The ways between the peaks were treacherous and known only to those who’d trodden the paths as aspirants. All were scarred with precipitous drops and deep crevasses. Some hunt-ways were built on solid stone, whereas others were on bridges of ice that would crumble to nothing with the first application of weight. Some led true, taking the hunter from the clefts in the shadow of the summits down to the plains where the prey dwelt; other led nowhere but into darkness, to the caves that riddled the bowels of the ancient landscape, full of nothing but ice-gnawed bones and despair.
For all its majesty and terror, there were islands of stability in that savage land, places where gigantic outcrops of rock created broad plateaux amid the plunging cliffs. These were the sites where the Wolves came to commune with the savage soul of the mountain country. In the Summers of Fire, when the ice was broken across the planet and war came to the mortal tribesmen, great fires were lit in such places and sagas declaimed by the skjalds. Then would the warriors of Russ put aside the demands of battle for a short time and remember those who had fallen in the Long War, and the Rune Priests would delve far into the mysteries of the wyrd, attempting to discern the Chapter’s path into the unknown landscape of the future.
It was at such a gathering that a younger Ironhelm had announced the first of the many hunts for Magnus. Further back into the past, the same location had played host to the decision to form the Wolf Brothers, the Space Wolves’ ill-fated successor Chapter, now disbanded and a source of hidden shame.
For the Thousand Sons, who knew and cared nothing of this, the plateaux were merely landing sites, places to disgorge the troops and vehicles from their cavernous landers ready for the land assault to come. So, forty-eight hours after the destruction of the orbital platforms, they came in spiralling columns, darkening the skies with their numbers. Heavy, lumbering drop-ships disembarked from the holds of the troop-carriers above and thundered down to the embarkation points, guarded by wings of gunships and shadowed by the void-to-surface batteries of the warships in orbit. One after another, the bronze and sapphire vessels broke into the atmosphere, streaking trails of fire as they plummeted.
By nightfall, dozens of them had come, just a tithe of the many that would follow. Wolf Guard Sigrd Brakk watched the twinkling lights of the latest drop-ship fall toward his position, hard under the shadow of the Krakgard, and his lips pulled back from his fangs. Like the rest of his pack, he was shoulder-deep in snow, crouching in the lee of an overhanging drift-curve, waiting for the moment when the plateau he was overlooking was picked by the enemy commanders.
‘That one, lads,’ he hissed, satisfied, motioning toward the descending ship. ‘First kill of the night.’
Assault-Captain Skyt Hemloq kept a sweaty grip on his lasrifle. Despite his armour and environment bodyglove, the air was terrifyingly cold. That didn’t stop him sweating.
His feet crunched through the snow, illuminated by his helmet-lumen, sweeping across the blue-white surface. His squad, thirty-strong and all equipped for the soul-crushing climate, fanned out beside him.
So this is Fenris, he thought, gazing up in awe at the dark shapes of the peaks above. The nearest of them soared into the night, far larger than anything he’d seen on his homeworld of Qavelon, and that was reckoned a planet with many mountains.
There was something about the air. It wasn’t just the cold – there was something sharp, savage, about it. Even modified through his rebreathers and boosted with oxygen-mix from his backpack, it was thin and caustic. Perhaps it was the alt-clim drugs still swimming through his bloodstream.
And it was quiet. The only consistent sound came from the whining engines of the drop-ship. The hulking lander, twenty metres tall and much broader, squatted on the meltsnow-streaked rock, gradually unloading its cargo of ordnance and manpower. Already over a hundred Spireguard had emerged from the cavernous interior, marching with false bravado on to a world that obviously wanted to kill them and looked perfectly capable of doing it soon. They were the first, the ones in the line of fire, the ones charged with establishing the bridgehead.
And yet, there had been no resistance. No movement. Nothing detected on the surveyors.
The silence.
‘Stay tight,’ Hemloq voxed, fixing his gaze back on the scene before him.
The plateau was over eight hundred metres across on the flat. It plunged down into a chasm on three sides; on the fourth, the rock rose steeply in broken, tumbling terraces. Negotiable, but difficult.
He swallowed, trying not to let his vision get clouded by the myriad points of light across the flat landing site. Fixed lumen-arrays had been erected after planetfall and all the troops disembarking had helm-lights on full-beam. The effect was confusing rather than helpful, as the night was broken by hundreds of star-like points and banks of eye-watering brilliance.
The drop-ship sat in the centre of the open space, smoke and steam gushing from its exhausts, a dark outline ringed with whirling tracer lights. Hemloq knew the pilots were eager to take off again. Despite the gunships patrolling the dropsites, they were vulnerable while on the ground, like a prey-bird crouched on its nest.
Even as he watched, another company of troops disembarked, some of them with heavier weapons in tow. A cumbersome lascannon was unloaded, flanked by a dozen gunnery crew, ready for deployment at the site edges. In time, portable void shield generators and proper anti-aircraft defences would be deployed. When that happened, the place would be something like secure. Until, they were vulnerable, and all of them knew it.
‘Sweep complete,’ came a vox from the far side of the dropsite.
‘Anything?’ demanded Hemloq, speaking more urgently than he’d meant to.
Damn it. Keep it cool in front of the men.
‘Nothing, sir.’
‘Then hold position. Until we get fixed surveyors online, your eyes are all we’ve got.’
The vox-link crackled out. Hemloq tried it again, and there was no response. That was just damn rude.
‘Keep tight,’ he said again. He was beginning to sound ridiculous with his military platitudes. The whistle of the wind in the high peaks, the lack of any response from the defenders, the bone-aching cold. It would have unnerved a man of far greater combat readiness than Skyt Hemloq.
‘Trust in the Masters,’ he murmured.
On the far side of the plateau, a lumen-bank winked out.
Hemloq stiffened.
‘Stand fast, men,’ he said, checking on his helm-display to see who was responsible for that section of perimeter.
Another one disappeared.
Shit.
‘They’re coming!’ he cried, uncaring of how shrill his voice had become. ‘Pick your targets!’
He hoisted his lasgun to his shoulder, sweeping it round as he peered out into the gloom. Dimly, he was aware of his men doing likewise. His proximity meter was blank. There was no chatter, no feedback.
They’re as terrified as I am.
Then, from over to his left, lines of retina-burning las-fire blazed out, followed by the whip-crack noise of their discharge. It was madly angled, fired in haste. Briefly, from the corner of his eye, Hemloq saw something huge and shadowy flit across the snow.
He whirled to face it, firing his lasgun indiscriminately at nothing. There were shouts of outrage as other beams lanced through the night, some of them striking the flanks of the drop-ship.
Hemloq dropped to a frightened crouch, feeling his heart hammer in his chest.
This is a farce. They’ve got us jumping at shadows.
Then, and from somewhere, from a place he’d never have guessed existed, Hemloq found resources of stubbornness. A defence had to be organised, some structure imposed. The Wolves had a reputation, but they were only men, just as the Masters had promised.
‘To me!’ he roared, leaping back to his feet, a new note of determination entering his voice. ‘Form ranks, and get those–’
A face flashed across his field of vision, something out of a nightmare. He sa
w two glowing shards of red, a gunmetal-grey helm studded with teeth, hulking pauldrons daubed in blood.
‘Shush,’ came a wet growl, impossibly deep, sounding more like a leopard’s than a human’s.
In the instant before Ogrim Redpelt’s gauntlet smashed in on Hemloq’s vocal cords and ripped them out, the novice assault-captain had time for a realisation that might have been helpful if it had come earlier.
These are no men.
Helfist tore across the landing site, swaying between the flickering las-beams more skilfully than his armour-clad bulk would have suggested possible.
There was little in the arsenal of such mortals than could have hurt him, but he maintained the absolute stealth of the approach and kept his bolter silent. It was a matter of pride – a clean kill, a minimum of fuss. His helm’s night-vision showed up the scene in clear lines. It was evident from the confused response of the enemy that they were using no such technology.
A lumen beam swept across him, briefly showing him up against the dark. His helm runes showed six beads locking on to his position, and he checked his barrelling run to home round on them.
Six mortals, twenty metres off, all dressed in pale-grey camouflaged armour, masked and helmeted, with lowered lasguns.
‘Fodder,’ spat Helfist under his breath, already running fluidly toward them, already relishing the splash of their blood against his armour, already bringing his power fist into the optimal swing-pattern.
One panicked beam got away before he crashed among them. It glanced from his sigil-carved vambraces harmlessly. His fist crunched into the face of one of the warriors, throwing him far into the night. The carry-through crushed the chest of the one behind him.
Helfist spun tautly on his left boot, using the grip of his bolt-pistol to smash the visor of a retreating mortal. The air howled in and the man fell to his knees, gagging on a shattered jawline.
The others broke, scrabbling to get away.
‘Filth,’ Helfist growled, grabbing the closest and snapping his spine with a whiplash shake of his power fist.
His helm showed the position of his battle-brothers carving their way toward the drop-ship. There was las-fire everywhere, cracking and snapping in an ill-focused storm of fear. More of the mortal soldiers had taken up positions across the plateau, trying to organise the defence into something that had a hope of stopping the Wolves. It would do them little good. Helfist could see the incoming signals of gunships, and could sense the charging up of lascannons, but neither would change the odds much now.
Pitiful. It enraged him.
‘You come here,’ he snarled, decapitating a mortal with a contemptuous upper-cut. ‘You defile this place.’ Disembowelled another with his power fist. The energy field wasn’t even activated. ‘You dare this.’ Ripped up breathing gear, tore open breastplates, broke limbs. ‘You insult me with your weakness.’ Crushed skulls, blinded faces, ripped out spines, bathed in the blood of the invader. ‘This is making me very angry.’
A swooping shape rushed past him on his left flank. Redpelt had made a break for the drop-ship. Helfist shook the life out of the man he held in his grasp, cast him aside and joined his battle-brother in the chase. The wolf-spirit within, the avatar of the kill-urge, uncoiled and stretched its claws.
‘Fired your bolter yet?’ voxed Redpelt over the comm-link, gunning his chainsword and drawing a splatter-filled arc across the panicked mortals in his way.
‘No need,’ replied Helfist with disgust, shouldering up to a barrage of las-fire at full sprint and ploughing into the terrified snipers. ‘They just don’t deserve it.’
Redpelt laughed, punching the butt of his pistol heavily into his next target’s midriff. The man flew back in agony, stomach burst, blood spilling across the churned snow.
‘No argument, brother.’
By the time they reached the open maw of the drop-ship the slush beneath their boots was rose-red. Brokentooth was still some way behind, detained with tearing apart a row of semi-prepared lascannon batteries. Somewhere further back, Brakk was dealing out silent death in impressively brutal quantities. He’d maintained comm-silence since unleashing his pack on the landing site, content to let the Claws take out the principal target while he maximised devastation amongst the infantry.
Caught in mid-deployment, the pilots were trying to take off. Enemy troops were scrambling to get back into the false safety of the interior, driven to a state of blind terror by the armoured shades sweeping through them.
‘They sicken me,’ continued Helfist, leaping up into the huge loading bay and plunging into the terrified huddle of men within.
Redpelt jumped up after him, pausing only to let the blood slew from his chainsword before flicking it back into life.
‘The Wolves are among you!’ he roared in Gothic, laughing riotously with the pleasure of the murder-make.
Constricted and cramped, the enemy fell like wheat under the scythe, getting in each others’ way, frozen in herd-like horror. Some tried vainly to escape the slaughter and leap back past the rampaging Blood Claws and onto the ice, but none made it through Redpelt’s gyrating blades. The rest retreated further back into the depths of the hold, postponing death by only few moments, letting loose their ineffective las-fire in panicked volleys.
Then there was a booming detonation, and a thudding, grinding vibration across the steel floor of the load-bay. The drop-ship had managed to take off.
‘Cockpit,’ snarled Helfist.
Redpelt was ahead of him, charging through the load-bay and racing up the first stairwell he came to. The bulky shoulder-guards of his armour scraped past the narrow walls, drawing huge gouges in the pressed metal.
Helfist blink-clicked a rune on his helm display and his power fist’s energy-field sparked into life, throwing an electric-blue discharge across the ship’s interior. He slammed the burning gauntlet into the swaying floor and ripped up a sheet of it. With a savage yank, he hauled it back, throwing the first rank of cowering soldiers from their feet and exposing the innards of the ship’s structure beneath. He crouched down and pulled out a length of wiring, snapping the connections and shaking the cords loose like entrails pulled from a wounded beast.
With a shudder, the lights died across the load-bay, plunging the space into utter darkness. High-pitched screams of terror echoed out from the press of troops ahead, suddenly flung back into a maelstrom of shadows and whirling helm-lumens.
‘Run while you can, little men,’ growled the Blood Claw, stowing his pistol and advancing into the dark, his power fist crackling lashes of disruptive force. ‘Now Hel is on your heels.’
Redpelt thundered up on the next level, his boots denting the meshed-metal stairs with every heavy tread. There were armed guards waiting on the platform above, and a snap of las-fire cracked against his right shoulder as he emerged.
‘Brave,’ he snarled, righting himself and sweeping his gore-soaked chainsword into the retreating body of the nearest. ‘But unwise.’
He spun into the guards, flailing with his blade. The movements looked wild, but they were nothing of the sort – peerless conditioning had given his murder-strokes a deceptive efficiency.
The guards held their ground against the onslaught, and so they died. As he butchered the last of them, Redpelt’s helm showed Helfist slicing his way through the hold-level below. From its reeling pitch, it was clear the drop-ship was in the air and climbing.
At the end of the platform was a sealed door. Redpelt sprinted at it, loosing three rounds as he went, all hitting the intersection. The reactive bolts detonated as he crashed into the metal, cracking the doors open and sending the two panels tumbling inwards.
There were four men inside, all seated at consoles, two by two. Cockpit windows lined the far end, showing flashes of the firefight below as the drop-ship struggled to make headway with its load-bay doors open.
Redpelt laughed raucously in triumph, and the horrific sound echoed in the cramped space of the cockpit. Three of the flight-cr
ew sprang up and tried clumsily to get out of the way of his rampage. There was nowhere for them to go. Redpelt’s chainsword whirred heavily. Two heavy swipes and all three mortals were hacked apart, scattering viscera across the metal-backed seats. Redpelt grabbed the remaining pilot from his flight position, ripping him out of his restraint harness by the nape of his neck. The man’s spine broke from the force of it and the corpse went limp in Redpelt’s gauntlet.
Snarling with disdain, the Blood Claw hurled the body aside. The control column swayed drunkenly in the absence of a guiding hand, and the drop-ship began to list violently.
‘Hel,’ he voxed. ‘Time to go.’
He plucked a krak grenade from his belt, but then saw incoming danger runes flicker across his lens. Redpelt’s head snapped up, just in time to see a wing of four Thousand Sons gunships home in on the plateau, a few hundred metres off and closing fast.
Interesting.
He flicked the grenade back to safety and grabbed the column. It was like a giant’s fist closing over a child’s toy, but the drop-ship instantly steadied under his touch. Instead of letting it crash to earth, Redpelt dragged it out of its dive and gunned the engines further. With a wail of protest, the tortured atmospheric drives blazed back into full throttle.
The gunships, their pilots looking for targets on the ground, saw the danger too late. The drop-ship rose up to meet them head-on, huge and sluggish.
Redpelt grinned and smashed the nearside window with his chainsword handle. He let go of the controls, crouched, then crashed headlong through the gap, tearing through the metal frame, spinning out into the night even as the swooping gunships veered to avoid the massive chunk of steel and promethium sent lurching into their path.
It was only then that he saw how high up he’d taken it. The plateau was over two hundred metres down, still lit up by sporadic las-fire.
Battle Of The Fang Page 10
