Morek turned and hurried back the way he’d come, averting his eyes from the floating figures in the tanks, ignoring the banks of strange equipment that lined the walls beyond them, hardly seeing the rows of tiny vials arranged in careful order under the controlled lights.
There were heavy footsteps somewhere behind him, and his heart jumped. He kept going, kept his head down, hoping whoever owned them was headed somewhere else. The linked chambers were confusing, hard to find one’s way around, and the sound could have come from anywhere.
The footsteps faded. Morek was back in the reception chambers, the ones with the empty metal tables. Ahead of him was the exit, and the corridor to the elevator shaft.
His heart was beating hard.
The curious mind opens the door to damnation.
He looked down at his hands. They were rough, calloused, hardened by a lifetime of service to the Sky Warriors. They were trembling. For a moment he paused, uncaring if the thralls saw him now.
What was that thing?
He stood still for a few more heartbeats, rendered indecisive by what he had witnessed. The Wolf Priests were the guardians of the Aett, the keepers of the traditions of the Vlka Fenryka. If they had sanctioned it, then it must be permitted.
It was an abomination.
He looked back over his shoulder. The tile-lined chambers stretched away from him, each one leading to the next, each stinking of antiseptic and blood. He felt the nausea rise up again, catching in his gullet.
In the Hall of the Fangthane, he had shouted himself hoarse with devotion to the Sky Warriors, the embodiment of the divine savagery of Fenris. As hard as he tried, he couldn’t summon that spirit back up.
Shakily, with none of the purpose that had brought him to that place, he walked back to the elevator shaft. Across his open, loyal face the certainty had gone.
In its place, and for the first time in Morek’s life, there was doubt.
CHAPTER TEN
Blackwing sat slumped at the metal conference table, ignoring the dozen figures seated around him, running his hands through his matted hair. He ignored the flickering strip-lights, he ignored the dozen or so kaerls standing to attention by the walls in their dirty uniforms, and he ignored the sclerotic grind of the damaged engines from below.
He felt cramped, dirty, cooped-up. Each day since the escape from Fenris had been a wearying round of emergencies and repairs, all in the cause of keeping the Nauro from breaking open and spinning into the void.
It was demeaning work, fit perhaps for mortals, but not for him. He was bred for higher things, for expert slaying in the shadows, for glorying in the contests of void-war. Having to listen to the counsel of greasy enginarium workers and the doom-laden pronouncements of the ship’s tactical crew bored him supremely.
Not that the situation wasn’t dire. He knew enough of starship mechanics to recognise when things were about to fall apart. Frankly, they ought to have done so already – the ship was still at least twelve days out from Gangava, and that schedule was only possible because he’d continued to thrash the warp drives over the protests of the ship’s Master. A few days ago, he’d made the mistake of asking the Nauro’s Enginarius, a mortal who’d had extensive training from Adeptus Mechanicus tech-adepts, what the machine-spirit was doing during all of this.
‘Screaming, sir,’ he’d replied in his gruff, practical voice. ‘Screaming like an ungor with its throat cut.’
Blackwing had given thanks then that he was insensitive to such things.
Then again, he was insensitive to most things. He’d never gelled with his battle-brothers, had never forged the friendships that tied squads together. He’d despised his superior officers, chafing against the discipline they’d imposed. Even in the Space Wolves Chapter, famous across the Imperium for its loose attitude toward the Codex Astartes, that discipline was severe.
Blackwing had always been different, subject to dark moods and bouts of a manic, dangerous over-confidence. The Scout corps had been perfect for him, allowing him to perfect the arts of lone killing far from the raucous brotherhood of the Aett. It was in such isolation that he’d found a kind of contentment.
Now, however, he began to wonder whether that choice had always been such a good one. None of the mortals on the Nauro were capable of making the command choices he had to, of taking the difficult decisions on which their lives all depended. It might have been preferable, perhaps, to have had a brother warrior to consult, someone to share the burden with for a short while.
Not that any of his battle-brothers would have willingly come with him on a mission. Blackwing had created a near-perfect bubble of solitude around him, alienating even those who had no prior dislike of the Scouts.
So be it. That was the path he’d chosen, and it had suited him well enough before now. Not all of Russ’s sons could be hollering berserkers.
‘Lord?’
The voice was that of the ship’s Master, a grey-haired man called Georyth. Blackwing looked up to face him. Even out of armour, the Space Marine dominated the chamber. As his yellow eyes, sunk into their dark-ringed sockets, clamped on to the mortal, Georyth swallowed.
‘You asked for a report on the fires.’
‘So I did, Master. Tell me the latest good news.’
‘I have none to give. Three levels are still out of bounds, even to thrall-servitors. The burning has spread to the drive chambers. As supplies run low, our ability to contain it will diminish.’
‘And I know what you recommend.’
Georyth took a deep breath.
‘It hasn’t changed, lord.’
‘You wish us to drop out of the warp, open the levels to the void, flush out the area and make repairs.’
‘I do.’
‘And how long would such a manoeuvre take, assuming optimal performance?’
‘A week, lord. Perhaps less.’
Blackwing shot him a cold, superior smile. There was no humour in it, just a kind of knowing disdain.
‘Too long.’
‘Lord, if the promethium lines are–’
Blackwing sighed and pushed himself back in his chair.
‘If they’re breached? Then we die, Master. Even I, an ignorant warmongering savage with zero enginarium training, know that.’
He fixed his pin-pupil gaze on the man.
‘But reflect on this,’ he said. ‘Without the Great Wolf’s forces to relieve it, the Aett will fall. Lord Ironhelm’s ships must still be in the warp. If we keep travelling at our current pace, with no pauses or slowdowns, we will arrive at Gangava many days after them. And then, even if I can pass on Lord Greyloc’s message swiftly and persuade Ironhelm to return to Fenris, it will be another twenty days before he can possibly do so. Which means that Lord Greyloc, whom I know is held in such unflinching esteem by all this Chapter, will have to hold the citadel, with a single depleted Great Company, for at least forty days. You saw the forces in orbit, Master. You saw what they did to our defences there. Now tell me, speaking honestly, if you really think that army can be defied on land for forty days.’
The Master’s face went grey.
‘If Russ wills it...’ he began dutifully, but his voice lost its certainty, and he trailed off.
‘Precisely. So perhaps you will now understand my insistence that we reach Gangava as soon as we can. We have cheated Morkai already on this voyage, and we will have to cheat him for a little longer. Count yourself lucky you’re commanded by a Scout, Master. That’s what we do. Cheat.’
The Master didn’t reply, but slumped in his chair, his expression hollow. Blackwing could see his mind working, already trying to figure out some way of keeping the raging fires from reaching anything explosive. He didn’t look confident.
Blackwing turned to look at the rest of the command crew, none of whom had yet spoken.
‘Anything else we need to discuss?’ he asked drily.
The Tacticus said nothing. The man had been driven hard, and his eyes were red-rimmed from fatigue. T
he Enginarius had already given his assessment of repair work needed in the hold, and the Armourer was dead, killed by an exploding bulkhead hours after translation from Fenris.
Neiman, the Navigator, was the only one still looking calm. He was also the only non-Fenrisian on the crew, a Belisarian from Terra, and was as slim and cold as his crewmates were stocky and vigorous. It was rare for him to leave his work of guiding the ship through the perils of the immaterium. In the presence of non-mutants, his pineal eye was covered in a wrap of silk over a steel patch.
He didn’t speak. He was staring intently away from the table, toward the kaerls standing to attention around the walls of the council chamber. His natural eyes were unwavering.
Blackwing found this annoying. He’d not summoned the man to this meeting to have him daydream.
‘Is there something you wished to contribute, Navigator?’ he asked.
Neiman didn’t flinch.
‘Who is that man?’ he demanded, his gaze locked on a particularly scruffy kaerl. Blackwing shot a glance at the man in question. He was shorter than the others, a little more hunched, with greasy hair and bruised skin around the eyes. He was a good deal filthier than the rest of them too, but the endless demands of survival had taken their toll on everyone. Strange, though – he didn’t look like a soldier.
At all.
‘Is this particularly important?’ asked Georyth irritably. ‘We have other things to resolve.’
The man in question didn’t respond. He kept staring blankly, his expression totally vacant. On either side of him, the kaerls seemed suddenly to notice his presence. One of them looked at his sergeant in alarm, as if the man had been functionally invisible until that moment.
Blackwing felt the hairs on his back rise. His mood shifted instantly from boredom to high alertness. Why hadn’t he noticed this man before? What had the Navigator sensed?
‘Seize him,’ he ordered, rising from his chair.
The kaerls grabbed the man by the shoulders. As if a switch had been flipped, the vacant-faced man went crazy. He backhanded the kaerl to his left, slamming him into the wall, then grabbed the neck of the other and launched into a vicious head-butt. Still without uttering a sound, the man spun round, making for the exit doors, knocking aside another kaerl who rushed to intercept him.
He moved with astonishing speed. But, for all that, it was mortal speed. Blackwing was quicker, leaping across the table in a lithe pounce and careering into the man as he raced for the door. Together they skidded across the pressed-metal floor. Blackwing seized the man’s hair and crunched his face into the wall, stunning him. He regained his feet quickly, dragging the man up with him.
‘Take care, lord!’ warned Neiman. ‘I sense–’
The injured man turned his bloody face toward Blackwing’s. His eyes suddenly blazed a pale, sickly green.
Blackwing felt the build-up of maleficarum. In a single movement he hurled the man away, sending him cartwheeling through space toward the empty far end of the council chamber. Before the kaerl had landed, Blackwing pulled his bolt-pistol from its holster and squeezed off a single round. The slug punched through the flailing man’s head and detonated, spraying bone and glistening grey matter across the wall.
The ruined, headless body hit the metal with a wet thud. It twitched for a moment, then fell still.
‘Teeth of Russ!’ swore Georyth, superfluously training his own sidearm on the corpse. ‘What in Hel–’
‘It knew how to remain hidden,’ said Neiman, looking at Blackwing in alarm. ‘This is witchery – he was in plain view of all of us.’
Blackwing stooped to pick up something on the floor. A sphere the size of an eyeball had rolled across the metal. It glowed green, and flickered with a ghostly witchlight.
He rose, gazing at the bloodstained ball in his palm. It felt hot to the touch, almost painfully so. As he looked at it, a dull ache broke out behind his eyes.
Blackwing crushed it with a clench of his clawed fingers.
‘It seems we have a new problem,’ he said grimly, turning slowly to face the startled ship’s council. ‘Something else is on the ship. Something that no doubt wishes us harm. And whatever it is, it now knows how weak we are.’
The Iron Priest had gone. In his absence, the dark seemed even colder, even more remote. The concept of daylight was already proving hard to reconstruct, as was the passage of time. Freija had lost track of both. Perhaps the assault had started, or perhaps the Sky Warriors still held the enemy in the mountains. If the battle came to the Aett, would any sign of it penetrate so far down?
She swept her gaze across the chamber. It was big, though hard to say how big – even her night-vision visor didn’t pick much out in the far recesses. One wall, the wall her squad had clustered around, had been extensively worked. There were huge doors in the centre of it, once more crested with the twin faces of Morkai. The space around the doors was studded with arcane machinery – coils of coolant piping, statuesque clusters of power transformers, lattices of ironwork covering unidentifiable workings within. Incredibly, given the oppressive cold and distance from maintenance crews, the low hum from the machines sounded healthy.
The thrall-servitors had certainly known what to do with it. After their master had passed through the doors, they’d got to work, attaching themselves to input valves and initiating obscure sets of protocols. Whatever they were doing, it was noisy and repetitive. Lights flickered across the wall of machines from time to time, glinting painfully in the otherwise perfect dark. The servitors not directly attached to the devices had started performing a series of rites in front of the major machine-nodes – anointing the moving parts with pungent oils, reading long lists of benedictions in flat, metal-dry voices, bowing before the inert iron and steel as if it were an altar of long-dormant gods.
They worked methodically, tirelessly, soullessly. There was no communication between them and the Iron Priest within. Arfang was alone, presumably in a place where only the Sky Warriors were permitted. There was no indication of how long his work would take, whether it was going well, or even what he was planning.
Freija fought against a growing weight of boredom. The oppressive dark combined with the dreary intonations of the servitors made it hard to stay sharp.
‘Keep your focus,’ she warned over the vox-link, speaking to herself as much as her troops.
Four of the six-kaerl squad stood alongside her, facing outward from the machine-wall, the muzzles of their rifles pointing into the dark. Two more were resting, slumped uneasily between their comrades and the unnerving rites of the half-human servitors.
Then she heard the noise again. Instantly all thoughts of boredom were banished, and she felt the prick of sweat under her gloves.
The other kaerls heard it too, and she saw them stiffening. The two on rest-rotation climbed their feet, grasping their sidearms clumsily in the gloom.
It was a low, rumbling growl, glottal and damp, vibrating in the stone of the floor.
‘Hold your ground,’ she hissed over the comm, trying to see something definite in the grainy feed her visor was giving her.
Behind her, the servitors carried on their work. The guns of the kaerls swept the far end of the chamber, moving slowly and uncertainly. She could sense their tension in the tight, nervous movements.
Suddenly, the distinctive rasping bark of a skjoldtar burst out of nowhere, its muzzle flare dazzling in intensity. Despite herself, Freija nearly pulled her own trigger in reflexive shock.
‘Cease fire!’ she shouted, peering into the shadows. Her proximity meter was empty, save for the group of friendly signals around her.
The echoes of the gunfire took a long time to die. The culprit, probably Lyr – she couldn’t tell – shook his head. By now Freija’s heart was properly beating. There was something out there, something she couldn’t see, something that sounded – felt – utterly terrifying.
‘Hold your ground,’ she said again, feeling her stomach twisting.
; Get a grip, woman. You are a daughter of Russ, a child of the storm.
‘We’re not getting a good feed from the visors,’ she said. ‘I’m walking out.’
None of her troops responded. They stayed where they were, locked in a semi-circle around the oblivious servitors.
Freija took a deep breath, and began to advance. She went slowly, feeling her heavy breathing quicken. Ahead of her, she could see nothing but static.
Then it came again, nearer this time, thrumming and resonant. It wasn’t emanating from one of the tunnels beyond. It was in the chamber, there with them, watching. Somewhere.
Freija had gone ten metres by the time she stopped. She looked over her shoulder briefly, checking for the presence of her squad. They were still there, still surrounding the wall of machines, still guarding the doors.
She turned back.
Less than a metre away, a pair of golden eyes, pinned with black, liquid and massive, gazed back at her.
Freija froze.
Skítja.
The siege-fire was horrifying, vaporising ice and snow and shattering rock, tearing up ancient outcrops of granite and dissolving them into clouds of scree. The superheavy guns had been dragged into range, and the Fang reeled under the dense volume of ordnance. Its flanks were wreathed in both smoke and steam as the snow was boiled away from the rock and the gun emplacements were picked off, one by one. The entire peak was clothed in raging tongues of flame, blazing as if the magma at the planet’s core had been released and flung into the permafrost of Asaheim’s summit.
The defenders waited within the walls, letting the fortress defences do their work for as long as possible. Static gun emplacements thundered with lethal force, chewing their way through whole loops of ammunition in moments, cutting down oncoming armour and leaving the tilting wrecks blocking the advance. Teams of kaerls worked ceaselessly to keep the death-dealers fed and operative.
It would not last forever. The Thousand Sons were advancing, claiming each metre of land in blood and fire. Only when the doors were broken would the Wolves take to the field again, welcoming the invaders with the embrace of Morkai.
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