“Let him go, brother,” Sven said quietly. “At this range, I can’t possibly miss.”
The Wulfen let the skald’s unconscious form slide heavily to the floor. A fearsome growl rumbled deep in the creature’s chest.
Sven let out a slow breath. “All right, that’s good,” he said. “Now, my lord, I want you to—”
He never saw the blow. The beast’s arm crashed into Sven, knocking the bolter from his hand, and then clawed fingers closed around the Grey Hunter’s throat. Sven drew back his power fist, in desperation, but he knew that the blow would not land in time.
“Stay your hand, Mikal Sternmark,” a voice spoke quietly from the doorway. “Remember yourself, and the oaths you swore to me.”
The Wulfen’s fierce gaze swung from the Grey Hunter to the tall figure framed in the doorway. Sven saw the beast’s eyes widen, and the hand slipped from his throat. An anguished whine escaped the creature’s lips, and the beast fell to its knees amid the carnage it had caused.
Berek Thunderfist looked haggard and pale in the wan light. Decked in his resplendent armour, Sven thought at first that he was looking upon the Wolf Lord’s ghost. “My lord,” he gasped in wonder. “When I saw you last, you stood at death’s door!”
“So I did,” Berek said gravely. “Madox wounded me sorely, and his magic trapped my soul in a realm of shadows from which I could not escape, until a lady came to me and showed me the way back to the land of the living.” A faint smile pulled at the corners of Berek’s mouth. “Our debt to House Bellisarius is deeper than ever. I only hope we live long enough to repay it.”
Sven frowned in consternation. “Forgive me, lord, but I don’t understand.”
“Nor do I Sven, not entirely,” Berek said, “and there is no time to explain. Even now the Holmgang is in the sky above us, preparing to bombard the planet. We have to reach them and call off the attack.”
“The Holmgang? Here?” Sven exclaimed. At once, the Grey Hunter bolted for the door, his scalp prickling at the thought of the doom looming high above the agri-world, but then he saw Gunnar’s unconscious form and stopped in his tracks. He turned back to the slumped form of the Wulfen. “What shall we do about him, my lord?”
Berek gazed upon the tormented face of his champion. “He will stay here and watch over his fallen brothers,” the Wolf Lord said, in a voice like iron. “Mikal Sternmark has been bewitched, like many of our brothers, by the sorceries of Madox and the Thousand Sons. But he is no monster,” the Wolf Lord declared. “He has ever been true to his oaths, and he will heed me now.”
Wulfen and Wolf Lord locked eyes across the blood spattered room, and a look of comprehension shone in the creature’s yellow eyes. The beast bowed low, touching its snout to the floor, and Berek turned away.
Sven followed the Wolf Lord into the hall, heading for the signals room. “This curse, how are we going to stop it?” he asked.
“It’s already begun,” Berek replied gravely. “Once we’ve halted the bombardment, I’m going to turn the fleet’s guns on the rebel positions while you and I rally our surviving brothers. Then we’re going back into the city to finish what we started.”
Gabriella seemed to fall in slow motion, sliding off the sorcerer’s hellblade and sinking with dreadful grace to the floor. Her hands still gripped the Spear of Russ tightly, even as her life’s blood poured out onto the dark stones. The Chaos sorcerer loomed above her, gripping the relic and trying to pull it free, but the Navigator held the spear’s haft in a death grip. The warrior spat a hateful curse and drew back his blade, aiming a blow at Gabriella’s head.
Ragnar crashed into the sorcerer at a full run, driving his shoulder into the warrior’s chest. The Chaos Space Marine flew backwards with a snarl, slashing wildly with his blade and slicing open the young Space Wolfs cheek. Ragnar’s hand closed around the haft of the spear, and he looked down at the stricken Navigator. Their eyes met for a single instant, and he could see the pain etched there. With a faint sigh, her hands slipped from the spear haft and she settled onto her back in a spreading pool of crimson.
He could hear her heartbeat slowing. The breath in her lungs was shallow, like a fading breeze. Horror assailed him as he looked down at the lady he had once sworn to protect.
The Wulfen called to him, beyond the red tide. It promised a simpler existence: a life without oaths or duty, living only for the moment and the red joy of the hunt. For an instant, he longed for that forgetfulness, and the feeling of power it promised.
He dimly heard the sorcerer clamber to his feet. Then came the voice of Bulveye, echoing in his head. War within, war without.
The Wulfen called, and Ragnar answered. Come to me.
With a furious hiss, the sorcerer rushed at the young Space Wolf, but Ragnar let the fury of the Wulfen drive him. He was a blur of motion, whipping the spear around and knocking the Chaos Space Marine’s thrust aside. Then he brought the spear head back into line with a tight, circling motion and thrust it into the sorcerer’s neck. The point of the ancient weapon punched through the ceramite plate as though it were paper, bursting from the back of the foe’s neck in a gout of vile fluids. Ragnar jerked the weapon free and let the warrior’s lifeless form fall to the ground.
Suddenly, Ragnar was bathed in lurid, red light, and he felt unseen hands grapple for the spear. Tendrils of energy wrapped around the haft of the relic, trailing from the foul eye floating above the ritual space. The young Space Wolf spun, glaring up at the semblance of Magnus, the foul primarch of the Thousand Sons.
He could feel the dreaded primarch channelling his energies into the spear, fighting to maintain the ritual that was corrupting the Space Wolves. Every moment the spell continued, the taint sank deeper into their souls.
Ragnar tightened his hands around the relic. He knew that he could not hope to match wills with one such as Magnus, and he did not intend to, for while he could sense the primarch’s fury and his implacable hate, he could also feel the pain from a wound that had not yet healed. The spear had wounded Magnus sorely, and he was still weak.
The young Space Wolf gazed defiantly at the blazing eye and hefted the spear in his hands. With a howl of fury he drew his arm back for a murderous throw.
At once the tendrils recoiled, and a disembodied voice roared with thwarted rage. Then there was a thunderclap, and Magnus the Red, Primarch of the Thousand Sons, was gone.
Ragnar felt the echoes of the primarch’s retreat reverberate across the surface of the shadow realm.
The red tide began to recede in his mind, flowing back into the deep recesses from whence it had sprung. However, the young Space Wolf wasn’t ready to let it go, and he seized it by force of will, stoking the rage once more. The ritual was finally broken, but Madox, its foul architect, still remained.
The sorcerer stood above Haegr’s slumped form, still clutching his bloodstained dreadblade. His left hand clenched into a trembling fist. “Ruined!” he hissed. “The labour of a hundred years, undone by a pack of fools.” Madox lashed out with a boot and kicked Haegr over, knocking the Wolfblade onto his back. “But you’ve doomed yourself as well, Ragnar Blackmane. This world has already begun to unravel. Soon, it will return to the warp, and the things that lurk there will feast upon your soul! I shall savour your agonies like wine,” the sorcerer said, and then lowered his glowing eyes to the Navigator. “Her, I may choose to keep as a plaything. Her spirit could entertain me for a very long time, I think.”
A chorus of hungry snarls answered Madox as the Wulfen turned from the bodies of their foes and caught the sorcerer’s scent. As one, the four beasts charged at the foul sorcerer, their bloody jaws agape.
“No!” Ragnar shouted as the Wulfen charged up the stairs. Too late, the sorcerer sprang his trap.
Madox’s left hand opened, and he uttered a string of blasphemous syllables. There was a rushing, wailing sound, like a merciless wind, and then a torrent of unnatural energy poured from the sorcerer’s palm. The foul stream engulfed the four Wulfen, s
hrivelling their massive forms to smoking husks in an instant.
Ragnar was charging up the stairs as the first of the lifeless bodies fell to pieces on the stone steps. He’d sensed that Madox had been trying to bait him, and now that the sorcerer had expended his terrible spell Ragnar was determined to strike before he could ready another.
The Spear of Russ gave the young Space Wolf the advantage of reach, which he used to full effect. Madox fell back from the furious assault, his blade moving in a dark blur as he parried a flurry of lightning-fast jabs and thrusts. Though at a slight disadvantage, Madox had ten thousand years of experience on his side, and he moved with the deadly grace of a viper.
Ragnar pushed Madox relentlessly, driving him steadily backwards. The sorcerer reached the top of the steps and continued to retreat, until the young Space Wolf found himself fighting on level ground. Almost immediately, the sorcerer counter-attacked, knocking the spear aside and darting in to plunge the tip of his blade into Ragnar’s thigh. Ragnar felt no pain from the blow, only a spreading coldness that sank deep into the limb.
Madox fell back, a faint hiss of laughter escaping from the depths of his ornate helm. Ragnar knew that he was being lured into playing the sorcerer’s game. He remembered the fight back at the Fang when Torin had played upon his aggression and killed him with small, precise blows. Madox was going to do the very same thing and there was little that Ragnar could do about it.
The young Space Wolf darted forward, aiming a series of thrusts at the sorcerer’s head and chest. Madox fell back, parrying them with ease. Then he lunged in and stabbed his blade into Ragnar’s left hip.
“You’re getting slower,” the sorcerer said, “just a bit, perhaps, but I can tell. It’s the cold, yes? You can feel it, sinking into your bones a little at a time, and each time I hit you, the feeling will get worse, until finally you’re stumbling like a wounded steer.” Madox chuckled. “I can make this last a long time, Ragnar, a very long time.”
The young Space Wolf staggered. Then, with a furious bellow, he leapt forward, stabbing at the sorcerer’s sword arm. Madox expertly gauged the blow and lunged past the expected second strike, stabbing his hellsword into Ragnar’s midsection.
Ragnar felt the icy coldness of the sword spread through his torso, and smiled. Madox looked up, and saw the point of Russ’s spear, poised to strike.
There hadn’t been a second blow. Instead, Ragnar had paused, letting the sorcerer’s blade strike home. He reached out with his left hand and grabbed the sorcerer’s wrist, driving the hellblade deeper into his chest and trapping it there.
Ragnar bared his teeth in a cold, wolfish grin. “This, on the other hand, won’t take very long at all.”
Madox’s scream was cut short as the young Space Wolf drove the Spear of Russ through the sorcerer’s faceplate.
For many years to come the officers aboard the Holmgang would speak with pride of the part they played in the salvation of Charys. It was only in private, after several stiff glasses of amasec, that they would confess their horror at how close they’d come to unleashing their torpedoes on their lord and his men.
Berek’s urgent call stopped the countdown with three seconds to spare, leaving the ordnance officers scrambling to transmit the abort code and silence the weapons’ hungry spirits. Cheers erupted across the command deck as the Wolf Lord’s steely voice barked orders to his fleet. The fight on the agri-world was far from over, and the guns of the great battle-barge were needed to turn the tide.
Within minutes the bombardment cannons were brought into action, unleashing a rain of devastation upon the massed rebel forces outside the planetary capital. Caught by surprise, the traitor regiments were devastated by the onslaught, and the survivors were forced to retreat in confusion back to the ruined streets of the nearby city.
But an even greater reversal was occurring invisibly across the entire world. As Madox’s ritual failed and the shadow realm began to pull away from Charys, the daemon packs that had overrun the starport were forced to dissipate, drawn back to the maelstrom from whence they came. The Thousand Sons, faced with the real danger of finding themselves trapped without support on a planet so close to Fenris, chose to retreat too. They faded from sight one last time, leaving the rebel commanders screaming in vain for deliverance. Abandoned, exhausted and under fire from orbit, the rebel offensive became a panicked rout.
Berek strode out into the darkness like a vengeful god, calling his warriors to his side. The survivors of his company fell to their knees at their lord’s miraculous deliverance, and soon word spread through the battered Guard regiments that the Lord of Wolves had risen from his deathbed to drive the Chaos spawn from Charys. Within hours, an armoured column of recaptured vehicles had been assembled and was making its way up the Angelus Causeway with Berek’s Wolves in the lead.
Their objective was the governor’s palace, and they slew every living thing that stood in their way.
Ragnar drew a deep breath and wrapped his hands around the hilt of the hellblade. He gritted his teeth and slowly, carefully, he pulled the vile weapon free.
The black blade clattered to the stones beside Madox’s lifeless form. Ragnar peered at his bloodstained hands for a moment, noting absently that the claws were no longer there. Then he planted his boot on Madox’s chest and pulled the Spear of Russ from the sorcerer’s helm. There was no blood upon the adamantine spear tip, just a dark stain of dust.
Ragnar could still feel the cold spreading through his body as he turned and limped carefully down the bloodstained steps. The air felt strange. It was thin and very dry, like ozone, and he heard the ominous rumble of thunder somewhere far away. He remembered what Madox had said about the world returning to the warp.
The young Space Wolf made his way among the shrivelled bodies of the Wulfen and sank to one knee beside his fallen friend. Haegr’s face was as pale as alabaster, and blood still ran freely from the terrible wound in his shoulder, staining the steps crimson beneath him. The Wolfblade’s eyes fluttered, and he puffed out his singed whiskers with a short breath. “You look awful,” he said breathlessly.
Ragnar tried to grin. “So I’m told,” he said. He rested his hand on Haegr’s breastplate, amazed that the burly Wolf hadn’t already sunk into the Red Dream. “Save your strength,” he said, looking down to where Sigurd knelt with Torin beside Gabriella’s prone form. “I’ll get the Wolf Priest—”
“Are you… are you saying that the mighty Haegr is lacking in strength?” the Wolfblade smiled weakly. “I should thrash you for that.”
The young Space Wolf felt a terrible ache in his chest that had nothing to do with his wounds. “Get up and try, then. Torin will take bets, I’m sure.”
Haegr’s grin faded. “Some other time perhaps,” he said softly. “Is Gabriella safe?”
Ragnar glanced again at the Navigator, and tried to sound dismissive. “Torin’s with her,” he said. “She’s resting I think.”
“That’s good,” the Wolfblade said, his voice growing faint. “Tell her I’m sorry. I didn’t want to leave her.”
“She knows, Haegr.” Ragnar said, his heart heavy with grief. “She knows.”
The Wolfblade’s eyes grew unfocused. He blinked once, and smiled. “Don’t take too long getting to the Halls of Russ,” he said, almost too faintly to hear, “or I’ll have drunk all the good ale before you get there.” He tried to laugh, but the breath escaped in a gentle sigh and the mighty warrior grew still.
Ragnar reached down and clasped his friend’s broad hand in farewell. As he did, he saw the black gleam of Haegr’s ale horn, lying on the steps beside him. Madox’s hellblade had severed its carrying strap, but the vessel itself looked unharmed. The young Space Wolf picked it up and tied it to his belt as he stood and made his way down the steps.
A tremor shook the Chaos temple, shifting the stones beneath the young Space Wolfs feet. He slipped on something slick, and realised numbly that there was blood on his boots. But for the terrible ache in his heart,
he could feel nothing from his waist to his neck. Using the spear as a walking stick, he made his way to Gabriella’s side.
Sigurd was bent over the injured Navigator, pressing a bandage to the wound in her abdomen. Torin looked up as the young Space Wolf approached. His eyes were dark again, and his expression was bleak as he clutched the Navigator’s hands in his own. “She told me she tried to send a warning to Berek,” he said. “Perhaps she saved Charys.”
Ragnar nodded dumbly. As terrible as Haegr’s death had been, the sight of the wounded Navigator was more terrible still. He touched Sigurd on the arm. “How is she?”
The young Wolf Priest shook his head. “My unguents and salves are made for Space Wolves, not people,” he said, his voice full of regret. He caught sight of the wound in Ragnar’s chest and his eyes widened. “Your wound is still bleeding,” he said, his voice taut with concern. “Sit down and let me see to it.”
“It’s nothing,” the young Space Wolf replied. “Save your energy for Lady Gabriella.”
Sigurd started to protest, but saw the look in Ragnar’s eyes and thought better of it. He nodded his head in the direction of the steps. “What of Haegr?”
Ragnar shook his head. Tears stung at the corners of his eyes, and he couldn’t bring himself to speak.
Sigurd nodded gravely and rose to his feet. He had one last duty to perform for the burly Wolfblade. Though he had fallen in battle, his gene-seed would need to be returned to the Fang, for implantation in a new initiate. Drawing a short, curved dagger from his belt, the priest made his way to the fallen warrior.
Torin looked up at Ragnar. “What now?” he asked. “It sounds like the whole world is coming apart.”
[Space Wolf 06] - Wolf's Honour Page 32
