by Various
THE CAGED WOLF
Ulrik’s breath misted in the chill heart of the Fang. The Vaults of Rest had to be kept cold to preserve the delicate technology down here – and to keep the slumbering bodies from putrefying in their sleep.
Ahead of Ulrik was one of the huge war machine berths. The stone was lined with cogitator screens and archeotech devices that clicked and whirred in the half-darkness. Set into the berth, linked to the Fang with hundreds of cables and hoses, was a Dreadnought. Even asleep and without its arm-mounted weaponry, its brutal shape, like a bipedal tank, spoke of danger and fury.
Ulrik placed a hand against the Dreadnought’s sarcophagus. The ceramite plating was caked in frost.
‘Brother Bjorn,’ said Ulrik. ‘Your Chapter has need of you.’
Ulrik’s words echoed around the vault. There was no other reply.
‘You walked with Leman Russ,’ continued Ulrik. ‘You were there when he left us, and you heard his promise to return. Now a daemon has woven lies that claim Russ is dead, and it seeks to shake our spirit with such deceit. You could end our disquiet, brother. If you stand amongst us and tell the sagas of Russ, the Changeling will find no purchase in our hearts.’
Ulrik was aware he was being watched. The Chapter thralls who worked in these vaults were a strange and uncommunicative breed, used to working in the near-dark and quiet of the Fang’s deeper layer. They waited in the shadows now, their deference to Ulrik the Slayer shown by their silence. The Dreadnoughts in these vaults needed constant care to ensure their systems continued to support the mortally wounded Space Marines interred inside, and waking a Dreadnought required hours of tech-rituals. These thralls, though they were rarely seen by any of the Space Wolves, had as sacred a duty as anyone in the Fang.
‘But it uses the flesh of truth to clothe its lies,’ said Ulrik. ‘It speaks of how Logan Grimnar, the Great Wolf, found the corpse of the primarch on the Eastern Fringe. And it is true that Grimnar has not returned from the Great Hunt. He is long overdue back at the Fang, and none can say where he is. So we must find him, even though the trap laid by the Changeling is as clear as day. We must walk into the jaws of the Great Enemy, Brother Bjorn, for I see no other way. Unless you can counsel us to greater wisdom. Unless you can awaken, brother, and speak.’
Bjorn did not reply. The Dreadnought did not move. Ice had encrusted the hydraulics of the legs and the mountings of its shoulder units. Bjorn had not awakened for years, and the time between his periods of activity had slowly grown longer over the centuries. How long before he woke again? A decade? A century?
‘Inform me of any change,’ Ulrik said to the thralls lurking in the shadows, and headed back towards the upper levels where the Wolf Lords were gathering. If there had been a chance to seek the ancient Bjorn’s counsel, it was gone now. Bjorn was unable or unwilling to stir, and now Ulrik only had one decision he could make.
The eleven Wolf Lords of the Space Wolves were gathered in the Repository of Battles. The circular chamber was lined with shelves holding books of battle-sagas and campaign histories. Thousands of conflicts were described there, from the Horus Heresy to the Great Hunt the Chapter had just completed. The lords stood around the huge circular table, waiting for Ulrik. A conclave of all the Wolf Lords would normally take place in the Great Hall, before the whole Chapter, but not this time.
Ulrik entered. Eleven pairs of eyes glanced down in respect. Even the Wolf Lords acknowledged the authority of Ulrik the Slayer, for the Wolf Priests were set aside in the structure of the Chapter, a parallel chain of command that could overrule any of them on the rare occasion it became necessary.
‘Does he wake?’ asked Berek Thunderfist.
Ulrik did not need to answer that question. ‘With the Great Wolf still lost to us and the Changeling having made its play against the Chapter,’ said Ulrik, ‘there is no excuse for inaction. And yet the Changeling has made its way among us once, and Njal Stormcaller still lies comatose because of it. I cannot leave the Fang unguarded when the daemon has shown itself cunning enough to breach our walls at will.’
‘Then leave an honour guard,’ said Engir Krakendoom. ‘As we did for the Great Hunt. Name which one of us shall remain and the rest shall tear the galaxy apart until we find the Great Wolf!’
‘No,’ said Ulrik. ‘You shall all remain. The Changeling’s objective is to break the will of the Space Wolves. If we fragment across the galaxy, it will prey on us one by one. The Chapter will stand united. If the Changeling wants to break us, it will have to break us all at once.’
‘I will not abandon the Great Wolf to his fate,’ snarled Lord Morkai.
Ulrik did not flinch before Morkai’s glare.
‘The Great Wolf will return to us,’ he said, ‘as surely as Leman Russ will at the Wolftime. I will see to it in person. I shall take a small and swift force and travel to the Eastern Fringe, following the route laid down by the Stormcaller’s rune-readings, and I shall find Grimnar. You, my brothers, will defend the Fang and the spirits of your Chapter. That is where your keenest duty lies. The Changeling will make his move against us again, and soon, and you will all be here to meet him.’
‘You would have me skulk here, when the Great Wolf is lost?’ Krom Dragongaze slammed a fist into the table. ‘The Changeling knew of the Great Wolf’s destination. Fell powers have closed in on him. He battles daemons and traitors and Throne knows what else, and yet we are to sit and watch over the Fang like so many nursemaids?’
‘You are,’ said Ulrik. ‘That is my command. In the absence of the Great Wolf Grimnar, it is my voice that carries the authority of Leman Russ.’
‘You can try to stop us,’ said Morkai. ‘But our lord needs our assistance, and woe betide anyone who stands in our way.’
‘Ready the fleet!’ demanded Engir Krakendoom. ‘Arm the ships! We leave with the dawn’s breaking!’
‘Wait!’ shouted Berek Thunderfist. ‘It was Ulrik the Slayer who took me from my tribe and made me a Space Wolf. He did the same for most of you, too. It was under his tutelage that you became what you are today. I trust him more than I trust myself. If it is his word that he alone seek the Great Wolf then I shall bow to it, much as it may pain me.’
‘If we are all of a mind,’ retorted Morkai, ‘then what force in the galaxy can stop us?’
‘Leman Russ bade all of us kneel to the word of the Wolf Priests,’ said Berek, ‘and yet how often has Ulrik used that authority? It is rare indeed that he stands against any one of us. I have faith that if he now overrules us, there is a good reason for it.’
‘And which of us,’ said Lord Bran Redmaw, ‘knows the mind of the Changeling? All we can be sure of is that it wishes to kindle despair within us. It is a cunning creature and we will surely make its work easier if we stampede across the galaxy in our rage. When the Changeling comes for me, I would have you, my brothers, by my side.’
‘Whatever you choose,’ said Ulrik, ‘whether you obey the word of Russ or usurp it for your own will, make the decision soon, for neither Lord Grimnar nor the Changeling will wait for us.’
None of the Wolf Lords spoke up. For a moment it looked like Krom Dragongaze would voice defiance of Ulrik, but the moment passed and he swallowed his words.
‘Then I will select a strike force from your Great Companies, said Ulrik, ‘and take the Canis Pax as my ship, for it is among our swiftest. I will leave before the breaking of the dawn. The rest of you, make fast the defences of the Fang and ensure the spirits of your brethren are made ready. The Changeling will make its move against us again, and you will be ready for it when it comes.’
The warp was angry.
Ulrik could feel it. He had made many voyages through the immaterium, slipping into the parallel dimension to travel vast interstellar distances, and each time he had felt the uncleanness of the warp cling to him. This time, as the Canis Pax plied its inconstant tides, he could almost hear the scratching of a million predators at the hull of the strike cruiser. In the time between moments, h
e was sure he caught the distant whisper of something dark following the ship hungrily, lusting after the morsels inside.
For his strike force, Ulrik had selected one pack of Blood Claws, led by Lief Stonetongue, two packs of Grey Hunters under Hef Sunderbrow and Tanghar Three-Finger, and a number of Wolf Guard. Baldyr White Bear, Wsyr Flamepelt, Olav Brunn, Thord Icenhelm and Brok Oakenheart were all veterans equipped with Terminator armour who had seen just about every form of war that existed in the galaxy, and had served in the retinues of their Wolf Lords for untold years. Ulrik had selected them for their experience, and because he had seen them ascend through the ranks of the Chapter since their initiation rites. He could trust them to obey him without question. They had brought a small armoury with them on the Canis Pax – Rhinos and a Land Raider assault tank, along with a clutch of drop pods for an orbital assault and a Stormwolf gunship to support them from the air. It was a necessarily small force, but one ready to cope with anything that waited for them on the Eastern Fringe.
Baldyr White Bear was on duty watching over the bridge as Ulrik walked through the blast doors. Shipmistress Asgir was at the helm, a woman so gnarled with age it seemed the starch of her Naval uniform was the only thing holding her up.
‘Lord Slayer,’ said Asgir as Ulrik approached. ‘It’s as rough as a kraken’s hide out there. Something doesn’t want us to get through.’
‘Are we making better time?’
‘We’ve reached the jump point,’ replied the shipmistress. ‘It’s been damnably slow, though. Navigator Morone is on the verge of speaking in tongues, I am sure of it.’
Ulrik imagined the ship’s Navigator, his third eye pressed to the sensorium that looked out onto the warp, mind churning as he was assailed by the insanity that only he could comprehend. ‘Breach real space as soon as possible,’ said Ulrik. ‘We are expecting to be in hostile territory when we emerge.’
‘The Pax has another few crash breaches in her,’ said Asgir. ‘Not sure about her crew, but they’ll live with it.’ The shipmistress smiled, showing some missing teeth. A lifetime ago she had been trained at an officers’ school of the Imperial Navy, but after serving with the Space Wolves for so long a little of Fenris had rubbed off on her.
‘I do not like the smell of this,’ said Baldyr White Bear. His Terminator armour was well-scored with old battle wounds – its previous owners had refused to remove the scars, and Baldyr continued the tradition. Baldyr had the tall crest of violently red hair and forked beard typical of the White Bear tribe, for though he was a Sky Warrior now, he had never strayed too far from the traditions of his tribe. ‘There are dark forces threatening us.’
‘Warp ghosts,’ said Asgir. ‘The voidborn are talking of it. The crew think it doesn’t reach my ears but I hear everything that happens on my ship. If a shoal of ghosts has caught our trail, it could be what’s slowing us down.’
‘Not that,’ said Baldyr, shaking his huge battered head. The servos of his Terminator armour sighed as he folded his arms. ‘Not something that’s following. Something that’s waiting for us.’
‘Lord Slayer,’ said Shipmistress Asgir. ‘We’re at the immaterium zenith. There’s no time like the present.’
‘Make ready for crash breach,’ said Ulrik.
Alarms blared throughout the strike cruiser. The crew’s training would have them securing loose gear before finding the safest footing they could. The bridge crew were firing up the real space navigation cogitators while strapping themselves into the bridge’s restraints. Ulrik activated the mag-locks on his armour’s sabatons, clamping himself to the deck, and watched the viewscreen for the first sight of the Eastern Fringe.
The Canis Pax shuddered violently as the Geller fields around the ship flared and the warp drive ripped a hole in the veil between dimensions. There was a sense of a sideways lurching, a nauseating shift in balance, and the image of a stretch of real space crackled onto the viewscreen.
The stars stopped halfway across the screen, for this was the very extreme of the Eastern Fringe, where the galaxy ended. Everything beyond was empty void, with only the smears of distant galaxies to suggest there was anything out there at all. Tales described how men went mad when they reached the edge of the galaxy and suddenly realised how insignificant it was to be a human being.
Ulrik did not feel insignificant. Any part of him that might have once been in awe of oblivion had long since been tempered into something stronger.
The purplish half-disc of a planet hung to one side of the viewscreen: Dactyla, a cold and rocky world in distant orbit around a dying star.
‘Shipmistress, we have contacts in the void,’ said the crewman at the comms helm.
‘Is it the Eternity Fang?’ asked Asgir.
The crewman scanned for a sign of the Great Wolf’s ship.
‘Xenos,’ he replied.
‘Bring them onto the viewscreen,’ said Ulrik.
The image shifted again, cycling through several magnified views of blurry shapes against the blackness. The final one resolved into a spaceship as large as the Canis Pax, surrounded by a shoal of smaller escorts. Its lines were smooth and streamlined, as if designed to swim through an ocean, and its red hull panels were mottled like the skin of a fish.
‘Xenos indeed,’ said Ulrik. ‘Tau.’
‘I fought them at Kolhelo Reach,’ said Baldyr White Bear, darkly. ‘Slippery and cunning things. And the daemon said Grimnar faced the tau here.’
‘The daemon mingles its lies with the truth,’ said Ulrik, ‘so that weaker men believe them.’ But in spite of his words, Ulrik’s teeth gritted when he recalled the daemon’s words. Everything the Changeling had said had so far been proven true.
‘The tau are contacting us,’ said a crewman. ‘They’re requesting… a summit.’
‘A summit?’ asked Ulrik.
‘One of theirs, one of ours.’
‘Tell them I have no need to match wits with an alien. We shall take what we came here for and leave.’
‘More contacts,’ said the crewman at the navigation helm. On the spherical holo-display above his cogitator, several red warning runes were flaring up as the Canis Pax’s sensors picked out more tau ships around Dactyla.
‘Reading one tau capital ship,’ said Shipmistress Asgir, looking up at the viewscreen. ‘The Canis Pax is a fine ship, Lord Slayer, but that xenos craft is her equal. And she’s not alone.’
‘You wish to speak plainly, shipmistress?’ said Ulrik.
‘We cannot break through, my lord,’ said Asgir. ‘Not here. They have many times our tonnage in the void and they can hit us from a damnably long way away. We’ll be drifting metal before we get to high orbit.’
Ulrik made a show of thinking on this for a long moment. In truth, he was quelling the wolf that snarled inside him. The greatest challenge for any Wolf Priest was to cage that inner beast, so he could offer counsel and even overrule the lords of the Chapter without his reason being warped by his anger. It was an unnatural thing to do, for rage was as intrinsic to Fenris as the storms that tore across its glaciers. But it was a necessary blasphemy, for no Wolf Priest can do his duty with the wolf running rampant.
‘Contact them,’ said Ulrik. ‘They have the advantage, for now. I will speak.’
The arranged location was a shuttle anchored halfway between the Canis Pax and the tau fleet. Ulrik waited in the passenger compartment as a ship of the same size, also unarmed, approached. The hull rang as the xenos craft docked with the Canis Pax’s shuttle. Ulrik could hear the hiss as the airlock pressurised.
Ulrik had come here alone. Even the shuttle’s pilot was a monotask servitor instead of a crewmember from the Canis Pax. Ulrik was taking a risk in making himself vulnerable before the xenos like this. It might be a war machine or even an explosive device that greeted him when the airlock opened. But the tau usually observed the protocols of negotiation, if only so their treacheries could be sewn all the more cunningly. It was not a question of Ulrik trusting the tau to honour the ru
les of the parley – it was knowing that it was in their interest to do so.
The airlock opened. The creature that walked in had a basically humanoid shape, except for the hoofed shape of its feet and the four digits on each hand. Its heavily embroidered golden robes hung over a set of body armour with plates painted deep red. A sheathed knife was mounted on the side of its chest-plate, and the faceplate of its helmet was a featureless bone-coloured oval. Aside from the knife, which looked ceremonial or like a badge of office, the being was unarmed.
A pair of hovering drones accompanied the alien, the disc-shaped devices ringed with eye-like sensors. No doubt they were transmitting everything to the tau fleet.
‘What are you?’ said Ulrik.
The tau removed its helmet to reveal a face with blue-grey skin, a lipless mouth, a vertical slit in place of a nose and large eyes like polished black stones.
‘I am Shas’el Dal’yth Sona Malcaon,’ the alien said, in slightly accented Low Gothic. ‘Commander of this fleet. This world is under the protection of the Tau Empire.’
‘Your kind work in castes,’ said Ulrik. ‘You’re not the ambassador caste.’
‘Our water caste ambassador was lost in action,’ replied the shas’el. ‘Thus, I speak for the Tau Empire here.’
‘What do you want with this world?’
The shas’el’s expression changed, but Ulrik couldn’t read the alien’s face. ‘I have answered your questions. I would have my openness reciprocated. Who are you, and why are you here?’
‘I am Ulrik the Slayer of the Space Wolves, a son of Fenris. I am seeking one of my own, the Great Wolf Logan Grimnar.’
‘This will be the gue’ron’sha who made war on my people,’ said the shas’el, ‘without warning or cause.’
Ulrik did not flinch, but the tau’s words hit hard. The Space Wolves had been here at Dactyla, and they had fought the tau. It was just as the Changeling had said.
Eventually, the story would reach a lie. It had to. The Changeling could not have told a complete truth if it had wanted to. It was a deceiver by nature, and it could not change that nature any more than Ulrik could stop being a Space Wolf. Every step closer to the end of the story brought Ulrik closer to the truth, and when he had it, whatever plan the Changeling had laid would unravel.
