Tyrant of the Hollow Worlds

by Mark Clapham

  This was good; he was regaining feeling. His other senses were beginning to return: he could smell the blood of the Corsair he had headbutted, taste it at the back of his mouth. He could hear distant gunfire, and the sound of it gave him new purpose. His fingers were still not fully under his control but he shoved the heels of his palms down, levering himself up. He was Anvindr Godrichsson of the Vlka Fenryka, and there was a battle he needed to fight.

  It seemed to take an age to raise himself to his knees, but when he did Anvindr found his vision clearing. It was like staring through a blizzard, a fuzz of white light with vague shapes visible, but Anvindr had fought his way through enough blizzards on Fenris. His muscles burned as he stood tall, and he nearly collapsed again as he leaned over to retrieve his chainsword with cold, clumsy fingers, but he was up and moving.

  With deliberate, painful movements, Anvindr began to walk towards the sound of battle.

  The Red Corsairs wore power armour that resembled a grotesque parody of an uncorrupted Space Marine, cracked and blackened and festooned with heretical symbols and trophies. Their very existence struck unease deep into Tormodr’s gut, and he unleashed a torrent of promethium across the elevator, setting it ablaze. The fire would not breach the enemy’s power armour, but it would give them pause as they opened fire on Tormodr and Sindri.

  The two Space Wolves were at one corner of the elevator, while half a dozen Corsairs were spread across the rest, with now-burning crates and machinery inbetween them.

  ‘They think us cornered,’ said Sindri, rolling forwards to evade a burst of bolter fire, taking cover behind a flame-licked generator.

  ‘Then, by Russ, we shall show them it is unwise to try to trap a Space Wolf,’ bellowed Tormodr, charging forwards through a hail of bolts, running towards the Red Corsair nearest the edge of the elevator. A bolt exploded off Tormodr’s helmet, causing his vision to blur and crack, but he was too hard-headed to let that stop him, and he rammed straight into the Corsair, knocking him off the edge. The Corsair fell back to ground level with an outraged roar, and Tormodr dropped to his knees, pulling off his damaged helmet. He had already stowed his flamer, and he held a combat knife in his right hand.

  Staying low, Tormodr ran to the ridge-side of the elevator, where two more Corsairs were firing on Sindri, who was in turn locking chainswords with another Corsair.

  Tormodr shoulder-charged the first of the two Corsairs, who smashed into the second as he was tipped off balance. That second Corsair crashed through the safety railing and became wedged between the elevator and the ridge, the ceramite of his armour screeching against the side of the ridge as he tried to extricate himself.

  As the first Corsair recovered his balance he turned his bolter on Tormodr, but the Space Wolf struck out with his left arm, knocking the barrel aside, metal clanging against ceramite. Holding the knife sideways in his right hand, he punched the Red Corsair hard in the helmet, three rapid blows that didn’t crack the armour but left the Corsair momentarily stunned. Then, when his enemy was off balance, Tormodr turned the blade around, forced the tip of the knife beneath the helmet of the Corsair and thrust forwards, pushing his whole body weight behind the knife. As the Corsair fell backwards Tormodr fell with him, using gravity to push the knife home, between thick layers of armour and through the thinner layer of material that joined them. As the Corsair crashed into the elevator floor, Tormodr landing on top of him, the impact pushed the knife right into the Corsair’s neck, a blow that reverberated back up Tormodr’s arm.

  ‘Skarrow!’ bellowed the second Corsair to his fallen brother, having pulled himself back onto the platform. He was about to shoot Tormodr in the head at short range, but was distracted by Sindri running across with a chainsword dripping with blood.

  The elevator reached the platform level, and the Red Corsair jumped back from Sindri’s blow, into the ornate space of the ridge runner station. The Corsair opened fire, and was joined in supporting fire by other Corsairs as they saw the Space Wolves in their midst. The platform was hectic with activity as Corsairs and their mortal followers boarded a train that was already beginning to move.

  Tormodr and Sindri ducked back into cover as bolts flew at them from half a dozen different Corsairs, detonating across the elevator as they hit crates and containers.

  ‘We are vastly outnumbered,’ said Sindri, sheathing his chainsword and cocking his bolter. ‘A whole train full of Traitor Marines. Impossible.’

  Tormodr grunted as he took the bolter from the dead Corsair. It would do.

  ‘I know,’ said Sindri. ‘I couldn’t have said it better myself.’

  Anvindr found the other Space Wolves at the base of the ridge, exchanging fire with unseen enemies in the station building atop the ridge, as well as within the structures that supported it. The ground around them was littered with bodies: some Red Corsairs, some Spaces Wolves, plus a large number of the Corsairs’ mortal followers, from uniformed officers to rag-wearing slaves. The Red Corsairs may have retreated to the ridge, but they had done so at a cost.

  ‘They flee from us like rodents,’ said young Hoenir as Anvindr approached. He bared his fangs in jubilation.

  ‘Why are we not chasing them down?’ Anvindr demanded. His voice came out weaker and more slurred than normal, the after-effect of the drug in his system.

  ‘The enemy collapsed stairwells as they retreated,’ said Gulbrandr, and Anvindr could tell from his cocked head that the other Space Wolf wanted to ask what had happened to him, but knew now was not the time. ‘Tormodr and Sindri stormed the elevator, but they are the only ones to find a route.’

  The great ridge runner that was docked above could just be seen over the edge of the ridge, and was moving out of the station, travelling away from the Archway.

  ‘See?’ said Hoenir. ‘The traitors are in flight.’

  As he spoke, the clock tower of the station exploded. It was a building of stone, and huge chunks of rock were propelled in all directions, causing the Space Wolves below to back away as debris fell to the ground. As the tower tilted to one side, falling through the structures that supported it, the explosions spread, ripping apart the station and everything the humans had built around the ridge. The initial blast of rock chunks from the explosion was followed by a great cloud of dust that spread outwards, blinding even the Space Wolves, a choking expanse of crushed debris that spread in all directions.

  When the dust cleared, there was nothing but burning rubble at the base of the ridge, a cairn too great for even the Space Wolves to dig through, under which Sindri and Tormodr were lost.

  Anvindr felt a pang he had not felt since the loss of Liulfr, in the cursed depths of Hrondir’s tomb. A howl rose in his chest, a feral scream of grief.

  His brothers were gone, his brothers were gone.

  Twenty

  On the deck of the Fist, Valthex looked out at the Ironshore as Huron Blackheart’s galleons circled. It was an island, sheer walls surrounding it with only a strip of rocky beach between the wall and the sea. The wall towered over the galleons, and Valthex saw it not just with his eyes but with all the sensors and scanners at his disposal, looking for any potential weakness.

  ‘That is not iron,’ he concluded. From a distance the Ironshore looked exactly how it sounded, a surface of dull grey metal, but looking closer the material had a translucency akin to smoked glass, the granularity of rock…

  ‘What is it, then?’ demanded Huron Blackheart.

  ‘No material known to mortals,’ said Valthex. ‘Nor like anything I have witnessed in the warp.’

  ‘Uncertainties bore me,’ Blackheart spat. ‘What payload of explosives would bring such a wall down without damaging that which lies behind it?’

  ‘Difficult to say, my lord,’ replied Valthex, preparing himself for Huron to lash out at this unwelcome news. But the Tyrant was still, in thought.

  ‘I will not bury my prize in rub
ble,’ said Huron Blackheart. ‘Let the cannons lie still – we will take the Ironshore with fist and bolter.’

  On board the Merciless Strike, Rotaka prepared for the landing ramp to drop and the taking of the Ironshore to begin.

  This was as it should be, thought Rotaka as he checked over his bolter. In a universe with Space Marines in it, almost all conflicts came down not to artillery batteries or planet-cracking orbital weapons, but to individuals on the battlefield, the firing of bolters and the wielding of armoured fists.

  The last conflict between living things, whenever it came to this benighted universe, would not be a detonation of some apocalyptic weapon that consumed the last scraps of living matter, but the physical struggle between the last two warriors standing. All weapons depleted, they would choke and claw each other to death at the end of everything.

  At least, that was how Rotaka thought it would end.

  For now, it made sense to him that the Ironshore would only be breached by the Red Corsairs themselves, either breaking it down by force or scaling it and cracking those defences open from the inside.

  Of course, Rotaka thought as he watched the huge container he had been listening to in the depths of the ship be hauled out on to the deck, even once the galleons had landed the Red Corsairs would not be entirely without powerful support…

  The Ironshore was quiet as the galleons crunched into the beach below, as it had been throughout their approach. Rotaka was under no illusions that this was anything other than a matter of the defenders waiting for them to get close before revealing their hand.

  Then the ramp dropped, and Rotaka was a little behind the front line as they charged for the Ironshore, so he had a better angle to view the spheres that fell from the top of the wall. Grenades, set to explode on impact. As the first few hit, the line didn’t hesitate – the explosions had little effect on the Corsairs, and the mortals feared the presence of Huron amongst them, and the fatal discipline the Tyrant’s Claw would mete out, more than being torn to pieces by a grenade.

  What Rotaka hadn’t expected was that the grenades would include a variety of explosive types. Some released bursts of deadly shrapnel, red-hot chunks of cruel metal that tore through exposed flesh and any armour weaker than the Red Corsairs’. Others exploded with an outward burst of corrosive acid, sizzling against flesh and armour alike. Others still exploded in a burst of poisonous gas.

  Most of these were harmless to the Red Corsairs, but their cumulative effect was confusion, with burned, torn and otherwise wounded mortals reeling into each other. The first attempts to approach the wall with extendable siege towers had been thwarted, the towers either knocked sideways by the blasts or stopped in their tracks as their crews were destroyed.

  In the middle of this pandemonium, Rotaka was tracking the top of the wall for any movement he could target with his bolter, but the defenders were too clever to be visible, launching a steady flow of grenades without sticking their heads out.

  What did emerge from the parapet were the barrels of plasma cannons and heavy bolters, which began to spray both the foot-soldiers on the ground and the galleons they had emerged from with a wall of heavy fire.

  Even slightly back from the base of the wall, Rotaka was looking up at a very steep angle, but he tried to find something bigger than the end of a gun barrel to target. His search for a live target was broken by a giant claw locking over his pauldron, and the voice of his master at his ear.

  ‘Rotaka,’ hissed Huron Blackheart. ‘It is time to wake Kolsh.’

  ‘It is quite a thing to watch the Adeptus Astartes fight each other,’ said Inquisitor Pranix, as the Space Wolves’ human servants – the kaerls, Cheng believed they were called – bustled around, maintaining communication between Pranix and the force led by the Wolf Lord Haakan. ‘It is an honour for mortals to see god-like beings clash, with all their might and martial prowess. Few eyes get to look upon such displays of battle.’

  The inquisitor spoke while sitting in a corner of one of the Gatehouse’s drabber chambers, in which the kaerls had set up their communications. While the Iron Priests and their wards held off any scrapcode infection from the Space Wolves’ own communications, they had set up their command centre away from any of the Lastrati comms, just to be sure no cross infection was possible. Pranix had taken to sitting at the edge of the room on a chair he had looted from the servants’ quarters, rather than taking a visible position of command at the centre of the room.

  Dumas Cheng, sitting on a more elegant chair nearby, resisted the urge to meekly nod along to Pranix’s monologue. As Cheng found himself further at the periphery of the decisions being made about the future of his worlds, the system under his governance, so a new frankness had emerged in his speech and manners, a refusal to bow and scrape to the lord inquisitor who had taken charge.

  Irritatingly, Pranix’s dislike of social niceties and ceremonies meant that the more bluntly Cheng spoke to him, the more engaged Pranix was with the conversation.

  If I shot the bastard and kicked him into a cesspit he’d probably take it as a compliment, thought Cheng.

  ‘If it is such a spectacle, lord inquisitor, then why deny yourself the chance to be there in person, instead of communicating from afar?’ Cheng asked.

  ‘Because it is an honour best given to those who wish such glory to be the last thing they see,’ said Pranix, unfazed by the implication of cowardice. ‘Besides, the Space Wolves want to run free unencumbered by those not of their pack. I have fought beside them before, but that was a different time and different circumstance. Wolf Lord Haakan is more than capable of leading in the field, so I will set the Space Wolves to running and see what they bring back.’

  ‘This opportunity has come at great cost, lord inquisitor,’ said Cheng, thinking of the ruins of the Onyx Palace. They had found what they had been looking for, but in the process destroyed millennia of the Hollow Worlds’ heritage, leaving the throne world permanently scarred. ‘I pray it is not in vain.’

  ‘If it is in vain, then the loss of one palace will be the least of our problems,’ said Pranix. ‘Do not dwell on the potential for failure, my Lord Cheng. You have offered us the chance for victory, and Lord Haakan is one of the greatest of his kind. He has led his Space Wolves to victory on a thousand battlefields.’

  ‘Let us hope this is the thousandth and first,’ said Cheng.

  One of the kaerls, a white-haired man named Walder, stood to attention before Pranix. The kaerls of military rank wore simple but sharply pressed grey uniforms, and being of Fenris they were imposing figures in their own right.

  ‘Position attained and held, jarl,’ Walder told Pranix. ‘There is limited room on the other side, though, so the majority of Jarl Haakan’s force will be positioned on our side, to move in once engagement is made.’

  Pranix nodded. ‘Please inform my Lord Haakan that I approve his strategy,’ he said.

  Walder nodded sharply, and moved to return to his station.

  ‘Also, I am not a jarl, Walder,’ said Pranix before the kaerl departed. ‘I do not hold that honour. “Lord” or “inquisitor” or “that serpent” will do fine.’

  ‘My lord,’ said Walder, nodding again, a smirk visible. Cheng watched Pranix’s eyes track the kaerl back to his station, impassively.

  ‘They have no love for you,’ said Cheng. ‘Nor you them.’

  Pranix ignored him.

  ‘Don’t you tire of the endless ritual and ceremony?’ Pranix asked. ‘The honorifics and the titles?’

  Cheng was about to reply with an honest ‘no’ when a commotion could be heard from outside, a great rattling as if a whirlwind had entered the corridors of the Gatehouse.

  Cheng, with the dignity that he had been taught came with his office, remained calm as kaerls and Gatehouse staff drew weapons and ran to secure the room, but Pranix was already on his feet, fists clenched, the whites of his eyes b
eginning to glow.

  ‘No, damn you, no,’ hissed Pranix, but the storm was upon them.

  What came through the door was hard for Cheng to focus on in the few seconds he retained consciousness, a storm of wings and teeth surrounded in milky white lightning, coruscating tendrils of power that grabbed at Cheng, cutting into him, dozens of painful wounds opening in his flesh.

  ‘Witchcraft!’ shouted Walder over the howl of unnatural winds and the flapping of monstrous wings. He opened fire, as did others, but whatever it was it had no interest in the kaerls or guards, instead descending on Pranix, seizing hold of him, shrinking as if to squeeze inside him.

  Then the storm slammed into Cheng again, cutting him once more with a flurry of invisible blades, and he lost consciousness as the storm disappeared back out into the Gatehouse, Pranix entwined at its core.

  Amidst the furore of the attack on the Ironshore, one thing moved slowly and purposefully - the huge container being rolled out onto the beach, dragged by dozens of slaves, stoop-backed creatures with over-developed shoulders.

  When the box – though box was an inadequate term for an ancient metal container humming with malice, bound with chains and covered in protective wards – came to a halt, Huron Blackheart was there, Rotaka at one shoulder and Anto at the other. Valthex stood nearby.

  ‘We could never disconnect the sarcophagus,’ said the Techmarine. ‘The sorcerers may have kept him from attaining full consciousness, but he has not truly rested since… the last time.’