War of the Fang - Chris Wraight

by Warhammer 40K

The Dreadnought didn’t respond immediately. Its speech was sluggish and halting.

  Under assault, it repeated, as if the concept was hard to understand.

  The Dreadnought sank into contemplation. A row of lights flickered along its flanks. Perhaps they were some age-slowed systems finally coming online. Every movement it made was heavy, hesitant and cumbersome.

  And I thought I was bad in the morning.

  An Underfang beast slunk up to them then, belly low. Freija stiffened, bringing her sidearm up.

  Leave it.

  Freija kept the muzzle pointed at the mass of fur and tooth. It had pale amber eyes, shining in the dark. She felt her jaw tighten.

  I said, leave it.

  Slowly, she lowered her weapon. The beast paid her no attention, but performed the same abasement before the Dreadnought as the others had done before Bjorn.

  ‘What are these things?’ she asked, staring at the bizarre scene.

  You are curious.

  Freija winced inwardly.

  ‘I am told so, lord. It is a weakness, and I will work to correct it.’

  So you should.

  The beast shot a single, unreadable glance at Freija, than crawled back into the gloom. As it went, she saw bands of dull metal around its foreleg. There were steel tendons there, pistols moving smoothly as the beast walked.

  They are weapons, mortal. We are all weapons. Even you, in your own way, are a weapon. Let that be enough for you.

  ‘Yes, lord,’ said Freija, bowing. She could feel her cheeks flushing with irritation at the evasion.

  My men have died for your damned mysteries!

  I am called Aldr. In life I was a Blood Claw, though the Long Sleep has... changed that.

  That admission came as a surprise. Freija didn’t know what to say in reply. Making smalltalk with a Dreadnought was not something she’d been trained for. Russ, it was hard enough speaking to regular Space Marines.

  This is my first awakening. The process is difficult. Tell me of the world of the living. That will help.

  ‘What do you wish to know, lord?’

  There was a pause. Deep in the vaults, Arfang was still busy. Freija had no idea how many of the Revered Fallen were kept down here, nor how many more he planned to awaken. The process might nearly be over, or there might be hours still to go.

  Everything, said Aldr, his ponderous voice touched with a note of eagerness. Or perhaps it was desperation. The yearning was almost childlike.

  Tell me everything.

  ‘Fenrys hjammar koldt!’

  Odain Sturmhjart bellowed out the curses until his mighty lungs were raw. He stood before the ruined Bloodfire Gate, his staff clutched in both fists, marshalling the fury of the maelstrom. The battlefield was darkening as the Fenrisian sun, that old ball of blood that gave the portal its name, sank slowly to the sawtooth horizon. The sky was already a dark wine-red, streaked with trails of smoke and the flickering illumination of promethium fires. Hail continued to hammer down in a blur, whipped into deadly eddies by the mastery of the Rune Priest.

  ‘Hjolda!’ he roared, fangs bared, feeling the awesome power of his calling answer the summons. Lightning, ice-white and blazing with spectral energy, lanced down in the wake of the hail, ripping through enemy formations and tearing up whole columns of men and vehicles where it landed.

  Ahead of him, the Wolves infantry had charged into the foremost formations of the invaders, hurling them back from the breach. Grey Hunters hacked and punched their way through whole regiments of Prosperine mortal troops, backed up by the ranged fire of the Long Fangs and the kaerl heavy weapon squads. Blood Claws raced into battle alongside them, howling in a frenzy of distilled kill-urge, flanked by growling Land Raider formations and whole rivens of kaerls. Protected and warded by Sturmhjart’s peerless control of the storm, the Wolves had room to kill, and they did so eagerly. The magicks of the sorcerers in the Thousand Sons had failed to do anything to answer the Rune Priest’s onslaught in the hours since the gates had gone down, tied up as it was defending their own troops from the elemental fury.

  For all that, the Fenrisian position was precarious. The Wolves fought like the demigods they were, laying waste to whole companies of mortals, but there were thousands upon thousands of troops in the enemy vanguard alone. Every so often, a massed thicket of las-beams would down a Hunter in his tracks, or a tank shell would find its mark with armour-cracking force. Each time a Sky Warrior fell, a pang of frustrated anger swelled within Sturmhjart’s breast, and the swirling majesty of the storm was raised to an ever higher level of lethality.

  They were losing ground. They would lose ground through the night and they would lose ground for as long as they fought into the dawn. Traitor Marines had made their way to the front ranks and joined the battle. They were mirror opposites of the Vlka Fenryka, equal in deadliness but utterly different in method. Whereas the Wolves fought with an exuberant, flamboyant skill, exulting in their raw prowess, the Thousand Sons came to the battlefield silently, marching like strangely animated bronze-crested ghosts. There were already too many of them to hold back, dozens more than the defenders could bring to bear in response, and additional troops were coming into the contact zone with every hour.

  Faced with such odds, the warriors of the Twelfth fought with a zeal that made Sturmhjart’s hearts swell with savage pride. No quarter was given, asked for or contemplated. The Wolves hurled themselves into combat with an utter disregard for anything other than the pain they could inflict on a foe they hated more than there were words to express. As the sun finally sank below the horizon, Sturmhjart saw a lone Grey Hunter barrel into a whole squad of Rubric Marines, his power-axe blazing in the dark before disappearing into a forest of sapphire amour. The manoeuvre cost him his life, but it gave an entire company of kaerls time to withdraw to higher ground and establish new firing positions.

  It was bitter, as bitter as gall, to lose brother warriors in such a cause. Full retreat would come in time, and then the ground would be yielded to the enemy.

  But they all knew the score. Every metre of stone, every rock, every patch of blackened ice, would be fought over until the blood of the enemy ran in rivers across it. Such was the way of Fenris, just as it had been since the dawn of the Imperium, just as it ever would be.

  Sturmhjart stole a quick glance over his shoulder, back toward the gaping gate-ruins. The proud arches slumped into rubble, studded with gigantic fallen lintel-stones like megaliths. In the light of the fires he could see squads of kaerls hurrying to the front, many carrying fresh ammunition crates. Some of those contained boltgun magazines. Those carriers would sell their lives to get them to the Wolves on the front line.

  Strumhjart saw the look of fierce determination in their mortal eyes.

  No fear. Blood of Russ, they have no fear.

  Further back, under the sagging arch of the Bloodfire portal, more kaerls were working furiously in the halls beyond. Sturmhjart knew what they were doing, and it chilled his heart.

  It was worth it. The sacrifices were worth it. These were the fires in which faith was forged.

  He turned his attention back to the battlefield. For as far as he could see, the vast causeway swarmed with the enemy. His entire visual field was filled with ranks of infantry, studded with the hulking formations of mobile armour.

  Inexorably, inevitably, the enemy was driving them back to the gates.

  ‘You’re not here yet, you faithless bastards,’ growled Sturmhjart, spinning his staff round and drawing down more power from the storm. Lightning arced through the air, tearing apart a column of lumbering troop-carriers and throwing the vehicle-shells high into the hail-wracked wind.

  For the first time since the orbital war, Sturmhjart began to feel himself again. For too long, he’d been mired in guilt and the need to atone. The failure to predict the attack had hit him hard, driving his ebullient wolf-spirit into an unfamiliar realm of doubt.

  Enough. My soul lives for this.

  It was ca
thartic, this exercise of power. As he governed the elements in the cause of righteous murder, his blood ran as hot as mjod. He felt the avatar of the Helix, the grey-flanked beast that prowled the corridors of his mind, flex its claws in savage pleasure.

  He looked up. From out of the darkening night, a formation of enemy gunships was swooping low, engines burning and weapons spooling up to fire. They’d failed to take him out by sorcery, and now more conventional weapons were being employed.

  ‘Bring it on,’ growled Sturmhjart, summoning up the inferno that would rip the squadron out of the skies. His staff erupted in wyrdfire, possessed by power of such raw savagery it made him grin just to feel it.

  By the time the gunships were in range to fire, Odain Sturmhjart, High Rune Priest of the Space Wolves Chapter, was laughing with all his old, battle-tempered might.

  Twelve Dreadnoughts had emerged by the time Arfang had finished his rites. They lurked in the dark, their engines drumming. The servitors fussed around them, adjusting bearings and oiling exposed metalwork. The massive machines waited patiently, like giant plains-beasts tolerating the attentions of parasite-cleaners.

  ‘I can do no more, lord,’ announced Arfang, bowing to the mightiest profile of them all. ‘Both gates are now broken and under attack. Jarl Greyloc summons me to the surface again.’

  Cumbersomely, Bjorn turned his torso section to face the Iron Priest.

  Greyloc? Your Great Wolf?

  ‘Jarl of the Twelfth. Only a single company remains within the Aett. The Chapter has been called to Gangava, where Magnus the Red has been located.’

  There was a low growl from Bjorn at that name, a rumbling mechanical noise that emanated from his very core.

  Brief me as we ascend. Your tidings anger me, Iron Priest. I should have been consulted before this was done.

  The venerable Dreadnought’s voice had lost its undertow of sluggishness. Gradually, painfully, the ancient intelligence within was rising to a full pitch of awareness. There was an unfamiliarity in the accent it employed, even filtered through layers of vox-generators. Each syllable Bjorn uttered was somehow archaic, the embodiment of an age that had passed.

  Freija found herself marvelling at that speech. It made her skin prickle with anticipation. It was irascible and severe, as hard as the granite roots of the mountain. But there was something else. The same quality Aldr’s voice had.

  They are crippled with grief. The darkness, the cold. It has entered their souls.

  Arfang bowed to Bjorn in apology and took up his staff again. There was a faint click as something in his armour’s mechanisms communicated a signal to the servitors. They fell into line. All of those half-human horrors had survived intact.

  Not like Freija’s troops. Three of them would lie in the dark at least until the surface battle was over, uncremated and without the rites being said.

  Arfang shot a glance toward Freija then.

  ‘We are heading back now, huskaerl,’ he said. His voice was as metallic and clipped as ever, but there was an unhideable exhaustion there. Whatever he’d been doing in that vault, it had tested him to his limits. ‘You have come through the deep dark. My servitors are intact.’

  Freija felt a surge of bitterness at that bald statement. She was surrounded by warped monsters and ghosts from the past, all of whom were utterly indifferent to anything but their own arcane concerns. Looking for the right words, she almost replied too curtly, which would, of course, have been a big mistake.

  Luckily for her, Arfang’s next words stopped her in her tracks. He fixed her with a direct stare, though what thoughts passed behind that scarred helm-plate were, as ever, impossible to read.

  ‘Thank you,’ he rasped curtly.

  Then he turned away and stalked across the antechamber toward the tunnels. In his wake, the procession of Dreadnoughts rocked on their servos and primed to march. With a grind of long-static gears, the giant armoured hulls swayed into line. The beasts of the Underfang, still cowed by their presence, remained in the shadows, watching the ungainly progress as it unfolded.

  One of Frieja’s men came close to her.

  ‘What now, huskaerl?’ he whispered over the mission channel.

  For a moment, Freija had no idea how to reply. Then she shook off her surprise at Arfang’s brief concession to courtesy and snapped her skjoldtar into position.

  ‘Stay close, kaerl,’ she said. ‘Keep away from the beasts, but do not hinder them if they follow.’

  Freija grimaced as she recalled what they were capable of. This whole situation was too insane for words, but there was little to do but cope with it. Above all, her squad still needed leadership.

  ‘They will march, as we all do,’ she said, watching Aldr’s angular bulk fall into line amongst the other Dreadnoughts. ‘To war.’

  The Blood Claws swept back into the attack, leaping over boulders and tearing across the broken terrain. Brakk was in the forefront, his body low, weaving between incoming las-fire. Though dawn was close, it was still dark, and the slopes leading to the Sunrising Gate were lit only by the plasma fires still streaming across the shoulders of the Fang.

  ‘Tired, brother?’ inquired Helfist, coming into contact range and smashing a Prosperine soldier three metres back into his terrified comrades.

  ‘Of you, yes,’ replied Redpelt, swinging round to gun down a line of mortals before triggering his chainsword into throaty life. ‘Otherwise fine.’

  Helfist laughed, plunging through the wavering ranks and laying about him with his crackling power fist.

  ‘You’d miss me,’ he said, seizing a retreating trooper and slamming him into the ground with spine-breaking momentum, ‘if I wasn’t here.’

  ‘Like a bolt in the arse, brother,’ grunted Redpelt, dragging his blade through the torso of one victim before whirling round to take the head off another.

  Though neither would have admitted it, they were strung out. The battle had raged for hours, a terrible, meat-grinding conflict in which the Wolves had gone steadily backwards, forced towards their own ruined gates with a grim inevitability. Though the Claws had launched charge after charge, breaking the enemy with every surge, the ground could not be held. There were too many artillery columns laying down hammering curtains of fire, too many troops ready to fill the gaps.

  And too many Rubric Marines. Even as Brakk’s pack surged through their mortal opposition, more sapphire giants loomed up to meet them from the dark, their power weapons glistening in the shadows.

  ‘Traitor filth!’ roared Helfist, powering towards them as soon he saw the hated armour-profile, lacing his voice with the vitriol reserved only for fallen brothers.

  Redpelt was at his shoulder in an instant, and the two warriors crunched into the lead Rubric Marine together, slamming him back and off-balance. There was a ripple of crashes and sharp cracks as more Blood Claws launched themselves into combat, bellowing their fury with a tidal wave of fervour.

  And then Brakk was among them, heaving his power sword in huge, crushing curves. The Wolf Guard remained comm-silent as ever, but his presence was immense. He squared up to a Rubric Marine and their blades came together with a heavy, resounding clang. The twin lengths of metal danced, both of them blurred with speed, hacking and parrying with astonishing control and weight.

  Helfist and Redpelt maintained their own attack, driving the Rubric Marine back another pace. Redpelt thrust his chainsword low even as Helfist lunged high with his disruptor-field. If their adversary had been mortal, he’d have been dead in an instant. As it was, the Traitor swung his sword down to knock aside the buzzing chainblade before veering expertly away from Helfist’s heavy punch. Righting himself, the Rubric Marine then loosed a burst of bolter fire at Redpelt, hurling the Blood Claw back and out of combat.

  Helfist suddenly stood alone. For a split second he saw the face of his foe lit up by the storm. The helm-mask was ancient. Pale green witchlight bled from the lenses.

  The warrior within had fought for centuries, just as pas
sionlessly, just as skilfully. There was something horrifying about that silent visage – the irreversible corruption of what had once been the apotheosis of humanity.

  For an instant, Helfist froze, stricken by the vision of what the Adeptus Astartes could become. His own reflection was visible in those terrible lenses.

  ‘Maleficarum!’ came a voice from close by, urgent and desperate.

  A new figure slammed into the Rubric Marine, sending it tumbling out of contact. Helfist shook his head as he recovered, burning with shame.

  It would have killed me.

  He powered back into action. Brakk had been the one who’d saved him. Isolated and out of position, the Wolf Guard now took on three Rubric Marines single-handedly, including the one who’d frozen Helfist. The old warrior fought like a berserker of old, laying about him with the dread blade Dausvjer, his charred pelts flailing. His free fist punched out, shattering the snake-mask of a Traitor as his sword carved deep into another’s armour.

  ‘Blood of Russ!’ yelled Helfist, rushing to his aid, feeling the force in his power fist explode again into roaring life.

  He arrived in time to see Brakk cut apart, his helm-plate blasted into pieces by close-range bolter-fire as the third Rubric Marine stabbed his blade in deep below the breastplate. More Traitors piled in soundlessly, hacking and slicing like butchers, as impassive in victory as they were in defeat.

  ‘Morkai!’

  Helfist burst amongst them, overcome with a flood of horror and grief. The wolf within him screamed, its jaws wide and eyes rolling. His vision went red, ringed with black, spiked stars. He forgot his training, forgot his technique, forgot everything but madness. He only felt his limbs moving, striking out with horrible, unnatural speed. He saw Rubric Marines scatter under his blows, ripped into dust-blown husks by his crushing strikes.

  Somewhere deep within, lips were pulled back from yellow teeth.

  ‘Kyr!’

  It might have been seconds, it might have been minutes. The combat claimed him, warping him into a maniacal engine of death. He killed, and killed, and killed.

  ‘Kyr!’