Blood of Asaheim

by Chris Wraight

  ‘When the lead tanker draws level, we break,’ he ordered. ‘Váltyr and I’ll take the first, Hafloí and Baldr the second. Olgeir in support. Then we work down the line, one by one. Understood?’

  The confirmations came in order. Baldr barely whispered his response, fearful his tight-clenched jaw would give him away. It felt like his blood was boiling in his arteries.

  The first chem-tanker inched its way towards the invisible line Gunnlaugur had drawn across the gorge. Baldr watched it come, willing it to move faster, feeling his innards churn and his temples throb while his body remained static. The glowing lights of its drive-unit swam closer, surging up through the clouds of smoke and spoor, juddering and leaking, trailing acrid tangs of chemical poison. Every riveted panel of it, every piece of armour-plate or looped tubing was raddled with decay and degradation. It was a wonder the thing moved at all. Lurid flickers strobed along its straining bulk, exposing stringy lattices of mucus hanging from each joint and piston-housing.

  Finally the leader passed Hafloí’s vantage. Baldr’s breathing got faster. He heard the faint clunk of Olgeir bringing his beloved sigrún into position. He detected movements on the far side of the ravine as both Váltyr and Gunnlaugur adjusted stance, ready for the pounce.

  He felt sick. In the final few seconds that remained, he scanned the host marching in the valley below, scouring it for the source of his sickness.

  Something interesting travels in that column.

  He saw nothing but rank after rank of shuffling plague-bearers, their sore-puckered mouths hanging open, their feet dragging in the dust, their empty eyes fixed ahead. Some of them wore the remnants of Shakeh Guard uniforms.

  Then Baldr heard the comm-link crackle open. When he heard the order, the relief was overwhelming.

  ‘The Hand of Russ be with you, brothers,’ said Gunnlaugur, his savage voice alive again. ‘Slay freely.’

  Ingvar and Bajola descended quickly, bypassing the cathedral’s nave and heading deep into the underground levels below. Bajola led, travelling swiftly and surely through the switchbacks and twists. Her lighter armour was an advantage in the cramped tunnels of stone, and more than once she nearly left Ingvar behind.

  The chambers and passageways under the marble floor formed a labyrinth of dank, claustrophobic spaces, thick with old dust and mouldering with the stale air of centuries. Ingvar caught fleeting glimpses of age-withered statues set in arched recesses. He saw leathery purity banners hanging over granite altars, barely moving even as he brushed past them.

  ‘How in Hel did they get down here?’ he asked, working hard to keep up.

  A fresh storm of bolter-fire snapped out ahead of them, fractured and overlapped by the echoing chambers. They were close.

  ‘Throne only knows,’ said Bajola, her voice tight.

  She swerved around a many-columned pillar crumbling from age. A dull red glare of firelight swept over her, turning her black armour the colour of old blood.

  Ingvar rounded the pillar after her, drawing dausvjer.

  Ahead of them lay carnage. An arched chamber stretched away from where they stood, its vaulted roof lost under a pall of smoke and underpinned by lined ranks of granite pillars. Flames roared furiously from its far end, licking up along blackened walls and rippling across the floor like spilled liquid. Huge, squat objects stood between the pillars, as square and solid as devotional altars. They were all on fire, sparking and raging like igniting melta-bombs. Portions of the roof had fallen in further back, and metal struts dangled precariously amid the roaring blaze. Gouts of thick smog curled up against the arches, raining flakes of soot.

  Two Battle Sisters had arrived before them. They were retreating in the face of the inferno.

  ‘Where are they?’ roared Bajola, grabbing one of them by the shoulder and hauling her round to face her. Her voice was furious.

  The Sister nodded towards the fires.

  ‘Dead already, Palatine,’ she reported grimly, nodding to a scattering of blackened bodies lying on the stone near the edge of the fire.

  Bajola edged over to one of the corpses, keeping her bolter raised, raising one hand against the heat. She kicked it over with her boot. A flabby, slack-skinned mutant rolled onto its back, its sightless eyes staring up at the ceiling. One whole side of its body was burned into scarring from the flames. Its eyes were gone, leaving empty orbits. Even in death, its blubbery face retained a brutish expression of fervour.

  Ingvar drew alongside Bajola.

  ‘How did they get in?’ he asked again. He could feel the tremendous press of the flames even inside his armour.

  Bajola shook her head. ‘Did you not hear me the first time?’ she said. She squatted down beside the plague-bearer’s corpse and looked more closely into its face. ‘I have no idea.’

  More Battle Sisters arrived. Orders for dousing agents were shouted back up the line. The stone roof above them began to crack and blister.

  ‘We cannot remain here,’ said Ingvar, watching the growing wall of flame lick up across the vaulting.

  ‘Too late,’ breathed Bajola, no longer listening. Her voice was distant, broken. ‘All destroyed.’

  Ingvar stared into the heart of the inferno, letting his helm-lenses adjust to the light and heat. More bodies lay amid the flames, crackling and bursting. Some were little more than slivers of flesh, blown apart by the bombs they’d been carrying. Others, more intact, lay amid the altars like slaughtered cattle. Sparks flew from the boxes as they burned, interspersed with flickering arcs of electrical lightning. The iron sheaths that had encased them were melting, buckling and distorting.

  ‘What is this place?’ Ingvar asked.

  Bajola clambered to her feet, shrugging off his outstretched hand irritably. Her helm-masked face turned to his. Even though her expression was shielded by the black ceramite, he could sense her frustration.

  ‘If you had not delayed me…’ she started, then trailed off.

  More explosions sounded at the far end of the chamber, fuelling the firestorm. Fragments of granite fell from the ceiling nearby, shattering as they slammed into the ground.

  Bajola gazed one more time into the inferno.

  ‘Too late,’ she said, sounding defeated. ‘Damn you, Space Wolf.’

  ‘What is this place?’ Ingvar pressed.

  ‘What does it matter now?’ she said, her voice a hoarse whisper.

  She turned away from him and started to walk.

  ‘All destroyed,’ she said. Ingvar watched her go. ‘All destroyed.’

  Chapter Fifteen

  Gunnlaugur broke, flinging himself from the fragile skin of debris that had sheltered him. His hammer lashed round, leaping into his grasp as if alive, and the disruptor field snarled into life.

  Váltyr broke from cover beside him and burst down the slope. He went silently, swiftly, uttering no battle-cry.

  Gunnlaugur’s momentum carried him down. He leapt and skidded down the long scree incline, swinging the hammer in arcs to build momentum. He felt his blood pump in his temples, swelling the veins with heat and fervour.

  The need for secrecy had passed; he could unleash his true self.

  ‘Fenrys!’ he bellowed, and the sacred, battle-sanctified words echoed from the ravine walls and called back to him in a dozen new, overlapping voices. ‘Fenrys hjolda! Cower and scream, slaves of darkness, for the blades of the Wolves are upon you!’

  He heard Olgeir answer him with a slamming volley of heavy bolter-rounds. The explosive shells lanced into the front ranks of Guardsmen, immediately causing havoc around the lead tanker. Dozens of troops went down, clutching at their exploding bodies futilely and tumbling into the dust. Some of them tried to respond, scrabbling for their weapons and looking for something to fire back at.

  By then it was too late. By then the pack was among them.

  Gunnlaugur crashed into a knot
of milling troops, hurling half a dozen of them into the air with a single blistering sweep of skulbrotsjór. Their broken bodies thudded back to earth before they’d even had time to cry out.

  ‘The Blood of Russ!’ he roared, scything the hammerhead back and throwing more corpses into the night. He swung skulbrotsjór two-handed, leaning into the devastating strokes, whirling on his axis like a typhoon of destruction, carving his way deep into the mass of marching bodies.

  The still of the night exploded into a rage of flashing las-light and clattering bolter-fire. Gunnlaugur saw Váltyr turning and leaping, veering past incoming lines of fire effortlessly as he sliced through the meagre defences. He left piles of twitching corpses in his wake, each of them mortally cleaved by a single stroke.

  Gunnlaugur grinned. That was astonishing skill. It was arrogant. It was beautiful.

  By then the rest of the pack had joined in the carnage. He could hear Hafloí’s echoing cries of rage and frenzy. He could see the Blood Claw’s favoured axe glittering in the moonlight, already flinging blood around it in long splatters. He saw Baldr break from cover and charge, his bolter thundering, screaming ancient death-curses from the Old Ice as he rampaged. His voice was the most terrible of all. It sounded almost demented.

  The defenders loosed off rounds into the dark – panicky shots, poorly-aimed and badly timed. Some were already scrabbling up the ravine edges, desperate to escape the sudden, horrific attack of the grey terrors that had exploded into them.

  Gunnlaugur turned on his heel, slamming skulbrotsjór hard into the midriff of a wide-eyed plague-carrier. The force of the blow ripped through the mutant, sending remnants of its bisected body tumbling backwards in a cloud of blood and spores. Gunnlaugur switched back savagely, taking the head off another one. They couldn’t get away fast enough – there was no room. The thunder hammer became heavy with strips of gore, the flesh cooking into frazzled slivers on its sparking disruptor. Gunnlaugur waded through them like a reaper of old, slaying in crushing strokes, spinning and crushing and cracking. He towered above them, his heavy power armour making him twice the bulk and heft of even the largest of them. His hammer flew freely, travelling in unstoppable arcs, moving around him in a halo of annihilation like those of the mythic Iron Gods.

  Váltyr was the first to gain a foothold on a chem-tanker. He sprang up from the clutching hands of the mutants, kicking out as he rose and breaking the jaw of a reeling cleaver-carrier. He seized on a railing that ran along the swollen flanks of the toxin tank and clutched it fast, his boots searching for purchase.

  By then the enemy had begun to respond. They surged towards the invaders, swarming around the beleaguered chem-tankers. Their aim got better, and Gunnlaugur felt the hard jab of las-beams glancing from his breastplate.

  He roared with laughter, shrugging them off like rain.

  ‘That’s better!’ he thundered, crashing through the press of bodies around him, flattening any who came within the ambit of the thunder hammer. Another half-dozen hapless mutants were crushed, smashed or ripped apart, their bloated entrails sent spinning into the night. ‘Try harder! Come on, try harder!’

  They did. They screamed at him, hurled their corroded blades at his face, clutched at his ankles as he trod them into the blood-clotted dust, grabbed at his arms as the hammer-blows blurred past, loosed thick barrages of las-fire to try to bring him down.

  The task was hopeless. Olgeir’s withering torrent of heavy ordnance blew apart any nascent defensive positions. Hafloí’s assault cut deep into their reeling ranks, preventing any rally further back. Váltyr’s terrifying efficiency was just unanswerable.

  But the one that really scared them was Baldr. Gunnlaugur, busy with his own slaughter, only caught snatches of what was going on, but it sounded like Baldr had gone completely berserk. He heard him shrieking like a banshee of legend, and the sound of it chilled his blood. He wondered what it was doing to the enemy.

  ‘What in Hel’s wrong with Fjolnir?’ voxed Váltyr breathlessly, working his way along the tanker’s toxin-cylinder, swatting down the defenders that crawled all over it and beginning to climb higher.

  ‘He’s certainly having fun,’ replied Gunnlaugur, kicking through the stomach of an obese waddler and vaulting over the corpse. The chem-tanker’s tractor unit loomed through the dust-flurried murk, its cab-lights glowing like a cluster of insectoid eyes. ‘Concentrate: let’s bring this down.’

  He lashed out with the hammer, clearing a two-metre circle around him. Three mutants were sent spinning under the tracks of the tanker. They had plenty of time to scream as the treads slowly ground them to a pulp.

  Gunnlaugur leaped, pulling clear of the crowds and landed on a coolant duct on the tanker’s muzzle. It was riddled with oxidisation, and whole chunks of it came free in his grip as he climbed up to the cab. Gunnlaugur whipped his hammer round and mag-locked it to his back, hauling himself up the front of the titanic vehicle.

  Some of the enemy tried to follow him up, but most were picked off by Olgeir’s ever-present curtain of supporting fire.

  ‘My thanks, Heavy-hand,’ voxed Gunnlaugur as he reached the cloudy armourglass of the cab windows. He was enjoying himself.

  ‘Bring them pain,’ replied the great one cheerfully.

  Gunnlaugur reached up with his fist and smashed the closest pane. A bloom of thick, green smoke tumbled out, streaming down the front of the tractor unit like spilled sick.

  He grabbed the frame and hauled himself up. Inside, the chem-tanker’s crew were hard-wired into fleshy command thrones. Eight of them sat in a cramped space stuffed with throbbing, pulsing mountains of semi-tissue and pseudo-machinery. Tentacles ran from rheumy glands, interfacing with thickets of dirty metal cables. Fluids gurgled in translucent sacs, filtered through pinned-open bodies and sent churning down long tubes into the innards of the vast machine.

  The crew turned to face him as he clawed his way inside, letting fly with screaming wails of impotent hatred.

  ‘Right, then,’ he snarled as he pushed himself through the shattered windscreens and thudded to the cab’s floor. He drew the thunder hammer. ‘Who’s first?’

  They screamed at him in unison. With a shrug he started to swing, crushing what remained of their mortal skulls and punching through their etiolated innards. They shrieked as they died, locked into position, forced to watch as Gunnlaugur worked his way down the line. As each one died the whole chem-tanker shuddered. The growl of its engines became a stuttering whine, and the clouds of smoke billowed ever higher. As he neared the end of the line Gunnlaugur felt the chem-tanker change direction, reeling on its axis and starting to crush its way aimlessly across the ravine floor.

  ‘Time to leave, vaerangi,’ came Váltyr’s voice over the comm.

  ‘Already?’ said Gunnlaugur, breaking the neck of the last shrieking crew member and pushing his way to the far side of the cab. ‘Hel, you work fast.’

  He glanced back at the carnage left in his wake. Fluids, pink with blood and blotched with inky lubricants, swilled across the metal-mesh floor. Eight raw carcasses slumped amid a tangled mess of fizzing cabling and shattered ironwork. The last of the pale marsh-gas drifted loosely away, no longer fed by its belching feeder valves.

  Gunnlaugur grunted with satisfaction, then smashed through the far end of the cab wall, pummelling a huge, ragged hole in the armour plates. He thrust himself through the gap, hanging clear of the cab-edge. The huge machine was still ploughing onwards, though its progress was now directionless. Dozens of milling defenders were dragged under the tracks as they tried to get out of the way. He could still hear Baldr’s frenzied screams and Hafloí’s battle-cries. The two of them had already destroyed their chem-tanker, which blazed in a mass of lurid chemical flames against the far wall of the ravine.

  Gunnlaugur saw Váltyr leap from the tanker’s lurching spine, hurling himself a long way clear and landing expertly amid a swarm of g
low-eyed mutants. Gunnlaugur tensed, ready to do the same.

  Then the krak grenades went off.

  Váltyr had clamped them all along the toxin-tank, just as Gunnlaugur had ordered him. They exploded in sequence, rippling along the bulbous sides of containers, spraying the noxious contents in all directions.

  The chem-tanker bucked, shuddered and ignited, hurling Gunnlaugur clear of the cab. He crunched heavily to the ground several metres away, his shoulder guard driving deep into solid rock, his helm cracking against blood-wet rubble.

  He picked himself up in time to be doused in a spray of flesh-eating acid from the broken chem-tanks. It cascaded down his armour, instantly dissolving the blood and slime from the surface and eating through the pelts that hung from his shoulders.

  The mortal troops around him were not so well protected. They screamed in chorus as their flesh was scoured from the bone, a riot of shrieking, gargling sobs that only ended when the acid ate down to the vocal cords.

  When the torrent finally died out the scene around the smoking tanker was horrific – bodies in all directions, skinless, eyeless, with exposed bone and shrivelled flesh. A thick soup of dissolved organic matter, tinged grey with foamy scum, lapped over the rocks of the valley floor, bubbling and babbling as it drained deep into the dry earth.

  The chem-tanker itself, driverless and burning, swayed on, finally crashing into the far side of the ravine and bursting into toxin-edged flames, just like its companion further down the gorge.

  Gunnlaugur shook the last of the acid from his burly frame before striding out to find Váltyr. As he walked, his boots crunched sickeningly through half-eaten bone. The silence from Olgeir’s heavy bolter told him that Heavy-hand was climbing down to join in the close combat. Four tankers remained before their night’s work was done.

  Gunnlaugur was glad of that. He was enjoying himself.

  ‘Ahead of schedule, bla–’ he started, just as something huge went off over by Baldr’s position. It was an explosion of sorts, but it lit up the ravine edges with corpse-glimmer and sounded like a strangled scream. He tensed immediately, the hairs on his arms raising.