ASHES OF PROSPERO

by Gav Thorpe

  Thumbing the firing stud, he unleashed a trail of rounds from the storm bolter, the short bursts ripping apart robed bodies, punching through flak armour and ornately styled carapaces and helmets. The Tzeentchian rabble had clearly not expected to run into foes as powerful as the Space Wolves.

  He fired again, grinning as cultists fell to the hail of bolts.

  Majula’s panicked shrieking cut through the pound of blood in his ears. Njal realised she had been screaming for several seconds. He wanted to shout at her to stop but denied the instinct at the last moment, forcing himself to think through the surge of combat stimulants his armour had poured into his system at the first sign of action.

  ‘We’re safe,’ he told her, loud enough to be heard over the zing of projectiles and energy bolts against ceramite, soft enough not to overwhelm. He fired again, felling another trio of cultists without thought. ‘They have nothing that can penetrate this armour.’

  She didn’t respond, nor had he really expected her to. Rational thought was not her present companion. The best course of action was to drive through the mob, now nearly fifty strong, and continue on towards the inner precincts. His hand reached for the Rhino’s long-range vox-caster to warn the others at the landing field to expect resistance but before he could flick the switch three swiftly consecutive events occurred.

  His prescience howled a warning. An incoming threat alert blinked on the Rhino’s tactical panel. His sensorium whined to draw his attention to the right.

  Njal slammed the Rhino into a skidding turn, one track locked as it bounced over the rockrete while the other churned debris and dust.

  The anti-tank missile hit the transport midway along the left side, almost square on the maintenance hatch. The detonation was oddly muted inside, a thud rather than a crack, but the spinning chunks of ceramite plate and explosion of warning lights betrayed a considerable hit. Something high-pitched outdid Majula’s shriek as road wheels burned against exposed gears, sparks flying down the road as the Rhino scraped to a halt, shedding its track links.

  ‘Stay here!’ the Stormcaller barked at Majula. His command was redundant. Her hoarse shouting had almost abated and she sat in stark terror, hands pale with tension as she clutched the safety harness in thin fists, eyes staring but not seeing the bulkhead opposite. Awkwardly, Njal turned, ripped out the armoured panel above him and wedged it into the transport compartment, effectively creating another barrier between the Navigator and the onrushing cultists.

  He glanced out of the viewing port. Foes thronged the street, closing quickly on the Rhino. He saw another missile launcher in the centre of the mob. There was no time to disembark properly, he had to act immediately.

  Partway through an eighth improvised verse of Magnagaldr, Lukas stopped, thoughts tuning to the vox-feed he had been subconsciously monitoring. He flicked the receiver to open speaker.

  ‘…gunfire from the western district. Moving platoon Grimbladr to stem the ingress.’

  He recognised Valgarthr’s terse commands and filtered the channel back to his personal feed.

  ‘Boost the power to the augur array,’ he told Gudbrand. ‘Let’s check what’s happening down there.’

  The co-pilot hesitated, hands hovering over the controls. He glanced at Lukas with an apologetic expression, the request unvoiced.

  ‘Those ones,’ Lukas told him, jabbing a finger towards the augur controls. ‘Dial down the focus and increase the range.’

  Lukas unlocked the control column and deactivated the gunship’s spirit-guided system. He pointed the nose down steeply, taking them through the banks of clouds over Tizca. The Stormfang juddered through a sudden pool of turbulence.

  ‘Augurs at full range, pack leader,’ said Gudbrand.

  ‘Call me Lukas,’ the Trickster replied on reflex, and not for the first time. ‘Pack leader sounds like someone who knows what they’re doing.’

  He studied the fuzzy schematic of the gunship’s sensor suite, decoding the streams of blotches and numerals that scrolled across a monochrome green sub-screen in front of the co-pilot.

  ‘Heat signals, lots of them,’ he told the others. ‘And plasma discharge. All across the…’

  No further commentary was needed when they broke the cloud cover, bursting into view over the city of the Thousand Sons. It stretched along the coast of a dried sea bed, the bright of glass and crystal dazzling against the greys and browns of the infertile ground around it. Though they were still more than a dozen kilometres away the flash of gunfire and the shapes of armoured vehicles and gunships told Lukas that the conflict was spread across several hectares of the city centre, and the read-outs from the augur warned that other enemies were massing on the outskirts.

  ‘Decision time,’ he told his companions. ‘The objective is the Pyramid of Photep, that large one right in the middle there. Looks to me like Valgarthr and Arjac are pushing on to secure it. To the east, as I recall, is the Silver Bastion. That large keep-tower on the boundary wall. Significant enemy signals coming from there. Or, north-west, we have the port facilities. Heat signatures betray growing presence there too. Where do you want to go?’

  The Blood Claws looked back at him dumbfounded. It was Artyn that voiced their concern.

  ‘You want us to decide, pack leader?’

  ‘We don’t have a pack leader,’ he replied, getting annoyed by the insinuation that he was somehow in charge. ‘We decide together. Call me Lukas.’

  They looked at each other, growing bolder by the second.

  ‘The Silver Bastion…?’ Artyn ventured quietly.

  ‘We should put down at the Orbital Yards with the general muster,’ said Bahrd. ‘Await fresh orders.’

  ‘Await fresh…’ Lukas scowled. ‘You and I are going to have disagreements if you keep this up, Bahrd. Come on, we have to select a course!’

  ‘The docks,’ said Gudbrand, more forcefully than perhaps he had intended judging by the surprise he showed a second later.

  ‘I knew there was a reason you were co-pilot,’ Lukas said with a grin. ‘Remember, pup warriors, always look confident in everything you do.’

  ‘Even when you are not?’ asked Herlief.

  ‘Especially then,’ said Lukas. He shifted the control column and adjusted the attitude jets, setting them towards the north-west of the city. ‘We’ll head off the reinforcements at the port.’

  ‘Just us?’ It was Bahrd again. Lukas scratched his ear, resisting the retort that wanted to slip from his tongue. He mastered his frustration and smiled warmly.

  ‘Do you see anybody else?’

  ‘No, pack…’ Bahrd trailed off as Lukas’ scowl returned. ‘No, Lukas.’

  ‘Then it’s just us.’

  This logic did not seem to reassure the newly promoted Space Wolf, and his doubts were in danger of infecting the others. As much as he was carefree of authority and only a passing acquaintance of duty, Lukas was still a Son of Russ.

  ‘You are Space Wolves. The bloody claws of the Allfather. What do you face? Deluded cultists of Magnus and deranged mutant renegades. Foes you have beaten before. This is why you have the gift of the Allfather, why you were elevated to the ranks of the Sky Warriors. The seven of you are a power greater than your number. You are not only Space Marines of the Imperium, you are Sons of Fenris, and that makes you magnificent!’

  ‘For Russ!’ Herlief lifted a fist as he shouted. ‘For the Allfather!’

  ‘For Russ. For the Allfather,’ the rest of the pack chorused after.

  Lukas rubbed his nose and turned his attention back to the controls. Just a couple of kilometres from the city and he could see sprawling firefights breaking out everywhere. As yet there was no action towards the port environs, but the augurs were clear that a significant number of foes were somehow materialising in the north-west sector of the city.

  Seven Blood Claws, he told himself. The equal of a company of lesser warriors.

  Such was the stuff of saga.

  Snatching up his staff, Njal asc
ended like a vengeful storm giant. The driver’s hatch and roof erupted above him in a cloud of shards and jags. He reached out a hand and blue-grey swirls of power flowed. He closed his fist as though snatching something out of the air. Flying shrapnel slowed and then stopped.

  Throwing his hand towards the snarling mob of depraved mutants, Njal let fly with his improvised missiles. The air was misted with blood droplets. Horrified squeals and terrified shouts of the dying and near-dead sounded distant in the open air.

  Njal hauled himself out of the broken Rhino, staff held before him. The skull-clad tip burned with the flame of his wrath, as he dropped down to the roadway. The hard surface crumbled under the impact of his heavy armour.

  The foe with the missile launcher had survived the shrapnel storm and opened fire. The projectile hissed over the piles of corpses, trailing vapour and blue fire. The Stormcaller swept his staff aside without thought, a barrier of azure energy leaping into existence a few metres ahead. The missile clattered against the shimmering wall and fell to the floor where it jittered for several seconds before exploding ineffectually.

  Njal splayed the fingers of his free hand, expanding the shield as a welter of bullets and las-bolts screamed down the roadway from sniping positions in the ruins to either side. From the immobilised Rhino, Nightwing ascended on black feathers and a dancing shadow of psychic power. The psyber-raven darted away, heading for one of the distant marksmen while Njal concentrated on the enemy that remained to his front. Through the eyes of his familiar, he saw the first sniper desperately trying to track the approach of the bird, unable to get a shot at the small target. The marksman rose and threw his arms up to defend himself, but it was too late. Nightwing’s claws ripped out his throat. Its beak plucked free the eye that had moments before peered down the long optic sight.

  Lightning leapt from Njal’s staff. Charred bones clattered in heaps upon the ground, wisps of blood vapour steaming from empty sockets and splayed ribcages.

  Still the cultists came on, driven by the madness of Chaos.

  ‘Abominations,’ growled Njal. He unleashed another storm of fury. Cascading blasts set fire to the masks and robes of his assailants. Wailing and thrashing, the cultists burned and writhed.

  +What brutality. What scorn. Though I did like the trick with the shrapnel. That shows some promise.+

  The sorcerer’s words tapped into a well of frustration that had been filling within Njal since Izzakar had become trapped inside his thoughts. The Rune Priest’s eyes were blazes of golden fire and he threw his head back to let free a howl. Pent-up emotion burst free from the depths, rising up around him in the form of a monstrous wolf clad in starlight and lightning. The storm-beast leapt from Njal, fangs bared and claws of flashing death. It fell upon the last cultists in a frenzy, tearing limbs from bodies, tossing the carcasses aside, an inchoate manifestation of the Allfather’s retribution. Panting and snarling, Njal willed the stormwolf to attack again and again, while about the street, Nightwing flew with loud caws having dispatched the last of the enemy snipers.

  Unnoticed, the pinnacles of obelisks lining the street burned with dark red flame, lodestones for the psychic power channelling through the enraged Space Wolf. He felt it only as an influx of spirit, the strength of the mountain, the hunting instinct of the wolf. Icicles formed in his beard and upon the edges of his armour plates, glittering with psychic energy.

  The wolf thrived, feeding on the tiny flickers of spirit that left the dying cultists. Their blood was a miasma in the air, their scattered body parts becoming a fleshy carpet underfoot. Njal’s conjuration swelled in victory, engorged by the power that flooded him through the now-imperfectly arranged psycho-conductive patterns of Tizca.

  ‘Stormcaller!’

  He only dimly heard Majula’s cry of alarm. The wolf’s snarls were far louder, his ears near deaf to all else.

  +Njal!+

  The shock of hearing his name in the tone of the Thousand Sons sorcerer gave him a moment of pause; a moment in which he saw the wyrdsign crawling across the ground around him, cutting the air about his staff.

  Gulping down bitter draughts of air, the Stormcaller released his hold upon the wyrd-beast, letting it drift away on a cold wind with a last plaintive howl.

  The patter of feet turned him, staff raised ready for another attack. It was Majula. He checked the power that simmered through his veins. She held her eyeguard in place as she ran, robes flapping about her. The Navigator stopped a few strides away, her eyes wide with fear.

  ‘All is well, I am in control,’ he told her.

  +You call that control? One might as well say that the leaf in the hurricane controls the winds. Even after so long, the genius of Magnus remains. You stand on ground steeped in psychomancy, rune-thrower. The city courses with untapped potential, but like the Portal Maze, it has become misaligned. One rogue thought could bring about cataclysm once more.+

  ‘Look, look there,’ gasped Majula, thrusting a finger past Njal, towards the immense pyramids of Tizca.

  Njal directed his attention to the city centre. About the highest sun-sparkled peak the clouds had been driven away. In their place burned a greenish-blue fire that cut hideous sigil-shapes upon the air.

  +Photep’s Phyre! What menace has your meddling unleashed?+

  The Stormcaller said nothing as the rune-flames curled and criss-crossed to create ever more complex weavings. Njal could not look away as an image emerged from their seemingly random intersections. A vision burned into his thoughts. A terrible memory given life again as he looked upon a monstrous face with a single eye.

  +The Crimson King returns to Tizca!+

  CHAPTER 10

  THE PYRAMID OF PHOTEP

  Njal looked at the Rhino and knew instantly that it would be going nowhere until it had been tended by the Iron Priests. In the distance, he could see the gunships moving back and forth against the blaze of psychic light. Whatever was happening in central Tizca was more important than his predicament and he held off voxing one of the pilots to collect him.

  +The Pyramid of Photep is several miles away.+

  ‘I have run the ice fields of Fenris for days at a time. It will take a few minutes, that is all.’

  His gaze fell upon Majula and his confidence waned a little. She could not hope to keep pace.

  ‘Leave me here, I will rejoin you when I can,’ she told him, guessing his thoughts. Though her eyes flitted to the mounds of corpses and the shadows in the ruined buildings. ‘I will find my own way to your brothers.’

  ‘It is not safe.’ Njal considered the problem and then took a step towards the Navigator, his empty hand held out. ‘If you do not mind your dignity being a little bruised, I will carry you.’

  ‘I do not wish to slow you down, Lord of Runes. Something fell occurs in Tizca and you must be quick to counter it.’

  ‘You shall be no burden at all,’ he assured her, gesturing for Majula to approach. ‘We shall run as swift as the hunting wolves.’

  ‘I am young but I am not a child. I do not think this paternal attitude is appropriate.’

  ‘You misunderstand,’ said Njal. ‘You are the Navigator and if I wish to return to Fenris I have to keep you alive.’

  +Well done, wolf-son! Finally you show some perspective.+

  ‘I see.’ She pressed against the wolf pelt that hung from his waist and he lifted gently, holding her to his chest. More carefully than when he had attacked the cultists, he allowed the warp to trickle into his thoughts, to flow gently through his veins. His hearts stirred at the power, his blood coursed, and a sweat stood out on his skin.

  ‘Like the wolf,’ he told her again and broke into a run.

  +It is hard to believe that a people famed for their sagas make such repeated use of trite metaphors.+

  His first strides were slow and lumbering, the Terminator armour so suited to close-quarters combat not ideal for quick acceleration. Four strides later, Njal and his armour had reached a rhythm that started to eat away at the d
istance. Forcing psychic power into his muscles and the fibre bundles of his suit, Njal continued to accelerate. Ignoring Izzakar’s taunt, he pictured a sleek wolf chasing deer across a glacier, tongue lolling, snow on its pelt.

  Leaving an ice-shadow behind him, they leapt a dozen metres at the next stride, momentarily sliding aside from reality. Majula gasped and he held her tight but careful not to crush her with the powered limb.

  +Remarkable!+

  Six more strides and he wyrd-slipped again, the next jump covering twenty metres in an instant. His sensorium bleated warnings of the fleeting exposure to warp energy, while threat readings from the ruins whined in his ears. He ignored them and looked up to the glowering Cyclopean image of Magnus the Red floating above the mountain-pyramid of his ancient home.

  Onwards they sped.

  +No, no, no! What are those fools doing? Make them stop!+

  The area around the great Pyramid of Photep was a scene of anarchy. The cracking Portal Maze network had unleashed hundreds of Magnus’ waiting cultists and beast-mutants into the precincts. Knots of grey-armoured Space Wolves controlled the junctions and areas of high ground, holding the defensive lines of the thralls around them like towers anchoring a wall. Guided by Aldacrel and his acolytes, gun servitors stalked among the living, the crackle of their arcane weapons distinct amid the bolter fire. The roar of gunship engines and heavy bolters throbbed from circling Stormwolf attack craft, while Thunderhawks volleyed fire into the buildings surrounding the beset Stormriders.

  Njal skidded to a stop about half a kilometre from the base of the incredibly vast mirror-plated pyramid, on the edge of the growing firefight. Warp power surged back and forth, flashing as lightning from the great pyramid to the peaks of its lesser cousins, coruscating down their broken surfaces in bolts of red, black and pale green. He set Majula down onto the naked ferrocrete and unconsciously pushed her back, sheltering her from potential attack with the bulk of his Terminator suit. Fed by the leaking energy, the staff in his hand crackled and the runes of his armour pulsed arrhythmically.