Leman Russ: The Great Wolf

by Chris Wraight

  'If you wish. It is just another world.'

  'No, not this one.' Russ lifted his gaze then, away from the hololith, up at the images, the architecture of Caliban. 'This is what you do - you conquer, one world after the other, until you can no longer count them. I admire that, truly. Few do it better, but it is not what we were made for.' He moved back towards the tactical schema, as if he could reach out and rip it into shreds. 'Every world we burn is for vengeance. They are condemned, he is condemned, and we are the sanction.'

  The Lion looked intrigued. 'Yes, I had heard you held this notion.'

  Russ turned on him. 'Do not mock, brother.'

  'No mockery, but you are right. I do not share your view of war. Perhaps our Father gave you a different task. For me, the order was simple - go out, harvest worlds for Terra. I carry no hatred for those who resist. I barely see them. They are numbers, objects, obstacles to be overcome. In the end the Great Crusade is all, and it stands or falls by our actions.'

  Russ stared at his fellow primarch for a moment, weighing that up. The words had not been said for effect - he really thought that. In that instant, Russ had an insight into a wholly alien way of battle; one of long-gestated plans of conquest, of moderation and tactical restraint, ready to turn preserved resources back towards the service of a greater humanity.

  They were of the same species, the two of them. They were even of the same gene-lineage; but just then it felt as if they might as well have been from other dimensions.

  'Do you think,' Russ said, mulling the matter over in his mind, 'that Malcador knew we would meet here?'

  The Lion raised an eyebrow. 'Why do you say so?'

  Russ shook his head. 'Forget it.' He turned back to the tactical diagrams. 'These plans look good to me. You hold the ground, we cut his bloody head off.'

  The Lion bowed in acquiescence.

  'As you say, then,' he murmured, 'so shall it be.'

  An hour later, the primarchs parted company. The two fleets pulled away from one another, taking up holding positions in high orbit The last of the Faash defenders had been long since run down and a blockade established across the entire planetary zone; with both Dark Angels and Space Wolves escort runners patrolling across the poles and down to Dulan's equatorial swath.

  Russ returned to the Nidhoggur. Orders were given to Helmschrot, who took them to the Valkam and prepared his landing parties. Guns which until recently had been trained on enemy warships were re-armed and directed towards the shields on the surface Soon a steady thump, thump of ordnance could be heard running through the bilge-levels of every capital ship as their arsenal was unleashed again.

  Once the bombardment was under way, Russ returned to his private chambers to receive the last of his panoply of war - his master-crafted helm and the reconditioned Krakenmaw. As the servitors fussed and drilled, ensuring every joint was sealed and every power line securely fixed, a chime sounded from the doors outside the arming-room.

  'Leave us,' said Russ, pleased to be rid of the attention. Once his attendants had limped away, he let the inner doors open, revealing Jorin standing on the far side of them.

  'So we have them at last,' Russ said, beckoning him in, then taking up Krakenmaw and testing the weight of it. Fresh runes had been etched into the metal casing, warding against harm and magnifying the death-thirsty spirit of the blade. 'You could look happier about it.'

  Jorin, also fully armoured, lumbered into the chamber and watched his primarch test the chainsword out. 'How was he?'

  'Just as I remembered.' Russ stopped his practice strikes and lifted the killing edge towards his face, studying the spikes on the chain-run. 'We reached an understanding. He fights his way, we fight ours.'

  Jorin leaned against a column, crossing his arms. 'I liked it better when they fought on their own.'

  Russ laughed. 'True enough.' He lowered the blade and sheathed it 'But I admire him. I don't like him, but I admire him. Like I do Rogal. They have the same stiff neck, but they know how to run a Legion.' He shot Jorin a knowing look. 'Organised.'

  Jorin snorted. 'You can't envy that.'

  'I don't. Like I say, I admire it.' Russ picked up his helm, made battle-ready by the servitors. The lenses gazed back emptily at him, black as night. 'The galaxy looks at the Dark Angels and sees the Legions as they were meant to be. They're the archetype.'

  'So what does he think of us?'

  'Ha. Who knows? It matters not - we are what we are.'

  Jorin looked at Russ steadily. 'A long time ago, you told me what you had learned of your coming to Fenris. You said it was fate that brought you to us, and fate that sent your brothers to their worlds. Like reunited with like, as the Allfather willed it. Now I wonder what would have happened if you had been sent to Caliban, and he had come to Fenris. Would I now be talking to a Wolf King, or would I see the Lord of Angels standing before me with runes hammered on his battleplate?'

  'Your humours are strange tonight, Bloodhowl.'

  'I only ask.'

  Russ shrugged. 'Well, you have me, for better or worse.' He grinned broadly, exposing his blunt fangs. 'And that has not been so bad, has it? You remember when we burned the halls of Svein Rejksson? Two hundred under his war-banner, thirty under mine, and still we tore down his walls and dragged that banner through the bloody slush.'

  Jorin remembered. 'A long time ago,' he said.

  'I remember every cut. Not the battles since, but those on Fenris I never forget. I'm glad you're still with me, Bloodhowl. The ones that came after you, they'll never know fighting like we did.'

  'They've had their fair share.'

  'Of a kind. But they're not my banner-bearers, like we had before the sky cracked.' Russ smiled to himself. 'I don't envy Jonson. All he has are subjects and seneschals. I have shield-brothers.' He put the helm down. 'That must remain,' he said, his voice unusually serious. 'The way of the old world. I don't want it forgotten, washed away by these new wars.'

  'It won't happen.'

  'It already is happening.'

  'No, we can't shake it off, even if we wanted to.' Jorin looked moody. Perhaps it was the come-down after the heady exhilaration of killing. 'Fenris is a disease, lodged in our blood. We can't grow, we can't change, and she keeps us locked on the teat, even though the milk has soured.'

  Russ stared at him then. 'By the gods, what ails you, Jorin?' he asked. 'This whelp-whining does not suit you, for I believed you to be a jarl of my company.'

  Jorin didn't meet his gaze for a moment. Then it looked as if he wished to speak, but something kept his lips sealed. He sucked in a long breath, then exhaled, pushing away from the column.

  He smiled - a forced grin.

  'Forget it,' he said. 'Forget I spoke. The Angels make my humours as black as their battleplate, and I need to stretch my axe-arm again.'

  Russ did not release him. 'Why did you come here? You had something you wished to say?'

  Jorin shook his head. 'Only to hear what passed on the flagship. We retain the honour of the kill. Good. When the Tyrant's head is severed, I wish it to be our hands on the axe. So I am glad, and I am eager for it to begin.'

  Still Russ did not release him. There was something else there, something running deep like a lead-lode under the Aett's roots.

  But battle called again, close now, the culmination of a long hunt. It could wait, for much needed to be done.

  'You can always come to me, you know this?' said Russ. 'You above all. You can speak to me just like it was in the past, for I do not forget.'

  Jorin nodded. 'I know it.'

  Russ grinned at him, the hooked, reckless smile of old. 'Then come. Shake it off. I'll need you there and I want this to be good hunting.'

  'It will be,' said Jorin, nodding, without conviction. 'Just as always.'

  IV

  Orbital bombardment continued for three more hours, hammering away at the dropsite coordinates. Sensors from both fleets zeroed in on the impact zones, scanning for signs of weakening. Stress-signals wer
e detected over the Crimson Fortress' causeways first, followed swiftly by the outlier regions. The battleships' drop pod racks were given warning, and every pack and squad took their places, locked down in restraint cages as the combat-lumens lit and the warning klaxons sounded.

  The Invincible Reason's bridge crew were first to pick up the telltale discharge of ionised particles, followed by the Aesrumnir's gunnery teams. Precise loci were fed down to the targeting teams, and the pod-claws swung out into the open bays under the warships' hulls. Void shields rippled back, exposing the long drop into the atmosphere below, and for a moment the ranks of shackled pods hung like iron fruit under the holding rails.

  Then the order was given, and the shackles flew back, the explosive bolts blew and the caskets of death plummeted in unison, thrusters blazing as they shot clear of the battleships and burned towards the red world below.

  Gunships came after them, dipping their noses and blasting hard to keep in contact with the rain of pods. Ship-mounted las-fire opened up in their wake, scything down between the descent columns and cracking into sites on the ground, eliciting flurries of dust-blooms as the targets were hit The drop was dizzying, precipitous - a whistling, shaking ride that spanned the vast gap between orbital fleet and planetside in seconds. Each pod glowed red, then orange, then a fiery white as it hit re-entry, edges blurred from the immense pressures and speeds.

  Inside the First Legion units the kill-squads remained silent, lost in their pre-combat meditation. Inside the VI Legion pods the warriors roared with exhilaration, thumping their armoured fists against the restraint cages and setting up the chorus of howls that would accompany their emergence onto the killing fields.

  As the drop pods burned through the thickest atmospheric layer and the ground raced up to meet them, interference fire burst upwards from the defenders' terrestrial emplacements. Stricken pods exploded in mid-air, scattering outwards in huge blast-circles. Stormbirds homed in on the artillery units and let loose with battle-cannons, driving huge wedges through the lines of waiting guns.

  Then the first drop pods hit, smashing deep into the planet's crust and throwing out roiling waves of dust, earth and pulverised rockcrete. The doors peeled open, exposing rack-mounted bolters that swung around, juddering as they let loose. Beneath that punishing curtain, the pods' restraint cages cracked, releasing their deadliest cargo. The Wolves and the Angels raced out under covering fire, adding their own mass-reactives to the torrents already homing in on the enemy positions.

  Bridgeheads were established - points of territory won in the first bloody minutes of fighting. Legionaries pushed out rapidly from those enclaves, driving Scarabine counter-attacking troops back, joining up with their comrades, forming battlefronts and assessing the next objectives. The intensity of the sky-borne assault was ferocious - fast, coordinated, physically brutal, the epitome of the Legion doctrines of war.

  In the wake of those initial gains, heavy transports began to land, now protected by coronas of ranged fire launched by ground-based troops. Tanks rolled out of the maws of the landers, engines growling and guns already tracking. Dreadnoughts, those most precious and scarce of battlefield resources, swaggered out of the heart of their uniquely swollen drop pods, rotary cannons blazing and lightning claws extended.

  Dulan's night sky became a mottled tapestry, underlit by flares and sudden freeze-frame blasts. Columns of fire still slanted down from the unseen void above, their barred purity marred by the contrails of rockets and gunship wings. The Scarabine elites pushed back hard against that first wave of attacks, wading through the hurricane of ordnance to get into contact, their shield units flaring in iridescent splash-patterns. Mobile artillery pieces of their own rolled out from behind camo-draped bunkers, their barrels lowered to near-ground-parallel and already rocking from recoil. Greater armoured walkers, akin to the leviathans found on the halo defence station, stalked out from the shadow of citadel walls, their shoulder-mounted launchers sending whirls of incendiary missiles twisting into the heart of the hardest fighting.

  Both Scarabines and legionaries went down under those dense walls of fire Others leapt up to take their place, and every new squad carried more deadly weapons - volkite chargers, heavy bolters, plasma cannons. Legion breacher teams hoisted shields and forced their way to the tops of the mounds of broken rockcrete, weathering the torrents of return fire, enabling fixed-point guns to be set up. Gradually, painfully, combined Dark Angels and Space Wolves landing vanguards cleared the ground around their impact sites, pushed out, took territory, and secured defensive points.

  The Lion's forces did just as he had promised, seizing ground in a wide arc around the towering bulk of the Crimson Fortress. Their dropsites were concentrated around the very perimeter of the area cleared by the orbital bombardment, and they worked swiftly to secure the gains. Aegis defence-lines were brought down by heavily armoured cargo lifters. The causeways to the east and north were occupied and reinforced, cutting off the central massif from further reinforcements.

  The Dark Angels primarch himself directed the fiercest fighting, carving out a position under the walls of three western citadels, each one scarcely less imposing than the Crimson Fortress itself. Ramps ran up to the gates of those citadels, overwatched by heavy ordnance and guarded by entire battalions of Faash Scarabines.

  Before they could airlift their own fixed artillery, the Dark Angels endured a vicious wave of suppressing fire, losing whole squads in the initial exchanges. They might have faltered then, had it not been for their primarch, who led the first breakout charge from the dropsites, driving up the first of the ramps and storming the enemy positions at its summit.

  In those opening minutes of the attack, when so much was at risk, the Lion was irresistible, moving too fast to be tracked by the heavy weapons, impervious to harm from small arms, a force of nature unleashed into the dirt-streaked skies of Dulan. Flames leapt up behind him as the skies were sliced by orbit-launched missiles. The primarch of the First was accompanied by his honour guard - Alajos and the elite paladins of the Ninth Order, each carrying force-shrouded longblades and blast-shields. When the Lion reached the first defenders, he leapt clear across the barricade-lines and crashed into the heart of them, laying about him with the immense Lion Sword. Every sweep was laced with a deep green surge of disruptor energy, one that kindled a rage of sudden fire on any surface it broke through, so that the Lion's onslaught was soon wreathed in tides of eerie flame, a bow-wave of shock and terror that swept on before him. Through it all he drove onwards, swift but never hurrying the silence of his approach somehow as terrifying as if the screams of the underworld had come in his train.

  Ahead of him lay the central one of the three secondary citadels he had pledged to storm. The walls rose up before him, precipitous and smooth, crowned with distant ramparts bristling with guns. Banners with the black-and-red dragon device of the Tyrant whipped crazily in the buffeting counter-swells of artillery back-draughts, and the dark skies beyond the summit were shrieking by then, streaked with sooty columns of promethium smoke and lanced through with the retina-burning sizzle of las-beams.

  The Lion crested the first summit of many that stood between him and the heights beyond. His retinue swept up around him, laying down a carpet of suppressive fire, and his banner-bearer raised the primarch's new standard - the great winged sword of the knights of Caliban, silver on a ground of forest-green, the icon of a hundred campaigns and the sign of doom for countless worlds. Dark Angels were now advancing in force on all fronts, whole columns of armoured legionaries sweeping out towards the heights as the wind whipped their cloaks and the flames licked against the walls themselves.

  The lion said nothing. He uttered no battle-cry, for his knights needed nothing to stoke their fury, and all orders had already been given. The primarch merely watched as the citadels were steadily invested, and the guns rolled into position, and his captains unerringly fought their way into their allotted locations. Alajos and his retinue stood sentinel arou
nd him, the ash drifting across their silent helms.

  Then the guns on the ramparts above opened up, blowing up trenches in the terrain before them and churning the land to slag. Scarabine detachments erupted from trenches under the walls' shadow and surged across the broken terrain to meet the invader. Cumbersome Dulanian flyers whined up on turbofans, ready to launch strafing runs and unload their deadly cargo.

  The Lion looked up at the gathering storm, and felt the presence at his back of thousands of his gene-sons, and knew that thousands more would be landed soon and thrown into the heart of the battle He held his blade aloft, feeling the metal shiver as lightning caught and skipped along its length.

  'One more world,' he said, softly, a ritual as old as the Crusade itself. 'For you, Father, one more world.'

  The drop pod doors slammed open, the burning night air of Dulan howled in, and a vista of burgeoning devastation stretched away in all directions. Over in the west, along the summit of a long line of ridges, the echoing report of massed bolter fire gave away the Lion's position. To the east, a long way distant, more of the First Legion's defensive lines could be made out.

  But it was to the north that Russ' gaze was drawn - steeply rising terrain, blackened by the scouring of fire. Whole swaths had been pummelled by the orbital fusillades, beating down the paths to the Crimson Fortress, now blotting out the northern horizon. Towers thrust tight against more towers, jostling for space, twisting around one another and merging into curtain walls and buttresses, bulwarks and ravelins, all rising and rising like the crags of Asaheim, and as red as bloody sunsets. It was colossal, testament to one man's lust for dominance, a vanity made manifest in rockcrete iron and adamantium.

  But it was burning now, its ramparts and parapets masked with rolling cataracts of dirty smoke. The main lenses of shielding still protected the very summit, but the lower terraces had been mauled, and many of its terraced arches had slumped down into slopes of churned scree Now the way was clear for the infantry assault. Already the packs were running, loping out from beached drop pods and racing up the causeways towards the mighty gates, where the defenders streamed out to meet them. Energy weapons glowed in the firelit night, stabbing at the gloom like stars. With the first wave of warriors in place, the Legion's airlifted armour trundled out into the open - Predator tanks swaying back on their tracks as their main cannons opened up, Land Raiders grinding their way out across the scored ground. Above it all, gunships hung low, burning up down-thrust as they unleashed their full spectrum of murder.