Magnus paused then, looking down at the ruin of his enemy’s image. For a long time, he didn’t move. There was a defiant pleasure on his face, the expression of a man who wished to fully enjoy an experience long anticipated.
But behind it, as Ahriman would no doubt have recognised, was a deeper pain, the pain of remembrance. There would always be pain. That was the tragedy of the past, of the things done that could never be undone.
The introspection could not last. As the last of the dust settled in the cracks of the Fangthane walls, Magnus stirred himself once more. He knew his sons would be impatient for more conquest, and he had a duty to them still.
‘The final push,’ he murmured, speaking to himself. ‘The most grievous blow of all.’
He departed then, shrinking in stature back to his old size as he walked, though still towering over the tallest of his servants. Behind him came his Rubricae and their surviving sorcerer-guides. Many had died, but several hundred warriors still remained, all as implacable and dedicated as ever. They marched with their usual eerie, diffident confidence, tramping up the slopes towards the transit shafts. They all followed their father, leaving none behind.
After they were gone, mortal Spireguard picked their way through the wreckage of the hall. They were strung-out after weeks of solid campaigning, but they carried themselves with heads held high. They were no longer scared. They had seen the majesty of the Wolves laid low, and it did wonders for their confidence. Many of them believed all of the defending Space Marines had been killed. It was a reasonable belief, given the recent evidence of their senses.
So it was that, a few hours later, none of the sentries noticed the pairs of glowing red eyes at the base of the stairway, moving fast and in pursuit formation. Only when the wolfclaws broke out from the darkness and the booming war cry of the hulking war-engine triggered terror among them once again, did it become apparent they had relaxed too soon.
There were Wolves left alive, and they were hunting.
Chapter Twenty-One
Redpelt didn’t have time to marvel at the ancient wonders of the Annulus Chamber. In another situation, he’d have lingered over the great stone circle, lost in contemplation of the devices inscribed there. In the current circumstances, that would have been an indulgence too far. He knew the enemy was hard on their heels, sweeping up the transit shafts and tunnels like a rising tide. They would be here soon, ready to finish what they’d started.
So he worked hard, digging in with the few remaining Wolves and the demoralised kaerls. They dragged what protection they could across the doorway to the chamber, piling heavy iron sheeting across the metres-wide portal. All of them knew such flimsy barriers wouldn’t last long, but at least it would give the kaerls some cover to fire from.
The mortals looked ready to collapse. They’d been fighting for days already, with only short sleep breaks to keep them from going mad or dying from fatigue. Even their Fenrisian constitutions, about as tough as any in the Imperium, were on the brink of implosion. It was a miracle any of them could still hold their rifles, let alone use them.
Helfist wouldn’t have appreciated such things. He’d always been impatient with mortal frailties.
‘Why do we still need them?’ he’d complained. ‘Just breed more Space Marines. Thousands of us. Don’t stop until we’re all that’s left, and forget about the weaklings.’
He’d been joking, but there’d always been an underlying seriousness there. He really didn’t see the point of unaugmented humans. Now he was gone, consumed by the very power that had elevated him into superhumanity.
That is the point, brother. We pay a price for our potency.
‘Blood Claw,’ came Wyrmblade’s dry old voice.
Helfist snapped round. The Wolf Priest stood there in his half-ruined armour, dark against the angry light of the hearth-fires.
‘You will have to hold the Annulus for a little while without me.’
For a moment, Redpelt couldn’t believe what he was hearing.
‘Forgive me, lord. I don’t under–’
‘There is something of the utmost importance I must attend to. Russ willing, I shall be back before the enemy reaches you. But if I am not, then hold the line until I return.’
Redpelt felt a roar of anger building up within him. He knew he was on the edge of his strength, and knew the penalty for defying a Wolf Priest, but what Wyrmblade intended was madness. There was nothing, nothing, more important than defending the last and holiest chamber of the Aett against assault.
‘You cannot,’ he said, keeping a lid on his temper with difficulty. ‘We need you here, lord.’
Wyrmblade shook his head.
‘Do not attempt to argue with me, Blood Claw,’ he said. ‘I know how you feel, and I will go as swiftly as I may.’
For a moment longer, Redpelt considered protesting. Hel, he even considered hammering the Wolf Priest to the floor and forcing him to stay.
As that thought crossed his mind, it forced a weary smile, the grim acceptance brought on by utter desperation.
Have we been reduced to this?
‘If you miss the action, I will claim the primarch as prey,’ said Redpelt. ‘You’ll have to live with that shame.’
Wyrmblade laughed in his strange, cynical way.
‘You deserve it, Blood Claw. But you will not fight Magnus alone. Take my oath on it.’
Then he turned and strode through the makeshift barricades, pushing his way past the working kaerls. Redpelt watched him go for a while, then cast his eyes back over the remaining defences.
Twelve Wolves, a mix of Claws, Hunters and Long Fangs. A few hundred kaerls, rammed into the narrow approaches to the Annulus Chamber or taking up positions within it. A couple of heavy weapons, but mostly sidearms, and those low on ammo.
Then he looked over to the Annulus stones, only a few metres away. The image of the Wolf that Stalks the Stars sat in the centre of the circle, the emblem of the Chapter. Russ himself had stood before that device once, surrounded by his mighty retinue, all warriors without equal.
So few left. So few, to defend the very heart of our realm.
Redpelt let out a shuddering sigh. He was in danger of letting the events of the past few hours get the better of him. He could imagine Helfist laughing at that, taunting him as he always had done.
Not now. There was work to be done.
‘You! Mortal!’ he roared, striding over to where a gang of kaerls was struggling to carry a fresh barricade into place. ‘Not there. I’ll show you where.’
And then he was busy again, consumed by the need to make the Annulus as secure as possible. They did not have long. As the defenders worked, the sounds of the coming storm could be heard, far below them, lost in the endless maze of tunnels. It was still a long way off, but coming closer with every heartbeat.
Magnus stalked through the corridors of the Aett, pausing only to destroy the meagre wards against sorcery that still lingered in the upper reaches of the Jarlheim. Behind him came the slow-moving squadrons of Rubric Marines.
There was almost no resistance. The tunnels and shafts were empty, or surrendered quickly by scattered bands of mortal defenders, bereft of hope and leadership. Magnus knew that Wolves still fought on down in the lower levels, pinned back by his troops and suffering a slow strangulation. The few defenders in the upper levels capable of mounting any kind of fight must have retreated to the summit, hoping against reason to hold the last redoubt for a few more hours.
That defiance did not surprise him, though he couldn’t summon much admiration for it. He’d never expected them to roll over and give up. The Wolves had kept attacking him as he’d swept up the Fangthane stairway, even though they must have known they would die in the attempt. That big warrior, the one with the chainfist and the sound of bitterness in his battle cry, his strikes had even hurt.
Magnus looked around him with disdain. These were, he knew, the levels where the Sky Warriors dwelt. The surroundings were as squalid and bare a
s the rest of the benighted mountain. Though the Fangthane had a kind of bleak grandeur, there was really very little in the Fang to be impressed by. It wasn’t much more than a big rock, half-carved open, cold and shivering with mountain draughts.
Czamine, the Pavoni sorcerer-lord, came alongside him then, striding hard to match his primarch’s pace.
‘Lord, do you have more orders?’ he asked. ‘I have sent squads into the side tunnels to destroy the remaining wards. We can cause much damage there before we engage the last defenders.’
Magnus nodded.
‘Do that. Burn, crack and maim everything you find. Pay special attention to the totems and charms. The Wolves have an inexplicable weakness for them, and it will hurt their souls to have them broken.’
‘It will be done. And then, the summit.’
‘Indeed, though you will be alone there, at least for a time.’
Czamine inclined his helm questioningly, though he didn’t dare voice a query.
‘I have an appointment of my own to keep,’ explained Magnus. ‘When you’ve finished smashing what remains of the artefacts, look for me again at the pinnacle.’
Magnus didn’t bother to hide the look of anticipation on his face then.
‘Russ’s chamber is close, my son, the one he called the Annulus. You will have the honour of taking it. We will meet again there, once the last hope of this wretched Chapter has been extinguished.’
Wyrmblade entered the chamber of the fleshmakers. He went hurriedly, passing through the many interlinked rooms swiftly. The vacated spaces were still brightly lit, but looked mournful in their emptiness. He hadn’t encountered enemies in the tunnels leading from the Annulus to his own domain, but he knew it was only a matter of time before they arrived. He had precious moments; moments he could use to salvage the essential elements of his research before all was destroyed. He had little idea what to do with it after that, but something would occur to him. It always did.
Wyrmblade strode through the empty fleshmaker labs, hardly seeing the bare metal slabs where the bodies had lain. After so long detained in the Fangthane, it felt odd to be back in those antiseptic spaces, bathed once more in the harsh light of medicae glowglobes reflected from the walls of white tiles.
Wyrmblade approached the inner sanctum, the place where the Tempering programme had been conducted in secrecy for so many years. The blast doors were shut, just as he’d left them. He prepared to issue the voice-activation release, forcing his pulse to lessen as he did so. Agitation would only interfere with the mechanism.
It was then that he stopped. He looked around, down the long rows of silent machinery, the pristine operating slabs.
There were no bodies. Frar, the Grey Hunter who’d been brought here by Morek, was gone. All the others were gone. It was as if no trace of them had ever existed. It was then that he realised the truth.
He’d not arrived at the laboratorium first.
Turning slowly, knowing the consequences of what he did, he opened the doors.
The Tempering chambers lay beyond. They were in disarray. The birthing tubes were shattered, their contents dribbling across the tiled floor. The corpses of the experimental Sons of Russ lay on the floor, trampled and torn apart. The vials were all destroyed, broken into glistening shards of glass. In the rooms beyond, the cogitators crackled, consumed by flames. Irreplacable equipment, some of it dating back to the days of Unification on Terra, had been entirely devastated, and priceless inner mechanics were now strewn open like entrails.
It was gone. All gone.
Wyrmblade took in the ruin of his life’s work in an instant. Then his amber eyes flickered up. Most of his attention was drawn to the man standing in the centre of the destruction.
No, not a man. He was smaller in stature than he had been on the stairs of the Fangthane, but still greater than any Space Marine. His golden mantle hung from three-metre-high shoulders, encasing a breastplate of bronze. Amniotic fluid dripped from his fingers. His single eye glistened with triumph.
Wyrmblade drew his sword, and the dragon-edge slid from the scabbard with an empty hiss.
‘Do you really intend to fight me, Thar Hraldir?’ asked Magnus calmly.
‘With all my hearts,’ said Wyrmblade, igniting the blade’s disruptor field.
The primarch nodded.
‘Of course you do. But know this first, old man. The future you envisaged was worth striving to prevent, and so what remains of my Legion has been sacrificed for it. There would have been no invasion of Fenris without your meddling, Wolf Priest. In the last moments you have alive, reflect on that.’
Then Wyrmblade roared with all his old, bitter fury, charging toward the giant primarch and sweeping the blade towards his neck. The dragon-sword, carved with the flowing image of the wyrm, screamed in its turn, hurtling over the bronze breastplate and toward its target.
Magnus drew his own weapon in an instant. His movements seemed casual, unhurried, but they somehow had effect instantly. One moment, he was unarmed and relaxed; the next, he was restored to the fiery angel he’d been in the Fangthane.
The swords clashed, and the clang of the metal edges resounded from the walls.
Wyrmblade moved as if he were a Blood Claw in the prime of conditioning, twisting his blade in tight, sharp arcs, crying aloud with every strike. The weariness of the long battle fell away from him, freeing his limbs to move with their old crushing, dazzling speed.
In all his hundreds of years of service, he had never fought more finely, had never perfected the channelling of kill-urge more completely. Wyrmblade whirled, ducked and thrust with sublime energy, driven by an anger and loss that consumed him utterly; a burning, terrible grief that, for a few moments, lifted his artistry beyond even that of the Wolves of Fenris and into the category of legends.
Magnus parried him with an unconscious ease, moving just as smoothly, deploying his blade with all the remorseless skill of his heritage. It was almost as if he were allowing the Wolf Priest his last moment of perfection, gifting him a final flourish of martial sublimity before the end had to come.
But it couldn’t last. Wyrmblade, for all his furious energy and control, was to a primarch what a mortal was to a Space Marine. As even his age-hardened muscles tired of their furious assault, the dragon-blade dipped for an instant, leaving an opening. It only took one stroke from Magnus’s sword, just a single thrust aimed directly at Wyrmblade’s chest. The primarch’s eldritch blade passed through the armour smoothly.
Impaled on the metal, Wyrmblade spasmed. He struggled for a little longer, desperately trying to pull himself from the bite of the sword. His own blade fell from his fingers, its energy field still fizzing angrily.
The Wolf Priest coughed up blood, hot and black, and it sprayed across the inside of his helm.
For a final time, his vision came to him. Space Wolves, as numerous as the stars, bringing war to the darkest reaches of the galaxy, shaping the Imperium in the image of the Wolf King and making it as vital and powerful as Russ had been.
‘It was... done... for Russ,’ he gasped, feeling the cold clutch of death steal upon him.
Then he went limp, slumping heavily on his enemy’s sword.
Grimly, Magnus withdrew the blade, letting Wyrmblade’s body crumple to the floor.
‘If that is so, then you failed him,’ remarked the primarch, looking down at the ravaged corpse impassively. ‘This struggle is over.’
‘Not while you live, betrayer!’
Magnus snapped his gaze up. Amazingly, there were warriors charging towards him. A Terminator-clad giant, his wolfclaws blazing with angry lightning. A Rune Priest, flanked by two bodyguards, his staff crackling with forks of aether-born power. And behind them, moving more slowly, something massive and lumbering. Something he recognised from long, long ago.
The Russvangum hurtled into the orbital engagement zone, its lances blazing. The escorts flew hard in its wake, opening fire with every weapon they possessed. The arrival of the Wolves’
battle fleet was devastating, wrapped in fire and fury.
The Thousand Sons fleet did not engage them, but began to pull away from Fenris in a move that had clearly been planned for. The Herumon, the only vessel in the armada capable of taking on Ironhelm’s flagship, powered out of harm’s way smoothly, turning on its axis and heading directly for the jump-points.
Space Wolves frigates and destroyers headed straight into the heart of the enemy, throwing broadsides against the flanks of the ponderous troop ships as they screamed past them. The golden vessels began to burn, their shields buckling under the fury of the assault.
But an orbital war was not what Ironhelm had come for. He could see the dark circle of destruction about the Fang even from the real space viewers. Kilometres-wide, it stained the pristine reflective expanse of Asaheim like a wound in pale flesh.
As he looked at it, his mind was taken back to the ranks of Wolf Brothers, howling in mockery and anguish even as they were cut down. The air of the Gangava pyramid had been noxious, infused with madness and horror. Breaking free of that battle had been the hardest decision he’d ever made. Lost in a world of rage, he’d barely recognised Kjarlskar when the Wolf Lord had fought his way to his side. Even then, even after he’d heard what had happened on Fenris, a part of him had resisted the call to come back.
The depth of his folly had been revealed in an instant. It would have been less painful to have kept on fighting, to have lost himself in the kill-urge, to have gloried in the righteous drive to purge the tainted from existence.
He still saw the faces of those he’d killed. Tortured faces. Faces that masked a dreadful awareness. Somewhere deep down, the Wolf Brothers knew what they’d been twisted into.
We keep the danger close.
‘To the pods,’ he growled, stomping from the bridge and down to the launch bays. On every ship of the fleet, Jarls of the Great Companies did the same. Dozens of drop pods were already primed for planetfall, each one carrying a full payload. Thunderhawk engines thrummed into life in the hangars, waiting for the all-clear to burst out into the troposphere and into cannon-range.
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