by Nick Kyme
The Wolf Lord pointed to the western end of the field beyond the pavilion. “Between the paving stones of the tithe site and the woods at the base of the surrounding hills, there was plenty of room to land an entire squadron of Stormbirds. They’ll likely bring their ships in over there,” he said. “That’s our kill box.”
Jurgen folded his arms and nodded grudgingly. The warrior cast a sidelong glance at Halvdan, then addressed Bulveye. “What’s our objective here, my lord?”
Bulveye frowned thoughtfully. “I’d think it was obvious,” he replied. “We inflict as many casualties among the enemy as possible and put them on the back foot. We want them to start worrying about the possibility of an ambush every time they leave the spire.”
“That’s not what I mean, my lord,” Jurgen said. “You saw all those ships landing last night; there must be more than a hundred at this spire alone. This isn’t a little raiding party: it’s some kind of nomadic clan or tribe.”
The Wolf Lord gave Jurgen a hard look. “Are you saying we’re not equal to the task?”
“I’m saying it’s not our fight,” the lieutenant replied. “These people aren’t Imperial citizens; in fact, their leader called you a liar and said that he wanted nothing to do with us. If the xenos hadn’t shown up yesterday you’d be on the Ironwolf right now, planning a campaign to conquer the planet and force it into compliance.”
Bulveye’s gaze narrowed angrily at the lieutenant’s bald declaration, but finally he nodded. “What you say is true, brother,” he admitted. “But it changes nothing. We’re warriors of the Emperor and protectors of mankind. All mankind. If we don’t live up to that ideal, then all the blood we’ve shed during the Crusade has been for naught, and I’ll be damned before I let that happen.” Before Jurgen could respond, he turned away from his lieutenant and waved at the assembled men. “We’ve only got a few hours left before nightfall. Let’s begin preparing our positions.”
The Astartes made their way down out of the hollow and moved quickly through the dense forests around the base of the hills. They took their time sizing up the killing field, drawing not only on the years of intensive training and hypno-instruction provided by the Allfather, but also from years of ambushing foes in the wild terrain of their home-world. When they were content with their positions, the four remaining warriors were summoned from their temporary camp up in the hills to bring down the heavy weapons they’d secured from the Stormbird. While the last elements of the ambush were set in place, the Stormbird’s pilot was situated in a camouflaged position high on one of the nearby hills to warn of the aliens’ approach.
They didn’t have long to wait. An hour after sunset, with a glinting field of stars overhead and deep shadows filling the meadow about the pavilion, Bulveye’s vox-unit came to life. “Fenris, this is Aesir,” the lookout called. “Multiple contacts approaching from the west at low altitude. Many heat traces: nearly a dozen large craft and a score of smaller ones.”
At the edge of the woods, Bulveye cocked an ear westwards. Sure enough, he could hear what sounded like gravitic engines, faint but growing stronger. They had an unearthly pitch, like a chorus of wailing souls. But the sound held no dread for him; instead, it set his blood boiling at the prospect of battle. He keyed his vox-bead. “Fenris copies. Relocate to point Alpha and prepare for extraction.”
“Copy,” the lookout answered. His job done, the pilot would retreat down the hill and head for the Stormbird, prepping the engines and making ready for a quick escape.
Bulveye checked his weapons one last time and turned to his lieutenants. Despite the near-total darkness beneath the canopy, the Wolves’ enhanced senses allowed him to see his battle-brothers clearly. “For Russ and the Allfather, Wolf Brothers,” he said quietly, then led them out into the meadow.
Halvdan and Jurgen followed Bulveye across the wide field west of the tribute site. Wild grass and meadow flowers swished against their armoured legs. The two lieutenants held their boltguns in one hand and their bared blades in the other. Bulveye’s weapons were still sheathed at the moment, and he continued to stare expectantly towards the western horizon.
They crossed the kill box and approached the tribute site, making no effort to conceal their movements. It wasn’t long before the shackled victims spotted the striding giants and began to moan in fear, thinking their doom had come at last. The Space Wolves ignored the rising panic of the prisoners, however. When they were ten yards from the western edge of the pavilion they stopped and turned about, placing the tribute site at their backs.
Halvdan tested his grip on his weapons. His bale-eye glowed like an ember in the darkness. “I don’t see why we have to be the bait,” he grumbled.
Jurgen grinned cruelly. “Obviously, Bulveye wanted the most impressive warriors he had available, to strike fear into the hearts of the enemy. Or, in your case, the ugliest.”
Before the exchange could escalate, a cluster of pale green lights appeared along the hilltops to the west, approaching swiftly. A faint chorus of cries grew louder with each passing moment, riding on the faint breeze. The Harrowers had arrived.
The Space Wolves watched as a dozen glowing lights descended upon them like a salvo of terrain-hugging missiles. Their keen night vision picked out details of the oncoming craft while they were still some distance away: they were small, sleek and rakish, with curved, blade-like stabilisers and rows of wicked barbs protruding from their undersides. Each craft carried a single rider, who appeared lithe and human-like despite the strange, articulated armour they wore. The alien jetbikes howled past the Wolves like a flock of hissing, wailing birds, sweeping by to either side of the three warriors and bearing down on the pavilion behind them. As the bikes went past, Bulveye caught a glimpse of a pale, sharply angular face etched with strange tattoos and glinting with metal implants. The rider’s eyes were black and depthless as the void itself.
Behind the swarm of jetbikes came eleven larger craft, gliding with lethal grace over the hills and sinking towards the edge of the western field. These ships were the big cousins of the strange jetbikes, with sharply raked prows, spiked hulls and razor-edged stabiliser fins. Crews of pale-skinned, armoured figures swarmed around the decks of eight of the transports; they crowded at the bow, having apparently been told of the three warriors awaiting them on the plain.
Fearless and haughty in their numbers, the large craft settled easily onto the grassy field, and their crews disembarked with contemptuous grace. From a hundred yards away, Bulveye watched the aliens congregate in loose-knit mobs; most of the raiders’ faces were concealed by tall, conical black helmets, and they held long-barrelled rifles in their gloved hands. Their leaders sported tall horsetail-like plumes of hair from their helmets, and their harnesses were decorated with glittering, web-like meshes that held trophies of bleached bone.
They advanced towards the waiting Space Wolves in a rough crescent, their rifles held across their chests, whispering to one another in a sibilant tongue that sounded like the rustle of dry snakeskin. The raiders were wary, studying the huge Astartes with disquieting intensity, but it was clear from their unhurried advance that they didn’t consider the three Wolves a serious threat.
At the centre of the advancing mob came a hunched, pale-skinned figure cased in bizarre, ornate armour, surrounded by a cadre of stitched-together creatures that paced about the leader’s heels like a pack of hounds. The hunched figure—evidently the leader of the raiding band, as near as Bulveye could tell—had half of his long, white hair shaved away, exposing a fragile scalp etched with complex scar-tattoos. The exposed ear, long and pointed like a dog’s, had been expertly flensed and perforated, until it lay against the side of the alien’s head like a kind of grisly lace. More scars lined the figure’s angular cheeks and throat; bits of metal glittered from the thin bands of scar tissue, creating a web-work that seemed to form a kind of complex symbol or pictograph that ran from temple to collarbone. The alien’s eyes were large and deep-set, and his frayed lips twitche
d over white teeth that had been filed to jagged points. The fingers of his left gauntlet were little more than a set of cruel blades that hung almost to his knees; they clattered and scraped against one another as the monster approached. Even from thirty yards away, Bulveye could smell the alien’s acrid scent, tainted by strange elixirs and bio-modifications. The scent prickled his skin and brought the taste of bile to his mouth.
He looked upon these monsters and felt no fear; instead, there was only a terrible eagerness—a hunger to bare his blade and dive in amongst his foes, hacking and slashing with wild abandon. It was the wolf inside him—the wild gift of Leman Russ himself, and it stirred in his breast like a living thing.
Not yet, he told the beast. Not yet.
The aliens drew closer, still whispering in their serpentine tongue. Still more strange scents washed over Bulveye and his men, making his veins shiver plucked chords. The raiders were surrounded by a miasma of pheromones, adrenal vapours and narcotic musk; it was all his enhanced physiology could do to filter the poisons before they rendered him insensate. As it was, his head swam and his knees felt weak. He heard Halvdan curse under his breath, and knew his men were struggling as well.
Bulveye turned his head away from the aliens and looked back at the huddled victims chained to the stones of the pavilion. Many were weeping; others had their heads bent in prayer. A handful were looking at him, their eyes wide and pleading.
The Wolf Lord turned back to the advancing raiders, his hands falling to his sides. He eyed the twisted creature at the centre of the mob. “Hear me, alien,” he called out in a clear voice. “You’ve preyed on these people for centuries, so I suspect by now your people understand our tongue. I am Bulveye, axe man of the Rus and sworn brother to Leman, Primarch of the Sixth Legion. The people of this world are under my protection, monster. You tread here at your peril.”
Bulveye watched the alien leader’s dark eyes widen in amusement. His lithe form trembled with deranged mirth until his lips peeled back from his jagged teeth and he cackled with feverish glee. His grotesque bodyguards gibbered and howled along with their master, raking their talons along their scarred cheekbones and tearing at their scabrous lips.
The alien grinned at Bulveye like a sea-pike, showing his needle-pointed teeth, and spoke in a gurgling voice that bubbled up from pheromone-soaked lungs. “You will make a fine gift for my master,” the xenos said in passable Low Gothic. He flexed his clashing finger-blades. “How he will laugh to hear your bold words as he unspools the flesh from your bones.” A shudder of pleasure gripped the alien’s tortured frame. “Your suffering shall be exquisite.”
Bulveye’s icy gaze narrowed on the monster. “So you are not the master of this vile horde?”
The xenos gave a bark of phlegmatic laughter. “I am but a lowly servant of Darragh Shakkar, Archon of the Kabal of the Shrieking Heart. It is he who holds this world of beasts in his taloned hands.”
The Wolf Lord nodded slowly. When he spoke again, his voice was cold as polished iron. “Then you and I have nothing more to discuss.” Bulveye’s right hand was a blur of motion as he drew the plasma pistol from his hip and shot the alien between the eyes.
The alien leader’s headless body had not yet hit the ground before the rest of the Space Wolves opened fire, unleashing a stream of bolter rounds from the surrounding woods into the mass of the assembled raiders. The xenos mob was so tightly packed that every round found a target; the mass-reactive slugs punched through the aliens’ light body armour and exploded within, ripping their limbs and bodies apart. With a crackling hiss, a pair of krak missiles streaked from the tree line and struck the sides of two of the larger transports, blowing them apart in a deadly shower of fire and red-hot shrapnel. The aliens spun about, shrieking with rage, and fired their rifles blindly into the darkness. Their weapons made a high-pitched buzzing as they fired, spitting streams of hypervelocity splinters into the trees.
Behind Bulveye, Jurgen and Halvdan raised their boltguns and added to the carnage, pumping streams of shells into the surprised raiders. The alien warriors twitched and fell in sprays of bitter blood.
Through the hail of fire came the bodyguards of the fallen alien leader, their hideous faces twisted into masks of drug-fuelled hatred as they hurled themselves at the Wolf Lord. Dozens of the xenos warriors took inspiration from the bodyguards’ wild charge, and they joined in as well.
Streams of splinter fire hissed past Bulveye or spattered against his Mechanicum-blessed armour as the aliens bore down upon him. Overhead, a flight of xenos jetbikes hissed past, raking the northern tree-line with splinter fire. In response, a frag missile streaked skywards on a plume of flame and detonated in their midst, riddling three of the bikes with shrapnel and sending them plunging to the ground.
The Wolf Lord held his ground and pulled his power axe from his belt. Triggering its energy field, he leaped forwards to meet the xenos charge with an ancient war-song on his lips. The bodyguards surrounded him on all sides, raking at him with their claws or lunging forwards to snap at him with their fangs, but each time Bulveye answered them with a fearsome sweep of his axe. He severed arms and split trunks, spilled entrails and severed heads, until the bodies began to pile up about him. The wolf surged within his breast, demanding release, but Bulveye focused on his axe-work and held the beast at bay.
Within moments Jurgen and Halvdan joined the melee, carving into the enemy mob with sweeps of their crackling power swords. Behind the aliens, more of their transport craft exploded under the missiles and concentrated bolter fire of the remaining Wolf Guard. The surviving jetbikes continued to strafe the woods, seeking revenge against the ambushers, but the darkness and the close-set trees shielded the Astartes from much of the enemy fire.
A saw-edged bayonet glanced off Bulveye’s breastplate; another jabbed at his right leg and scored a bright line across his greave. A third weapon jabbed in from the left and a little behind the Wolf Lord, stabbing into the hollow under his arm and tangling in the cables that ran there. He swung his axe in a backhanded stroke that struck the head off one raider and buried itself in the torso of the attacker who’d stabbed him from behind. To his right, he levelled his plasma pistol and fired twice, point-blank, into the press. Aliens burst apart, vaporised by intense blasts of ionised gases or set alight by secondary thermal effects.
Then, suddenly, the xenos raiders retreated from the Wolf Lord like an outgoing tide, flowing away swiftly on all sides. More splinters crashed against his chest and arms, but they were wild bursts fired by the retreating aliens. The surviving warriors were in full flight, racing back to their remaining transports under the covering fire of the remaining jetbikes.
Bulveye and his lieutenants rushed forwards with bloodied weapons held high, singing songs of vengeance and death. A splinter struck the Wolf Lord just above the knee, causing him to stumble with a spasm of sudden pain, but his advance scarcely faltered. Two of the transports rose into the air with a whine of gravitic impellers; immediately they were targeted by a pair of krak missiles. One transport was struck on the flank, showering the troop deck with flame. The vehicle rocked beneath the blow, spilling burning bodies over the starboard rail, but it managed to lurch ahead with a shriek of thrusters and come about in a long turn to the west. The second craft blew apart in a spectacular explosion, showering the field with blazing debris. Some of the burning pieces fell among the rest of the rising transports, sowing more death and destruction across their troop compartments, but the damage wasn’t enough to incapacitate them. The rakish craft swung around and disappeared swiftly into the distance, fleeing for the safety of the distant spire. Moments later, Bulveye and his men were alone, surrounded by flaming wreckage and the bodies of the dead.
The Wolf Lord summoned his men from their ambush positions. “Jurgen, check on the men and give me a report,” he told his lieutenant, then turned and headed for the pavilion.
They cowered at his approach—a massive, armoured giant, silhouetted in flame and bear
ing a glowing, crackling power axe in one gauntleted hand. The Antimonans, prisoners and innocent victims alike, looked upon Bulveye with an equal mix of awe and pure, atavistic terror. He looked over the huddled mass of men and women and spoke in a clear, commanding voice.
“Hear me, people of Antimon,” the Wolf Lord said. “From this night forwards, you will live in fear no longer. Return to your city and tell everyone you meet of what happened tonight. Tell them that the Allfather has sent his warriors to fight on your behalf, and that we will not rest until the aliens are driven from your world forever.”
He swept his axe down in a hissing arc and sliced through the chains of the first set of prisoners. They leaped back with a shout, then held up the severed links with looks of shock and uncomprehending wonder. By the time the Wolf Lord had reached the second set of prisoners, the first men were already running eastwards as fast as their feet would take them.
Halvdan joined Bulveye in freeing the Antimonans. His power sword crackled as it split the iron rings asunder. When the last of the people had been freed and sent fleeing back to Oneiros, the lieutenant gave Bulveye a sidelong glance, his augmetic eye flat and unreadable. “Not a bad beginning,” he said. “But we were lucky. The damned aliens have had the run of this planet for so long that they’d become complacent. And I reckon they’ll be back here in no time, looking to even the score. What do we do now?”
The Wolf Lord straightened and looked to the west. “We call in the Stormbird and head south, drawing any pursuit after us so the Oneirans have a good chance of getting back to their home city,” he said. “Then we find a good spot in the wastelands to set up a base and wait to see just how badly these people want their planet back.”
