by William King
Ragnar could hear the enemy babbling up ahead. A wounded man cursed and screamed alternately while his fellows told him to shut up. A commanding voice bellowed instructions. Ragnar lobbed a grenade in their direction, and the orders ceased, to be replaced by more screams and howls.
Ragnar drew his chainsword as he emerged from the smoke, and found himself face to face once again with the cowled members of the Brotherhood. He did not wait for them to recognise their peril. He leapt among them, striking right and left, slaying as he went. He showed the wounded no mercy, stamping on them as he passed, crushing hands, heads and ribs under his armoured boots. He had seen many wounded men pick up their weapons to kill again and he was not going to take any chances here.
The sheer fury of his sudden onslaught panicked the zealots. They did not know they were facing only one man. All they knew was that some furious daemon had emerged from the smoke of battle and was killing them. Ragnar passed through them like a whirlwind. Nothing withstood him. The chainsword cleaved through the barrels of lasrifles raised in hasty parries. It sent sparks scattering and made the screams of tortured metal mingle with the last wails of the dying.
He did not let up when his foes started to flee. He pursued them, despite being outnumbered scores to one. When his prey ran into their comrades from behind, he realised that he only faced the advance guard of his enemies. But that did not slow him down. As the cultists barged into each other, and tripped one another up, he followed, hacking with his chainsword, blasting with bolter shells at point-blank range, letting the wild ululating war cry of his Chapter reverberate down the corridor.
Bones broke, blood, meat and gristle got caught between the swiftly whirring blade of his chainsword. As the friction heated them, they sent up an awful stench. He kept chopping, severing limbs, opening the top of one man’s skull with one blow like an islander opening a coconut with a machete. Once more he heard someone bellowing, telling the zealots to stand firm in the name of the Light. It said that they would prevail. He aimed himself towards the voice, knowing that if he slew the leader, he could create more panic and disarray.
One or two men tried to make a stand now. One of them had raised his autorifle to his shoulder and was aiming at point-blank range at Ragnar. The Space Wolf sprang to one side, as the autofire ripped past him. He brought up his own bolt pistol and slew the shooter with a single shot, silencing his weapon forever.
Someone tugged at his legs and he felt something sting the back of his knee. Looking down he saw that a wounded man had caught the weak joint at the back of his kneeguard with a combat knife. Instinct told Ragnar that the wound was neither serious nor likely to slow him down, but it was a warning to him to be more careful. He lashed out with his boot. The impact threw the wounded man’s head backwards and his neck snapped. Ragnar could hear the crunch of vertebrae, but it seemed that he was losing the initiative now.
More and more fire impacted on his armour, the force of the bullets were like hammer blows. Something glanced off Ragnar’s skull, drawing blood and sending waves of pain and blackness surging through his head. Perhaps he had been overconfident, he thought. There were too many of his foes for even a Space Wolf to overcome. As he reeled backwards, they continued to rally, raising weapons, drawing blades, making ready to carve him up and chop him down. Ragnar sprang back pulling the trigger of his bolt pistol repeatedly. He sent shells tearing through closely packed flesh. He howled as he fought. He was rewarded with a familiar war-cry echo close by.
Over the scent of blood and opened innards he caught the familiar smell of Fenrisian flesh and hardened ceramite. Valkoth’s rescue party must be close. He need only hold on for a little longer.
He snarled defiance. He was not going to hold on, he was going to kill and kill again, dragging as many of his foes to hell as he could — like a true Fenrisian warrior. The beast within him was filled with killing lust, while the saner part of his mind turned it to his advantage. He knew that if he pressed on through his attackers he would link up with Valkoth and his force.
Guided partly by feral instinct and partly by cold calculation, he struck out again. Gathering all his strength he sprang forward, lashing left and right with his chainsword, taking off heads and limbs with every blow, leaving men to slip and fall on their own spilling intestines.
The fury of his renewed onslaught took his opponents off guard for a moment, and he hewed a bloody path through them in the direction of the oncoming Belisarians. But it did not take the fanatics long to regain their wits. Whatever their faults, a lack of desperate courage was not one of them. Some of the wounded grasped at his legs, trying to slow him. Others aimed their weapons. A wave of them threw themselves forward, trying to grapple with Ragnar, and to immobilise his arms and legs. It was a mistake; no two men were as strong as he. He threw them off, sending them flying through the air to smash into walls or into other zealots. He dashed out the brains of others with the butt of his bolt pistol. Trying to restrain his sword arm was like trying to grab the jaws of a hungry tiger.
Still they came on, and still their comrades fired. They did not care that their bullets thudded into the bodies of their fellows more often than smashing into Ragnar’s armour. All were overcome by the madness and the chaos of battle. He realised that none of them had as clear a picture of what was going on as he did. The gloom and smoke confused them, as did the loud echo of their weapons. All they could see was a huge shadowy figure moving among them with almost supernatural speed. Even when they did not panic there was a natural urge to shoot, to do something — anything in the face of the threat.
Ragnar lashed out with his boot at the head of one man who was lying on his belly and shooting upward at him with a pistol. His foot connected with sickening force, sending teeth and splintered bone flying. A moment later he was through to Valkoth who was leading a line of black-garbed Belisarian guards towards him. Knowing what would come next Ragnar turned and faced the zealots. A moment later Valkoth and his men were at his side, and the fighting became close and deadly.
“By Russ, Ragnar, you might have left some for us,” said Valkoth. His gloomy aura seemed to deepen in the midst of battle. He moved his head fractionally and a lasbeam hissed by. He raised his bolter easily and fired back at his assailant. Only one shot, but it was enough. There was a precision about Valkoth’s way of fighting that was very odd in a Space Wolf, but he was none-the-less deadly for it.
“I think there are a few,” said Ragnar, ducking the stab of a bayonet, then carving through weapon barrel and then man with his riposte.
“Glad to hear it,” said Valkoth, sending another man to hell with a single shot of his bolter, then laying open the forehead of an assailant closing with him with its barrel. Even as the man fell Valkoth pumped a shell into him and moved on.
They headed down the corridor towards Torin, who was holding off more zealots from behind a barrier built of corpses.
Ragnar wondered whether he really could have killed all those men on his own and then driven the others back. But when he thought of the number he had killed, he realised that it was more than possible.
“The situation here is under control. I think you should go and see what Haegr is up to,” Torin said. “He’s probably got his foot caught in a bucket.”
Even as he spoke, Valkoth was issuing a clipped order to the Belisarian guard who moved off in the direction of Torin’s attackers.
“Let us all go together,” said Valkoth, leading them in the direction Haegr had taken. Within a hundred metres they found the first mauled bodies, and heard the receding sounds of slaughter. Somewhere further off they heard Haegr bellow: “Come back and fight like men!”
“Doubtless he thinks that if he shouts loud enough they will obey him,” said Torin sardonically.
“No sign of any bucket,” said Valkoth.
“It’s only a matter of time,” said Torin. “You know that as well as I do. Well, we’d best get to him before he falls down a lift shaft trying to persuade those z
ealots to come back and be slaughtered.”
They advanced through scenes of awful carnage. Bruised and mangled corpses lay everywhere, their heads oddly indented or turned to jelly, broken ribs protruding through flesh. Ragnar had seen bodies run over by Land Raiders in better condition.
“I am surprised he did not stop for a snack,” said Torin, and catching the disgusted glances of his two companions, he raised an eyebrow. “Well, he probably hasn’t eaten more than a small killer whale in the past few hours.”
Ahead of them loomed the man himself. Gore covered him. Spatters of blood and brain and less recognisable substances decorated his armour and the head of his hammer. He looked around at them and said, “You did not miss anything here. These worms were barely worth killing.”
“Your mission took a little longer than you expected,” said Valkoth sourly.
“That’s the way these things go sometimes,” said Haegr, entirely unabashed. “No plan survives contact with the enemy, as I have heard you say yourself.”
“Those are an ancient philosopher’s words, not mine.”
“Well they are the first sensible words I have ever heard from any philosopher.”
“This is a first,” said Torin sardonically. “Standing in the ruins under Earth discussing philosophy with Haegr. Whatever next?”
“We were not discussing philosophy,” said Haegr. His outraged tone made it sound as if Torin had accused him of molesting a sheep.
“Don’t let me interrupt your intellectual debate,” said Torin wickedly.
Haegr lapsed into sulky silence, folded his huge arms across his chest, and snorted audibly. Valkoth looked at Torin. “We should be going now,” he said. “After all, I have rescued you and you have duties in the world above.”
“Rescued us!” said Torin and Haegr near simultaneously.
“The situation was under control,” said Torin.
“Mighty Haegr would have battled his way to the surface, carrying his two weak-stomached companions if need be,” said Haegr. Ragnar noticed that Valkoth’s long drooping moustaches were oddly twisted around his mouth. Is he mocking us, Ragnar wondered? Was there a sense of humour at work there?
“We’d best fetch our prisoner and our guide,” said Ragnar.
“A guide?” said Valkoth. He sounded disbelieving.
“He has been of assistance,” said Ragnar innocently. “And I believe he should be rewarded appropriately.”
Ragnar glanced around his chamber, glad to be back on the surface, all too aware of the comforts of the place, and the security. He lay down on the bed and stared at the ornately carved ceiling. No, that was wrong. There was no security on Earth. It was an illusion. There were traitors everywhere, even here, and soon they would need to smoke them out. There was no place in the Imperium that was truly secure, not as the ancients might have once understood the word. This was a place of intrigue and danger, of fanatics filled with burning religious hatred and self-righteous anger.
He smiled to himself. He had heard the Wolves described in those terms, and he knew that some Chapters and organisations prided themselves on zealotry and a fanatical devotion to their duty. Was there really so much difference between the Inquisition and the Brotherhood, Ragnar wondered? There was a great deal of similarity between them. Both were pledged to defend mankind from the mutant. Both were staffed by dedicated fanatics. Why single out the Inquisition, he thought? His own Chapter was as guilty of these things as the Brotherhood. Ah, but then his own Chapter was in the right. Ragnar could almost have laughed. Of course, that was what he had been taught, and that was what he believed, and in this he was no different from Antoninus.
He lay on the bed for a long time wrestling with the sin of relativity.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Two days later, Ragnar stalked through the halls of the Belisarius Palace. Outside it was night, but inside business went on. Over one of the doors was a sign that read “commerce never sleeps”, and the men sitting in the booths, bidding and contracting in hand sign and pidgin Gothic proved that fact. He had no idea what they might be contracting for. It could be anything from the futures in Necromundan industrial production to the shipping of a million sides of grox from the steppes of Thunder Plain.
He suspected it would not matter to these men who gathered under the shadows of the Navigators either. Their business was business. They traded where they could find a profit. The Navigators got a cut for shipping it, and possibly financing it. He had been in the palace long enough now to know that the Houses bankrolled an enormous amount of trade even though they were supposedly above such things. There were fronts over fronts over fronts. The middlemen had middlemen. It was not as it was supposed to be, but Ragnar supposed sourly that this applied to a lot of things on Terra.
He saw Linus Serpico sitting at the side of one booth frantically making notes on vellum. He looked both tired and happy, as if his only purpose in life was writing things down.
As Ragnar approached, the negotiation came to an end and both richly garbed merchants rose and shook hands before affixing their seals to the document Linus had prepared. Linus stifled a yawn, bowed to them both and flitted over to Ragnar.
Ragnar smiled at him and he smiled back happily. The Belisarians had given him work and that seemed all he required. Then a troubled look flickered over his brow. A strange edge entered his scent too. “Excuse me, master Ragnar, but I have heard the most disturbing rumours.”
Ragnar looked at him and waited for him to say more. He was not surprised. Linus had a quick mind, and good ears, and few people seemed to pay him much notice. It was for this reason that Ragnar suspected he heard everything. “Rumours?” he prompted.
“They say there have been riots against the Navigator Houses, and that men are massing to sweep them from the face of the planet. I mean no offence, I merely repeat what I hear.”
“I take no offence, Linus,” said Ragnar, “but where did you hear such things?”
“The merchants talk about it. They say such things are bad for business, and the Inquisition should do something about it.”
That would suit the Inquisition, Ragnar thought. They would love to get a foothold in the navigators quarter and all they needed was a reason. If the House troops could not quell the protests and riots, the Inquisition surely would, by whatever means necessary. Disturbances to the peace of Holy Terra would only be tolerated so far. It was worrying. Ragnar himself had been involved in the suppression of several minor riots. He had been called out along with the rest of the guard to keep the peace. The mere sight of him had been enough to send many of the protesters running for their lives, which had surely been Valkoth’s intention.
Still, the memory disturbed him. He had not seen so much unreasoned hatred and fear for a long time. In addition, there was something about an agitated crowd he did not like at all. Its behaviour reminded him of a Space Wolf pack, but without the guiding intelligence, or the ability to think independently when called on to do so. The people had been armed with makeshift weapons, burning and looting the stores of those they thought did business with the Navigators. In truth Ragnar suspected it had been more of an excuse for looting than anything else. They had come nowhere near the palaces, and he doubted the shopkeepers had anything more or less to do with the Navigators than anyone else in the quarter.
“These are troubled times, sir,” said Linus.
“Indeed,” said Ragnar. The little man looked up at him nervously and licked his lips.
“Is it true that the Navigator throne is vacant?” he asked.
By the Emperor, news travels fast, thought Ragnar. The Celestarch herself had only had word of old Gorki’s death an hour ago. Now it was the talk of the bazaar. He did not know why he was surprised. Fortunes could be won or lost on such information. Right now factions were manoeuvring to get their representative on the throne before it was barely cold. The status and power of entire Houses would be decided. People would try and back the winner.
“
As far as I know that is correct,” said Ragnar.
Linus nodded as if this confirmed what he already knew. “There will be trouble,” he said.
Ragnar did not ask him what drove him to that conclusion. When mastodons fight, grass gets trampled. Political awareness was a basic survival skill for people around here.
Linus fell into step beside him as they made their way through the halls. He smelled tired and hungry and doubtless was returning to his cell. Ragnar was strangely glad of his presence, because he was feeling uneasy. Something did not feel right. Perhaps it was his encounter with the howling fury of the mob earlier that day, but he doubted it. Such things had never made him uneasy and restless in the past. He felt as he often did when he was hiking through the frozen peaks of Fenris. The first signs of an avalanche were often not striking. They were small meaningless things. A slight vibration underfoot, a creak of ice in the distance, an odd tone carried on the wind. He felt he was hearing such things now.
The riots, the rise of the Brotherhood, the mazy intrigues of the House surrounding him were all small signs but they hinted at a large threat. Events were occurring somewhere that boded no good for House Belisarius and his battle-brothers, he was certain. They walked a deadly path during a thaw, he thought. None of the bustling commerce that surrounded him could make him feel differently.
They left the halls of commerce behind them, passing the guards who stood vigil at the entrance to the private quarters. Ragnar returned the fist to chest salute of the House warriors and strode through. Linus made his way towards the elevators that led down to the cramped chambers of the servants’ levels.
He touched Linus on the shoulder. “Come and tell me if you hear anything suspicious, anything at all.”
