The Space Wolf Omnibus - William King

by Warhammer 40K

  ‘It was a long time ago,’ he said. ‘In the days when Berek Thunderfist was lord of this company…’

  ONE

  ‘When will we ever get out of this bloody place?’ asked Sven, a grimace of pure frustration twisting his cheerfully ugly features. Frost had gathered on his eyebrows, and hung like icicles from his sideburns. ‘It’s been nearly six months since Xecutor, and I am as sick of looking at bloody Fenris as I am of looking at your ugly face, Ragnar.’

  Ragnar did not take the comment personally. It was just Sven’s way. He understood his fellow Blood Claw’s frustration. All of this training might well be improving his skills, but it was no substitute for action.

  Briefly he wondered if the process that had turned Sven and himself into Space Marines had not done something to their minds and souls as well. He felt restless in a way he had never done before. He craved the excitement of battle and the thrill of combat in a way that he suspected was not entirely natural even for one of his warrior people. Or maybe it was that despite the leatheriness of their skins, and the few grey hairs that had started to appear in their hair, they were still Blood Claws at heart, with all of a young warrior’s yearning for blood and glory.

  He smiled and shook his head looking at their surroundings. All around them were the Ice Wastes of Asaheim, league after endless league of snowy desolation, broken only by the cold peaks of the Dragonfang Mountains. It was an environment in which he could not have survived ten years ago, back when he had been merely a lad of the Thunderfist tribe. It was so cold that even wrapped in the thickest of furs he would not have lasted an hour, and so desolate that if the temperature did not kill him, starvation would have. Most likely the ice fiends would have taken him before that happened. Now he found the place merely entertaining, a place to hone the skills he had been taught by his Chapter.

  But then, ten years ago, his body had not been sheathed in the miraculous armour of the ancients, capable of shielding him from far more hostile environments than this. And ten years ago his body had not been transformed into a near tireless killing machine capable of eating lichen or the inhuman flesh of the ice fiends and their related folk. Ten years ago his unaltered eyes would have been snow-blind by now, rather than filtering out the glare. Ten years ago he would not have agreed with Sven in finding this little hiking trip quite so dull. Being back on Fenris after the Xecutor campaign had proven a bit of an anti-climax. He did not even feel a thrill of pride any more when he contemplated the armour runes that showed he belonged to Berek’s company. Not much anyway. Not as much as when he had first been assigned to a proper unit.

  Of course, back then he had never been off-world, had never embarked on the great ships that sailed between the stars, had not fought against men and daemons and monsters. Back then, he would have thought only gods capable of doing what he now found so lacking in challenge. How times had changed! Since then there had been Galt and Aerius and Logan’s World and Purity and Xecutor and a host of minor campaigns he could not even be bothered to enumerate.

  ‘There’s nothing bloody funny about it, Ragnar Thunderfist, or should I call you “Blackmane” like all the little cubs do?’

  Having failed to get a rise out of him one way, Sven was taking another tack. It was a bit of a sore spot. Part of Ragnar wished he had never had that old wolfskin made into a cloak, it had been the cause of so much jesting from his old comrades. The new Blood Claw packs and even some of the older Wolves, the Grey Hunters and the Long Fangs, had taken it as a mark of Russ’s favour. After all, it had been a long time since any man had killed one of the beasts while still in training and armed only with a spear. It was in fact considered near impossible.

  Ragnar had pointed out the old monster had been sick and starving and he had killed it with a lucky blow, but that had made no difference. If anything, his un-Wolf-like modesty had gotten almost as much attention as the slaying. Perhaps he should have boasted about it, like Sven or anybody else would have done. He did not quite know why the fame made him so uncomfortable. Perhaps it was because he felt he was not worthy of it.

  ‘You bloody daydreaming again?’ Sven asked. ‘Or can’t you answer a civil question?’

  ‘You’ll find out when you ask one,’ Ragnar responded, his nostrils dilating, catching the faintest hint of an acrid inhuman scent on the wind. He looked over at Sven to see if his friend had caught it too. Sven’s marginally less keen nose twitched. The long moustache he had been cultivating since the campaign on Xecutor moved like the whiskers of some great hunting beast.

  ‘You smell that?’ he asked. Ragnar nodded.

  ‘Ice fiend, I reckon. Not too close, not too far either.’

  ‘Perhaps you’re not quite so bad at tracking as I thought,’ said Ragnar.

  ‘We can’t all have the razor keen senses of the blessed of bloody Russ,’ said Sven. ‘Maybe I should let you go and check this out on your own. After all, the cubs will give you all the credit for killing the beasts anyway. Even if I were to kill a whole bloody tribe single handed, while you stood back and applauded my fine bloody technique with a chainsword, they would praise you for it.’

  Ragnar checked his weapons. Tracking down the ice fiends was the whole purpose of this expedition. They had been raiding along the coastal glaciers and slaughtering the mastodon herds. It was time they were taught a lesson. ‘I think you’re just jealous of my well-deserved reputation,’ he said.

  ‘I would be jealous if it was well-deserved,’ said Sven. ‘Unfortunately, all you do is hog the credit for my own heroic deeds.’

  ‘Like I did on Micah,’ said Ragnar, ‘when I pulled you out of that squig pit, before they could gnaw you to death?’

  ‘You always have to bring that up, don’t you?’ said Sven in a tone of mock gloom. ‘I would have fought my way out in a few heartbeats if you had not interrupted.’

  ‘Your plan was to choke the squig to death by thrusting yourself down its throat then, was it?’

  ‘I was lulling it into a false sense of security,’ muttered Sven, his eyes checking the horizon. Ragnar could tell he too had spotted the massive white shapes until now near invisible amongst the snows.

  Sven made a few practice passes with his deactivated chainsword just to loosen up.

  ‘I don’t remember that being covered in the Codex Tacticus.’

  ‘I am a brilliant improviser.’

  ‘Apparently.’

  ‘Well, what about it? I don’t cast up all the times I have pulled your fat out of the bloody fire. What about that time on Venam? When I saved you from those heretics before they could chop you up with your own chainsword? You never bloody well hear me mention that, do you?’

  ‘Not more than once or twice a day.’

  Sven was in full flow now, not to be stopped. ‘Or how about on that space hulk near Korelia or Korelius or whatever it was bloody well called – when I saved you from those tyranids? I never mention that, do I?’

  ‘You just did.’

  ‘Or what about that time–’

  ‘Sven?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Shut up.’

  ‘Don’t tell me to bloody well shut up, Ragnar bloody so-called Blackmane. Just because you have a head swollen to the size of a small bloody planetoid, doesn’t mean I can’t kick your–’

  ‘No! Can’t you hear it?’

  ‘Hear what?’

  ‘That!’ There was a sound of cracking ice. Ragnar saw a crevasse start to open ten strides away.

  ‘Glacier’s breaking up,’ he hissed, beginning to run forward, as the crack splitting the ice came nearer.

  ‘I would never have noticed,’ said Sven sarcastically.

  ‘Quite probably,’ said Ragnar, racing forward and leaping over the gap. Sven was a few strides behind him, but leapt fractionally too late. It was obvious that he was not going to make it across the widening gap, and was going to tumble down, Russ alone knew how far. Ragnar leaned out and grabbed his friend’s outstretched hand, tugging him forward and
sending him sprawling in the ice beside him.

  ‘Siding with the ice fiends now, eh?’ said Sven around a mouthful of snow.

  ‘No – just saving your life yet again.’

  ‘So you say. I was doing fine before your sneak attack sent me sprawling.’

  ‘Going to wedge open the crevasse with your thick skull, were you? Best use for it, most likely.’

  Sven bounded to his feet and cast a casual glance over his shoulder, checking on the distance separating them from the ice fiends. Several hundred strides lay between them still. It looked like the fiends were waiting to see whether the crevasse took them. ‘Yours is the only head around here big enough to fill that hole,’ said Sven cheerily.

  The ground beneath their feet started to move again, as the glacier shook. ‘Maybe we should get off this frozen river of ice before it swallows us both up,’ said Ragnar.

  ‘Well, looks like the only way out is through them,’ said Sven, gesturing to the approaching ice fiends.

  ‘And your point is?’

  ‘Just giving you directions in case you get lost again,’ said Sven, turning and racing towards the approaching creatures. Ragnar followed him, the snow crunching under his ceramite boots and splashing off his greaves, his breath clouding the air like steam. The ice fiends bellowed challenges. The two Blood Claws answered with whooping war-cries. As they closed the distance Ragnar realised how big the creatures were. They were almost twice his height. Long white fur covered their bearish bodies, massive yellowing tusks protruded from the gaping caverns of their mouths. Long dagger-like claws tipped the three digits on each paw. Their faces were a startling combination of humanoid and beast. Their yellowish-red eyes gleamed with a malign and bestial intelligence and a glittering malevolent hatred of all not their kind. There were close on ten of them, all male, a pride of hunters. Ragnar knew they would fight until either they were dead or their prey was. There was no more insensately ferocious life form on the surface of Fenris. Unless it was Sven, he thought.

  Ragnar thumbed the activation rune of his chainsword and it roared to life. He sprang into the ice fiend pack, chopping right and left. His first blow took off a taloned hand and sent blue blood spurting to stain the snows.

  Briefly and incongruously a screed of information placed there by the tutelary engines back in the Fang blazed across his brain. He recalled that the blood of an ice fiend contained different chemical elements from human blood, designed to prevent it from freezing in the winter chill of the arctic wastes. He also remembered that it was poisonous, just as the creature thrust its stump into his face and a deadly searing jet of the stuff spurted into his eyes.

  Ragnar was grateful as the translucent second lid dropped into position over his eyeball. Even so, the pain was immense as the corrosive stuff began to eat away at the specially hardened flesh. He shook his head to clear it away and a massive impact sent him sprawling into a snowdrift. Gratefully he scooped up a handful of snow to wash the poison ichor from his eyes. From the scents of the beasts and the sounds of their heartbeats he could tell there were none within striking distance. He could hear Sven leaping among them, chopping away with his blade, preventing the beasts from getting at him.

  ‘Just as I thought!’ he bellowed. ‘Leaving me to do all the work, while you have a bloody kip in the nice soft snow.’

  Ragnar retracted his second eyelid and wiped his eyes. The stinging had started to diminish as his enhanced body adapted to the poison. He saw Sven carve a ruinous path through the ice fiends, hacking left and right with his mighty chainsaw-edged blade. It looked like his fellow Blood Claw was going to do just what he claimed and take out the entire pack all by himself, when one of the beasts grabbed the Space Wolf from behind, immobilising his arms. Another knocked the chainsword from his grip with a buffeting blow.

  Ragnar leapt forward, burying his own blade in the back of the beast that held Sven immobile. It let out an ear-splitting howl and dropped the Blood Claw as it clutched its wound. Ragnar hacked again, smashing his blow into the creature’s neck and beheading it. He could hear Sven scoop up his blade. A moment later they laid into the beasts with their potent weapons. Chainsaw blades ripped through fur and flesh. Blue blood flowed. The beasts kept coming, filled with the insensate savagery of their kind, determined to kill the human interlopers.

  The Space Wolves matched savagery with savagery, and brute strength with superior speed and weaponry. Within heartbeats Ragnar carved up two of the fiends, severing limbs and spilling ropy intestines. In five heartbeats he could see that more than half of the ice fiend pack was dead. Even so, the monsters kept fighting. Their claws scrabbled against the hardened ceramite of Ragnar’s armour with a hideous keening screech. Their foetid breath stank in his nostrils. The reek of their blood and fur and internal organs began to overwhelm all other scents.

  Ten heartbeats later it was over. All of the ice fiends lay dead or dying. One of the wounded lashed out at Ragnar even on its dying breath. He avoided the stroke easily and sent it to hell with a flick of his blade.

  ‘Fierce buggers, aren’t they?’ said Sven, rotating the blades of his chainsword in a snowdrift to clean it.

  ‘I’ve seen worse,’ said Ragnar scooping up a handful of clean snow to wipe the alien blood from his armour.

  ‘Well, they won’t be killing any more bloody bondsmen, that’s for sure.’

  ‘You have it there,’ said Ragnar quietly. He felt an obscure melancholy start to sneak over him now that the excitement of the battle was over. The creatures had not presented much of a challenge after all, and in death had started to look slightly pathetic.

  ‘Useless beasts,’ said Sven. ‘Not even good to eat.’

  ‘I suppose not.’

  ‘Cheer up, Ragnar. You’d think it was you that had taken your death wound, not them.’

  Ragnar attempted a smile, wondering at the change in his mood. Such things were becoming rarer and rarer as his body adapted to the changes that becoming a Space Wolf had wrought, but still they sometimes took him off guard. Suddenly, his eye caught sight of a distant flickering, as something massive dropped through the white clouds to the south-west. A moment later, he heard the sonic boom of the approaching aircraft.

  ‘Looks like we’ve got company,’ he said.

  ‘Help has arrived. Too bloody late as usual. I’ve done all the work. You’ll get all the credit.’

  Ragnar reached down and wadded up a snowball. A second later he snapped it into Sven’s face. So swift were the Blood Claw’s reflexes that his comrade almost evaded it despite Ragnar’s speed. Almost.

  ‘Sneak attack, eh?’ said Sven. ‘Well, there’s only one bloody response to that.’

  A moment later, a snowball smacked off Ragnar’s armour, and then a second.

  They were still fighting when the Thunderhawk’s landing skids dropped into the snow nearby.

  Ragnar was surprised to see Sergeant Hakon emerge from the hatch of the gunship. He thought the veteran had returned to Russvik to take charge of training once more. The old Marine was even more grizzled-looking now than when Ragnar had first met him, five years before. His face was still a patchwork of scars, his eyes still chips of blue ice. His hair and long sideburns were pure grey. His canines were monstrous fangs. He surveyed the two Blood Claws for a second and the fighting stopped.

  ‘You’re wanted back at the Fang,’ he said.

  ‘We’re flattered that you came all this way to get us,’ said Sven. Over the past few years, they had all lost some of their awe of their leader. ‘Has our liege Berek Thunderfist decided that he needs a bigger audience when the skalds sing his bloody praises?’

  ‘You should watch your tongue, youth,’ said Hakon, ‘or Lord Berek might rip it out. He always had a bit of a temper that one. Or I might do it myself, if you don’t show some respect for your elders.’

  Hakon’s voice was a flat and flinty as ever. Sven’s cheerfully ugly face lost some of its cheeky expression at the sergeant’s tone. Perhaps he h
ad not quite lost all awe of the old man, Ragnar thought.

  ‘Why have we been summoned?’ asked Ragnar. It was not every day that a veteran sergeant and a gunship was dispatched to recover two Blood Claws on a hunting expedition.

  ‘It’s not just you,’ said Hakon. ‘Every Wolf on the planet has been called back to the Fang.’

  ‘Every one?’

  The sergeant nodded.

  ‘Must be something big,’ said Sven.

  ‘Aye, youth, must be. Such a thing has not happened since you and your friends discovered that Chaos nest under Daemon Spire Mountain, and that was the first time that had happened in over a century.’

  ‘It’s nice to know we’ve brought a bit of excitement into your otherwise dull lives,’ said Sven.

  ‘Get in. You’re not the only cubs I have to pick up today,’ the sergeant said.

  Ragnar followed Sven into the innards of the armoured gunship and strapped himself in.

  ‘Who’s he calling a bloody cub?’ muttered Sven. ‘About time we were made Grey Hunters, that’s what I think.’

  ‘Do you have an idea what all this is about?’ asked Aenar Hellstrom brightly from across the hold. His oval face looked almost obnoxiously young and cheerful. Aenar was part of the most recent intake of Blood Claws to Lord Berek’s company. A whole new pack of them, the second Ragnar had seen since his own acceptance by Lord Berek. Looking around he could see a couple of other members of the pack – the saturnine Torvald and the massive brute everyone just called Troll.

  Sven grunted, not wanting to reveal his ignorance to one of the cubs, as they thought of the youngsters. It would not do. After all, he and Sven and Strybjorn were veterans of sorts, the oldest Blood Claw pack, and Aenar and his ilk had not even been off-planet yet. Aenar whooped as the Thunderhawk shuddered and roared its way through a patch of turbulence. Was I ever like that, Ragnar wondered with all the world-weariness of his extra five years? It’s a wonder that Hakon did not shoot me.

  Ragnar exchanged knowing glances with Sven who looked as if he were about to cuff the younger Blood Claw. Ragnar glanced around the inner cabin of the Thunderhawk. It was indeed a strange mix the gunship had picked up on its trip around the wastes. Along with Hakon there were other veterans, Long Fangs bearing the insignia of three different great companies, Grey Hunters, Blood Claws, even a Wolf Priest who had been scouting for new aspirants along the ridges near the glacier valley. It seemed like a fair cross-section of the Chapter had been abroad, about their own business in the winter-bound lands of the northern continent.