Space Wolves

by Various

  Grundar and Krom’s pistols came up as snarls crossed their faces.

  ‘Stay where you are,’ Grundar Greymane barked as he struggled to hold back the ravenous pack on their adamantium chains, ‘or I’ll blow you in half.’

  Like Sathar, Krom knew this to be an empty threat. They were to hunt down and take the traitor alive for Brother Balthus. Even to the Space Wolves, the Chaos Space Marine was much more valuable alive. He might be able to tell them much of the Great Wolf’s location and activities in this dismal corner of the galaxy.

  The traitor retracted his wings and rose from his landing crouch. In his hands he held the unwieldy length of a crusader’s blade. With dark confidence, Sathar walked towards them. Grundar leaned into his aim.

  ‘I mean it,’ the Space Wolf told him through gritted teeth.

  Krom stared at Sathar the Undone as he entered the hall. Turning from silhouette to an advancing menace, the Wolf Lord could see that their quarry was much twisted by Chaos. His cloak was a withered patchwork of flayed skin, while his wings were in fact scaled like those of a mythological serpent.

  Krom slipped his pistol back into its holster and laid a gauntlet on Grundar’s arm, prompting the Space Wolf to lower his own weapon. Sathar took his imposing blade in two hands and began to move the length of the sword about him in practised movements. The Wolf Lord felt bile rise up the back of his throat. He wanted nothing more than to allow Grundar to blast the heretic back off the balcony or to cleave him in two himself with Wyrmclaw. The arrogant traitor had led them on a pointless chase. He had evaded the Blood Claws, who were perhaps still climbing up to intercept him. He must have eluded Brother Balthus, and now he had intercepted Grundar and Krom when they were attempting to do the very same thing to him.

  Krom would make him pay for such hubris. He readied his frost axe, taking several experimental swings. Sathar the Undone needn’t have arms or legs to repent his transgressions to Brother Balthus or provide the Space Wolves with information.

  ‘So you are the wolf that’s been snapping at my heels,’ Sathar said, his voice like a snake’s belly across the sands.

  ‘And you are the traitorous wretch whose stench we have been tracking,’ Krom returned.

  ‘If Balthus has engaged the assistance of the VI Legion, then his standards must have fallen,’ the traitor said.

  ‘Speak not to me of who has fallen, heretic,’ Krom growled. He tipped the head of his axe at the slaughter that surrounded them.

  The accusation produced a nasty chuckle from Sathar the Undone.

  ‘You think this was me?’ he asked. ‘I’m here to halt the progress of this mindless barbarity. That’s why I left my brothers in waiting.’

  The mounds of dead flesh either side of the Space Wolves began to tremble and collapse. Butchered torsos, heads and dismembered limbs tumbled down as the armoured figures hidden beneath rose. Krom turned and Grundar with him. The wolves went mad, snapping and drooling at the hidden warriors. Boltguns came up as the figures shrugged off the gore. The blue-green of their monstrous plate ran black with blood. Krom waved the blade of his axe from one foe to another, holding them in his sights.

  ‘Drop it,’ an Alpha Legionnaire hissed, stepping forward through the dead. Krom looked around at the Chaos Space Marines.

  Sathar nodded at Krom.

  ‘Do it, Wolf,’ Sathar told him.

  ‘You heard him,’ Krom said to Grundar Greymane, as he placed Wyrmclaw carefully on the floor. ‘Drop it.’

  As Grundar released the chains of the beasts in his charge, the wolf pack surged away. Leaping in all directions, the wolves tore at the Alpha Legionnaires. Bolters thundered and the beasts of Fenris snarled. Wolves died, blasted back and torn apart by bolter fire. Others rattled their teeth and claws against cursed cera­mite before being battered aside. Krom Dragongaze’s reflexes were no less swift than the ferocious beasts. Grabbing Wyrmclaw, he brought the frost axe around with sudden violence, stepping over the body of a blasted wolf. Chopping down, he turned the boltgun of the Alpha Legionnaire who had issued him orders into a cascade of shattered parts. Grabbing the shaft of the axe, Krom pivoted the weapon around and smashed it into the warped detailing of the Legionnaire’s faceplate. Following the turn around, Krom smashed the axe blade through the helm, leaving an arc of gore in its path.

  Assailed by wolves on all sides, the Alpha Legionnaires sent bursts of fire wide. With streams of bolt rounds blazing through the bloody haze of the banquet hall, Grundar picked up his bolt pistol. Hammering bolts into the chest and faceplate of the nearest Legionnaires, the Space Wolf crouched below streams of gunfire meant to blow his head from his shoulders. A Chaos Space Marine grabbed him suddenly from behind, seizing him in an expert hold. The final bolt rounds of his pistol blasted into the marble of banquet hall pillars. Grundar saw a knife flash before him, the Legionnaire aiming to slice the Space Wolf’s throat. Growling as much to himself as his attacker, Grundar fought like an animal, tearing at his foe’s plate and arms. While the Alpha Legion warrior adapted his powered hold, moving with elegant determination between death-dealing techniques, Grundar simply relied upon the rage of the animal inside him.

  Ripping and clawing at the Legionnaire with his gauntlets, Grundar turned within his enemy’s grasp. Prising his arms free, the Space Wolf tore the serpent-styled helm from the Legionnaire’s face. His dead reptilian eyes burned with some inner corruption. The Alpha Legionnaire benefitted from expert training and was a master of martial invention. He had an elongated lifetime of battle experience and the boon of some darkness at work within him. He could have killed Grundar a thousand different ways. Trapped in the Legionnaire’s hold and with a blade slicing for his throat, the Space Wolf knew only one.

  Instead of pulling away, Grundar lunged for the Legionnaire. Holding him by the warped stylisations of his breastplate, Grundar heaved him in close. Opening his mouth, his sharpened teeth glistening, the Space Wolf tore the Legionnaire’s throat out with a single, disgusted bite. Allowing the Alpha Legion warrior to crash to his knees, Grundar stumbled back, spitting gore from his blood-spattered lips.

  With the thunder of boltfire echoing about the hall, Krom smashed a blazing weapon aside with Wyrmclaw. Heaving the frost axe with the firing fibre bundles of his powered plate, the Wolf Lord chopped down through a Legionnaire’s chest. Turning with lupine grace, Krom dodged the furious blast of a boltgun as another Legionnaire advanced with his weapon tucked into his pauldron. The frost axe came around, smashing the Chaos Space Marine’s weapon from his hands. Whirling about, Krom buried the blade in the Alpha Legionnaire’s head.

  Krom ducked as a final Legionnaire came up behind to smash the butt of his boltgun down on the Space Wolf. Krom crashed down onto his armoured knees, dragging the axe and the corpse in which it was embedded with him. Savagely jabbing the axe hilt back, Krom cracked the plate of his attacker in the midriff. Pivoting on one knee, the Wolf Lord hacked at the Legionnaire’s leg. The Chaos Space Marine dropped his weapon and reached down for the grievous wound but Krom completed the cut with another chop through the knee.

  As the Alpha Legionnaire fell, Krom rose from the bloody floor. Staggering, he reached out for a pillar to steady himself. He saw Sathar the Undone swing the tapering length of his crusader sword, cutting one bounding wolf out of the air before splitting another in half. The keen blade slipped through the fur and lean Fenrisian meat, silencing the beast’s roar. Krom continued where the animal had left off, a roar building in his chest. He pointed the blade of his frost axe at the traitor before pushing himself away from the pillar. Stomping his way into a run, with blood splashing about his footfalls, Krom launched himself at Sathar the Undone. Stamping up a mound of bodies, the Wolf Lord jumped – taking full advantage of the hive world’s low gravity. Bringing the axe down on the renegade, Krom felt a bone-rattling jar pass through his body as Sathar brought up the length of his crusader blade to meet his blow.

  The traitor heaved back at Krom, prompting the pair to
circle each other with powered steps. The optics of Sathar’s helm burned into the Space Wolf, while Krom returned the stare with the piercing gold of his eye. The Wolf Lord snarled his intention to annihilate his opponent while Sathar was calm, his exertions resulting in a helm-grille hiss. Simultaneously, they launched their attacks.

  The differing fighting styles of the two combatants made for awkward and uneasy combat. Krom hacked and wheeled about with Wyrmclaw, attempting to rake through armour and slash his enemy to ribbons. It was savage and instinctive: the unleashing of the beast within. Sathar, conversely, moved with practised sweeps of his long blade. With a knightly martial elegance, he propelled the blade about him, or held it aloft to absorb the frost axe’s savage blows. He thrust and stabbed with the length of the blade, using it like a spear to weave through Krom’s defences. As the Space Wolf heaved, chopped and smashed at Sathar in a fury, the tapering tip of the renegade’s blade punctured plate and flesh, striping the grey of the Wolf Lord’s armour with the red leakage of fresh wounds.

  Krom brought Wyrmclaw down on the Chaos Space Marine’s blade and fancied the weapon creaked. Heaving down on the haft of the frost axe, the Wolf Lord leant in, baring his teeth at Sathar’s faceplate. The traitor held him there, however, the crusader blade trapped between them. Pushing Krom back, Sathar whipped the weapon around with serpentine speed and determination. As Krom came straight back at him, the sword was ready – surging forward to skewer the Space Wolf. Krom was ready too. With blistering savagery, he backslashed the oncoming blade aside, smashing his axe blade through the weakened section of metal.

  The crusader sword shattered, prompting Sathar the Undone to stagger back in surprise. Krom would not relent, however, and stamped out, burying the sole of his armoured boot in the traitor’s gut. Krom heaved his axe over his head and down at Sathar, who just managed to get the remains of his blade and its crossguard between him and the descending Wyrmclaw. The two held each other there for a moment – still, like statues.

  ‘No!’ Grundar Greymane roared as a staccato of bolt rounds hammered into his Wolf Lord. The shock and surprise registered on Krom’s snarling face almost immediately. He had taken the shot in his side, the pipes and lines of his armoured midriff a sparking mess. As his arms and plate faltered for a moment, he looked down to see the Alpha Legionnaire whose leg he had hacked off still on the floor. The Chaos Space Marine had reached for his boltgun and in agony aimed it up at Krom from the floor. The Legionnaire was dead seconds later as Grundar ran at him, bringing his boot down barbarically on the back of the Chaos Space Marine’s head and snapping his neck.

  The murderous strength behind Wyrmclaw was lost for a second and Sathar pushed the weapon back. It gave the renegade just enough room and opportunity to withdraw the wicked remnant of his blade and thrust it at the surprised Wolf Lord like a dagger.

  The shattered, stabbing stump of the blade scraped the Wolf Lord’s breastplate and would have pierced his hearts had it not been for Grundar Greymane’s thundering advance. Stamping through the carnage of slain Legionnaires, butchered wolves and hiver corpses, Grundar hammered into Sathar. Getting a gauntlet to the traitor’s armoured wrist, the Space Wolf interrupted the deadly advance of the shattered blade and tore it away from its path of murderous destruction. The Chaos Space Marine was knocked back by the Space Wolf cannoning into him and it was all Krom Dragongaze could do to clutch his bolt-blasted side and watch Grundar knock Sathar the Undone through the stone of the balcony balustrade. Seconds later the pair were gone, wrangling with each other in a death grip and falling from the edge.

  Clutching the rawness of his injured side, Krom staggered over to the ruined balustrade and peered down through the clouds. He searched for Grundar Greymane and their sworn enemy but the clouds had swallowed them as they plummeted through the spire heights.

  Out of the haze about the tower, Krom saw figures appear. Blood Claws, leaping from the opposing spire where they had failed to find Sathar the Undone. They clawed for purchase on the busy architecture of the palace walls, holding there for further orders as the remainder of their number sailed across the open space.

  Bent double over the demolished balustrade and peering down over the edge of the balcony, Krom heard footsteps coming up behind. In agony, the Wolf Lord hauled himself up and around to meet the threat but found Interrogator-Chaplain Balthus working his way through the slaughter. The Dark Angel looked down at the bodies of the Chaos Space Marines.

  ‘Where have you been?’ Krom demanded.

  ‘I was searching for him in the mist,’ Balthus replied.

  There was something in the Interrogator-Chaplain’s tone that gave Krom pause. Balthus had proved himself honourable time and again, and yet… Krom could read nothing in the blank skull helm that stared back at him.

  ‘Well, you were wasting your time looking out there,’ Krom snarled.

  ‘You had him?’

  ‘Had him,’ Krom confirmed, ‘and lost him.’

  As he approached, Balthus nodded down at Krom’s stomach wound.

  ‘You’re injured,’ the Dark Angel said.

  ‘I’ll live,’ Krom assured him, looking over the balcony. He grunted. ‘I’m not sure I can say the same for the traitor you hunt.’

  Grundar Greymane tumbled down through the cloud. He clawed at his foe, tearing at his cloak of flayed flesh. They fell past the rushing blur of over-elaborate architecture. Stratovass Ultra might have been a low gravity world but it still had gravity – enough to drag the Space Wolf at increasing speed towards the splattering embrace of the rockrete surface.

  Suddenly, the whooshing obscurity of the cloud became a storm of whipping lines and cables. Cords snapped and lines slashed about Grundar’s armoured form. As he hit the metal of a support line he abruptly stopped. Plate crumpled and the air was knocked out of his lungs. Falling to one side, the Space Wolf plummeted through a further net of cords and cables stretching between the palace tower and sub-spires.

  Sathar the Undone was torn from his grasp, the traitor tangled in the lines. With the fingers of his gauntlet grasping for his enemy, Grundar plunged away. The irregular outline of the tower seemed to reach out for him: vanes, statues and balconies. He smashed down through the stone of an ornamental bridge and punched a hole through decorative banners advertising the ancient Houses of the Eyriax Hive.

  The lines and wind-lashed banners did enough to break Grundar’s­ fall that when he hit the roof of a sub-spire, the Space Wolf merely crashed through the crumbling tiles, bouncing off the metal bracings of the superstructure. With smashed plate and bones, Grundar rolled off the steep tower roof and once more found himself plummeting.

  The fall was short-lived, however. With a grunt of agony, the Space Wolf hammered into the marble of a balcony floor. With the stone shattered beneath him like a tessellation, Grundar rolled onto his chest. He found it difficult to breathe, his black carapace and ribs broken.

  The Space Wolf had fallen back into the central spire. He was confident of that. The balcony of another great hall – one of many in the labyrinthine grandeur of the hive palace. Blurred vision began to focus to a grim crispness. There was movement. A multitude in motion. Sound that hurt Grundar’s sensitive ears. Groaning. Screaming. The horror of death, shrieked seconds before the fact. The Space Wolf’s nose also picked out the pungency of sweat and fear. The sharp tang of blood spilled. The rawness of flesh ripped open.

  The hall was a cacophony of panic and slaughter. Like the chambers above it was crowded with victims. They jangled with chains that prevented them from running. They fled in confusion and dread, each in their own direction before being torn back by the restrictions of their shackles. The whites of their eyes and the frantic futility of their movements told of their terror. The cultish symbols freshly carved into their hive-grimy flesh was evidence of the sacrificial horror to come.

  Then Grundar heard it. Something harsh and half-remembered. A sound that called out to the animal part of him. The monstrous part o
f him. The part that was Russ. Like a tsunami of gore, blood fountained for the hall’s high ceiling as unseen abominations moved through the sacrificial throng. Chains were slashed and victims snatched up before being thrown through the air. Heads spun off in whirls of blood.

  Grundar imagined some of the horrors he had faced in his long service to the Allfather. Xenos abominations. Chaos Space Marines twisted into monstrosities. Daemonic entities crafted of infernal whim. As the slaughter moved towards Grundar, the Space Wolf tried his vox-link.

  ‘Greymane to command,’ he hissed with effort. ‘Come in.’

  The channel was silent. It was not a good sign. ‘Greymane to command. Lord Dragongaze, receive.’

  Like everything else about the suit of powered armour, the vox-link was smashed. Then he saw it. As a throng of terrified hivers were turned to chum before his eyes, an armoured figure ventured forth from the bloodbath. Grundar Greymane’s hearts leapt at the sight of grey plate and the sigil of the wolf’s head, proudly displayed on a gore-spattered pauldron. Hunched like some wild beast burdened by its own savage nature, the creature wore neither helm nor gauntlets. It was as if its plate was a remnant of a forgotten age, unable to contain the animal fury within it. Its hands were dripping grapnels of blood-matted fur and wicked claws. The thing’s maw was crowded with blood-stained fangs and its facial hair slick with gore.

  Grundar searched for some scintilla of humanity in its rage-bright eyes. Some flicker of nobility or recognition. He failed to find it. Grundar, however, recognised his brother-beast. By his grey plate, caked black with old gore. By the legionary sigils that still adorned its armour. By the curse that drove mind and flesh to acts of animal barbarism. By the features of Russ, worn like a mask over the rage of a monster unbound. Unbridled. Unstoppable.