Space Wolves

by Various

  Beoric, with his centuries of experience, had seen it at once.

  ‘Eldar!’

  The shadow of the craft flitted over them, its belly almost scraping the Space Wolves’ heads. Its gunners rotated their cannon to spray out more shards in their wake, forcing the Drakeslayers to scramble for new defensive positions.

  Crouched in his archway, Krom emptied his bolt pistol in the enemy’s direction. His targets were the gunners’ exposed heads, but at this range, through a blizzard of poisoned needles, they were nigh on impossible to hit.

  ‘Use your weapons, you sons of dogs,’ he bellowed at his Wolf Guard and Grey Hunters alike. ‘Bring that damned thing down, and you might just show me you have iron in your blood, after all.’

  The black xenos craft, following the road’s curve, had disappeared behind a dome; that gave them some respite from its splinter cannon at least, a precious moment to regroup. Krom could hear its antigravity engines, however – quiet by any normal standards but loud in the city’s silence. It hadn’t gone far.

  He pulled two crystal needles out of his forearm, one out of his chest. He dashed them to the ground, where they shattered. He reloaded his bolt pistol.

  He heard Wolf High Priest Ulrik’s voice, insistent, through his comm-bead

  ‘I have reports of gunfire from your position. What’s happening over there? Krom!’

  Krom drew his breath to answer him, but held it. He can wait another moment, he thought, for better news. Other voxes were coming in, in any case, competing with each other to be heard. Egil Redfist, in search of his missing Blood Claws, had come upon a xenos ship too, and three more Space Wolves packs, spread across the city, had likewise suddenly found themselves under fire.

  Russ, they’re everywhere at once, thought Krom. How is that possible?

  The black craft had climbed out of the maze of streets and banked steeply around; now it came swooping in again, snapping the spire off a square tower as it skimmed over it. For a second time, the Space Wolves found themselves fixed in its cannon sights; this time, however, there was one important difference.

  This time, Krom Dragongaze knew what was coming, and he was ready for it.

  They leapt from inside the broken buildings, behind the archways. They appeared on balconies and parapets and at the shattered windows of crumbling towers.

  Ulrik cursed himself for a novice. He had caught their scent on the wind but misjudged their proximity, concerned about the brothers he had been rushing to assist. He had shouted a warning in the moment the ambush was sprung, and this alone had kept his pack – six-strong at present – from being entirely surrounded. Still, they were badly outnumbered.

  He counted over twenty of them: dark eldar warriors in flexible, black armour. Spikes bristled from their shoulders, knees and elbows, horns from their conical helmets. Like all their kind, they had a sun-starved pallor to their skin – those few that showed their faces – and yet they were muscular and lithe, with their tapered ears and chins, filed teeth and silken black or white hair.

  ‘Their weapons are strong, but their armour is weak,’ Ulrik bellowed. ‘Hit them fast and hit them hard. For Russ!’

  But even as he led the charge to battle, he voxed an appeal – to anyone, any Space Wolves who weren’t already themselves besieged – for reinforcements.

  The black craft came around for another strafing run: its third.

  Krom had feared it might not. His men were well entrenched in doorways and windows along each side of the street – good sniping positions. They had shattered the pilot’s glacis and, he felt certain, winged one of the gunners. He had thought the dark eldar might change their tactics, perhaps even turn tail.

  They had drawn blood, however, and they had a thirst for more.

  Ulvar Razorfang had ventured too far out of hiding to line up a perfect shot. The splinter cannon had snapped around towards him in a heartbeat, and its crystal shards had shredded him. He had reeled back into his doorway, hitting a wall hard – he was still propped up against it. He hadn’t moved in over a minute.

  At least three other Space Wolves were wounded – Krom Dragongaze among them. Like Ulvar, he had chosen to take a risk and had been punished for it. This time, he told himself, he would be faster. No excuses.

  Crouching beneath his stone arch, he judged the skimmer’s approach by the whining of its engines. When it was almost on top of him, so close that it had to level out of its dive and its cannon couldn’t target him for a second, he made his move.

  This time the climb was easier, because Krom could use the handholds he had punched into the stone already. The numbness in his left shoulder, however, was spreading along his arm into his fingers. Aloud, he cursed the splinter that had found the gap between his gorget and his pauldron, momentum driving it through his power armour. He had yanked out the stem, but the tip had embedded itself in his flesh.

  What if the poison spreads to my primary heart?

  He didn’t like to think about that. He clambered onto the top of the archway, and this time his timing was near perfect. The skimmer was right there, almost within his reach. Had he lifted his head a second earlier, it would likely have taken it off. Indeed, another ship – with normal engines – could have fried him in its backwash.

  The dark eldar gunners hadn’t seen him. They had their backs to him, focusing on the targets strewn across the street ahead of them.

  A lesser man – even some Space Wolves, such as Beoric Winterfang – might have taken a moment to think, to assess the situation, and thus been too late to act. Krom trusted his instincts, which had always served him well. He let them guide him now and made the jump. For a heady second, he flew.

  Not fast enough! Like a shadow, the black skimmer slipped out from underneath him. Krom howled, reaching for it with straining arms and fingers. His numb left arm threw off his balance, and suddenly he was flying no more but falling. He felt a stab of emotion – not fear, never fear, but shame.

  And because Krom Dragongaze refused to bear that shame, because he couldn’t fail in front of his pack, somehow his flailing hands found purchase after all. They caught on a snare chain, trailing from the skimmer’s port wing. He bit back another howl – this one of pain – as his injured shoulder was almost wrenched out of its socket.

  The sudden addition of Krom’s plummeting weight threw the craft into a spin; caught unawares, one of the gunners pitched over the side and fell past him. The craft wasn’t high enough for the fall to be fatal, but the nine Space Wolves waiting below would see to that.

  It was taking all of Krom’s strength to cling to the chain, but he had to climb it; dangling in mid-air, he was horribly exposed. As the skimmer levelled out, its wingtip struck tortured sparks off the marble skin of a tower – whether accidentally or in a frantic attempt to scrape him off, he couldn’t tell.

  He willed his arm to work, to haul him up the chain and onto the skimmer’s stubby wing. It lurched as he planted a foot on it, and its engine pod trailed black smoke. The surviving gunner saw him and wheeled the cannon around towards him. Krom fixed the alien with a menacing glare and half-charged, half-stumbled into its turret.

  He wrestled the xenos for control of the splinter cannon. Dark eldar were quick and they were agile – but in a contest of strength, he had a servo-assisted edge over them. The gunner surrendered its cannon and snatched instead for a flail at its hip.

  Krom left his axe slung across his back. He grappled with the xenos, pinning its spindly arms to its sides. He felt its lightweight armour cracking in his pincer grip, and only wished he could see the frightened face of his enemy beneath its black, impassive helmet.

  Somehow, it squirmed free of him for a second, but it was struggling to draw breath. It reached for its flail again, but Krom delivered a brutal, backhanded blow with his gauntlet, which almost took its head off. As the xenos reeled, Krom barged it, leading with his good shoulder. It tried to brace itself, but a fortuitous lurch of the skimmer betrayed it and sent it tumbli
ng after its late partner.

  The dark eldar flipped head over heels in mid-air; it would land on its feet, but the craft was flying higher now than it had been and the impact would likely shatter the xenos’ bones.

  The pilot had managed to lift the skimmer’s nose and drag it up above the rooftops, but was struggling to keep it there. Krom drew his axe, intending to cut his way into the sealed cockpit, but was forced to make a grab for the cannon instead. The black skimmer plunged into a barely-controlled dive and careened around the narrow streets, scraping a wing against a building here, ploughing through a mast there.

  The engine pod was coughing up gouts of flame; Krom could see through the glacis that the pilot was losing a fraught battle with its controls. It was only by the Allfather’s will that they hadn’t been spread across the city already.

  Krom had no choice. He had to jump for it.

  Russ, but these xenos are fast – or are my injuries slowing me down?

  Ulrik was flanked by a trio of dark eldar. They lashed at him with blades that telescoped into razor-studded flails at the flick of a wrist, making them impossible to parry. In contrast, they evaded each blow of his energy-wreathed crozius, seeming almost to be enjoying the dance. Their eyes shone fervently in the slits of their tapering helmets; above these, each wore the jagged symbol of their warrior kabal. It was not one that Ulrik recognised.

  He described ever wider arcs with his weapon, trying to keep them at bay, but they darted between his swings and raked at him again. So far, the force field generated by his amulet had absorbed most of their punishment, but they were wearing him down, and his lungs were feeling the strain again. Ulrik had to change his tactics or he would lose this fight.

  The next time a flail lashed out at him, he entangled his crozius in it and yanked on it sharply. His intention had been to disarm, but the wielder clung to its weapon stubbornly, which led to a brief and decidedly one-sided tug of war. As the xenos stumbled into him, off-balance at last, the Wolf High Priest swiped at it with his free hand, sending it reeling into one of its fellows.

  In the process, he left his back exposed to the third, and its lash sliced through his fur-trimmed cloak and flayed a layer of ceramite off his forearm.

  He had opened a gap in the dark eldar’s circle, however, and he lowered his head and powered through it before they could regroup. He drew his plasma pistol, wheeled around and fired at them as they leapt after him, flattening his back against a stone wall so they couldn’t surround him again.

  The odds were still against him, but he suspected that was about to change.

  Ulrik counted three brothers felled by flails and venom blades, and two others by splinters fired from the shadows – but many more had responded to his summons, most of them Drakeslayers. I may owe Krom my life again! The battle was spreading to engulf a city block, and the Sons of Russ were no longer on the defensive. They had begun to claim a few kills of their own.

  Some packs across the city were not faring half as well. Reinforcements hadn’t been able to find them in time. The vox-channels had been clogged with their voices a moment ago, but one by one they were falling ominously silent. Ulrik hadn’t heard from Krom, but he had contacted Beoric Winterfang and had learned that his Wolf Guard had also been attacked.

  They appeared so suddenly, with no warning at all, thought Ulrik, and my ship’s scans didn’t detect them. Could it be…?

  The dark eldar were bringing in additional forces too. A pair of hulking, slavering beasts had joined the melee, dwarfing the humanoid combatants of both sides. Ulrik had encountered their like before. They resembled colossal, violet-hued apes, many-eyed and many-toothed with barbed tails and massive, razor-sharp claws.

  A lean figure hovered above these clawed fiends on an anti-gravity skyboard: a dark eldar beastmaster. It was driving its charges onward with judicious lashes from a crackling whip. Its chest was bare, its belt hung with animal skulls, and it wore a shamanistic mask that resembled the monsters’ own features – perhaps one of the arcane methods by which it asserted its dominance over them.

  Two packs of Krom’s Grey Hunters engaged the beasts. Ulrik voxed them across the battlefield.

  ‘Bloody them and you’ll send them into a berserker rage,’ he warned them. ‘Take out their master first, and they’re as likely to turn on the dark eldar as not.’ Far easier said than done, he knew.

  His own three opponents were upon him again with their flails. Ulrik turned the red-eyed, snarling visage of the Wolf Helm of Russ upon them; one of them faltered for an instant, and he stove in its skull with his crozius.

  He filtered a single voice out of the babble that filled his ears: ‘–saw they were outnumbered and fled from us. We ran some of them down, but the rest seemed to melt into the shadows. We have four Blood Claws down. As we arrived, they… the xenos were loading our battle-brothers onto a black skimmer.’

  They’re using hit-and-run tactics, Ulrik realised, keeping the bulk of our forces disoriented – and divided – while they pick off our stragglers, one pack at a time. And take them where? He feared he knew the answer to that question.

  It was time he took the offensive.

  Three dark eldar warriors had been enough to keep him on the back foot; two was a different matter. Ulrik lunged at them, taking the blows of their flails, whirling the sacred crozius – his weapon, but also his badge of office – end over end. One of them managed to dance out of his path, but the other did not. These xenos were fast – but so too were the Sons of Russ.

  Ulrik roared as he battered his enemy repeatedly, giving it no time to draw breath, splitting open its helmet and driving it into the ground. When he was done, he rounded on his remaining opponent – to find it gone.

  It had not left alone, he realised. No more than a handful of dark eldar lingered on the battlefield – some had fallen, but not enough to justify the drop in numbers – and their snipers’ heads had vanished from the surrounding windows.

  His battle-brothers hadn’t noticed yet, or were just too preoccupied to care. The clawed fiends had scented their own blood and been driven into a frenzy, as Ulrik had predicted they would, and it was taking every man at hand to contain them.

  He couldn’t see the beastmaster. Had he been shot down or had he withdrawn with the others, leaving his charges behind? He tried to vox Krom Dragongaze, but received no answer again, so spoke to Beoric Winterfang.

  ‘I assume the Ironpelt is in orbit?’ he asked, referring to the Drakeslayers’ strike cruiser.

  ‘It is, High Priest,’ Beoric confirmed.

  ‘Contact your shipmaster. Have him launch his Thunderhawks.’

  ‘High Priest, the tau–’

  ‘I know. Our scans told us the same. I don’t need those ships to land, just to look as if they might. I’ll have my own gunships join them.’

  ‘A distraction,’ said Beoric.

  ‘Keep the tau’s air defences busy for ten minutes, then withdraw.’

  Ulrik didn’t wait for any further questions. Switching to another frequency, he issued a series of orders to his own shipmistress, Asgir. At the same time, he reloaded his plasma pistol. With that done, he bellowed his war cry again – raising an answering howl from as many Space Wolves as could hear him – and returned to the fray.

  The smoking wreckage of the black craft was strewn all about him.

  Krom could no longer feel or move his left arm at all; on top of that, he had twisted his back and scraped his armour, ricocheting off walls and outcroppings on his way to the ground. Repair cement had patched up the damage to the armour; the damage to his body would require more time and care.

  He voxed Beoric, on a frequency that allowed the other Drakeslayers to overhear him.

  ‘I’ve dealt with the xenos craft. Its crew are dead.’ He made the boast sound almost casual. ‘Making my way back now; I need a fix on your location.’

  Krom didn’t reveal how close to death he had come, how soon after his leap from the skimmer it had smacke
d into the near-intact stone wall of a tower.

  Its pilot may have crashed deliberately, he thought, knowing it was dead either way and desiring to take its killer with it. He considered digging the dark eldar’s corpse out of its mangled cockpit, so he could spit on it.

  His impromptu flight had carried him deeper into the ruined city. All was quiet here now the wreckage had settled – but he feared that wouldn’t last. Beoric and the others were over five miles away from him. Too far. He had their bearing now, but would still have to find a route through the streets to reach them.

  ‘We should come to you,’ suggested Beoric. ‘There are more of us. It would be safer. You should take shelter until we–’

  The Wolf Lord cut him off with a contemptuous snort. ‘If you expect Krom Dragongaze to hide like a mewling–’

  He froze as he felt his hackles rising and heard an all-too-familiar whining noise from above and behind him.

  ‘What is it?’ hissed Beoric through his earpiece. ‘My lord?’

  ‘Another skimmer,’ he answered through his teeth. ‘It’s seen me.’

  For a moment, Krom was ready to stand and fight. His right forefinger was curled around the trigger of his bolt pistol before he knew he had drawn it; through narrowed eyes, he glared along its barrel at the black shape bearing down on him. He had brought down one dark eldar ship today, why not another?

  He hadn’t been hurt last time. Nor had he been alone.

  Krom had no choice, but that didn’t mean he had to like it. He put off the decision as long as he could, perhaps a second too long. He emptied his magazine in the enemy’s direction and hurled violent curses at them – futile gestures both, except for giving vent to his impotent fury. The black craft levelled out, careering between the city’s stone husks. Its cannon began to spit, its poisoned darts tearing up the road in front of him.