But now Skeln was no longer penned in. He used this freedom of movement to ride Fenrir around the plague-spawn’s side, searching for Thorgard, following a pipe kept at the periphery of his vision.
Magnin was dead. The noble beast lay on its side, a brackish liquid trickling from its maw and pooling around its snout. Three, deep puncture wounds were visible in its flank, having entered flesh. They were dark and infected from where the plague-spawn’s tongues had raked it.
Whatever poison was harboured by the plague-spawn, it was more deadly and virulent than that carried by the zombies. If it could kill a mythical thunderwolf, it could kill Skeln and his brothers too.
A desperate roar seized Skeln’s attention and his gaze was drawn upward to where Thorgard and Hagni had mounted the plague-spawn’s back and were tearing at it with their claws.
Lost to grief and vengeance, Thorgard was no further use right now.
A loud crack, followed a shallow crump and the tang of explosive, came from the opposite end of the chamber.
‘Afger?’ Skeln hoped at least one of his battle-brothers still had something left.
‘Bolter’s dry… switching to grenades…’ came the fragmented response.
‘Is it working?’
Fenrir had slowed so Skeln could reload his bolt pistol. Last clip.
Thorgard and Hagni were keeping the creature occupied, eliciting bellows of pain as they tore into its blubbery hide.
Several seconds elapsed before Afger answered. Another explosive rocked the chamber. He sounded annoyed.
‘What do you think?’
Skeln reined Fenrir around, tracing the pipe he had seen earlier to the source of its rupture. He let rip a desultory burst, downing a pair of zombies creeping towards him, before fixing his attention back on the broken pipe.
‘Hang on to whatever grenades you’ve got left. We’re going to need a spark for our accelerant.’
‘What are you talking about, Skeln?’ Afger spoke between thrusts. He’d drawn his combat blade.
‘Can’t you smell it, brother? The tainted water, just below the reek of decay…’
‘Promethium,’ replied Afger a moment later.
Skeln reached the ruptured pipe. It was one of Skorbad’s main fuel lines, fed from its major pumping station. Volatile liquid exuded from it in a slow but steady trickle. They’d need more. Much more.
Skeln jumped down off Fenrir’s back. The thunderwolf turned, guarding its master’s blindside as Skeln sheathed his weapons. He’d have to tear a wider opening in the broken pipe – he couldn’t risk a spark before the tainted water was saturated.
Digging his gauntleted fingers around the ragged hole, he heaved and pulled. The metal screeched but gave instantly. Corruption had ravaged it, degrading the tough housing of the pipe. Promethium was gushing freely now, it lapped onto the floor and spilled eagerly into the morass where the plague-spawn was languishing.
Skeln turned, leaping onto Fenrir’s back again. He unclipped a grenade from his belt. The thunderwolf was barrelling towards a sewer-slicked column at the edge of the room.
‘Find cover,’ he growled to Afger.
Reaching the column, Skeln swivelled his torso and pressed the detonator stud on the grenade. Its parabola took it across the chamber where – a second before it splashed down – it exploded, igniting the promethium drowning the tainted pool.
A burst of incendiary lit up the room, fire sweeping through the water in a purging wave. Through the inferno’s glare, Skeln thought he saw two figures leap free, obscured by smoke and rising flame.
The plague-spawn bucked and thrashed, powerless to heave its monstrous girth away from the burning pool, its efforts only splashing fiery promethium over its waxy skin. It burned, and as it burned, seemed to shrink. Like a diseased candle against the attentions of a blowtorch, the Scion of Pestilence melted away, shrieking rage and denial.
A curtain of fire was left flickering across the surface of the pool; the roaring promethium flames had died quickly. A dark green sludge, polluting the already tainted water, was all that remained of the plague-spawn. Cleansing fire had destroyed it.
Relieved to see Afger alive and well, across the other side of the chamber, Skeln then looked for Thorgard. Another tunnel lay across from them, opposite where the Space Wolves had entered. Diminishing boot steps echoed from the shadows there.
Thorgard was alive, but he had gone after Hagni.
Skeln met Afger’s gaze and the two of them raced towards the tunnel mouth.
Fenrir slowed, keeping pace with the other Wolf Guard, then charged into the gloom of the tunnel.
‘He is a fool!’ snarled Afger. ‘Alone, he is no match for it.’
‘He is blinded by grief. Magnin is dead, Thorgard wants to finish the mission to honour his mount’s sacrifice,’ Skeln countered, adding, ‘Besides, I remember you were determined on facing the beast alone, too.’
Afger sniffed his contempt.
‘So you now acknowledge it is a beast?’
Skeln’s reply was prevented by a scream up ahead.
It was Thorgard.
Fenrir rode on faster–
But was too late.
Thorgard’s half-eviscerated body was lying in the centre of the tunnel, wet and bloody. His torn throat hung open like a second mouth, fixed in a dark red scream.
Afger snarled, walking over to take up one of his fallen brother’s wolf claw gauntlets. He winced as he stooped down, gingerly touching his chest.
‘It’s nothing,’ he growled, before Skeln could say a word. Swiftly, Afger changed the subject back to the wulfen. ‘It’s of the killing mind, now. Hagni is lost to us,’ he said, removing his old gauntlet and pulling the weapon onto his fist.
Skeln was silent, but didn’t linger with Fenrir. There was no time for remorse. The wulfen must be stopped.
The trail was easy to follow. Fenrir tracked the wulfen by the scent of Thorgard’s blood still on the beast. The tunnel took them back up into the snow drifts and arctic tundra of Skorbad. Crimson droplets dotted the landscape at long, loping intervals.
Skeln knew this road, and realised where the wulfen was headed.
‘It returns to its old hunting ground,’ muttered Afger, running alongside them.
Skeln urged Fenrir on and allowed the howling ice-winds to smother his thoughts.
In less than an hour, the bastion loomed on the horizon.
‘Something is wrong,’ said Skeln.
The Imperial command post was dark, as if it had lost all power. Smoke trailed from unseen fires behind the walls and there were no visible sentries. As the Space Wolves drew nearer, they saw the gate was wide open and streaked with bloodstains. A Chimera had slewed to a stop a few metres away, the vehicle’s exit ramps yawning. There was more blood here too.
Two hundred metres of open ground lay between the Space Wolves and the bastion.
Afger was incredulous.
‘Not even the wulfen could’ve got so far ahead and done all of this…’
Skeln eyed the silent battlements. His gaze narrowed.
‘It didn’t.’
Shambling into view where they had laid crumpled and inert, figures wearing the olive drab of the Cadian 154th and cradling lasguns in crooked fingers appeared. Old memories compelled them. The plague had come here, and now the bastion had an undead garrison. In his last act, before the feral aspect of the wulfen had claimed his mind, Hagni had led them here.
Afger grimaced, gripping his chest again, but kept his pain hidden. In the sewer chamber, there hadn’t been enough time to reach cover…
A spark of melancholy flickered suddenly within him. The end of the road was near.
‘I wish Barek and Thorgard were with us.’
‘So do I,’ the solemnity in Skeln’s voice turned to anger, ‘We finish this.’
He outstretched his hand, beckoning to his brother.
Afger seemed reluctant.
‘You’ll never reach the bastion alive on foot, and I need your bolter and blade with me, brother.’
Skeln gestured again.
After a moment, Afger took his hand, seizing Skeln by the wrist and swinging up and onto Fenrir’s broad back.
Skeln spurred Fenrir on just as the zombie-Cadians were levelling their guns.
‘The last charge of the thunderwolves, brother.’
‘Let it be a worthy end, then.’
‘I’ll see you in the halls of Russ, Afger.’
For the first time in weeks, Afger smiled.
‘Aye, that you may.’
Skeln kicked Fenrir’s flanks and the beast began to charge.
If there had been anyone alive to see it, the deed would have been worthy of a saga or two.
Skeln and Afger howled together as las-bolts filled the air around them.
Fenrir died just before they reached the wall. An autocannon burst had opened up its torso in a red mist and the great beast collapsed in the snow, leaving a crimson smear behind it. Their armour punctured and torn by las-blasts, the Wolf Guard burst into the bastion and commenced slaying everything inside.
A ragged firing line, a crippled mockery of disorder, opposed them as they barrelled through the gates. Bolters flaring, the Space Wolves swept the zombies aside and then split up, intent on destruction.
Skeln took the stairway to the battlements. Zombies fell like suicides, heaved from his path as he rose up the steps. He savaged with his fangs, tearing open throats, and split torsos with his power axe to reach the summit. The battlements became a field of slaughter, a reaping of cleaved limbs and staved-in skulls. Russ’s name bellowed loud above the carnage, piercing the blood-red night.
Fires began below. Promethium storage sheds were set ablaze by Afger’s bolter. Explosions cracked, billowing black smoke. Bodies were heaped onto the conflagrations, like heretics onto a pyre. He went to his fists, snapping spines across his knee, wrenching bones from decaying sockets. Afger carved a red ruin with Thorgard’s wolf claw, anointing it in old blood to honour its fallen keeper.
Skeln’s bolt pistol had long been empty when he noticed the wulfen amongst the horde, clawing and shredding with abandon, reunited with its former brothers for one last fight. He’d lost sight of Hagni after that, the need for killing preventing any pursuit.
The Space Wolves were gored and burned, but in less than twenty bloody minutes, the entire Cadian garrison was destroyed. Skeln had not seen Ekhart in the mob, but then could have missed him easily. A haze had fallen upon the Space Wolf, blood-red and frenzied. There was no way to identify any individual amongst the heaped body parts.
Heaving air into his lungs, Skeln was standing at the bastion’s perimeter as it burned. After they’d vanquished the undead Cadians, he and Afger had spread the fires. The roaring flames cast a sombre light on the mound where Skeln had buried Fenrir. He’d wept as he’d done it, Afger looking on, honouring them with stoic silence.
In the aftermath, there was no sign of Hagni. Skeln assumed the beast had loped away once the killing was done. But it was not ended. There was no monster to lead them to, no fight save the one that was left between former brothers. Hagni knew it as well as Skeln did. A reckoning was near.
‘Time to move, brother,’ Skeln said to Afger.
The wulfen was still loose. It was all they had left now to stop it.
‘Brother,’ Skeln repeated when there was no answer. He turned…
Afger was slumped against the hull of the abandoned Chimera. His arms hung down by his sides and his cold eyes were glassy.
For the first time, Skeln noticed the wound in his torso. It was deep and mortal. Afger had held on long enough to finish the fight and see his foes burn. He was with the All Father now, feasting in the halls of Russ.
‘Be at peace, brother,’ Skeln whispered, closing Afger’s eyes.
All dead now, except for him – a lone wolf with but one duty left to it.
Skeln took off his left pauldron, stripped away the arm greave and vambrace of his power armour to leave his skin bare. With a tooth from his fang necklace, Skeln carved the runes of Barek, Thorgard and Afger in his flesh. At the end, he added Hagni.
The bolt pistol was empty, so he dumped it along with his gun belt. Hefting his power axe, he ignited the blade and trudged into the ice wastes.
Somewhere in the drifts, Hagni was waiting.
‘Wulfen!’ His challenge echoed across the tundra.
A few moments later, a feral howl answered.
A BLACK LIBRARY PUBLICATION
Published in 2012 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd., Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK
Cover illustration by Jon Sullivan
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