The sorcerer’s insane, gurgling laughter filled the hall with evil glee. He coughed in a long wracking spasm that bent him almost double, then spat on the floor. The huge gobbet of green slime that dripped from his mouth bubbled and evaporated on the ground. He smiled at Ragnar as if they were old friends and, in a voice that seemed to consist of the buzzing of thousands of insects, said, ‘Lord Botchulaz sends his greetings.’
At the mention of that name, Ragnar almost froze, reminded of horrors long past and griefs so ancient that he thought he had forgotten them. Words of defiance froze on his lips as images of evil and despair flashed through his brain.
The magician made another gesture with his hand and there was no time now for anything but action. With eye-blurring speed, the ball of corrupting flame sailed through the air towards the Space Wolf. Having seen what the thing could do, Ragnar had no intention of letting it touch him. He dived forward beneath it, sensing the evil power of the thing as it passed over his head. He aimed a shot at the Chaos-worshipping sorcerer with his bolter. The man raised his other hand in a warding gesture and the shell was deflected to one side.
By Russ, this was a powerful one, Ragnar thought, greatly gifted by the powers of Chaos.
Ragnar felt the surge of energy at his back which told him the ball of flame was searing up behind him. He sprang to the left, the servos in his power armour straining, and it blazed past him, leaving a flickering trail in its wake. The sorcerer made another gesture and the thing he had created looped towards Ragnar once more, blazing round and down in a deadly arc. This time Ragnar leapt upwards and over it. He felt the power of its presence once more as it passed below him. As he leapt, the Wolf loosed another shot but once more the heretic warded it away with a gesture.
Nothing for it, thought Ragnar, but to settle this up close and personal, the old fashioned way. He dived forward, sensing the ball of fire moving in pursuit, and hit the ground rolling. He tumbled all the way to the mage’s feet and lashed out with his chainsword at his foe’s legs. The mage tried the warding gesture once more but he was too slow. Even as he did so Ragnar changed the point of impact of his blow and took the man’s arm off at the elbow. Black blood flowed thickly from the stump like molasses and instantly began to congeal around the wound. Another gift of the Dark Powers, Ragnar guessed. He smiled nastily and stabbed again. His ancient blade embedded itself in his foe’s guts and hung there, blades screeching as it tore the fiend apart.
Ragnar sprang suddenly to his left and the ball of flame missed him and impacted on the mage. Instead of reducing him to nothingness, it was absorbed into his body without causing him any apparent harm. Russ take me, Ragnar thought, but it had been worth a try.
He reached forward once more and pulled his blade free, making sure to turn it in the wound for maximum damage. With a hideous slurping sound the whining chainsword came free, dragging ropes of tangled intestine with it. The sorcerer showed no sign of any pain. A look of discomfort passed over his face as he began the gesture that would summon the fireball again. This time Ragnar severed the man’s head from his shoulders. Even as it fell, the Wolf struck the skull again, searing it in two with his chainsword. The sorcerer’s body fell to the ground as though pole-axed.
Ragnar looked at it for a moment, as if half expecting it to stir, but nothing happened. The combat was over. He looked around with some satisfaction but could not see any more targets. All around him the sounds of combat were dying away. It seemed like his men were achieving their objectives. Trying to forget what the magician had said, Ragnar turned and raced back the way he had come. It was like running through a slaughterhouse. Blood and gore decorated the walls. He sniffed the air, taking in all the scents, and knew with certainty that only Space Wolves were left alive in the building. It came as no surprise to him when the signal crackled over the comm-net.
+Objective secured.+
Night gathered. The old yellow moons glared down through the contaminated clouds. Ragnar stood on the roof of the battered factory and glanced out into the night, braided hair flapping in the cold breeze. Over there the war still raged as other units of Imperial troops struggled to contain the heretics. A flower of fire blossomed where a shell exploded. A few moments later there was a crack like thunder. Ragnar was aware of the vibration of the distant explosion passing through the structure beneath his feet.
Down below, the Blood Claws celebrated. They gathered around a blazing fire and roared chants drawn from the epics of their people. They told of their deeds and the deeds of their ancestors. Some of them shouted out what they had done today, the number of heretics they had killed and the way they had killed them. He smiled at the innocence of their boasting. They were so proud of themselves and what they had done, filled with the simple pride of men who were being blooded, on their first campaign; feeling, for the first time, the thrill of war as it was waged between the stars.
He knew that their boasting was as much to relieve tension as to impress their peers. All of them knew how many of their number had died today. All of them had taken part in the funeral rites which Ragnar had led. Now their task was done, they were coming to terms with the fact that they were still alive, that men, evil men, had tried to kill them, and that they had endured. Ragnar could well remember the shock and the thrill of that realisation himself. There were times when it seemed like only yesterday that he had fought in his own first off-world campaign.
Everything had seemed simpler then somehow, before his rise to command, before the long series of adventures and wars which had seen him rise faster and further than any Space Wolf had ever done before. There were occasions when he wondered whether it was worth it, when he envied the Blood Claws their innocence. They did not yet know what it was like to feel the responsibility for another Space Wolf’s death. All through the long evening, as the reports came in and the factory complex was secured, Ragnar had replayed the battle in his mind, wondering if there had been some way to do it differently, some tactic that would have prevented Olaf and the others from dying. But if there was he could not see it. This was war, and in wars men died, even Space Marines. Perhaps Russ and the Emperor could have done better than he, perhaps another commander could have, but there was nothing now he could do about it. What was done, was done. He simply had to accept that and put it behind him. Tomorrow the war would continue. Tomorrow a new battle would be fought.
Still, at that moment, he longed to return to a simpler time, to the time when it had all seemed easy. But he reminded himself: it had only seemed easy. Even in his youth there had been losses, and horrors and intrigues. He let his mind drift back to the events he had been trying to suppress since his encounter with the sorcerer.
He gazed out into the night, remembering.
ONE
Along with his fellow battle-brothers, Ragnar stood at the entrance to the landing bay, his weapons holstered, his newly acquired Blood Claw insignia displayed proudly on his shoulder-pad. They were all waiting for Inquisitor Sternberg to descend from his ship.
The Space Wolf took another deep breath and tried to calm himself. He knew that the monstrous vessel before him was only a shuttle, not even one of the huge craft that plied the unthinkable distances between the stars, but even so the sheer scale of the thing was enough to take your breath away. It seemed as large as the village in which he had grown up, a great wedge of ancient ceramite and duralloy, pitted by meteor trails and seared by weapon impacts. In a strange way, it was beautiful. Gargoyles clutched the fins and the Imperial eagle had been embossed on its side with a craftsmanship that no jewelsmith from his own people could have hoped to rival. He studied the crystalline portholes in its side, looking to see if anyone glanced out at them.
His mouth felt strangely dry. He was about to experience something he would have considered an impossibility but a few short months ago. He was about to encounter strangers from another world. He told himself that he would not gawk and stare, but the thought was still an astonishing one. A season ago, when
he had still lived in the Thunderfist village, he had believed that the universe was a great sea dotted with endless islands and girded about by a mighty serpent. Since the time he had been selected to join the Space Wolves, he had learned differently, so differently. He now knew that his homeworld, Fenris, was a sphere floating in the endless immensity of space, orbiting a star that he had once thought was the Eye of Russ. He knew now that it was but one star amid millions which made up the galaxy and the Imperium of Mankind, and that, somehow, mighty ships moved between these worlds. Moreover, he had learned that each world was different, and that many were homes to different nations and peoples. In this they were like the islands in the Worldsea of Fenris, for there too the islands were homes to clans, each with different customs and beliefs. The other worlds were like that and there was scope for far greater differences between the inhabitants of planets than of the islands of Fenris. Some, he had been taught, were homes to foul mutants, others to alien races inimical to mankind. Some worlds were entirely sheathed in metal and inhabited by teeming billions pressed cheek to jowl. Others were empty wastes of ice and snow on which dwelled fur-clad nomads. Some were deserts of fire, yet more airless barrens where life survived only in ancient cavern cities. His mind could only begin to comprehend the merest fraction of all the endless possibilities they represented.
As he had tried to do so many times recently, Ragnar pushed such thoughts from his mind and tried to concentrate on the task at hand – but it was difficult. He wondered what the passengers on this ship would be like. Would they have green skins or two heads? There was no way of knowing until they emerged. He wanted to look around him to see what his brother Blood Claws were doing or thinking, but he did not. They were an honour guard for these new arrivals, and they were meant to show discipline and restraint. It would not do to go staring about him like some youngling.
He could just picture the expressions on the faces of those around him though. Sven’s ugly broken-nosed face would be looking hungrily as if the strangers might be carrying something good to eat, all the while trying to restrain a grin from twisting his features. Ragnar’s old rival and former blood-enemy Strybjorn would have an expression of angry contempt locked on his dour, brutal face. Lean Nils would be fighting to keep a smile from erupting on his lips as he wrestled with his urge to toss insults at Sven. All of the others would be fighting with their own impulses. It was not easy for them. They were all Blood Claws, newly initiated, and their heads and hearts were still filled with the wild animalistic urges that were a side-effect of their transformation into Space Wolves.
Pretty much all of the Chapter currently resident in the Fang was here awaiting the new arrivals. They had been drawn from their lairs and meditation cells all over the great armoured mountain to be here and welcome this inquisitor. Only mighty Logan Grimnar, the Great Wolf himself, legendary leader of all the Wolves, and his household were not present. Grimnar waited in his lair for the inquisitor to come and see him, as was fitting. Nevertheless, Ragnar thought this Inquisitor Sternberg must be a mighty man indeed to warrant such a welcome to the Fang. There must be over a hundred Space Wolves here, plus over a thousand retainers. Few strangers were ever welcomed to the home of the Wolves and few indeed were greeted with such ceremony – or so Sergeant Hakon had told him. His former instructor had returned from the mountains some weeks back to take charge of the Blood Claws after the death of Sergeant Hengist. If he concentrated, Ragnar could catch the veteran Wolf’s scent, and it immediately brought to his mind’s eye a picture of the sergeant’s massive frame and lean, leathery face.
Ragnar found himself considering the rumours he had heard about Sternberg. Some of the thralls had claimed that he had fought alongside the Space Wolves on several occasions, once even saving the life of the Great Wolf himself. Others claimed that he came all the way from the ancient homeworld of Terra, sacred home of the beloved God-Emperor himself, bringing news of an important mission for the Chapter. Still others claimed that he was here to spy on the Space Wolves for the distant masters of the Imperium, hoping to find the taint of heresy in the Chapter and so be allowed to order its dissolution.
Ragnar doubted the last. He knew, as only an initiate could know, how utterly loyal the Wolves were to their duty. They would all of them, Ragnar included, have died to the last man rather than betray humanity to the darkness. There was no way they ever could be found wanting.
He fought back a sudden shiver as a dark memory intruded. Ragnar knew that not even Fenris was free of the taint of Chaos. Mere months ago he and his fellow Blood Claws had uncovered a nest of heresy in the mountains to the north of the Fang; a nest so deep and so filled with foul enemies that all the Wolves present on the planet had been massed to deal with it. He pushed the grim thoughts aside. He knew that it was all too possible that the inquisitor would be accompanied by one who could pluck such thoughts from one’s mind – and what had happened during that encounter with the renegade Marines of the Thousand Sons was no one’s business but the Chapter’s.
As if in direct response to his ill-considered thoughts, the great door in the side of the shuttle hissed and opened. A boarding ramp extruded itself from the spacecraft’s side and rattled down to the plascrete floor of the hangar. Ragnar drew a breath and turned his face into a frozen mask as the first of the strangers came into view. Disappointment warred with relief in Ragnar’s mind. The stranger was surprisingly normal but impressive nonetheless. He was a tall man, almost as tall as a veteran Space Wolf, and almost as broad too. His body was encased in dark ceramite armour which left only his grizzled grey-haired head visible. A pair of well-used weapons were holstered at his hip, a long pistol of unusual design and a chainsword. A great red cape fluttered in the breeze caused by the induction fans which pumped air into the chamber. The cape’s wide cowl was thrown back to reveal the man’s head, but Ragnar guessed that was not always the case. He glanced around him; his gaze appeared to take in every last detail of the scene quickly and smoothly. The man smiled easily, showing white teeth in a face tanned dark as well-seasoned witchwood. He paused only for a heartbeat and then strode down the ramp. It flexed slightly beneath his weight. Ragnar guessed that the armour was a lot heavier than it looked, and was, like his own, animated in part by servomotors.
As the newcomer began his descent others emerged from the ship behind him – and at the sight of the first Ragnar’s breath hissed from his chest. She was quite possibly the most beautiful woman he had ever seen, certainly the most striking. She was tall and willowy with dark brown skin, her black hair cropped short to her head. Indefinable symbols had been tattooed or scarred on her forehead. Her armour was similar to that of the man before her, as was her cape – but not quite as ornate, and with far fewer symbols and badges embedded in it. Ragnar was guessing, but he felt fairly certain that this indicated she was of lesser rank than the man he assumed was Inquisitor Sternberg. It was certainly the way of things among the Space Wolves, where men proudly wore the campaign badges and honour studs they had earned in battle for all to see. His ultra-keen eyes made out the name engraved in curled Imperial Gothic on her chest plate: Karah Isaan.
After these first two, the rest of the strangers were a disappointment. There were many in the uniforms of warriors, perhaps a bodyguard, most likely the ranking officers of the inquisitor’s entourage come to consult with the Great Wolf. Ragnar knew that Imperial inquisitors often travelled with what was in effect a small personal army ready to do their bidding and cleanse heresy upon their orders. That they might be here to protect him from the Wolves was such a ludicrous concept it took a few heartbeats to insinuate itself into Ragnar’s brain. He dismissed the idea as laughable. The Wolves would not attack their guest – and in the almost inconceivable event that they decided to, mere mortals could not stand against them.
After the warriors came men and women cowled in the dark blue robes of scribes. Each carried a leather-bound libram chained to a thick leather belt at their waist. Ragnar was unsure wheth
er these were books of lore or for making new records. He decided that he would ask one of them, if he ever got the chance.
As they paced down the ramp, Ragnar caught their strange off-world scent for the first time, and suddenly he was filled with a nagging sensation of unease, a premonition of doom. The beast within him stirred and he felt an urge to rend and tear at these newcomers, to strike them down as if they were his sworn enemies. He had never felt anything quite like it before. As if sensing it, the female inquisitor glanced around her, and caught his eye. Gazing across at her hooded brown eyes Ragnar felt suddenly calm. His sense of unease diminished, but did not vanish entirely. He tried to push it to one side. These were trusted allies, he told himself – yet a need to be wary remained.
As the first inquisitor reached the plascrete floor of the hangar, Jarek Bluetooth, the Great Wolf’s chief bondsman and steward, walked forward to greet him. He reached out and clasped arms, hands gripping at the elbow in the traditional Fenrisian greeting. Sternberg did not seem at all surprised by this. He smiled again and, once the clasp was ended, bowed from the waist in an elaborate and courtly fashion. As one, all the folk of his retinue, newly alighted behind him, did likewise.
‘In the name of Logan Grimnar, Great Wolf and Chieftain, I bid you welcome!’ Jarek said proudly. He spoke in the Gothic tongue of the Imperium, which made his rough voice sound even harsher.
‘I thank the Great Wolf for his welcome, and request an audience with him at his leisure.’ Compared to Jarek, the inquisitor’s voice was smooth and pleasant, yet it held steely undercurrents. Quite plainly this was a man used to getting his own way. Unsurprising really, Ragnar knew, considering the man was authorised to investigate all manner of heresies in the Emperor’s name. Only the Space Marine Chapters considered themselves beyond the remit of His Divine Inquisition, for they were bound by laws and traditions which predated the Imperium itself. Ragnar’s teachers had been quite specific on this point. The Space Marines were an independent force within the great swathe of humanity and proud of this fact. Indeed, they had been one of the major contributors to its founding and as such were granted many privileges. They were loyal only to the Emperor himself, not to his minions in the Ecclesiarchy.
The Space Wolf Omnibus - William King Page 31
