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The Call of the Pack - Gav Thorpe

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About the Author

An Extract from ‘Dawn of Fire: The Wolftime’

A Black Library Publication

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The Call of the Pack

Gav Thorpe

Before coming to the Helwinter Gate, Aigr Fyrsson had never paid much attention to warp translation. He could not say how many times he had been aboard ship when it had sunk through the storm barrier into the othersea. But he knew how many times he had entered the Gate of Endless Storms, which those not from Fenris called the Eye of Terror.

Sixteen.

Sixteen times he and the other survivors of the Firehowlers had plunged through the torrents of the warp into the most damned place in the whole galaxy: the ruins of Cadia. Sixteen times he had felt the wrench of dropping between reality and unreality more severe than any transition he had encountered before, like his soul was pressed hard to the inside of his skin. Also unlike every other warp jump, there was no counter-translation at the other end of the trip, not until they returned in failure from their mission. The Gate of Endless Storms did not lie beyond the stormwinds, it was the stormwinds and when in its grip there was no relent from the crushing presence of the immaterial.

Runes burned white hot along the walls of corridors and chambers of the Iljostihel, supplementing the strained energies of the former Imperial Navy frigate's small Geller field generator. Formerly the Stringent Guard, the ship had never been intended to weather such sorcerous assault as was found through the Gate. It had never been built to house Space Marines either, but that had not stopped the three dozen Firehowlers taking command after the loss of their original ship and the calamity of the monstrous Will of Eternity crashing into the surface of Cadia. Just over three score kaerls accompanied them, along with a handful of the original crew that had somehow survived the earliest forays into the madness of the warp.

Aigr and three more members of the Grey Hunters pack waited by the forward shuttle bay along with the other Firehowlers. The bulk of the much-battered Thunderhawk filled the chamber beyond the pressure door, almost comically large compared to the Naval transports the bay was supposed to accommodate. The launch bay's outer doors had been blown off and the atmospheric shield had failed during the eighth assault, which meant the kaerls could only perform pre-drop drills in the scant minutes while the Iljostihel was deep enough into Cadia's atmosphere for balanced pressure; maintenance was similarly restricted on the flight out.

How the broken remnants of a world located inside the warp still had an atmosphere was a question Aigr had stopped asking himself. It did not pay to reason too much regarding what happened beyond the Gate. There were things that he and his brothers would never talk about, even to each other.

The pressure doors behind the pack wheezed open, letting in the flicker of struggling lumens to complement the wyrdglimr of runes. Yellow light strobed over the Terminator armour of Leithi, whose gift name was Speaks-Fire. The iron wyrdleif hammered into the Rune Priests battleplate shone gold and the wall runes brightened to match them.

'Just like crossing the Sea of Mother's Tears when I was young,' said Leithi, but the strain in his voice betrayed the lie of his attempted levity. 'Nearly through.'

Aigr and the others said nothing. What was there to say that they had not said fifteen times before?

It was easy to tell when the air was thick enough to breathe, because it was choked with dust that made it near impossible to breathe. But pressure was more important than oxygen as the Firehowlers pounded aboard the last gunship and the kaerls charged the engines from the frigate's plasma reactors. Beyond the ragged maw of the bay wall, the shimmer of heat from the starships hull distorted the greyness. Repeatedly pushed beyond its intended tolerance for atmospheric entry, the ancient frigate was dwindling mission by mission, as surely as the Great Company. Yet its spirit held as firm as any other Firehowler, its growing list of malfunctions viewed like the idiosyncrasies of a long-time battle-brother.

When the bay was cleared and the interior gate sealed again, Bodvar, known to his peers as Bearclaw, longest-serving of the remaining Wolf Guard, gave the order to launch. There was nothing to see through the viewports, just a swirl of dust and occasionally larger debris that pattered against the hull of the Thunderhawk. Sometimes it sounded to Aigr like hands clawing and banging for entry but he never mentioned that to the others. Nobody said anything much at all, each warrior locked in his own thoughts, living his own memories behind eyes that stared ahead without emotion. An outsider would have thought them catatonic or dead, but Aigr knew better. This was not mental collapse that might be seen in lesser soldiers. The Wolves of Fenris knew death personally, from early age, and hardship was the anvil on which their lives were forged. Detachment wasn't a symptom of breaking but a necessity to avoid it. Every brother around him was as alive and fierce as ever, but that fire was kept guarded behind walls of iron so that only endless ice could be seen from outside.

It was impossible to navigate by sight and the Thunderhawk's machinespirit was just as vexed by the unreality of the Gate of Endless Storms as the handheld auspexes and the sensorium of Terminator armour. Leithi stood in the command chamber with the pilot and guided the gunships flight to their objective, sensing the route past swirls of immaterial rift and physical obstructions alike, as he had steered them through the warp itself.

The Rune Priest's wyrd wasn't needed to locate the remains of the Blackstone Fortress. The broken remnants of the primordial vessel weighed on the minds of all those aboard, like a hole on the edge of the spirit, dragging one's thoughts down into a vortex. It was claws inside the skull, pulling everything towards it, tearing at conscious and subconscious alike.

Fifteen times before, they had ventured into the depths of the ash dune-shrouded ruins, digging their way into the broken carcass of the former star base, fighting off mortal and immortal foes alike, pressing through the living nightmare that pulsed from the alien stone and the half-imagined static snarl that emanated from Cadia's broken pylons.

Today Leithi was taking them to a new landing site, close to a separated piece of the void fortress that they had not yet investigated. As the Thunderhawk dipped through the swells of the unnatural storm, howling winds occasionally parted the whirling clouds of sand and ash and atomised flesh, revealing the shadowy bulk of their destination. The sight of the jagged, dark upthrusts still had the power to force Aigr into a moment of reflection. It would never become familiar, no matter how many times he visited those forbidding ruins.

The view through the Thunderhawk canopy was a stretch of black void broken by the crackle of starship weapons and the detonation of orbital defence fire. Traitor ships seemed to outnumber the stars: the gleam of plasma engines and the unholy glow of propulsion that owed nothing to physical means lit the firmament. Each ship cruising towards Cadia seemed vaster than the one before, until Aigr laid eyes on the Vengeful Spirit. The former Gloriana-class starship was unmistakable in size and brutality. Like its master it was a domineering presence among its vassals, its massed batteries and arcane lances alight with fury. Laser and torpedo spark illuminated the drifting wrecks of the Imperial battlefleet, a debris field that stretched in every direction. Never had Aigr thought a place of colossal death could contain such vibrancy, the void awash with the multicolour of burning gases and dissipating plasma clouds. It was destruction on a scale Aigr had never encountered but his augmentation, his upbringing, his training meant he viewed it with growing anger rather than fear.

Yet in the flare of gun deck and turret, Aigr saw something that made him question his eyes and then his sanity. It was larger even than the Thrice-cursed's flagship, its surface absorbing the light rather than reflecting it, darker than the vastness of space and yet agleam at the same time, as though eclipsing a sun that shone through from some other place that could not be seen. Its four arms had parted and partially rotated across its vertical axis to form the eight-pointed star, symbol of Hel, icon of the Dark Gods and their followers, and from the poles of its hub rippled arcs of lightning-fire.

'Teeth of Russ,' muttered Varin, the pilot.

'The one place only fools would go,' said Aigr. 'And that's exactly where we're heading.'

The swirling dust was like a cocoon, cut off from everything but the immediate surrounds, but it was cold and unforgiving rather than warm and welcoming. The Firehowlers advanced together, knowing where each other would be though they were indistinct shapes in the fog; knowing the horned and spiked silhouettes that came upon them were enemies to be cut down without thought.

Aigr tried to remember the old sounds of combat: the howls, the battle cries, the laughter from the joy of slaying the Allfather's foes. He couldn't. He wanted to let forth a shout of encouragement, to roar Russ' curse upon his enemies, to bellow his devotion to the Allfather, but the urge died in his chest, never reaching lungs or tongue. Just the moan of power armour, the snarl of chainblades, the crash of bolters and the crackling detonations of the Terminators' power fists. Rubble crunched as he advanced with bolter spitting rounds - underfoot were the remnants of a Cadian building, perhaps a home, maybe a barracks or a defence tower. Everything had been pulverised to featureless grey and black.

His foes did not bleed here. They were not mortal. As bolt-rounds detonated in warp-spawned bodies there were no splashes of gore, no shattering bones. In the overlap of the real and unreal the minions of Hel needed no physicality as they did when wholly in the realm of the living. They were wyrdborn in the purest sense, formed of thought and emotion and nightmare. Those that came at him today were red-skinned, white-eyed warriors with great swords and axes of bronze that left fire-edged rents in the air where they swung. Their cloven feet marked the dull ground with ember-glow footprints and the orbs of their pupilless eyes glowed like lumens, paired deathlights that found the Firehowlers unerringly through the miasma.

The Grey Hunter aimed without thought, his body moving, with lethal purpose divorced from any desire of his conscious mind. His war-instinct had settled on a wyrdborn taller than the others, with a mane of black hair knotted with skulls of humans and xenos, wielding a jagged-edged sword nearly as tall as a human.

Aigr fired bolts manufactured on worlds he had never heard of, taken from across the ruin of Gadia from the bodies of fallen Astartes of a score of different Chapters, just as others had their weapons and parts of their armour painted in the grey of the Vlka Fenryka. It felt like he continued to fight for them, making using of ammunition that had gone unspent in the defence of the fortress world. He wondered if he even fired bolts at all. Their distinct cough and crack was muted, the flicker of propellant more like wyrdlight sparks, each round's detonation a miniature sun that for a split second leered with a monstrous face.

The wyrdborn champion reeled back from the impacts, hit by more shots from other pack-brothers. Aigr pressed forward, shooting again, placing each bolt in a tight cluster to shatter a breastplate no more real than the body within.

Around him the occasional grunt of pain, the shriek of metal against metal, brought sharp punctuation to the incessant dullness of the battle. The rasp of Bearclaw's chainfist went uninterrupted though it chewed through foes just a few yards to Aigr's left - no juddering of resistance or shriek of shirring teeth against armour. The flatness of everything threatened to unbalance Aigr as he dodged the wyrdborn's falling blade, the pulsing flame at its edges licking across his bolter as he brought it up, the saw-toothed combat blade affixed beneath the muzzle parting wyrd-forged body like a hand through fog.

A snarl echoed inside Aigr's head as the apparition collapsed into falling blood, the puddle that splashed across the broken masonry quickly becoming shadow and then nothing. As swiftly as his foe dissipated so too did the sensation of motion and life within Aigr, his blood feeling like lead cooling in his veins.

Over everything loomed the spar of the shattered void fortress. As the Firehowlers came closer to their goal, more shapes carved eddies through the grit and smog. Shapes not wyrdborn but of power armour adorned with wolf pelts, as grey as the surroundings but unmistakably there, their outlines like a negative space in the dust-fog. Today, as before, there were sometimes other companions: warriors in battleplate that flickered with green fire and orange flame, and in the shifting light of their presence Aigr spied a livery of black and bones.

But nothing here seemed real at all and he wondered if maybe they had never escaped the Gate. Perhaps this was the realm of Hel and the Firehowlers were the ghosts, fighting unseen alongside companions in the realm of the living.

The walls looked like spilled ink made solid; rainbow swirls just below the surface formed screaming faces and maddening runeshapes. Aigr stayed close to his pack leader, Hathi Iron-smile, the other two members of the pack a short distance behind. He didn't know where the other six Grey Hunters were - probably still on the surface of Cadia or fighting in one of the many boarding actions still raging in orbit. Sven Bloodhowl and his Wolf Guard forged a path ahead, though nobody knew what they were heading for: something, anything, that could cripple the immense void craft before its planet-slaying power was in range of Cadia.

It mattered nothing to Aigr, he was too caught up in the murder-make to think beyond the next foe, the next blow. Creatures neither fully beast nor human charged at the Space Marines along the oddly angled corridors and archways, some with crude propellant-charged weapons, others with blades and mauls. Aigr and his pack-brothers greeted them with snarls and bolts, Hathi's chainsword a bane to any enemy that reached them.

Deeper they went, leaving dead brothers behind and with an ever-growing number of foes ahead. Aigr knew then that they walked the silver trail, the winding path between Hel and the Upplands, with glory on the one side and abysmal damnation on the other. Death was a certainty; only the manner of the thread-cut remained to be determined.

They must have neared a worthy target, for Traitor Astartes - armoured warriors in black and silver - arrived to goad more beastmen into the Firehowlers, hoping to deplete their ammunition and test their cohesion.

It failed. At the forefront of the attack, the Terminators and Wolf Lord made short work of the bestial enemy with crackling fists and gleaming power axe. The Black Legionnaires withdrew before they felt that ire fall upon them next, a thundering salvo of autocannon fire filling the passageway with high-velocity shells to cover their retreat.

'They will not spool out their thread much longer,' Hathi called, waving the squad forward with his chainsword, spatters of wyrdkin-ruin splashing across his helm and chestplate. 'Run them down and sate your hunt-hunger!'

The Grey Hunters pounded down the corridor after the retreating enemy, until the vox crackled into life.

'Leave them be, they will lead us only into more distress and away from our prize,' the Wolf Lord commanded. 'Break pursuit and look for whatever it is they do not wish us to discover.'

Aigr, at the rear of the pack, turned back to rejoin Sven Bloodhowl and the others. A couple of seconds passed before he realised there were no footfalls coming after him.

'Hathi? Sigar?'

Aigr was alone. The walk were more crystalline here, reflecting a fragmented view of the Grey Hunter, distorted and discomforting. Other than when he had taken the Trial of Morkai he had never been out of sight of a fellow neophyte, Blood Claw or other battle-brother. Now the corridor swallowed all sound, the darkness seeping from the walls to obscure even the auto-senses of his armour.

He was about to try the vox when bolter fire sounded from the direction of the pack, and the echo of heavier weaponry from the Wolf Lord's retinue behind. Aigr had been with his new pack less than half a year, having moved up to the Grey Hunters from his position as Blood Claw just before the Rune Priests had seen the omens of Cadia's demise. Instinct sent him after them, away from Sven Bloodhowl and the bulk of the Great Company.

'Wait for me,' he voxed, breaking into a run. Weapons fire intensified, the walls vibrating with bolt detonations and the crash of ceramite against ceramite.

He came upon the pack around a sharp corner, almost sprinting into his pack-brothers. Hathi Iron-smile lay on the floor, his head several yards from his body. On top, speared on the pack leader's chainsword, a Black Legionnaire struggled to rise, a sword that shimmered with sickening yellow in his fist. A bitter fight between the other traitors and the Wolves of Fenris filled the chamber; fist and knife, head, elbow and point-blank bolter shot deciding the fate of each.

The traitor tried to raise his head as Aigr stopped in front of him.

'You will nev—' The Black Legionnaire's taunt became a choked cough and he pushed again, the curved teeth of the chainsword lacerating his flesh as he dragged himself from it.

'For the Allfather and Cadia,' growled Aigr.

He thrust the muzzle of his bolter into the gap between the Black Legionnaire's helm and plastron, pulling the trigger. The explosive bolt ripped through the flexible neck seal and shredded the traitor's spine.

For a moment he was mesmerised by the broken remnant that slipped back down the chainsword, headless and powerless.

A thud of a boot brought him back to the battle, turning with weapon raised as another of Abaddon's cursed followers leapt at him. Turning the blow aside with his arm, Aigr let loose a howl and lost himself in the madness of the reddening.

Revving the motor of the chainsword he had taken from Hathi's dead grip, Aigr pushed himself into a run, fighting against the drag of his own mired soul as much as the sucking dune-ash underfoot. The other Firehowlers surged around him, coming to the same realisation as Aigr.

The men and women ahead, gathering from across a rough encampment of canvas, metal and toppled stone, had looked at first to be another of the many scattered remnants of Cadia's defenders; billions had been on the planet when the blackstone edifice had crashed into the surface and the maw of the Gate of Endless Storms had opened wide. Even now, more than two years later, there were whole armies somehow still fighting amid the ruin of their former home, just as the Firehowlers were still seeking their lord.

Their proximity to the shattered piece of the void fortress was rare. Most Cadians avoided the destroyer of their world, through terror or superstition.

But not all.

Aigr had glimpsed a far larger figure in the distance, black-armoured, with a horned helm.

The Cadian renegades threw themselves forward, lasguns held as bayonet-spears and clubs, devoid of powercells. Faces twisted with mindless rage. Only the Allfather knew what horrors had broken them, what tortures of body and mind they had endured only to finally find refuge in madness. Their cries were as much horror as rage, their lips pulled back in grimaces of bestial instinct.

Their former service did not save them. A volley of bolts ripped apart the first renegades to break towards the Wolves of Fenris. After that, it was brutal melee. As he broke the neck of a foe with a swing of his bolter, Aigr felt the teeth of a chainsword gnawing across his chest plastron. A former sergeant swung the weapon in both hands again but Aigr's whirring blade was quicker, taking the man apart from groin to neck.

Unlike the wyrdborn, his end was very messy and Aigr felt a tiny spark of satisfaction at the red gore soaking into the dust.

Bolter rounds shrieked back through the fog from the distant Black Legion slavemasters, each leaving a black trail like negative tracer rounds. Aigr reacted too slowly, caught in split-second contemplation of the Guardsman's blood. A bolt splintered the ceramite encasing Aigr's right arm, weakened in previous battles. The explosion tore into muscle, the pain a sudden, almost welcome sensation among the numbness. Aigr almost dropped his bolter as nerve endings spasmed with sudden life.

To his enhanced body the damage was a momentary thing, the surge of anti-pain biochemicals washing away the sensation. Aigr raised his weapon to return fire but the press of combat obscured the Black Legionnaires as the former shock troopers charged, unaided, against the Wolves of Fenris.

The unaugmented humans stood no chance against the Vlka Fenryka. Seeing their shield-troops hacked down within seconds, the Black Legionnaires - Aigr had spied at least four as he carved apart another handful of Cadians - slipped away into the murk of dust and ash.

Unlike on the Will of Eternity there was no pursuit, no command needed to halt the remains of the company. To be split in this desolate, half-nightmare place was to be damned. None needed reminding why they were there. They had one mission: find Sven Bloodhowl. Hard lessons had been learnt in the first forays into the Gate of Endless Storms: experience gained at the expense of losses. No distractions. No delays. Hel had a way of gripping your soul, of pulling you back when you wanted to leave, distorting time and energy and desire.

They had all seen what had become of the Thirteenth Company, those that had travelled with the Wolf King into the depths of this place and been trapped for an age. Nobody called the curse by its name, but it was there all the time, the other side of the Canis Helix that gave them strength and protected them against the wild wyrd. Looking at the frenzied expression of a Cadian at his feet, her torso severed at the waist by two sweeps of his chainsword, Aigr saw the same animal ferocity there.

Perhaps it was not just the Wolves of Fenris that wrestled with a beast inside, but all those that were born in sight of the Gate.

* * *

The vox was mostly static but for occasional disturbing noises, like monstrous chattering teeth or the echo of bones snapping in some vast space, but now and then fragments of transmission made it through to the surviving Grey Hunters. Theirs was not the only pack to have become separated, by movement of the fortress' interior or by enemy action, but according to the broken reports a core of the Firehowlers were still at their lord's side, closing on some goal that Aigr did not know.

'All packs, move… press on while we… Break through. Now! Now we have the—'

'Melta charges are rea… no fuse-time… need to find anoth—'

'…unt their counter-attack. Lost visual with… something monstrous…'

'Russ, what is that? Ach, wyrdborn! Its massi—'

The spurt of distorted vox-traffic indicated that the Wolf Lord believed some kind of victory was in sight, though what that might be, and what the consequences were for anybody else aboard the Will of Eternity, was impossible to guess. Egrik had assumed leadership, longest serving of the four, but there was little for him to do: there was no objective, no orders, no mission that they could accomplish. Instead they focused on trying to join up with another part of the Great Company.

By design of some unknown force, favourable wyrd or sheer luck, the pack battered their way through a glasslike wall to find themselves in the void-exposed hall where they had landed in a gunship along with two other packs. The Thunderhawk was still there, unscathed, and at first Aigr took it to be an illusion. Closer inspection revealed it to be true, however unlikely.

'Praise the Allfather,' said Aigr, running a hand over a landing stanchion.

'I thought we would never get off this Hel-cursed place.'

'What do you mean?' said Egrik, 'We can't leave yet.'

The thudding of boots had them all turning, weapons ready. From the opposite end of the access tunnel appeared Firehowlers, a variety of pack markings on their shoulders, led by Bodvar Bearclaw. Leithi Speaks-Fire was a short distance behind, his rune armour afire with white-and-gold flame.

'Maleficarum!' declared the Wolf Guard as he set eyes on the pack and the gunship beside them. 'I would swear by my uncle's axe that we were a mile or more from this place if it was a step.'

'You are right, brother. The blackstone is infused with wyrd energy,' explained the Rune Priest. 'Dimensions and time are not subject to the laws of reality.'

'Is Bloodhowl with you?' demanded Egrik and received shakes of the head in reply. 'Have you seen him?'

'I feel he is still alive, but lost in darkness and fire,' said Leithi. 'We cannot reach him.'

'Perhaps that is the meaning of this misdirection,' said Egrik. 'This warped craft thinks to see us retreat rather than fight our way back to his side. It is a lure, a trap even.'

'Or delivery of the cumulative unspoken desire we all hold, or a path opened by the Allfather,' countered Leithi. He stepped past the pack, headed towards the boarding ramp controls. 'Who are you to read intent into this situation?'

'We cannot abandon the lord,' said Nordrin, turning to Bodvar, a hand held out in appeal. 'Tell him, Bearclaw!'

'I am not his to command!' snapped the Rune Priest. With a grumble the assault ramp hinged down from the nose of the gunship.

'That is true, and I will not order you, either,' the Wolf Guard said, looking at the power-armoured warriors and then at the Thunderhawk. 'Once aboard perhaps we'll find another way in, closer to Sven.'

'You're free to choose your path, Wolf Guard, but we're not going,' said Varin, moving away from the gunship. Nordrin and Korr followed, the lenses of their helms fixed on Aigr. A pair of the other Firehowlers went with them too. 'We have to find the Wolf Lord.'

Aigr could feel their expectation like chains, dragging him closer.

'No.' Aigr stepped back, the imaginary chains shattered by his defiance. 'I go with the runethegn. We'll find another way.'

The traitors had made their camp below an artificial escarpment formed from the flank of a mile-long chunk of the shattered Blackstone Fortress. A crack nearly thirty yards high allowed ingress, and the evidence suggested it had been used for some time by the Black Legionnaires and their accomplices. Leithi and Bodvar discussed what this might mean while the rest of the Firehowlers butchered the remains of the Cadians; good protein was as hard to find as any other resource in this bleak landscape.

'There has to be something of interest nearby,' argued the Bearclaw. 'Why would Abaddon's curs be skulking about the ruins of the void fort?'

'Or they come here to escape him,' said Aigr. His laugh was short, little more than a cough.

'You think the Bloodhowl draws them,' the Rune Priest said to Bodvar.

'You may be right.'

'I hear no gunfire,' Sigvat said, his voice solemn. 'Just grave-wind and the whispering dead.'

'Does it matter?' asked Thengir, last of the Blood Claws, weariness in his every syllable. 'We're here anyway.'

'Truth from youth,' said Bodvar, nodding.

Leithi had stopped as though trapped by a stasis field, his helmed face turned towards the sky. A few seconds later Aigr thought he heard the wind carrying a monstrous howl, though there seemed to be words in the sound as well. He found that the others were turning their gaze into the grey sky too, whispering and muttering, and looked up.

Ripples in the air grew, stirring the murk into vortices as though a wind was blowing from the horizon. Growing to a gale, the disturbance carved the ash clouds into crude shapes, of wolves chasing across the heavens. They circled each other for a few seconds until a larger wolf emerged at the centre, sitting, head thrown back as the howl reverberated again. It was much clearer than before, though Aigr felt it rather than heard it, his warplate's auto-senses registering no input. The lupine shapes turned and ran towards their leader, sleek bodies disappearing into it, feeding their master as it grew larger and larger. The chief wolf expanded and faded into the greyness but its yellow eye continued to sparkle like firelight, a distant star that refused to be eclipsed.

'Fenris.' Aigr barely breathed the word. He had never forgotten the world of his birth but had given up hope of seeing it again. It seemed odd to be looking back out of the Gate towards the planet when he had so many times looked up to see the storm in the sky.

'The hearth-howl,' said Leithi, reanimated. 'I sense the mind of the Stormcaller abroad on the wyrdsea.'

'What does it mean?' asked Sigvat. 'How can we all hear it?'

'We are beyond the storm barrier, where wyrd and mortal realms have nothing betwixt them,' explained the Rune Priest. 'Here the eye and the mind see the same, and perhaps even more than eye or mind alone. The Great Wolf has swift need, that much is certain. There were twelve wolves circling.'

'All of the Great Companies,' said the Bearclaw. 'The whole Chapter is to return to the Aett.'

Nobody spoke for several seconds until Aigr forced himself to voice the question someone had to ask.

'But what of the hunt for Sven?'

Aigr recalled his first memory of seeing Helwinter on Fenris. He had been with his uncle on a whaling expedition, no more than three summers old, about eight years by Terran measure. As Fenris passed into the dense asteroids at the point of orbit furthest from the Wolf's Eye, the skies had rained meteors even as the world was cased in the deepest freeze of the ice season. Close to the equator the sea was still a ribbon of water through the Icelands, and marine life massed, making them easy prey but also dangerous in such number. Aigr beheld the burning heavens with awe and terror, feeling tiny compared to the majesty and power of the elements that raged through the atmosphere. It was a sight common to every Fenrisian, the fire and ice; the harshest, most dangerous time of the year, which sorted the strong from the weak, raising life from death, creation from destruction.

Terror had been taken from Aigr with the changes wrought by the Wolf Priests, but he was united with the other Firehowlers in sharing a sight of such terrible import it was seared into his thoughts ever after.

Looking out of the viewports of the Thunderhawk, they watched with deep dread as the remains of the Will of Eternity plunged into the upper atmosphere of Cadia. An order of magnitude larger than even the greatest rock of the Helwinter, the Blackstone Fortress burned white with entry heat. Flames scores of miles long licked along its flanks. The firestorm of its entry was already expanding across the surface, sweeping away forests and cities, boiling lakes and seas dry. Leithi cried out, stumbling in his massive armour as he held a hand to his brow, a black nimbus of Morkai's breath playing about his armoured head.

Aigr felt it too, and so did the others, a great swell of death as the souls of billions screamed into the hereafter, torn from their bodies to Hel or the Upplands as their wyrd determined. For a moment he thought his spirit too would be wrenched from the flesh, a pain a hundredfold that of translation searing through him. As one, the Wolves of Fenris let loose grief laden howls, filling the gunship with noise.

The sensation passed, leaving emptiness. After some time in numb denial, Aigr pushed to the port again and saw the void stronghold breaking apart, becoming a dozen black spears that would slay a world. Unseen, on the planet's surface, the pylons that held back the energies of the Helwinter Gate shattered, their protective aura as broken as the ground on which they stood.

'Fly!' roared Leithi, rousing himself thundering towards the cockpit. 'Away from this storm!'

The view veered as the Thunderhawk turned, a brief glimpse of a titanic vortex devouring the stars, tendrils of rainbow energy jagged with lightning and fangs reaching out from beyond the storm veil. Aigr's last sight as the Thunderhawk powered into the void was of a storm of ash and flame devouring the remnants of the Blackstone Fortress, before distance and the plume of plasma afterburners obscured all that was behind.

Stood on the lowered ramp of the Thunderhawk, Aigr looked back through the dust swirl and ash clouds, the silhouette of the blackstone remnant just about visible at the limit of his auto-senses.

'Could he really have survived?' he asked quietly.

'Would you abandon the hunt?' replied Bearclaw. 'Are you ready to say that they are all dead?'

'Someone from the other side of the veil walks beside us,' added Leithi from inside the compartment. 'If the shade of Sven Bloodhowl was among them, why would they aid our quest? I believe they are those that perished with him, trapped in this world of Hel while bound by their oaths to a man that still lives.'

'Then we should stay and look for him,' said Thorrilkar Stone-Bear.

'Remain if you will, I do not claim any right to command you,' said the Wolf Guard, gesturing to the dust storm. 'But this gunship returns to the Iljostihel in sixty seconds.'

Aigr took a step off the ramp and bent a knee, scooping up the grey sand and dust. Perhaps the bones of his brothers were mixed into the fine grains. He whispered to himself, 'Nothing here but the ghosts of dead wolves.' But he was numbered among them now, his soul locked to this place.

He turned and mounted the ramp just before it started to close.

There would be a seventeenth time.

INTRODUCTION

Dawn of Fire: The Wolftime Limited Edition

I'm sure it will come as no surprise to readers of any experience that Big Stories need lots of words to be told. While it's possible to convey large stretches of history and vast conflict and battles with just a few lines (as the codex supplements and Warhammer 40,000 rulebooks from the Games Workshop Background Studio admirably attest), to get into the hearts and minds of the participants requires space and time in the narrative. This is a lesson I learnt at the sharp end of the Siege of Terra series, which was a culmination of many elements and storylines squeezed into a preset sequence of events.

With the Dawn of Fire series, the aim has been to recreate something as grand and compelling as the Horus Heresy, while drawing on lessons from The Beast Arises and the Siege of Terra author collaborations. The Indomitus Crusade exists in an interesting liminal space as a narrative. It has been written about in several Games Workshop products - some parts of it in great detail - yet on the whole it remains a huge, blank canvas on which many stories can be told. While it doesn't have the real-world context and history of the Horus Heresy, it does have the major advantage of being able to feature a cast of well-known heroes and villains from the 'current' 40K universe as well as allowing us to introduce new characters that might go on to become fan favourites. But, to get back to my point, both well-known characters like Roboute Guilliman and newly discovered participants like Custodian Vychellan need the same thing to grow within a series - page time.

There are also what I like to think of as 'foreground' and 'background' narratives, with the novel having to be a satisfying, self-contained story but also moving on the greater narrative of the series. Too little foreground and a book can feel like just a bridge between other stories (middle books of trilogies can often suffer from this), while not enough background makes a book appear disposable in terms of the series. Where possible, foreground and background should be seamless and linked. Quite often, using a classic A plot and B plot structure (do an internet search if you're unfamiliar) can service both types of story, but it's even better if the reader cannot tell exactly where the strands join and separate.

From the outset of planning I had decided that The Wolftime was going to be a big beast of a book. Looking at the first two novels in the series, and the lessons from The First Wall, bearing in mind what I wanted to achieve with this novel, I knew that it would be closer to 150,000 words than 100,000. Despite heavy planning, the story grew right from the outset, laying down foundations for characters that would then be able to go on to other stories if needed, and by the end of the book I was having to keep things on a tight rein not to bust through any semblance of the required word count... Like books in the Horus Heresy and Siege of Terra, I could have written another 30,000 words, probably.

I take that as a good sign and hopefully readers will appreciate the various threads and the additional depth that taking that space allowed.

It was important that I used those extra words because The Wolftime is my ode to Fenris, my love letter to the Space Wolves. As any 40K fan of my vintage will tell you, the Space Wolves occupy a special place in our hearts simply by dint of being one of the Chapters that was given a proper 'make over', in look and background, prior to the arrival of the second edition of 40K and the range of codex books. They were brought to life by fantastic miniatures from the hands of legendary sculptor Jes Goodwin. The Space Wolves could trace their real-world heritage all the way back to Rogue Trader, and in particular Chapter Approved: Book of the Astronomican. It was in this book that 'The Wolftime' first appeared, with famous words that you shall see repeated later in these pages.

It wasn't until the pages of White Dwarf magazine, starting in Issue 156, that the warriors of the Great Wolf really sprang apart from the other Chapters. The articles on the Space Wolves by Andy Chambers, Jes and Bill King (who would go on to bring further renown to Fenris with his Space Wolves novels) laid out the look and personality of the Chapter as we know it today.

Among these great miniatures and within the expanded background, the Space Wolves had their first special characters for our battles - Ragnar Blackmane, Ulrik the Slayer, Njal Stormcaller. Seminal additions to the Warhammer 40,000 universe. Which brings us back to the meat of the Indomitus Crusade, and being able to feature some of the Big Names of the Imperium and beyond whilst also surrounding them with a broad cast of other interesting folks.

That's how the Space Wolves remained over following iterations of the rules, until one Mr D. Abnett tackled their founding Legion in the Horus Heresy, and with Prospero Burns brought us an entirely new angle on these 'vikings in space'. This work is admirably accompanied by novels from Chris Wraight that served as equal inspiration for the Chapter I wanted to put onto the pages of this book.

However, perhaps ode and love letter are not quite the right terms, because in this book I hope I have laid bare the Vlka Fenryka in a way that is more than just buffing up their collective ego. With the good comes the bad, the rough with the smooth, stripping away some of the in-universe fiction to examine Fenrisian culture and Space Wolves exceptionalism. To me that is part of the love. It isn't to glorify without fault (fat chance of that when I've written so much about Dark Angels!) but to admit those failings and love anyway.

Gav Thorpe

Nottingham, April 2021

About the Author

Gav Thorpe is the author of the Horus Heresy novels The First Wall, Deliverance Lost, Angels of Caliban and Corax, as well as the novella The Lion, which formed part of the New York Times bestselling collection The Primarchs, and several audio dramas. He has written many novels for Warhammer 40,000, including Indomitus, Ashes of Prospero, Imperator: Wrath of the Omnissiah and the Last Chancers series, including the most recent title, The Last Chancers: Armageddon Saint. He also wrote the Rise of the Ynnari novels Ghost Warrior and Wild Rider, the Path of the Eldar and Legacy of Caliban trilogies, and two volumes in The Beast Arises series. For Warhammer, Gav has penned the End Times novel The Curse of Khaine, the Warhammer Chronicles omnibus The Sundering, and, for Age of Sigmar, The Red Feast. In 2017, Gav won the David Gemmell Legend Award for his novel Warbeast. He lives and works in Nottingham.

An extract from Dawn of Fire: The Wolftime.

The traitors brought the storm with them and the heavens were clad in midnight. The broken miles-high spires of Holkenved were swallowed by dark clouds billowing down from the void, descending upon the ruin of the hive city as a flock of carrion eaters on a corpse. And like a scavenging flock there was movement within the cloud, churning and twisting, pushing into broken portways and sliding along cracked viaducts.

Where the miasma came, suffocating blackness followed. The last fitful stutters of lumen globes and lightstrips were snuffed out by the encroaching shadow. The whirr of atmocirculators became mechanical stammers that sighed into silence, throttling the least movement, as though every molecule had been seized in a freezing grip. Dead air chilled by altitude sank through the levels of the city, piling down into great crevasses of metal and ferrocrete carved by a twenty-day onslaught of orbital wrath. Shadow and chill stalked the corridors of palaces and swept into slave pens. The umbra flowed over bloating carcasses; it caressed time-rigid corpses; inhaling dying breaths still hanging in the air.

Tendrils of icy dark quested through the broken spire heights, pushing blindly through the devastation until they sensed the first traces of life. Sluggishly, but with increasing purpose, the blackness slithered towards these knots of warmth: it was not the mortal radiation of breath or blood that it hunted but the immaterial heat of human souls.

The first prey the creeping fog discovered were scattered survivors, cut off from the rest of the hive by collapsed walls, ruptured hallways and miles-deep shafts cut by starship lance strikes. Such barriers penned in noble and servant alike. To the deadly cloud all were the same, too. Each was a flicker of nourishment that tasted as sweet whether it came from the descendant of three millennia of inbred Holkenved aristocracy or the child that cleaned out the waste pipes. Some perished of fright, their final screams cutting ripples through the cloud before being quenched. Many hurled themselves to the depths or dashed their heads out upon the jagged rubble, driven by the whispers that presaged the blackness, unable to bear the voices’ constant urgings of self-hate. Others suffocated in the cloying un-air that followed the advancing miasma, or had their blood turned to ice as wisps of voidmist passed through their hearts.

Barely sustained by the morsels of the spires, the hungering fog flowed onward. Miles down from the summit, life glowed like the embers of a fire, stoked to flame in places. Though no soul was stronger than any other, in togetherness there was a strength, a combined light that baulked the shadow. Here and there such flames wreathed as protective rings, centred on officers and priests. But for every castle of faith there were also gaps where terror reigned still. As though guided on a leash, the darkness flowed back and forth across the city levels, probing, exploring the boundaries between the vulnerable and the strong, filling chambers of the factories and dormitories of the peasantry while steering away from the blazing cathedra and shrines.

When all the upper reaches of the hive were invested with darkness, the storm writhed again. Lightning clawed down from the boiling cloud, scattering over the cracked skin of the ancient city, driving into the open wounds upon its mountainous body. Pulse after pulse of white energy split the skies until the summit of Holkenved was aflame with strikes and the blackness convulsed with immaterial power.

The screaming, twisting column of energy drove deeper and deeper into Holkenved, splitting and merging as it raced along halls, avenues and tunnels, speeding through the darkness but a part of it also.

A fresh wave of pure terror struck the companies arrayed in defence of the hive’s mid-layers. Despite the barked warnings of commissars, veterans and new recruits alike cast down their weapons and fled, to be rewarded by sharp las-bolts in their backs. Those that remained clung grimly to their weapons, tears streaking their faces as every nightmare remembered and imagined welled up in their thoughts. Some were physically sick with dismay, others fought back with mumbled prayers that sounded weak against the cloying silence that possessed the hive.

There were wings in the tempest, but not of crows and ravens. The scarlet flare of jump packs and gleam of eye-lenses fell with the storm; sparks within a darker shadow with teeth of explosive bolts and claws of plasma. As though birthed by the storm itself, figures woven from darkness and lightning erupted from the gloom, joyous screeches and laughter filling the void with noise. Encased in suits of armour older even than Holkenved, carried upon crooked wings and infernal power, the traitors burst upon the defenders even as the thunderous storm broke, its detonation scattering the upper reaches as ash and debris. Amid defiant las-fire and the bark of autocannons, the warriors of the storm replied with their own guns and, scant seconds later, with cruel blades and claws.

The Night Lords.

Terror heralded their coming and death rode the lightning.

Gaius had been commanded to ignore the screams, but it was hard. Enhanced hearing, boosted further by the auto-senses of his warplate, meant that the cacophony of dread-filled howls and panicked shrieking cut short was ever-present.

Even so, the Primaris Marine followed orders and remained where he was with the rest of the strike force. There were seven others in his Intercessor squad. They had landed on Caldon IV with ten. Heindal and Gestartas had died during the landing, blasted apart by defence guns once employed to protect the domains of the Emperor but now turned against His warriors.

The squad was one of six in the strike force, itself part of a deployment company of one hundred and twenty Space Marines. All were Unnumbered Sons – Primaris brothers that had yet to be formed into new Chapters or adopted by one that shared their gene-seed. When they had left Terra three relative-years ago there had been two hundred and fifty of them.

They might have been Unnumbered but Gaius hoped someone, somewhere, was counting the dead.

Against the urge of warrior pride it made sense to allow the Astra Militarum and the loyal defence regiments of Holkenved to take the brunt of the Night Lords’ counter-landing. Had the traitors been waiting for the warriors of the Lord Commander to attempt to retake Caldon IV? Or had the Night Lords been brought to a fortunate intervention by the vagaries of the warp – if indeed they were vagaries for servants of the Dark Powers?

Gaius did not overly concern himself with the grander affairs of the Indomitus Crusade. It was enough to be a part of it; to destroy the enemy before him and see their plans undone. To him the higher matters seemed abstract. Like pieces being exchanged on a game board, armies moved across the stars, fighting over worlds while fleets obliterated each other in the void. All that mattered was the singular purpose of the Lord Commander: to reclaim the Imperium from its foes.

‘Keep your focus, listen for the command,’ reminded Lieutenant Astopites. He spoke calmly and slowly. Though he did not move, his cadence matched the same tempo he used when pacing up and down the squad ranks during drill. Gaius pictured a ghost version of his superior moving among the strike force with deliberate strides and knew exactly where he would have been had he not remained standing by the great doors of the hall in which they were mustered. Astopites was a Firstborn warrior of the Novamarines, inches shorter and thirty decades older than Gaius and his Primaris companions.

‘Every cry you hear is a sacrifice. Just as He on Terra must endure for the Imperium to survive, so we too must endure this test now.’

Amid the noise of human suffering and desperate defence, Gaius caught the distant report of bolters and crackle of energy weapons. The Night Lords were butchering their way closer.

‘They must know we’re here, brother-lieutenant,’ said Sergeant Faulkstein in the Aggressor squad to Gaius’ left.

‘Of course they do, brother-sergeant.’

Imaginary Astopites was at the end of the second line, just in front of Sergeant Cormacca’s squad. Gaius pictured him without moving his head from parade ground straight-ahead or even a flicker of his eyes – a side-benefit of tactical visual mnemonic processes included in the Primaris psychodoctrination package. Possessing extended kinaesthesia that extended far further than a normal human’s senses, Gaius was instinctively aware of the proximity of his battle-brothers. There was a rumour that Astopites inloaded lens display feedback data to check whether any of his warriors ever faltered in their steady gaze during inspection. If he did, none of them had ever been faulted for it.

As he waited patiently for the coming confrontation, Gaius thought about the enemy force. A number of Night Lords flotillas and companies had been preying on worlds all along the Iron Veil – a boundary zone within reach of the Great Rift but not directly touched by it. More importantly, the worlds of the veil fell along a kind of political fault line, as Gaius understood it, surrounded by wilderness systems between the sectors historically aligned to Fenris and those patrolled by a Black Templars crusade. On top of that, it curved on the very fringes of the semi-official demesne of Ironhold and the Knights of House Kamidar. Before the arrival of the Iron Veil task force from Battle Group Retributus, the local Imperial commanders had suffered a lack of external allies to call upon.

At first Gaius had thought it remarkable that a few thousand Traitor Astartes had subjugated a dozen worlds. However, a communication from Lord Commander Guilliman had explained how so few could conquer so many. Not by strength of arms: that would have been impossible. Something far more devastating had been unleashed upon the Iron Veil: fear. Such was the terror of the Night Lords that the threat of attack was enough for each of the Iron Veil rulers to bow the knee to the Sons of Curze and pay tribute to stave off their arrival.

Fear had enslaved twelve worlds more swiftly than any occupying force.

Astopites continued, breaking Gaius’ chain of thought.

‘The Night Lords’ scans, perhaps even that filthy warp tech shadow they unleashed, must certainly detect our presence. It is to tempt us into premature engagement that the traitors are making such a show of slaughtering our allies.’ A sudden pause in the lieutenant’s tempo gave the impression of a similar pause in his steady tread, about three yards to Gaius’ right. ‘Remind me, Brother-Sergeant Faulkstein, why our allies are deployed to the front when we might hold the line ourselves?’

Astopites was as painstaking in his briefings as he was everything else. He firmly believed that his field-company, such as it was, would go on to be the glorious officer corps of the future. To that end he briefed them thoroughly on all strategic decisions and encouraged his Primaris Marines to tactically improvise when necessary.

‘The Night Lords rely upon morale-sapping attacks, swiftly initiated and moving from target to target,’ Faulkstein replied, repeating the lieutenant word for word. ‘The disposition of our allies will blunt the enemy’s momentum and draw them into a disadvantageous and divided position. We will counter-attack when they are at their most vulnerable.’

‘And not a millisecond before,’ Astopites concluded. ‘No matter how many of the Emperor’s servants fall. To act earlier jeopardises victory and would be a waste of their sacrifice.’

Planetary governors, ruling councils and Imperial commanders had been so terrified of the Night Lords bringing their warriors that they had willingly spread the fear themselves. They had reason to be fearful: the Night Lords were hated and dreaded almost as much as Abaddon, especially along the Iron Veil, which had been subjected to many raids over the millennia. Ten thousand years of murder and torture were warning enough that the Lords of the Night did not make idle threats. Every violence and humiliation they said they would visit upon dissenters was backed up by millennia of proof. Every capitulation had hastened the next, as each world sought to comply and pass the threat along the Iron Veil, on to their neighbour.

If that first world – Endlespin – had stood firm and called for aid the Night Lords might have been undone. But the lord regent had not blamed the Imperial commanders.

‘Selfishness is the companion of fear,’ he had said. ‘The cataclysm of the Cicatrix Maledictum has made every system feel as though it is fighting alone against the darkness.’

The battle group had been tasked with liberating these systems from the bloody-fingered grip of the Night Lords, to bring hope to the Iron Veil. Lord Guilliman had sent them off with sound words.

‘Fear multiplies when not confronted, gaining strength when unchallenged because its true potency is never tested.’

Gaius and his brothers were here to challenge that fear, just as thousands of others did likewise across the broken Imperium.

The energy of the terrorstorm flowed through Ektovar, filling him with vitality just as the stacked crystal reactor in his jump pack powered his warplate. He was the storm, feeding it the horror of his foes while it sustained him in return. Its flaring embrace caressed his armour; its driving hunger filled him with desire, stoking the emptiness of his soul until it was ignited by a fire of need that could only be sated with rapturous slaying.

As one of the Darkstrike it was his honour to be at the forefront of the attack, becoming the maw of the terrorstorm as it fed on the dread of the hive occupants. For too many days he and his midnight-clad companions had waited in orbit, poised to unleash their heavenly slaughter yet held back by the tight leashes of their masters. Day followed by endless day, dry and dusty, the life-thirst unslaked and growing. Every passing hour an agony of wanting, until he had felt the first hint of soulwash as the sorcerer Ke’Hiva channelled the misery of the Emperor’s lackeys, becoming the conduit for the terrorstorm.

At first the wave of sudden shock and panic had buoyed him up, sending jolts of pleasure through Ektovar even before his blade tip had pierced flesh to release the blood of his victims. The Darkstrike attacked like flesh-feeders in the underlakes of night-wreathed Nostramo. Striking quickly, they butchered without art, while their senses reeled with the influx of despair.

Once the edge of his desire had been taken off, Ektovar started to seek more particular morsels. Gifted the dreadtaste by his binding to Ke’Hiva, the Raptor followed the undulating curves of fear that rippled through the living fog that had carried him and the others to the hive city. Moans and sobs, the sickly sweetness of hormone release, the flicker of movement in his peripheral vision confirmed the presence of new prey.

A las-bolt glanced from his chestplate, the spark of it bright red among the white and pale blue energies coursing over the ancient ceramite. He retraced its trajectory, desire rising, but Felskas found the cowering woman first, the wings of his pack obscuring Ektovar’s view as her whimpering became a howl of despair that sent a quiver through the storm and Raptor alike.

Ektovar moved on, filtering one scent from another, following the strongest spoors of fear-hormones. In blackness he moved, forked tongue flickering at the air passing through the adapted vent of his visor.

With silent bounds, the Raptors sought their prey. With them came umbral companions, flitting along the ebony fog bank that forced its way through cracked ferrocrete and seeped along fractured pipes. From the questing fingers of the terrorstorm Ektovar caught a surge of synthetic hope – cortical stimms to improve reasoning, to quench the fear. Coming out into a broad, semicircular hall, the Raptors were met by a sudden hail of las-bolts and the slower, deeper thud of an autocannon. Just behind Ektovar, Serius cried out amid the cracking of armour and snapping of wings.

‘Ruinbrother,’ he wheezed across the vox as Ektovar ignited his pack and leapt towards the muzzle flare of the heavy weapon. ‘My flesh ails. Sustain me!’

Ektovar felt the spirit of his dying Darkstrike companion like fingernails scratching at a door, insistent and demanding. He swatted the psychic pulse away as if ridding himself of distracting flies. He had been starved too long, he would share his meal with no other.

A couple of seconds later Serius realised he would die, scorned by his ruinbrothers, alone in the darkness. His own fear spiked and within moments Nordra and Elizir fell upon their wounded companion, ripping his fear-tainted breaths from his lungs as snarling chainswords opened his armour and body, suckling on his last despair.

Firing his ornate pistol, Ektovar landed among the hive defenders, his boot-talons raking the face from one gunner, the pommel of his sword smashing open the head of another. The autocannon collapsed as he alighted, its tripod buckling beneath the weight of armour and occupant. Perched upon the crumpled metal, Ektovar allowed the fog to roll back, revealing himself before his true victim. The shrieks of the faceless gunner crackled across the Raptor’s senses and lightning flared over his armour in response. But the trooper’s fear was tainted with raw pain, innervating but not satisfying.

He turned on the officer commanding the defence platoon, bedecked in a long grey frock coat with a silver breastplate bound tightly over the thick fabric. Not a commissar, but still a worthy morsel. An Imperial aquila was moulded into the armour and Ektovar briefly wondered if the Corpse-Emperor enjoyed the same thrill of completeness from those He consumed.

Ektovar fixed the lenses of his helm upon his prey, letting the man see himself in their blood-red mirror. Defiant, the officer lifted a basket-hilted blade and pistol. The Night Lord allowed him a shot, a blast of blue careening from the side of his helm that brought a surge of hope from the Imperial lackey – a hope that made the spike of fear that much greater when the Raptor let out a shrill cry and pounced.

Gaius was not enamoured of strategic thought, beyond what he needed to know to kill traitors. As sergeant of his squad, his focus was more localised, trying his best to create an effective fighting unit for every situation. His task had become harder in the recent months of fighting against the Night Lords, with only himself and three other members of his squad as survivors of the unit that had originally deployed with Fleet Primus; over that time eleven other Space Marines had fought and died at his side.

The Night Lords had been unwilling to engage in a massed battle, but rather than abandoning their victim-worlds back to the Imperium they had instigated widespread uprisings, which had turned what should have been reconnection missions into bloody reconquests. Such was the hold they had on their prey, the vassal planets would rather face the wrath of the lord regent’s armada than a Night Lords punishment attack. The three Iron Veil worlds so far retaken had drawn away valuable fighting resources – Astra Militarum, Naval and Adepta Sororitas assets required to reassure the populations and their rulers that they were safe from Night Lords reprisals.

And then, after more than half a Terran year of evasion and raids, the Night Lords had come to Caldon IV in strength. That they had arrived while the task force landings from orbit were commencing could not have been coincidence.

‘Estimate one minute until counter-strike begins,’ Lieutenant Astopites informed the force, quiet and confident. ‘Final weapons check.’

As he revved the motor on his chainsword and slid his pistol from its holster, Gaius could feel the battle-eagerness growing inside him. Since the breakout from the landings he and his warriors had suffered enforced idleness, concealing their strength and conserving warriors and materiel.

Holkenved was the capital hive, seat of the Imperial commander, and had signalled its surrender to the Imperial forces even before they arrived in orbit. Yet it was an island among a sea of insurrection, the rulers of rival hive cities having thrown in their lot with the Night Lords and rebels to oust ancient adversaries. Now it seemed the Night Lords thought to crush all resistance, and reinforcement, with a single devastating attack. If Holkenved fell, Caldon IV would revert to the traitors and – as sure as snow fell on Fenris – the whole of the Iron Veil would be in open revolt again.

That could not be allowed to happen. The Lord Commander had been most adamant.

The people of Holkenved paid for their loyalty with their lives, as did any good servants of the Emperor. Ships were vital to the continuing impetus of Battle Group Retributus, while architecture and people were not. The command staff had feigned weakness, not wishing to scare away their enemies, dispersing the fleet as though fleeing attack. A predator acting like prey, playing dead. The gambit had meant less orbital support and Gaius could not help but wonder if Heindal and Gestartas would be alive if the landing zone had been targeted with a saturation bombardment prior to the drop.

Virtually unopposed, the Night Lords had targeted the hive from orbit. The void shields had failed on the second day, the defence lasers and missiles on the fourth. The further sixteen days that had followed served no military purpose but to ensure the total eradication of all life in the upper spires.

‘Bait,’ Captain Veirsturm had warned, when asked why the Night Lords were allowed to inflict such death and misery upon the hive city. ‘The hive is the young goat staked in the clearing, their assault companies are the arrow set in the bow poised to be let loose. They torture the people to draw our attack, and if we bare fangs too large for them, they will withdraw.’

The sergeant thought of the pict-grabs and vid-feeds that the lieutenant had used during the briefing. They had been intended for tactical assessment, but while Astopites had talked about the layout of passageways and damage absorbency reckonings of various materials, Gaius had fixed upon the hands jutting from rubble; the rictus grins on children’s faces covered with the ash of their parents; the walking wounded scrabbling at debris piles with bloodied fingers. The images both still and moving were silent, but cries for help, desperate moaning and noisy death had been the soundtrack of Holkenved for the past sixteen days, only drowned out by the thunder of starship shells and the irregular hiss of lance strikes wreaking more devastation.

Gaius’ grip on his chainsword tightened at the thought of bringing bloody reckoning. The idea that warriors created to be the cutting edge of the Emperor’s blade had been forced to hide behind a shield of civilians, Imperial Guard and defence troopers brought a bitter taste to his tongue.

Every day, every hour and every minute spent waiting would lend speed and strength to his arm when he was finally unleashed.

‘By squads, attack pattern alpha.’

The words the Unnumbered Sons had been waiting for issued across the vox from Captain Veirsturm.

The lead squads broke into a run, swiftly moving past Lieutenant Astopites. Gaius and his Intercessors were in the third line. Without a word they set off after another four seconds, fifty yards behind the squads in front. As he accelerated to combat pace, Gaius was aware of the smallest of weight differences at his hip, caused by the book he now carried in one of his ammunition pouches. Or perhaps it wasn’t the physical weight but the emotional burden that made him hyper-aware of his new acquisition.

A disruption to the routine of pre-drop doctrine caused a momentary ripple of disturbance across the muster deck. Gear checks and squad assembly perfected over thirteen previous drops suffered a second-long stutter as the gathered Space Marines each reacted to the foreign presence in their midst.

No remarks needed to be uttered for the intruder to be noted. An extra breath in the hymn. Movement where there should have been stillness and stillness where there should have been movement. Glances that caused split-second hesitation amid arming protocols. To anyone not a Space Marine, it would have been nothing at all of remark, perhaps not even felt. To Gaius it seemed like a sudden crash of unexpected percussion amid the pre-battle symphony; a discordance that grew as he realised it approached him.

A figure dressed in a simple grey military uniform, small amongst giants, picked his way over trailing refuelling pipes and charging cables that snaked across the muster hall floor. He glanced from one squad to the next, eyeing each carefully as though appraising a room of interesting antiquities, but to the transhuman senses of the occupants his nervousness betrayed itself in a dozen tiny ways.

The interloper stifled a flinch as Brother Kemi lifted a bolt rifle and sighted on him.

‘Just calibrating my targeter, historitor,’ the Intercessor said with a chuckle, lowering his weapon.

The adept smiled without humour and looked around, seeking his objective. He hurried forward as his gaze fell upon Gaius’ squad.

‘Historitor Mudire,’ the sergeant said with a nod of greeting. ‘What brings you to the muster? Are you going to be dropping with us?’

There was a hesitation as Mudire mastered an involuntary twitch.

‘As much as I appreciate the thrill of plunging towards a war-torn planet with my fate entrusted to a few inches of armour and the timing of a retro rocket, regretfully, no,’ the historitor said. He took a moment before continuing, blinking quickly as he regained his train of thought. ‘After Gelsepllan… When you… When that…’

He swallowed, eyes sliding past Gaius as memories took him elsewhere, lips forming a grimace.

‘When I saved your life, historitor?’ prompted the Primaris Marine.

Mudire nodded, focusing again on Gaius. His gaze flickered to the sergeant’s shoulder pad and Gaius recalled that it had been his pauldron that had taken the brunt of the fusillade when he had shielded Mudire during a heretic ambush on Gelsepllan.

‘You asked if we had anything about the world of your gene-father,’ the historitor said brusquely. ‘Something “authentic”, you said, which would link you back to those ancient times.’

‘Great Cawl gave us much during our long sleep,’ said Gaius, raising a gauntleted finger to tap the side of his head. ‘Facts and figures. Verified stories. Accounts and reports. Nothing…’

He could not find the words for what he sought: a connection beyond mere genetic manipulation and historical data. He spread his fingers and approximated a shrug that made his armour whine.

‘Spiritual?’ suggested Mudire.

Gaius nodded even as he heard the grunting laughs of a couple of his squad-brothers behind him.

‘It is not primary, as a source,’ said Mudire, reaching into a satchel. He brought forth a book that was small but thick, the pages yellowed and worn, the cover missing. ‘But it is almost contemporary to the time of the First Founding.. And though the tone is a bit convoluted and archaic, it requires no translation.’

‘I look forward to reading it on our return,’ said Gaius.

‘It’s for you,’ said Mudire, thrusting the book forward, suddenly awkward. ‘For… A gift. I have come to know myself a bit differently since Gelsepllan. Perhaps it will help you know yourself too.’

Gaius looked at the outstretched hand and the thin paper ruffling in the vent breeze.

‘This is unnecessary, historitor,’ he said. ‘I performed my duty, nothing more.’

‘I have some influence in the ranks of the historitors,’ Mudire said, straightening, his gaze hardening. ‘It took considerable effort to retrieve this for you, as a sign of my gratitude. It would be impolitic to refuse. Consider it an award, a commendation from my organisation.’

‘Impolitic, you say?’ said Heindal, moving up beside Gaius. ‘You’d best take it, brother-sergeant, or Mudire will complain to the Lord Commander.’

Mudire’s stare was unwavering. He still held the book out in a steady hand. Gaius took it and read the details on the frontis page.

He smiled.

‘It is perfect, historitor,’ he told Mudire. ‘Thank you.’

Fear was infectious, leaping from one weak mind to the next, coursing through unseen veins of mutual need. As one line of resistance toppled, the resolve of the next was weakened, the taint of dread followed swiftly by the assaults of Ektovar and his companions. The shrill death cries of the Emperor’s slaves, baying howls of the Raptors and unearthly keening from the storm-spirits carried the contagion of terror into the minds of those ahead.

‘Seldom has butchery been so easy,’ boasted Lenthe as he eviscerated a thrashing defence trooper. Unsheathing his claws from his victim, the Night Lord waved a hand towards the gutted and decapitated corpses littering the corridor. ‘Their defence seems ill-prepared and random. Had they met us in force, the challenge would have been greater.’

‘They are weak because they do not understand the nature of their foe,’ crowed Keslos, jump pack bright as he landed next to Ektovar. ‘They reckon not with the power of the terrorstorm.’

The defenders had indeed been sporadic in their placement and reaction, but Ektovar retained enough sense amid the thrill of the hunt to question whether it was incompetence or design. The terrorstorm – its concealing, demoralising miasma – was certainly something the hivers would never have encountered before, rendering their layered defence more vulnerable. But he hesitated as the others moved towards the half-closed security gate ahead of the squad.

‘It is not the humans that guide this, but the hand of the Misguided Son,’ he said to his companions. He felt the last juddering escape of the soul from the corpse at his feet and paused to feel its presence slide through the dark fog that permeated his flesh. ‘There will be a counter-attack.’

‘We should signal the main force to begin the assault,’ said Keslos. ‘Their sudden attack will crush the spirit from the survivors and dull the cut of the enemy’s riposte.’

‘We shall be the point of the blade driving deeper, with their weight to push us on, direct for the heart,’ said Elizir.

Ektovar knew of what his companions spoke. The terrorstorm could feel the cold knot of the Emperor’s Space Marines behind the lines, waiting for their moment. Greyness descended on his senses as the bodies cooled around him and the dread of their departure flittered away to be absorbed by the semi-sentient mist.

‘Do it,’ he decided, despising the emptiness in his soul, its gnawing at the edge of his awareness. ‘The Dreadmaster shall descend and we will lead the way.’

He cut open the ironwork of the gate with two swings of his glittering blade and stepped beyond, while his vox crackled with the effect of long-range transmission from Elizir. Just a few dozen yards ahead the next enclave of defenders waited, surrounded by the probing appendages of the terrorstorm. He felt discipline there, a solidity that had been missing from many of the defenders.

He would enjoy breaking it.

The corridor was too low for his jump pack so Ektovar swept forward with long strides, carried along by the warp miasma. His sword left a trail of pale blue energy in his wake, occasionally flickering into a bright arc as the energy earthed through an exposed lumen or power conduit.

Sharper than any auspex, the terrorstorm showed him the way, guiding him from the main passage to a smaller access corridor. His wings scraped sparks from metal-clad walls as he ran along the ducting, hunched slightly to avoid the cable-lined roof. The maintenance tunnel brought him out into the hall where the Imperials waited, several dozen yards above them.

Ektovar burst through a rusted grating amid a billow of blackness. His jump pack responded to his desire like the wings of a bat, spiralling him down towards the panicked defenders as tatters of the storm wreathed his descent.

More than fifty troopers manned makeshift barricades built across the hall, blocking two exits. A bellow from one of them drew his eye – a commissar in burnished carapace armour and peaked cap, a power sword in one hand and pistol in her other.

Ektovar’s bolt pistol barked, picking off the soldiers around his chosen target, isolating his prey. From behind him the others opened fire, explosive rounds illuminating the stunned expressions of the troopers with brief flares of yellow. The plunging warriors knew instinctively what their leader desired, and directed their own attacks to other parts of the defensive line, the wall of overturned furniture, dismounted doors and piled ration boxes no barrier against vertical assault.

Panic swelled like an undercurrent, rising to meet Ektovar as he swooped. His next bolt took the commissar in the ankle, turning booted foot and lower leg to a ruddy mess, toppling her with a sharp cry. Yet there was only pain there; the schola-ingrained stoicism of the commissar was like a fortress protecting a golden treasure just out of reach.

Her mind was not like that of a Space Marine. The iron will of the Emperor’s sons was cold and dry, bereft of nourishment. The commissar’s mental walls were thick but not impenetrable; prising them open would be a delight in itself, to eventually release the delicious morsel within.

Gaius’ squad turned east, heading towards the left flank of the counter-attack. The ferrocrete floor cracked under the pound of their tread, the plasteel-lined walls reverberating like an immense war drum. The sound of gunfire ahead had quietened but there were still screams of fear and cries of pain in plenty.

Gaius checked the auspex feed from the receiver in his forearm. ‘Multiple signals half a mile away,’ he confirmed to the squad.

‘Augurs confirm secondary enemy wave incoming. Respond as necessary but maintain strategic objectives,’ Brother-Lieutenant Astopites ordered over the vox.

‘This is it,’ said Gaius, looking at his companions. They ran so fast along the corridor, the lumens seemed to strobe across their blue-grey armour. He held up his chainsword and brought the teeth into snarling life.

He remembered a line from the book and gave voice to an old battle cry as the Sons of Russ charged into battle.

‘Vlka Fenryka!’

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First published in Dawn of Fire: The Wolftime in Great Britain in 2021.
This eBook edition published in 2021 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd, Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK.

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Cover illustration by Maria Zolotukhina

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