Crusade & Other Stories - Dan Abnett Et Al.

by Warhammer 40K

  Perhaps that was why he was pursuing his current course. Iron did not bend and it did not break, except beneath the most terrible of forces. He would not

  acknowledge that these wyrdspawn, these beasts bred from a madman’s nightmares, were stronger than he was. He wouldn’t give them the privilege of forcing him to abandon his Great Wolf. He would not bend, and he would not break.

  ‘Destination reached, lord,’ Torvald’s voice crackled over Ironfist’s intercom. ‘Ramps ready to drop on your mark.’

  ‘As soon as we’re clear, rejoin the task force,’ Egil said. He glanced back at Conran. Unlike the rest of the Ironguard, he sat in one of the hold’s restraining harnesses, his expression stony.

  ‘I will see you aboard the Wolftide, brother,’ Egil said.

  ‘With the Great Wolf,’ Conran added, nodding. ‘May Russ and the Allfather be with you.’

  The time for words passed. Egil’s servo-skull, Skol, hovered at his shoulder, its tiny anti-gravitic motor buzzing. He checked his armour was properly sealed and banged the disembarkation rune above the Land Raider’s forward hatch. It flashed from red to green. Wolf claws slid free, a thought sending energy crackling down the wicked blades.

  There was a thump of mag-locks and a hiss of decompressed air. The ramp

  fell forwards and light, sickly and pale, flooded the troop compartment. Egil charged out into the rot jungle, a howl on his lips.

  Two seconds to assess his surroundings. Skol looked left, the skull’s implanted vid feed uploaded directly to the Wolf Lord’s bionic eye. Egil went right. Ten paces ahead, the corroded remains of the entrance to a Midgardian mineshaft yawned. Ironfist’s hurricane bolter sponsons were still hammering.

  Only a handful of plaguebearers were between the Land Raider and the mine entrance. One died with Egil’s claws in its throat, gargling on its own ichor. Moln Stormbrow, the first of Egil’s Ironguard to follow the Wolf Lord from the hatch, pulverised another with a swing of his thunder hammer as it made a clumsy swipe for Skol.

  ‘Into the mine,’ Egil barked, bursting a squealing nurgling underfoot.

  ‘Now!’

  Olaf Ironhide, the final member of the Ironguard, splashed out into the jungle’s quagmire. Ironfist’s ramp immediately began to rise, and the tank was reversing before the opening was even sealed, great tracks throwing up fountains of pestilent, sticky spume. The noble war machine was almost unrecognisable from the outside, drenched in oozing filth, its thick armour

  plating pockmarked by ichor and spore clouds. The pain its machine-spirit must have been suffering caused Egil to bare his fangs beneath his visor as he gutted another droning plaguebearer.

  With their lord at the centre, the Ironguard sprinted the last few yards to the mine’s corroded metal overhang. Egil’s auto-senses stripped away the darkness within, picking out dead lumen globes and a rudimentary lift mechanism leading down into the mine proper. Its winch and cables, however, had long been eaten away. A servitor controller hardwired into the shaft’s activation panel was little more than bones and rusted metal, its vat-grown flesh desiccated by Midgardia’s spores.

  ‘Borgen, hold them off,’ Egil ordered. ‘There must be a secondary point of access.’

  Borgen Fire-eye planted himself at the mine’s entrance and unleashed his combi-flamer on the daemons gathering outside, spitting oaths and curses at the wyrdspawn even as he set their rotting flesh ablaze. The rest of the Ironguard spread out around the lift chute, hunting for another path downwards. Egil’s visor display was already being lit by red, flashing runes telling him the toxic air was eating away at his armour’s sealant, while Skol’s gleaming cranium was becoming visibly more pitted and scarred with each passing second. They had to get belowground, and fast.

  ‘Here, my jarl,’ Bjorn Bloodfist said. ‘A machine-ladder running parallel to the lift.’ Egil hurried to the Ironguard’s side, and saw that he was right. A smaller shaft entrance, including a heavy ferroplas ladder designed for lowering mining machinery, led down into a darkness so deep even the scans of Egil’s augmented eye couldn’t penetrate it.

  ‘Will it hold?’ Orven Highfell asked as they looked at the ladder, the doubt in his voice obvious.

  ‘It will have to,’ Egil said, turning to Moln. ‘Collapse the entrance,’ he ordered.

  ‘Jarl?’

  ‘Do it! We need to descend, but it will take time. We cannot afford a pursuit.’

  Moln hefted his hammer, and replaced Borgen at the mine’s entranceway.

  As Fire-eye checked his weapon’s promethium level Stormbrow swung his crackling weapon at one of the overhang’s support beams. The decaying timber gave with a splitting crash, and Moln ducked back just in time to

  avoid the thunderous fall of the mine’s entrance.

  Egil already had his feet on the machine-ladder’s rung clamps. The ferroplas groaned beneath his power-armoured bulk, but held. He began to climb downwards. There was no time to think, no time to assess the situation or calculate risk percentages. They had to get below before Midgardia’s corrupt atmosphere poisoned them all.

  And besides, every second wasted was another second not knowing the fate of the Great Wolf.

  Mouthing a silent prayer to the Allfather, Egil led his pack into the darkness of the underworld.

  The Rock, in high orbit above Midgardia

  For the most fleeting of moments, when the inquisitor had first arrived on the bridge, the thing wearing the flesh of Vox-Seneschal Mendaxis had known the closest sensation to fear a creature such as it ever could.

  The unsettling sensation was soon replaced by the thrill of a close escape.

  For a second, as the human’s eyes had fallen on it, the creature had fancied its flesh would unravel and its daemon-form would burst into holy flame. The Imperium’s storytellers would have enjoyed that. The purifying aura of His Chosen Servant burning away the disguises of the corrupt and scorching their evil plots from existence. The ridiculousness of it almost made the Mendaxis-thing giggle out loud. The inquisitor was just a man, and like all men he had ultimately failed to see what was right in front of him.

  It was growing bored in the communication pit. It had been masquerading as the vox-seneschal since the crusade fleet had entered the warp, bound for Fenris. But now, with the inquisitor’s departure, Azrael had returned to his bauble-throne above while the bridge busied itself with preparing firing solutions for Midgardia. Briefly it had toyed with the idea of following the inquisitor back to his shuttle and killing him and his simpering little herd of sycophants. A void pilot who accidentally opened both airlocks in transit perhaps? Or a tragic carbon monoxide leak in the transport bay?

  But no. Of the many, many skeins of Fate that wove themselves around such undeniably titillating acts, none of them furthered the task the Mendaxis-thing was here to complete. It chided itself. There would be time aplenty for such games afterwards. Once the Wolf and the Lion had torn each other’s

  throats out.

  Finally, the balance of Fate on the bridge changed. The one known as Interrogator-Chaplain Elezar turned from the holochart he had been scanning and made for one of the bridge’s vaulted exit gangways.

  Azrael was deep in conversation with his skull-helmed Master Interrogator-Chaplain, and no one else had the authority to stop the vox-seneschal. The Mendaxis-thing rose from the pit and followed lightly in Elezar’s wake. As it went it wondered whether any of the labouring menials around it would note that, although it appeared to walk, the body of Mendaxis was in fact floating a fraction of an inch above the bridge’s worn flagstones. Such little touches amused it still further. There really was no cure for mankind’s blindness.

  Elezar passed through hissing blast doors and left the bridge. The Mendaxis-thing slipped after him just before the doors slid shut. Ahead, so real that it seemed to impose itself upon the Mendaxis-thing’s vision, Fate’s weave spread, a beautiful multihued tapestry spun by its master. And all the threads that were tied to Elezar’s mag-boots led h
im to his private Reclusiam-cell.

  That much was now inevitable, and the Mendaxis-thing felt the gratification of knowing it had locked them both into the correct path.

  All that remained to do was pick which body it would greet the young Interrogator-Chaplain with.

  The warp

  They would have made him their master. Beastlord. Wolfheart. The Wild King. They would have crowned him with savagery and robed him with hunger. He refused. He was not like them. Not yet.

  That truth pained him, he could not deny it. There was something inside, something in all of them, that refused to ever be tamed. While the hearth-fires burned low it would rather be hunting in the snow, while weapons lay at rest it would rather sink fang and claw deep into preyflesh. Even some of those he had known the longest had succumbed to it. Scarpelt and Harok, Haghmund and Olfar. Long-fangs and grey-pelts all, given over to the Beast Within.

  They said the same thing, each one of them. The Wolftime was coming.

  Leadership was needed. Would he join them?

  That was not his way, he reminded himself over and over. There was savagery, yes, but it was cold, calculated, unleashed only when the moment

  was right. The savagery the others now possessed burned bright, was blind to reason. It was the hungry rage that flung the wolf into the huntsman’s trap.

  They were late. The warp was playing its usual tricks, seeking to confound and infuriate them. Fury made the Beast stronger. It made more of his warriors turn. They had been bound for the Fenris System for what felt like a lifetime. The other Great Companies were already there, already fighting, already dying, already writing their sagas on Midgardia, Svellgard and Frostheim. The thought pushed him even closer to the edge. He took a long, shuddering breath, trying to clear his head.

  Soon they would be home. Whether it would be as beasts or as men, he did not know. There was only one certainty. He would make all those who defiled Fenris pay.

  LEGACY OF THE WULFEN

  by David Annandale and Robbie MacNiven

  The return of the Wulfen – a long-buried secret from the Space

  Wolves’ past – sets the Chapter on a course towards destruction. As

  Chaos erupts on Fenris, and the Chapter’s heroes are beset, things

  look bleak for the sons of Russ…

  Find this title, and many others, on blacklibrary.com

  HONOUR OF THE THIRD

  GAV THORPE

  ‘Seventeen worlds have drowned in blood. Seventeen worlds and countless millions hewn down by the battle-lust of a single man. Now that rage incarnate has beset Durga Principe. Here we will halt the tide.’

  So had been the last command of Master Nadael of the Dark Angels Third

  Company before he too had fallen to the horde of the arch-traitor Furion. In the darkness they had come, cleaving through the outer perimeter like a blade.

  Now the warriors from the Tower of Angels looked to Sergeant Belial for leadership even as the night was torn apart by distant battle cries and the baying of Furion’s manic Skull-scythes. In the ruins of the Temple Saturnis, a complex of sandstone and marble that covered several square kilometres, looked down upon by cracked statues of the Emperor and His saints, Belial held swift council with the veterans of the company.

  ‘We cannot hold the temple. Master Nadael had hoped to fortify before Furion’s arrival, but it is too late. The naves and galleries provide too much cover for the foe and our superior firepower is for nought.’ Belial gestured westwards to the palace-topped hill that overlooked the Temple Saturnis. ‘We must withdraw to the flanks of Mount Dawon and await the dawn.’

  ‘Fine strategy, but flawed,’ countered Sergeant Meneus, chosen representative of the company’s devastator squads. ‘The enemy will fall upon our turned backs before we can quit this place. It will become our mausoleum.’

  ‘True, brother, but only if we turn tail and flee like rats. This will be a withdrawal, not a rout. A rearguard will entertain the Skull-scythes while the remainder of the company relocates. I shall lead the defence.’

  There was no further argument from the others. They well understood the need for rapid action and the sacrifice Belial was willing to make. Returning

  to his squad, Belial ordered his warriors to break out from the Dark Angels’

  line, heading towards the foe. Augur readings showed the traitors were less than a kilometre away and closing swiftly.

  ‘I am resolved to my death tonight,’ remarked Lederon, second only to Belial in seniority amongst the squad, ‘but is it wise to hasten that moment with our own advance?’

  ‘If we cannot hold, we must attack, it is that simple,’ explained Belial as the ten Space Marines marched through the tumble of toppled pillars, collapsed shrines and broken chapels. The skies were clear, allowing the three moons to bathe the ruins in pale blue light. ‘Every second and every metre are vital.’

  They met the first traitors in a crumbling, plant-choked cloister. Clad in white armour marked with handprints and smears of dried blood the Skull-scythes spilled through an archway. They were met by the fire of the squad’s bolters, missile launcher and meltagun.

  ‘No forgiveness! No retreat!’ Belial roared as the enemy tumbled to the ground amidst the torrent of bolts and blasts.

  The firefight was brutally short, but the peace that followed was only momentary as more of the slaughter-hungry foe converged on the Dark Angels. To tarry was to invite encirclement. Belial led the squad through the archway into the courtyard beyond, laying down fire with his bolt pistol. Like moths to a flame the Skull-scythes were drawn to the fighting, howling for blood and death.

  The Dark Angels took a heavy toll, manoeuvring through the ruins for ambuscades and crossfires that cut down the traitors as they plunged head-long into the attack. Through streaks of pale light and shadows in roofless cathedrals and across devastated quadrangles Belial steered the squad, always seeking open ground, knowing that at close quarters his warriors would be overwhelmed. Building by building, street by street, they gave ground to the enemy advance, stopping to give fire when possible, moving back towards their battle-brethren when they could not.

  ‘We have drawn their sting, brother-sergeant. It would be unwise to remain any longer,’ said Lederon. The veteran’s observation was correct: the rest of the Third were clear of the ancient Ecclesiarchy buildings and the squad was almost at the edge of the ruins.

  ‘Agreed, brother,’ replied Belial. ‘We fall back to the company.’

  As soon as he uttered these words, another force of Skull-scythes appeared

  in the darkness. At their fore strode a beast of a warrior. His plate was adorned with spiked chains, and from the chains hung trophy-skulls that clattered as they swung. In both hands he bore a massive chainaxe, its teeth glinting in the wan light.

  Furion, arch-traitor, thrice-cursed slaughterer.

  ‘Your little game of hide and seek is over, son of the Lion!’ Furion bellowed as he broke into a run. Behind him, the Skull-scythes screamed dedications to their dark god and followed their champion’s charge.

  The Dark Angels opened fire, standing their ground to blaze away at the approaching enemy. Furion ignored the detonations of bolt-rounds on his armour, sprinting through the storm without pause. His axe took Brother Mendeleth’s head clean off in one sweep; the traitor’s return swing eviscer-ated Lederon in a welter of blood and shattered armour.

  ‘Keep firing!’ Belial snarled as he bounded forwards to meet the attack. He was too late to save Brother Sabellion, whose torso was cleaved from waist to shoulder. Belial would atone for his slowness if he survived.

  As shots from Belial’s pistol exploded across his armour, Furion turned to meet the sergeant’s counter-attack. Raising his chainsword for the strike, Belial ducked beneath Furion’s blade as the traitor swept it towards the Dark Angel’s throat. The teeth of the chainsword bit into armour, screeching as they chewed into Furion’s left arm.

  Furion lashed out as blood spurted
from his wounded limb, smashing the haft of his weapon into the side of Belial’s head. Out of instinct, the sergeant raised his blade to ward away the next blow. Razor-sharp shards of metal showered around him as chainblade met chainblade. Furion’s next strike shattered Belial’s weapon and sent him stumbling to his right.

  Lifting his axe in victory, the Skull-scythes lord loomed over the sprawling sergeant.

  ‘Blood for the Bl–’

  Furion’s triumphant roar was cut short by the bark of Belial’s bolt pistol.

  The explosive round pierced the collar of the traitor’s armour and detonated inside his throat to send his head arcing away into the darkness. For a moment Belial was taken aback by his deadly reflex shot.

  The headless corpse crashed to the ground and Belial recovered, realising that only he and Brother Ramiel remained standing amongst friend and foe.

  Thermal registers betrayed the presence of other enemies close at hand.

  ‘The death of the Skull-scythes’ leader will cause our foe some strife, and let us hope the search for his successor delays them further,’ said Belial. ‘Our duty here is done to my satisfaction, brother. To Mount Dawon, where the guns of the Third wait to greet these traitors.’

  AZRAEL

  by Gav Thorpe

  The Supreme Grand Master of the Dark Angels must ally with

  treacherous aliens to save his Chapter – but he walks a fine line, as

  the secrets of the Unforgiven must stay buried.

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  THE WORD OF THE SILENT KING

  L J GOULDING

  More, my Lord Anrakyr? You would know more?

  Better than this, we will tell you everything. Perhaps then you will understand. After all, you will need allies.