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It is the 41st millennium. For more than a hundred centuries the Emperor has sat immobile on the Golden Throne of Earth. He is the master of mankind by the will of the gods, and master of a million worlds by the might of his inexhaustible armies. He is a rotting carcass writhing invisibly with power from the Dark Age of Technology. He is the Carrion Lord of the Imperium for whom a thousand souls are sacrificed every day, so that he may never truly die.

Yet even in his deathless state, the Emperor continues his eternal vigilance. Mighty battlefleets cross the daemon-infested miasma of the warp, the only route between distant stars, their way lit by the Astronomican, the psychic manifestation of the Emperor’s will. Vast armies give battle in his name on uncounted worlds. Greatest amongst His soldiers are the Adeptus Astartes, the Space Marines, bio-engineered super-warriors. Their comrades in arms are legion: the Astra Militarum and countless planetary defence forces, the ever-vigilant Inquisition and the tech-priests of the Adeptus Mechanicus to name only a few. But for all their multitudes, they are barely enough to hold off the ever-present threat from aliens, heretics, mutants – and worse.

To be a man in such times is to be one amongst untold billions. It is to live in the cruellest and most bloody regime imaginable. These are the tales of those times. Forget the power of technology and science, for so much has been forgotten, never to be re-learned. Forget the promise of progress and understanding, for in the grim dark future there is only war. There is no peace amongst the stars, only an eternity of carnage and slaughter, and the laughter of thirsting gods.

PART ONE

FEAST OF LIES

BEN COUNTER

For the first time in many years, Logan Grimnar was exhausted from battle. He had held off the tau for nearly three days as the xenos had sent unending packs of attack-beasts and swift hover-tanks to harass the Space Wolves.

The aliens had paid dearly for the chance to tire out the Great Wolf of Fenris. Hundreds of tau and their alien auxiliaries lay among the rocky canyons covering the surface of Dactyla. Now, as the Great Company faced the xenos outside, Grimnar stood on the threshold of the temple he had come to this world to find.

‘Can the Great Company stand?’ asked one of Grimnar’s champions. Each of the half-dozen warriors was taken from the Chapter’s Wolf Guard, armed with Terminator armour and their pick of weaponry from the Fang’s armoury. It was rare that anyone would speak to Grimnar so bluntly, and Grimnar still had ample fury in him to round on the warrior.

‘You know better than to question the resolve of our brethren,’ he snarled. ‘They will stand as long as they have to. And we will ensure that is not for long. Follow me and speak no more.’

The temple was more ancient than the Great Crusade itself. Echoes of a long-dead xenos empire’s architecture broke through the living rock of the tunnel complex beneath the ground. Even as Grimnar led his champions down further, he could hear the reports of tau pulse rifles and the replying volleys of bolter fire.

They were Space Wolves, and the tau were as drained by the running battle as Grimnar and his brethren were. The Great Company would hold. The tau assault would be blunted. He knew this because this was the place the runes had described, and Grimnar would not return from this hunt empty-handed.

‘There,’ said Grimnar, indicating a symbol cut into the wall. It resembled a serpent coiling around a skull. ‘Njal Stormcaller cast that rune as I watched. We are close. Just a little further.’

Grimnar felt the weight of the Axe Morkai as he walked. The warrior he had once been would have dearly loved to lay it down and rest, but those were the thoughts of a lazy pup and not the Great Wolf, so he forged on until he came upon a massive circular slab of rock blocking the way ahead.

Without a word, Grimnar put a shoulder against the rock and pushed. The Wolf Guard joined him, adding their strength to his. The slab rolled aside, revealing the way into the chamber that lay at the heart of the complex.

Purple light bled from the vault. Grimnar’s autosenses were not enough to shut down the glare completely, and he held a hand in front of his face, squinting. The Wolf Guard had their storm bolters ready to open fire on any enemy that might emerge from the temple’s core, but they held their fire.

They saw what Grimnar did. And in that moment, all the weariness of battle was gone.

Ulrik’s watch included the dawn hours, when the blood-red light of Fenris’ sun broke across the glacier-bound mountains. It was the season of fire, when Fenris came closest to its star and the equatorial oceans boiled. In the environs of the Fang there was no warmth, but the ground heaved and cracked like distant thunder as the glaciers experienced a rare thaw.

‘It will be today,’ said a voice behind Ulrik. It was that of the Wolf Lord Krom Dragongaze, whose Great Company had the duty of manning the Fang during the Thirtieth Great Hunt. Krom wore his trophy rack on the back of his power armour, surrounding his ruddy face with a halo of jangling bone. The orange ridge of hair along his scalp was dark in the reddish dawn light. ‘Do you not think so, Lord Slayer?’

‘Perhaps,’ said Ulrik. He anticipated the return of the Great Companies as much as any at the Fang, and yet he could not let the emotions of a Fenrisian close to the surface.

‘I can smell it,’ said Krom. ‘My Great Company is restless. It is not a glorious task, to serve as housekeepers here while the rest of the Chapter is on the hunt. I must fight to keep them focused, and yet I itch to be let off the leash myself.’

‘Sometimes,’ said Ulrik, ‘we must keep the wolf caged.’

‘That is not as easy for us as it is for you,’ said Krom shortly.

Ulrik kept looking into the distance. He wore, as always, his armour’s skull-faced helmet, and so Krom had no chance of reading anything from his face. Ulrik let the silence fall, broken only by the distant moan of the thaw and the cries of frosthawks wheeling overhead.

‘Forgive me,’ said Krom. ‘I spoke out of turn.’

Ulrik did not move to face the Wolf Lord, and instead pointed a finger up towards the colouring sky. A silver streak was just visible there, like a falling star, a thread of precious metal suspended.

‘The Canis Pax,’ said Ulrik. ‘You were correct, Lord Dragongaze. It is today.’

The Canis Pax carried with it the Great Company of Alaric Nightrunner, known to the rest of the Chapter as the Silent Howlers. They descended in a fleet of shuttles from their strike cruiser and landed among the eyries of the Fang, and were met by a host of thralls to assist with their docking procedures and get the first glimpse of the trophies they had brought back. The brothers of Krom Dragongaze’s Great Company, the Drakeslayers, lined the processional down towards the cell blocks and sparring halls of the Fangs, saluting Nightrunner’s battle-brothers on their return. Behind them walked Alaric Nightrunner himself, cutting as dashing a figure as there was among the Space Wolves, with skin the colour of beaten bronze and thunder hammer swinging at his hip. Alongside Nightrunner’s Company marched the Rune Priest Njal Stormcaller, by some accounts the most powerful psyker the Space Wolves had fielded for thousands of years.

Everyone there cried out the same question: what trophy had the Silent Howlers brought back to Fenris? No Wolf Lord ever returned from the Great Hunt without a new prize to be displayed at the Fang as a symbol of the Space Wolves’ relentlessness at the hunt. Alaric did not carry a new skull or captured banner, and met all questioners with the same knowing smile.

Ulrik was not among the honour guard. This was a time for the Space Wolves to be uncaged and to let their spirits run wild. They needed times like this. They did not need a presence like Ulrik standing over them to remind them of their duties. Instead, the Wolf Priest spent several hours in the Reclusiam, drafting missives to be sent out by courier-thrall to the most loyal tribes of Fenris. Each one called for them to send an emissary, one of the wise and powerful men permitted to know of the Chapter’s workings, to the outskirts of the mountain fortress’ hinterland, where a shuttle from the eyries of the Fang would transport them to the inaccessible peak. There they were to hear of the exploits of the Great Hunt, and take the tales they heard back to their tribes.

It was part of the cycle that brought new blood into the Chapter. The youthful warriors of Fenris learned of the Space Wolves’ heroic deeds and sought to emulate them in the endless battles between the tribes and with the furious indigenous life forms of Fenris. The Wolf Priests, led by Ulrik, chose the most valiant, and brought them into the Chapter to be put through the Blooding and made into Space Wolves. The myth of the Space Wolves was as crucial a part of the process as the warlike Fenrisian stock, and the Great Hunt served to create new legends that grew and spread with every telling.

Elsewhere in the Fang, for nineteen days Alaric Nightrunner kept his silence. In that time three more Great Companies, those of Bran Redmaw, Gunnar Red Moon and Sven Bloodhowl, arrived home laden down with the trophies they had taken. Finally the emissaries from the tribes arrived, and Ulrik led them wordlessly into the fortress – wise men and warlords, the soothsayers and patriarchs of their clans. The call went out for the Space Wolves to gather in the Great Hall and hear the sagas of the Great Hunt. The first to take the place reserved for the saga-teller was Alaric Nightrunner.

Ulrik presided over the feasting. There was only so much of the leash that could be given to a Space Wolf. Five Great Companies were present in the Great Hall and Fenrisian ale was flowing, a concoction of fermented plant life lethal to an unaugmented man. It was strong enough to affect a Space Marine in spite of his enhanced capacity to filter out toxins, so Ulrik was ready to intervene in case boasting and challenging turned to bloodshed among the battle-brothers. Ulrik stood in his black, skull-faced armour, silent while the cheering and drinking songs of the Space Wolves battered against him like a sea wind.

Alaric Nightrunner approached the enormous fireplace to a tremendous cheer. The tribal emissaries applauded too, and among them Ulrik recognised the First Spear of the Bear tribe, a muscle-bound warrior carrying a kraken-tooth lance, and the hooded emissary of the Stargazer tribe. The Frost Wyrm tribe, the Flint Striders and the People of the Burning Sea had also sent representatives. Not all the tribes had answered Ulrik’s call, but many had. Whatever tale Alaric was about to tell, it would soon be heard by all of Fenris.

Alaric heard the cheering for a minute, then motioned for quiet. The noise lowered enough for him to be heard.

‘I carry no trophy for you,’ he said. The battle-brothers cried out in dismay. ‘But that does not mean I have disgraced the Great Hunt. Far from it! No, I have a tale for you, and fear not, there will be plenty of reason to pour yet more of Fenris’ bounty down your gullets.

‘Our hunt took us to the edge of the Ghoul Stars, where the void is as clouded as a corpse’s eyes. The Canis Pax was my steed and my brethren were sharpening their blades for the chase. The region is haunted by warp predators and the ghosts of fallen xenos empires, and there is always worthy quarry to be had! Njal Stormcaller, whose casting of the runes guided all the Great Companies on the Great Hunt, stood by my side, and he looked upon the diseased void with great relish. He foresaw the foes all but begging to be put to the bolter and the chainsword. And I had my thunder hammer and spear ready to take the foremost head!’

The brothers of Alaric’s Great Company cheered and pounded the feasting table. The Space Wolves of the other companies shoved the Silent Howlers and jeered, but they could not drown out the celebration.

‘And we were not disappointed! But it was not some void ghost or spectre that we found. No, the quarry found us. Which of you has not faced the accursed tyranids upon the battlefield? The shadow across the stars, the Great Devourer? You all have cause to hate the tyranid, and indeed I have left a thousand of their foul warrior-beasts headless and gutted in my wake. And yet, I had never faced them like this.

‘The Canis Pax was pursued by a great hive ship of the tyranids. This monstrous, living thing was like one of the whales that live in Fenris’ deep oceans, but vast enough to swallow the Canis Pax whole! And indeed, that is what it intended, for it hounded us for many leagues across the void.

‘The hive ship loosed its spores, and they fell upon the hull of our strike cruiser. I despatched the brothers of my company to face the boarders, and furious battle raged on the Canis Pax! Elbow-deep in dark ichor were my brethren, their snarls of rage punctuated by the sound of chainblades through chitinous armour. And what tales of heroism I could tell you of the hours they fought! Time and again they fended off the tyranids as the xenos tried to breach the bridge and engine rooms. They led counter-charges to the alien beachheads, where the raw void had bled into the decks.

‘Hundreds of tyranids were slain. The smaller creatures attacked in waves. The warrior-creatures that serve as elites and officers among their kind directed them, and were singled out for combat and destruction by the pack leaders of the Silent Howlers. I took my place outside the bridge, and beside me stood the Stormcaller. He called on the World Wolf to open his jaws, and a score of tyranids tumbled into the void he conjured! He bade the lightning fall upon the enemy, and a brood of warriors was charred to smouldering chitin by the sky’s fire that answered! And as the enemy charged, I killed one with every spear-thrust, and crushed a skull or a ribcage with every swing of my thunder hammer. Thus did the first prey of our Great Hunt fall, and it was good!’

‘But brothers, it was not enough, for the hive ship itself was closing in. If we did not destroy it, it would consume us. Even if we outpaced it, there might have been a million warrior-beasts in its belly to send against us. And though the brethren fought with fury, some were brought down and slain. Howl the names of Agmundyr Iron Talon, Kari the Swift and Hrolfyr Bearhide! For they reaped a toll of the xenos filth before they fell.’

Alaric Nightrunner’s Great Company howled a long, high note of mourning for the fallen. The other Space Wolves did not harangue them now. Alaric grabbed a flagon from the table beside him and poured the foaming ale down his throat in one, and at his signal the Silent Howlers did the same.

‘And when the fight paused,’ continued Alaric, ‘I turned to the Stormcaller. To him, I said, “We cannot destroy this hive ship alone. Our torpedoes cannot penetrate its hide, and its presence so close prevents us from jumping into the warp.” And the Stormcaller replied, “Is this Alaric Nightrunner who speaks? The Wolf Lord most renowned for his cunning, for whom no battlefield conundrum is too obscure? Use that cunning, my lord, and with wisdom seal its fate!” Thus did Njal Stormcaller speak to me, and I was much chastised by his words, for they were true. But in that moment, I knew the solution.

‘Imagine, my brothers, the void, befouled by the presence of the Ghoul Stars. The hive ship pursues the Canis Pax, and disgorges more boarding spores with every moment. And now, when the hour is darkest, a hero emerges! A Stormwolf gunship flies from the strike cruiser’s fighter decks, and it is painted with the heraldry of the Wolf Lord, Alaric Nightrunner! Can you see it, my brothers?

‘Then a hatch opens, and the Wolf Lord himself steps out onto the hull. White vapour streams from the faceplate of his helm. He carries the spear with which he slew the Frost Worm of Jormun Glacier. He holds it above him, and though none can hear him in the void, he is yelling obscenities at the hive ship, and demands it fight him one to one, spear against voidborne might!’

The Silent Howlers were laughing now, whooping between swallows of Fenrisian ale. They began banging the tables rhythmically, a drum roll that shuddered the floor of the Great Hall. Alaric was posing with his spear, holding it above his head as he brandished it at an imaginary hive ship.

‘The hive ship closes in. Its jaws open in a grin wide enough to swallow the Canis Pax. Deep within its gullet are colonies of tyranid filth, tens of thousands of them roosting in the cavern of its mouth, thousands more crawling between its teeth to pick at the morsels of its last meal. The Stormwolf flies closer, the Wolf Lord draws back his arm to strike… and he is gone!’

The laughter stopped. The Great Hall was suddenly silent as every Space Wolf there imagined the hive ship’s jaws closing on the Stormwolf, swallowing the gunship and the Wolf Lord alike.

Alaric held them there, extending the moment of silence for as long as he dared.

‘And then… boom!’

The Silent Howlers erupted. Ale spattered on the walls and floor as they held their flagons aloft.

‘I give you Njal Stormcaller,’ exclaimed Alaric over the din. ‘The greatest worker of wonders ever born to Fenris! For it was he who created the illusion of the Stormwolf, and of myself atop it, waving my spear as if I meant to harpoon that great whale of the void. And that illusion was wrapped around a most tasty morsel – a cyclonic torpedo, a deep detonation warhead, such as the Canis Pax uses to rake the flanks of its prey. The hive ship’s hide was too stout to let the torpedo through, but once the beast had swallowed its prey, I gave the order to detonate!

‘The warhead must have gone off close to the beast’s brain pan. Instantly, it became ill-coordinated and slow, and faltered in its pursuit. And those of you who know the tyranid well are aware of how the lords among them coordinate the lesser beasts from afar. The hive ship controlled the creatures assailing the Canis Pax, or else its brain was used to transmit the commands from whatever distant horror leads their fleets. The control was broken, and now the tyranids on board the Canis Pax became unfocused and panicked, striking about at random or seeking to flee. And what Space Wolf could resist such a hateful foe, suddenly so ripe for the killing?

‘So I led my brethren in falling upon the tyranid. It took three hours to finish the task. Three hours of butchery and revenge! I must have taken two hundred hormagaunt heads, and a dozen warrior-beasts fell beneath my thunder hammer and spear. There is joy in the hunt hard-run and well-fought, it is true, but I cannot deny the pleasure of the hunt that falls upon the prey when it has been made weak and desperate. And when the Canis Pax was free of the xenos taint and its decks were awash with dark blood, we turned to the hive ship.

‘Its jaws lolled open. It drifted without purpose. I ordered the Canis Pax to turn about and unload its missiles and torpedoes down the beast’s ruined throat. Its innards were blasted through, and it vomited forth a mighty torrent of torn xenos flesh and dead tyranids. How could such a sight be so foul, and yet so glorious? Thus was the death of the hive ship, and thus did the Great Company of Alaric Nightrunner take its quarry in the Great Hunt!’

Alaric gave a grand bow and the battle-brothers of his company chanted his name. Alaric accepted their acclaim with exaggerated humility, laying his spear on the floor before them as they cheered.

‘Wait!’ cried a voice. Krom Dragongaze’s face was flushed with drink, and no doubt with anger that he had not had the chance to bring such a tale back from the Great Hunt. ‘You tell a fine story, Lord Nightrunner. But every lord on the Great Hunt must return to the Fang with a trophy of his kill. I see you carry no new baubles. Where is your trophy?’

‘Lord Dragongaze,’ replied Alaric with a smile. ‘You have but to look.’ He pointed to the large windows at one end of the Great Hall, which led onto a balcony looking out over the snowy hinterland of the Fang.

Ulrik followed the gaze of every Space Wolf. Through the windows, a pair of Stormwolf gunships came in low over the peak of one of the Fang’s sister mountains. Between them was strung an enormous object that took shape as the mists were blown away by the engines – it was a titanic length of curved bone, lined with thousands of teeth. It was several hundred metres long, and looked to be part of a much, much larger skull.

The ships lowered the jawbone onto the peak, where it became lodged between spurs of snow-capped rock.

‘The jawbone of the hive ship,’ said Alaric Nightrunner. ‘Presented to my brothers of the Fang.’

In the hours of feasting that followed Alaric Nightrunner’s story, the Great Companies of Erik Morkai and Egil Iron Wolf arrived back at the Fang, accompanied by fanfare and feasting as before. Ulrik again stood back from the celebrations, and watched from the Great Hall’s balcony as Engir Krakendoom’s shuttle fleet descended to the eyries.

Ulrik saw that Njal Stormcaller had joined him on the balcony. The Rune Priest’s fierce, wind-burned face was not flushed with drink. Ulrik had noticed him abstaining from the Fenrisian ale.

‘How straight was Lord Nightrunner’s tale?’ said Ulrik. ‘I will not contemplate he lied, but his are the tales that gain and lose much in the telling.’

‘True enough,’ said Njal. The various rune-stones and bone trinkets hanging from his robes jangled in the chill wind as he watched Lord Krakendoom’s shuttles coming in to roost. ‘All that he said happened, happened. He did not say that my casting of the runes led him to the Ghoul Stars, where there was no sign of our true quarry. He did not disclose the great disappointment I saw in him that he had brought down his enemy with a ploy from afar, rather than slaying a champion of the warp that in single combat, or some xenos corruptor whose death marked the freedom of a human world. But yes, his tale was straight enough, as it goes.’

‘Krakendoom is almost as garrulous as Lord Alaric,’ said Ulrik. ‘I expect he will demand the saga-teller’s place next.’

‘And he is not shy to call out those who do not match his exploits. Perhaps you will be needed in the hall before long.’

‘No doubt,’ said Ulrik. ‘I have broken up scraps between him and Dragongaze since they were Blood Claws.’

Already there was a commotion in the Great Hall as the first of Engir Krakendoom’s Great Company, the Seawolves, took their place among the revellers.

‘Let us hear what he has to say,’ said Ulrik.

‘Think of the foulest place,’ said Engir Krakendoom. ‘Think of the most noisome pit, the rankest orifice of a world you have ever been to. Now think of it twice as filthy, three times as foetid, four times as brimming with vermin! The world you think of now is Sorixyn IX. And there the Great Hunt led us, and though it was a world benighted and embattled, the Seawolves leapt right into this sea of filth! For there the soldiers of the Imperium fought, and there were enemies that needed killing.’

Krakendoom’s Great Company had a reputation for fierce ship-to-ship combat prowess, and they wore that reputation on their armour as kill-markings and memorials of engagements. Many of them wore now the skulls of the lizard-like pests that infested the jungle world of Sorixyn IX, and more than a few wore ork skulls or finger bones as trophies of their last battles. They were as boisterous as ever, cuffing and wrestling with one another as their Wolf Lord spoke.

‘The Imperial Guard on Sorixyn were veterans of death world campaigns, and yet this world was preying on them as if they were newborn pinklings! And their foe was the ork, that most resilient of vermin, which was moving at will through the dense jungle hunting man and beast. Truly, if there was ever a world that cried out for the tender touch of the Space Wolves, it was this one.

‘The Seawolves fell upon the orks where the fight was fiercest, and many were the life-debts pledged to the sons of Fenris by regiments of the Imperial Guard in return for their deliverance! At Foulfester Ridge and the Blackleaf River we left heaps of the orkish dead in our wake. Our Stormwolves strafed the crude orkish airfields and our packs rampaged through their mech-yards and supply trails! But there was one foe that could not be fought with the tactics of drop pod and bolter volley. No, this was a creature whose legend was as dangerous as an entire war-host of greenskins, whose existence eroded the will of the Guardsmen more than the cruelty of the jungle or the savagery of the ork. And they called it the Thousand-Handed One.

‘While my brethren joined the Imperial Guard in fending off the orks, I made it my duty to hunt down the Thousand-Handed One. For was this not an omen, to have such a quarry placed in my path while upon the Great Hunt? It was for such a hunt that I was born. Why, you ask? Because of this nose!

‘This nose, my brothers, is as keen as any blade in the armouries of the Fang. This nose has slain more foes of mankind than the guns of a battleship! There was no corner of Sorixyn this Thousand-Handed One could flee to where I would not sniff him out. It was among a heap of slain Guardsmen that I picked up his scent. And what a scent it was! Who among you has not experienced the stench of the ork?’

At this, a disgusted groan and angry grumbling rose from the Space Wolves. A quirk of the Chapter’s gene-seed, one inherited from the Primarch Leman Russ himself, was an exceptionally well-developed sense of smell. There was indeed nowhere to hide from a Space Wolf once he had the scent, and he could close his eyes and sense a world picked out in smells instead of colours. Engir Krakendoom prided himself on a sense of smell that had tracked a Fenrisian werekraken across a stretch of fjord and glacier, and many a Space Wolf could proudly claim feats of olfactory prowess.

And it was true that orks stank. Ulrik himself could remember his first whiff of the greenskin. It was something that truly never left a Space Wolf’s memory.

‘Yes, you know it well,’ continued Krakendoom. ‘That hint of spoiled offal. That mixture of sweat and stale ordure. The fire of the filth that clings between its fangs! The pus and rot of its battle-wounds! When the Wolftime comes, when I stand beside the Emperor and Lord Russ to fight the final battle, I shall rejoice to know that soon I will never have to smell an ork again!

‘And the Thousand-Handed One had a very particular scent of its own. Its name came from the men’s hands it took as trophies and wore about it everywhere it went. It had the smell of death on it as well as the orkish stink. And so I followed it through the jungle, through gullies choked with foulness and across pools of bubbling sulphurous bile. Sorixyn IX tried to stop me as best it could with its own exotic smells, be it the rot-lily or the carrion of a fallen scarasaur, but I did not relent.

‘And I was being hunted in turn. The Thousand-Handed One knew I was after it, and it had my trail, too. We circled one another through the jungle, closing and drawing away, each seeking the perfect terrain to strike. Were we equally matched? Was this a quarry whose prowess in the hunt matched that of Engir Krakendoom?

‘It was many days after I picked up the trail that I found a dark and foetid hollow. I knew the Thousand-Handed One was at least half a day away. I judged the place perfect to lure in my prey and subject him to a lethal array of death traps. I set up deadfalls and snares, spear-throwers loaded with the springs of young saplings, spike pits and tripwires, using every scrap of field knowledge I had learned in decades upon the battlefield. And at the end of this gauntlet I waited, the bait for this trap, feigning injury and exhaustion such as would make me an irresistible feast for the savage ork.

‘But the Thousand-Handed One was not a son of Fenris. It knew not the honour of the hunt, the respect granted to the prey, the bond between hunter and quarry we learn while barely out of the cradle. It cared nothing for a clean kill, face to face. No, it was a coward. And once it divined my location, it called on the greenskin artillery on a nearby hill to bombard my position with a firestorm of furious shrapnel!’

The Space Wolves hissed and spat to hear of the dishonour of the greenskins. It was said that a long time ago, in the age of the Scattering, human encountered ork for the first time and instinctively came to a place of mutual hatred. Orks had just enough concept of civilisation to delight in tearing it down, and enough sense of honour to wantonly breach it whenever they could.

‘And yet,’ said Krakendoom, calming the grumbling with an outstretched hand, ‘I was no fool. Of course I knew the greenskin would call on its big guns to flush me out. Of course I knew the Thousand-Handed One would cast away all the honour of the hunt and take its cheap kill while it could. And so I had prepared a way out of my death trap, a tunnel through the rocks that broke from the clinging mulch of the jungle floor. It was just big enough to admit my mighty frame, and as the shells whistled down I crawled through it and out into a nearby valley where the artillery could not find me.

‘For hours the shells fell. The sky was black with smoke, and lit with the red lightning of explosions. A terrible thunder rolled across the jungle! Yet I was unharmed, and in that valley brimming with foulness, I waited. Predators fled from the thunder, but they saw in me a fellow hunter and gave me a wide berth.

‘Finally, the fires no longer fell from the sky. As the echoes died, I heard the war cries of the greenskins as they moved through the remains of my death trap. And I caught the scent of the Thousand-Handed One, at the head of a band of orks, and I knew they were searching for my corpse.

‘Yes, the Thousand-Handed One was looking for me. And it found me! I leapt from my hiding-place, no longer content to skulk like a lizard in the undergrowth. For the first time I saw the Thousand-Handed One up close, and what a beast it was! Twice the height of a Space Marine and three times as broad, a hulking monstrosity such as had terrorised the whole battle zone of Sorixyn IX. Chains of severed hands hung around it. Its enormous fangs were crusted with filth and gore. It carried an axe well-stained with the blood of Imperial Guardsmen, and its dark green skin was as gnarled as the bullet-scarred trees of the jungle.

‘Across the smouldering ruin of the jungle our eyes met, and the Thousand-Handed One knew it had been outfoxed. For a moment it showed the honour of the prey, just enough for it to bark angrily at the other greenskins who followed it so they shied away and did not intervene. I drew my mighty frostblade, its teeth carved from those of the kraken I slew with my own hand. The ork hefted its axe, a weapon huge enough to fell the mighty jungle trees with one stroke. And we charged.

‘Can I speak truly of the fury of our battle? Though I take quick to the tale, I do not have the words. If the greenskin had found its mark, it would have hewn me in two. But I did not give it the chance. I called on every feint and swordsman’s trick I learned in the sparring halls of the Fang, even those tricks my people taught me when I was but a stripling boy in the halls of the Devil Lynx tribe. Never have I faced such a foe, and never have I dredged so deep within myself to solve the riddle of the blade before me.

‘But the Thousand-Handed One was an ork, and I was a son of Fenris. Angered at being outwitted by me, it sought to split me from crown to fundament with a mighty downward swing of its axe. But I rolled out of its way and the axe was buried in the charred ground. I rose to my feet, drew back my blade, and with a howl of revenge I plunged it into the back of its skull!’

The Space Wolves cheered. There was little they enjoyed more than to hear of the death of such a xenos.

‘The blade came out of its mouth, and the matter of its brain sprayed from between its teeth!’

More cheers.

‘And when I tore my frostblade free, its skull was emptied, its eyes dull, its axe hanging limply from dead fingers!’

The Seawolves whooped and howled and banged their tankards on the table. With a smile, Engir Krakendoom reached into a leather bag hanging from his waist and took out a pair of withered, gnarled green hands, each three times the size of a man’s, severed at the wrist.

‘This is the trophy I bring back to the Fang!’ he exclaimed. ‘The hands of the Thousand-Handed One!’

Ulrik watched over the placing of the ork’s severed hands in a niche in one of the Fang’s many trophy halls. Over the millennia, trophies almost beyond counting had been brought back by Space Wolves who had taken a notable kill or achieved a crucial objective. A band of thralls curated them, keeping the rolls of which trophy was taken from which foe and by whom.

The emissaries of the tribes watched the interring of the hands in a crystal display case, for they would take the story back to their tribes of the astonishing, exotic things the Space Wolves took or cut from their foes. The youths of their tribes would seek to win the eye of the Space Wolves, some of them would win trophies of their own, and the cycle would continue.

With great pride, Engir Krakendoom watched the thralls close the lid on the display case. The ork’s hands took their place alongside the battered helmet of a Thousand Sons traitor and the severed arm of an accursed eldar farseer. The Seawolves howled in triumph as Krakendoom’s offering to the Fang was added to the spoils of the Thirtieth Great Hunt.

Wolf Lord Berek Thunderfist emerged from his shuttle carrying the war-glaive of an eldar pirate, one he had personally slain while his Great Company stormed the space hulk Vivisector. Shortly after him arrived the Great Company of Harald Deathwolf. Harald had the head of the rebellious governor of Triskel Secundus, carried with mock gravity on a pillow of bloodstained velvet. Finally Kjarl Grimblood arrived, his Great Company badly mauled in a brutal clash with a warband of Night Lords traitors, and he brought two dozen blasphemers’ hearts to adorn the trophy halls of the Fang.

Only the Great Wolf Grimnar had yet to return. Almost the entire Chapter was at the Fang, a rare enough occurrence, and so Ulrik watched carefully over the Great Hall as the feasting and drinking continued.

None could say who would take to the place of the saga-teller next. It was not unknown for Wolf Lords to fight a duel over the right to tell the next tale, wrestling with hands and bared teeth alone, or instigating an ale-fuelled brawl between their companies. Beneath Ulrik’s gaze, none would dare fight now, but still the tension was there. Berek Thunderfist, normally reserved among the Wolf Lords, might relate one of his fabled episodes of bluster and bravado when the ale flowed and seek to seize the attention of the Great Hall. His Great Company certainly encouraged him to do so, but for the time being Thunderfist was content to sit and tear with his teeth at the hunks of meat the thralls brought up from the Fang’s lower reaches.

One of the tribal emissaries stood and walked towards Ulrik. It was the emissary of the Stargazer Tribe, in his dark blue hooded robes. The Stargazers were rarely seen outside the mountain pathways they knew so well, and though Space Wolves had been recruited from among them they were few in number and suited more to serving as lone Wolf Scouts than as packmates among the Blood Claws and Grey Hunters. Ulrik had walked among them seeking candidates for the Blooding before, but not for some years. It had been a surprise that the Stargazers had sent an emissary at all.

‘Lord Slayer,’ said the emissary. ‘I have heard much of the exploits of the Great Hunt to tell to my people upon my return. They will seek to make war to catch the eye of the Fang, and so we will become strong. For this reason you brought me here. But I see now that you give the teller of tales a sacred place, as is our custom too. May I petition you for a turn to speak?’

‘This is an unusual request,’ said Ulrik. ‘Thralls of the Fang are permitted to tell a saga, for indeed Leman Russ bade the Chapter grant the greatest respect to he who tells it. But for someone outside the Fang to be given the honour is rare indeed.’

‘I understand,’ said the Stargazer emissary. ‘But for now, no Wolf Lord is minded to take his place by the fire, and I feel it would benefit the battle-brothers greatly to hear a voice from the world of the tribes they have left behind. It will remind them who they are.’

‘Then take your place, emissary,’ said Ulrik. ‘You have shown no fear in speaking with me. I shall show you the respect that is due to an elder of your tribe. Tell your tale.’

The emissary bowed in thanks, and shuffled to the place by the fire. By the looks of him he was old, well past the age of a warrior, which on Fenris meant he had been a fierce and tenacious man in his youth to have survived so long. Bone fetishes and runestones jangled as he walked, the implements of the soothsaying and divinations for which the Stargazers were known.

The babble of conversation died down as the Space Wolves realised the old man was about to address them. They were curious to hear what such a man would say, for only the oldest Long Fangs had heard someone from outside the Fang regale them with a saga.

‘My people read the stars,’ began the emissary. ‘Though we divine the future in many ways, it is among the stars that we find the most profound truths. The Crone Fenris looks down at us with her thousands of eyes, and in that glittering void we seek to understand things that are distant in space or time. My people have read from the stars a tale that I believe concerns you here, for having heard the sagas of your exploits, I realise the night sky has granted us a glimpse into the Great Hunt.

‘On the extreme edge of all things there lies a rocky and harsh world, one devoid of life in its natural state, named Dactyla. And yet there is life there now, an alien that men call the tau, and in great numbers he has colonised this world. For what purpose I cannot say, for none can understand the mind of the xenos, and curses on him who tries. The runes your own seers read led one of your number, the Great Wolf Logan Grimnar, to Dactyla, and it took many months for him to arrive there. He rejoiced, for there were xenos to slay, and the Great Wolf loves nothing more than fresh xenos blood on his axe. There he bade his Great Company set about the xenos with much fury, as if exacting revenge for some unknown wrong, and the tau fled in terror as the Space Wolves descended from the sky.’

Ulrik had not expected this from the emissary. He did not think word of the particulars of the Great Hunt was known among the peoples of Fenris – and yet Grimnar had indeed set off for the Eastern Fringe, following the runes cast by Njal Stormcaller on the eve of the hunt. The Stargazers were known for their prowess at reading the past or the future, and sometimes events in the present that were far away, but nevertheless Ulrik had not heard of one divining distant events in such detail.

Whatever Ulrik thought, the place of the saga-teller was indeed sacred, as Leman Russ himself had decreed. So the Wolf Priest respected the emissary’s right and listened on.

‘Yet the tau waxed great in number,’ the human continued, ‘and called many more to the battlefront. Lord Grimnar wished not to become mired in war, for he had not come to take the heads of the tau but to seek the quarry of which the runes had spoken. So he gave the order for his battle-brothers to fight on the move, through the valleys and tunnels of Dactyla, fending off the tau as he strove on for his destination.

‘The Grey Hunters met the tau advances with walls of bolter fire. The tau sent forth giant suits of walking armour and tau warriors armed with weapons that could fire from a league away. They sought to race ahead of the Great Company and lay ambushes, but the Blood Claws fell upon them as they laid their explosives and dug their foxholes. Tau blood flowed on upon the black stone of Dactyla, and yet the tau did not relent.

‘Svalgar Brokentooth was the first to fall to the tau. His wargear failed him, and a shot like an arrow of bright energy found his primary heart. He was the first, but not the last. Though the Great Company covered many leagues at a bound and evaded every tau attempt to bring them to battle, yet one by one Space Wolves fell. And as the running battle continued, they had no time to mourn their dead. They committed the names of the fallen to memory, took their gene-seed and wargear, and forged on, for the Great Wolf would not let his quarry go.

‘Finally, Grimnar espied his goal. He had not known what form it would take, but now he saw it was a mighty gate hewn into the rock, the threshold of a temple older than mankind. It was graven with symbols from a language that had not been spoken in millions of years. Surely this was the place the runes had spoken of, and Grimnar’s prey lay within.

‘The Space Wolves stood with their backs to the gate, and made ready to defend the temple against the tau. The xenos had brought in squadrons of mighty armoured suits and metal beasts from their base on Dactyla, and now these stood arrayed against the Great Company of Logan Grimnar. The Long Fangs shot down a xenos machine that flew like a steel eagle, and it spiralled down into a squad of Fire Warriors in a ball of flame. Great was the celebration to see the aliens burn! And yet more were cresting the ridge above the Space Wolves with every moment.

‘Grimnar chose six heroes to accompany him. Six mighty champions of his Wolf Guard, to stand with their lord while the Great Company fought. He threw open the gates to the temple that had stood closed for aeons, and entered.

‘From outside, the sound of battle reached the Great Wolf’s ears. The tau had surrounded his brethren and it seemed attrition alone would seal their fate. Just as the noble predator is cornered by a pack of scavengers on the winter ice, so did the Space Wolves face a foe many times their number. And just as that great beast is slain not by one mighty blow but by a multitude of tiny bites, thus the Space Wolves’ doom appeared to them. The tau did not fight face to face and fist to fist like the men of Fenris, but from a great distance with arrows of light, and soon more Space Wolf dead were added to the tally to be mourned when the battle was done – if any Space Wolves remained to remember them.’

The Space Wolves grumbled and glowered. Any talk of falling to the xenos was cause for anger, and now they were hearing of it from a tribesman from outside the Fang. Even though it was just a tale the emissary was telling and they had no way of knowing its truth, the words carried a certainty to them. Ulrik knew he would have to watch them carefully, for already the emissary had strayed into dangerous territory. When it came to protecting the good name of the Great Wolf, the Space Wolves might need to be discouraged from turning to violence.

‘In the temple, the Great Wolf felt the leaden ache of long battle in his limbs. He had fought for so long, and yet the greatest test he felt sure was now to come. His champions were resolute, yet he knew they, too, were at the point of exhaustion. They had all fought for many times the hours any of us among the tribes could, and even Space Wolves can only fight for so long.

‘In the depths of the temple was a great portal. Grimnar and his champions hauled aside the stone barring the entrance, and looked upon a great chamber with walls of amethyst. In the centre of this chamber was a sarcophagus, huge in size, inscribed with rough-hewn runes. To Grimnar’s shock they were in the tongue of Fenris, an old dialect and yet one he could read. They spoke of the heroic deeds of he who was within, and a dread curse on those who had put him inside. Grimnar bade his champions remain by the doorway, and approached the sarcophagus himself. He shattered the sarcophagus lid with a blow from the Axe Morkai, and looked on the corpse within.

‘It was a sight the Great Wolf knew well. He had seen that mighty countenance many times in the histories of his Chapter, but now it was withered and dry, with skin aged like desiccated leather. He also knew well the wargear in which the corpse had been buried, the dark and dull grey livery of the ancient Space Wolves Legion, the mighty frostblade that lay beside the body now tarnished and blunted with neglect.

‘Logan Grimnar sank to his knees. He let out a terrible howl of abandonment, and in his heart truly he knew despair for the first time. For the Great Hunt was over. Logan Grimnar, the Great Wolf and High King of Fenris, was looking upon the corpse of the primarch Leman Russ.’

The uproar was furious. Space Wolves yelled insults and curses at the emissary. Krom Dragongaze threw one of the great feasting tables on its side, spilling heaps of meat and gallons of ale onto the flagstones. A young Blood Claw drew his combat blade and stepped towards the fireplace, face creased with anger.

‘No!’ yelled Njal Stormcaller. ‘The place of the saga-teller is sacrosanct! Sheathe your blade, Brother Freigar!’

‘This cur has blasphemed in all our hearing!’ retorted Erik Morkai. The Dark Wolf, as he was known, glared from beneath his mane of black hair, fury in his equally black eyes. ‘He speaks of the death of Leman Russ. But Russ swore he would return to us, at the Wolftime! To say he is dead is to defy the very word of the primarch!’

‘It was Russ who commanded that no man lay a hand on the teller of the tale,’ argued Berek Thunderfist. ‘Though my fury is stoked, I shall choke it down. I bid all my brethren do the same.’

‘This man is not even of the Fang!’ yelled Brother Kulfrarg, a Long Fang of Engir Krakendoom’s Great Company who was one of the longest-serving pack leaders in the Chapter. ‘Who will curse us for spilling his blood? Who will call us to heel?’

‘The Stormcaller and the Thunderfist speak true.’ Ulrik the Slayer did not have to raise his voice for it to cut through the din. The brothers quieted their anger when they heard the Wolf Priest speak up. ‘No man may harm the teller of tales.’ Ulrik stepped towards the emissary, who through the uproar had not moved or spoken a word. ‘But I stand apart from the rules of the Chapter. The bindings of Russ’ rules do not hold me as they do you.’

Ulrik tore the hood from the emissary’s face.

Where the face of the Stargazer tribe’s emissary should have been, there was instead an endless and starry void, as if the entire universe could be glimpsed therein. Galaxies spun in the darkness, and stars were born and boiled away to nothing. Empires could have lived and died in the time it took Ulrik to tear his eyes away, mindful of becoming transfixed by the vastness of the sight.

Ulrik’s crozius arcanum, the power weapon that served as the badge of the Wolf Priest’s office, was in his hand. Its power field crackled into life as he brought it around in a vicious, bisecting strike up into the emissary’s torso.

The emissary was gone, flitting in a heartbeat to a place several metres away. The crozius thrummed as it swiped through nothing. Already the Space Wolves were bringing out their knives and bolt pistols, but as shots cracked across the Great Hall the emissary vanished from one point to the other, impossible to pin down or hit. Brother Freigar, the Blood Fang, dived at the emissary but he was caught in a tendril of psychic power and flung against the wall.

The shape of the daemon was no longer that of a man. It was a spectre, its shape formed by the folds of the cloak whipping around it. It had four arms, three of them on one side of its body, multicoloured flame flickering around its hands. The other hand pointed a long, black talon down at Brother Bjarki of Thunderfist’s Long Fangs. Bjarki was thrown into the air and slammed into the ceiling, tumbling back to land with a smack on the stone floor.

‘Hold, daemon!’ Njal Stormcaller jumped up onto one of the feasting tables, blue-white light flashing around him as he called a lightning bolt to each hand. He hurled one bolt like a javelin and the daemon, its robes whipping around it, teleported out of the bolt’s path. The second bolt slammed into the ceiling of the Great Hall and cast out a crackling cage of electricity, trapping the emissary in bars of raw energy.

‘The words of the daemon are lies!’ shouted Ulrik. ‘You seek to bring us despair but we see through your untruth!’

The daemon turned its empty face towards Ulrik. ‘There is no deceit,’ it said in a dark, liquid voice, ‘as cruel as a truth disbelieved.’

Blue-black power was gathering between the daemon’s hands. Njal’s cage held it now, but in moments it might be free.

‘By the jaws of the World Wolf, be devoured!’ yelled Njal. He drove his staff into the floor and a black fissure opened up in the air, the maw of a crack in reality. Like a crevasse running across a glacier, it roared towards the daemon.

The jaws of the World Wolf was a particularly Fenrisian application of psychic might, an exhortation for the spirit of Fenris itself to swallow the enemy and condemn him to an oblivion more profound than destruction. Njal Stormcaller had a mastery of the power that no other Rune Priest had ever approached. The battle-brothers knew it was coming and dived out of the way as the fissure streaked across the Great Hall.

The daemon cackled and the lightning cage shattered. Ulrik felt the shockwave hitting him, lifting him off his feet to slam him into the wall behind him. He stayed conscious through the impact, willing himself to observe what happened.

The daemon held up a hand and the fissure stopped just before it was swallowed up. The daemon started to reel in the blackness, winding it like thread into a sliver of black lightning that echoed those Njal had called forth. Then, as if mocking Njal, the daemon hurled the bolt at the Stormcaller.

Njal yelled as the bolt hit him between the eyes. His cry choked in his throat and he toppled to the ground.

Ulrik was on his feet now. The crozius was hot and angry in his hand. The daemon turned to him again.

‘Despair,’ the daemon said. ‘The truth, the lie, it is all the same. It is all despair.’

The thing that had claimed to be the Stargazer emissary shifted form into a swirling blue-black bolt of energy, and hurtled off through the window of the Great Hall, over the balcony and out across the snowy landscape of the Fang’s hinterland. Ulrik ran to the balcony rail and saw it vanish behind the mountains, off past the peak where the hive ship’s jawbone lay.

The Space Wolves rushed to the balcony. Bolt pistols chattered as they fired after the daemon, but it was long gone, swallowed by the Fenrisian sky.

Ulrik turned from the window. Njal Stormcaller lay by an upturned table, face down on the flagstones. Ulrik turned him over and checked his life signs from his armour – the Rune Priest was alive, but his hearts were hammering arrhythmically. Ulrik took a vial of stabilising serum from the many compartments and pouches around his waist and injected one into the Stormcaller’s neck. His heartbeats became slower and more regular. Njal’s face, burned to leather by the winds of Fenris, took on a little more colour as Ulrik checked his pupils.

‘What manner of thing was the intruder?’ asked Wolf Lord Krom Dragongaze, walking over from the furious mob of Space Wolves by the window.

‘Take the Stormcaller to the apothecarion,’ said Ulrik. ‘See to it yourself. Then I will seek your answers.’

Ulrik knew the vaults of the Fang better than anyone in the Chapter. He had to own that knowledge alone, for among its treasures were books of lore that could not be entrusted to anyone save a Wolf Priest. One of them was an account of the mad mind-wanderings of a nameless warp-prophet, where he described a being that came to him in his dreams. It was a being with a face of stars, one that could take on many forms, and dictated to the prophet a million-line poem that drove men mad.

Another was a tome proscribed by the Inquisition but recovered by the Space Wolves from a raid on an apostate cardinal’s palace. It was a catalogue of the beings which the cardinal had summoned from the warp and had bargained with for obscene pleasures and ancient secrets. One of those beings was a thing that took on the shape of anyone the cardinal thought of, and mocked him with what turned out to be the truth of his violent death at the Space Wolves’ hands.

There were others. Glimpses here, mentions there. It had many names but the title most often given to it was the Changeling. A creature born of the will of the Lord of Change, the warp power of knowledge and lies. An agent of the purest Chaos.

There was no mystery as to how the Changeling had entered the Fang. Ulrik had invited it. Perhaps it had been masquerading as the emissary of the Stargazer tribe for years before it got its chance to stand before the Space Wolves and weave its fiction. Perhaps it had taken over the emissary’s form after Ulrik had sent the word out, and had left the real emissary frozen in a snowbank or thrown in dismembered chunks into the sea. Whatever the case, it had used Ulrik to enter the Fang and take up the place of the saga-teller in the Great Hall.

Ulrik knew anger well. It was impossible to grow up on Fenris and not know it. The chief Wolf Priest had to keep his anger caged, bolted down and restrained, so it did not overwhelm him and drive him to the same destructive and reckless acts he dissuaded in the rest of the Chapter. But he felt that caged wolf growling now, inflamed by the rage and disgust he felt at having been the Changeling’s means of penetrating the heart of the Fang.

Ulrik banished these thoughts as he stood over Njal Stormcaller. The Rune Priest was still comatose. All the fury of the World Wolf had been driven back through Njal’s mind and had forced his brain to shut down. The Wolf Priests and the apothecarion thralls would ensure his body was looked after, but only Njal himself could put his mind back together. Ulrik had never seen the Stormcaller as vulnerable as he looked now, stripped of his armour beneath the Wolf Priest’s shroud, wires and tubes hooked up to the autosurgeon and medical cogitator beside him.

‘We will find it, brother,’ said Ulrik. ‘We will bring it to justice. Many have tried, but it has chosen us as the means of its destruction. And the sons of Fenris will deliver.’

The only reply was the ticking of the cogitator’s autoquill, scratching out the beat of Njal Stormcaller’s hearts onto its reel of parchment.

‘It lies,’ said Ulrik. ‘That is how it sows destruction. Its tale of Russ’ death was a lie. If we do not believe that, we are lost.’

There is no deceit as cruel as a truth disbelieved.

The daemon’s words were intended to create the fissure of doubt in the Space Wolves’ mind, to make them wonder if Russ really could be dead and the prophecy of the primarch’s return meaningless. It wanted to force them onto the path that would lead them to despair. While Ulrik lived, the Changeling would not succeed.

‘But the brothers are beginning to ask the question,’ continued Ulrik. ‘And there has been no sign of the rest of the fleet in the sky. They ask why the Changeling came to us, and what it intended with its lies of Russ’ death. And above all, they ask the question to which I must turn my own mind.’

Ulrik had not spoken it out loud, but here, with only Njal Stormcaller to hear him, he gave it voice.

‘What has become of the Great Wolf?’

PART TWO

THE CAGED WOLF

BEN COUNTER

Ulrik’s breath misted in the chill heart of the Fang. The Vaults of Rest had to be kept cold to preserve the delicate technology down here – and to keep the slumbering bodies from putrefying in their sleep.

Ahead of Ulrik was one of the huge war machine berths. The stone was lined with cogitator screens and archeotech devices that clicked and whirred in the half-darkness. Set into the berth, linked to the Fang with hundreds of cables and hoses, was a Dreadnought. Even asleep and without its arm-mounted weaponry, its brutal shape, like a bipedal tank, spoke of danger and fury.

Ulrik placed a hand against the Dreadnought’s sarcophagus. The ceramite plating was caked in frost.

‘Brother Bjorn,’ said Ulrik. ‘Your Chapter has need of you.’

Ulrik’s words echoed around the vault. There was no other reply.

‘You walked with Leman Russ,’ continued Ulrik. ‘You were there when he left us, and you heard his promise to return. Now a daemon has woven lies that claim Russ is dead, and it seeks to shake our spirit with such deceit. You could end our disquiet, brother. If you stand amongst us and tell the sagas of Russ, the Changeling will find no purchase in our hearts.’

Ulrik was aware he was being watched. The Chapter thralls who worked in these vaults were a strange and uncommunicative breed, used to working in the near-dark and quiet of the Fang’s deeper layer. They waited in the shadows now, their deference to Ulrik the Slayer shown by their silence. The Dreadnoughts in these vaults needed constant care to ensure their systems continued to support the mortally wounded Space Marines interred inside, and waking a Dreadnought required hours of tech-rituals. These thralls, though they were rarely seen by any of the Space Wolves, had as sacred a duty as anyone in the Fang.

‘But it uses the flesh of truth to clothe its lies,’ said Ulrik. ‘It speaks of how Logan Grimnar, the Great Wolf, found the corpse of the primarch on the Eastern Fringe. And it is true that Grimnar has not returned from the Great Hunt. He is long overdue back at the Fang, and none can say where he is. So we must find him, even though the trap laid by the Changeling is as clear as day. We must walk into the jaws of the Great Enemy, Brother Bjorn, for I see no other way. Unless you can counsel us to greater wisdom. Unless you can awaken, brother, and speak.’

Bjorn did not reply. The Dreadnought did not move. Ice had encrusted the hydraulics of the legs and the mountings of its shoulder units. Bjorn had not awakened for years, and the time between his periods of activity had slowly grown longer over the centuries. How long before he woke again? A decade? A century?

‘Inform me of any change,’ Ulrik said to the thralls lurking in the shadows, and headed back towards the upper levels where the Wolf Lords were gathering. If there had been a chance to seek the ancient Bjorn’s counsel, it was gone now. Bjorn was unable or unwilling to stir, and now Ulrik only had one decision he could make.

The eleven Wolf Lords of the Space Wolves were gathered in the Repository of Battles. The circular chamber was lined with shelves holding books of battle-sagas and campaign histories. Thousands of conflicts were described there, from the Horus Heresy to the Great Hunt the Chapter had just completed. The lords stood around the huge circular table, waiting for Ulrik. A conclave of all the Wolf Lords would normally take place in the Great Hall, before the whole Chapter, but not this time.

Ulrik entered. Eleven pairs of eyes glanced down in respect. Even the Wolf Lords acknowledged the authority of Ulrik the Slayer, for the Wolf Priests were set aside in the structure of the Chapter, a parallel chain of command that could overrule any of them on the rare occasion it became necessary.

‘Does he wake?’ asked Berek Thunderfist.

Ulrik did not need to answer that question. ‘With the Great Wolf still lost to us and the Changeling having made its play against the Chapter,’ said Ulrik, ‘there is no excuse for inaction. And yet the Changeling has made its way among us once, and Njal Stormcaller still lies comatose because of it. I cannot leave the Fang unguarded when the daemon has shown itself cunning enough to breach our walls at will.’

‘Then leave an honour guard,’ said Engir Krakendoom. ‘As we did for the Great Hunt. Name which one of us shall remain and the rest shall tear the galaxy apart until we find the Great Wolf!’

‘No,’ said Ulrik. ‘You shall all remain. The Changeling’s objective is to break the will of the Space Wolves. If we fragment across the galaxy, it will prey on us one by one. The Chapter will stand united. If the Changeling wants to break us, it will have to break us all at once.’

‘I will not abandon the Great Wolf to his fate,’ snarled Lord Morkai.

Ulrik did not flinch before Morkai’s glare.

‘The Great Wolf will return to us,’ he said, ‘as surely as Leman Russ will at the Wolftime. I will see to it in person. I shall take a small and swift force and travel to the Eastern Fringe, following the route laid down by the Stormcaller’s rune-readings, and I shall find Grimnar. You, my brothers, will defend the Fang and the spirits of your Chapter. That is where your keenest duty lies. The Changeling will make his move against us again, and soon, and you will all be here to meet him.’

‘You would have me skulk here, when the Great Wolf is lost?’ Krom Dragongaze slammed a fist into the table. ‘The Changeling knew of the Great Wolf’s destination. Fell powers have closed in on him. He battles daemons and traitors and Throne knows what else, and yet we are to sit and watch over the Fang like so many nursemaids?’

‘You are,’ said Ulrik. ‘That is my command. In the absence of the Great Wolf Grimnar, it is my voice that carries the authority of Leman Russ.’

‘You can try to stop us,’ said Morkai. ‘But our lord needs our assistance, and woe betide anyone who stands in our way.’

‘Ready the fleet!’ demanded Engir Krakendoom. ‘Arm the ships! We leave with the dawn’s breaking!’

‘Wait!’ shouted Berek Thunderfist. ‘It was Ulrik the Slayer who took me from my tribe and made me a Space Wolf. He did the same for most of you, too. It was under his tutelage that you became what you are today. I trust him more than I trust myself. If it is his word that he alone seek the Great Wolf then I shall bow to it, much as it may pain me.’

‘If we are all of a mind,’ retorted Morkai, ‘then what force in the galaxy can stop us?’

‘Leman Russ bade all of us kneel to the word of the Wolf Priests,’ said Berek, ‘and yet how often has Ulrik used that authority? It is rare indeed that he stands against any one of us. I have faith that if he now overrules us, there is a good reason for it.’

‘And which of us,’ said Lord Bran Redmaw, ‘knows the mind of the Changeling? All we can be sure of is that it wishes to kindle despair within us. It is a cunning creature and we will surely make its work easier if we stampede across the galaxy in our rage. When the Changeling comes for me, I would have you, my brothers, by my side.’

‘Whatever you choose,’ said Ulrik, ‘whether you obey the word of Russ or usurp it for your own will, make the decision soon, for neither Lord Grimnar nor the Changeling will wait for us.’

None of the Wolf Lords spoke up. For a moment it looked like Krom Dragongaze would voice defiance of Ulrik, but the moment passed and he swallowed his words.

‘Then I will select a strike force from your Great Companies, said Ulrik, ‘and take the Canis Pax as my ship, for it is among our swiftest. I will leave before the breaking of the dawn. The rest of you, make fast the defences of the Fang and ensure the spirits of your brethren are made ready. The Changeling will make its move against us again, and you will be ready for it when it comes.’

The warp was angry.

Ulrik could feel it. He had made many voyages through the immaterium, slipping into the parallel dimension to travel vast interstellar distances, and each time he had felt the uncleanness of the warp cling to him. This time, as the Canis Pax plied its inconstant tides, he could almost hear the scratching of a million predators at the hull of the strike cruiser. In the time between moments, he was sure he caught the distant whisper of something dark following the ship hungrily, lusting after the morsels inside.

For his strike force, Ulrik had selected one pack of Blood Claws, led by Lief Stonetongue, two packs of Grey Hunters under Hef Sunderbrow and Tanghar Three-Finger, and a number of Wolf Guard. Baldyr White Bear, Wsyr Flamepelt, Olav Brunn, Thord Icenhelm and Brok Oakenheart were all veterans equipped with Terminator armour who had seen just about every form of war that existed in the galaxy, and had served in the retinues of their Wolf Lords for untold years. Ulrik had selected them for their experience, and because he had seen them ascend through the ranks of the Chapter since their initiation rites. He could trust them to obey him without question. They had brought a small armoury with them on the Canis Pax – Rhinos and a Land Raider assault tank, along with a clutch of drop pods for an orbital assault and a Stormwolf gunship to support them from the air. It was a necessarily small force, but one ready to cope with anything that waited for them on the Eastern Fringe.

Baldyr White Bear was on duty watching over the bridge as Ulrik walked through the blast doors. Shipmistress Asgir was at the helm, a woman so gnarled with age it seemed the starch of her Naval uniform was the only thing holding her up.

‘Lord Slayer,’ said Asgir as Ulrik approached. ‘It’s as rough as a kraken’s hide out there. Something doesn’t want us to get through.’

‘Are we making better time?’

‘We’ve reached the jump point,’ replied the shipmistress. ‘It’s been damnably slow, though. Navigator Morone is on the verge of speaking in tongues, I am sure of it.’

Ulrik imagined the ship’s Navigator, his third eye pressed to the sensorium that looked out onto the warp, mind churning as he was assailed by the insanity that only he could comprehend. ‘Breach real space as soon as possible,’ said Ulrik. ‘We are expecting to be in hostile territory when we emerge.’

‘The Pax has another few crash breaches in her,’ said Asgir. ‘Not sure about her crew, but they’ll live with it.’ The shipmistress smiled, showing some missing teeth. A lifetime ago she had been trained at an officers’ school of the Imperial Navy, but after serving with the Space Wolves for so long a little of Fenris had rubbed off on her.

‘I do not like the smell of this,’ said Baldyr White Bear. His Terminator armour was well-scored with old battle wounds – its previous owners had refused to remove the scars, and Baldyr continued the tradition. Baldyr had the tall crest of violently red hair and forked beard typical of the White Bear tribe, for though he was a Sky Warrior now, he had never strayed too far from the traditions of his tribe. ‘There are dark forces threatening us.’

‘Warp ghosts,’ said Asgir. ‘The voidborn are talking of it. The crew think it doesn’t reach my ears but I hear everything that happens on my ship. If a shoal of ghosts has caught our trail, it could be what’s slowing us down.’

‘Not that,’ said Baldyr, shaking his huge battered head. The servos of his Terminator armour sighed as he folded his arms. ‘Not something that’s following. Something that’s waiting for us.’

‘Lord Slayer,’ said Shipmistress Asgir. ‘We’re at the immaterium zenith. There’s no time like the present.’

‘Make ready for crash breach,’ said Ulrik.

Alarms blared throughout the strike cruiser. The crew’s training would have them securing loose gear before finding the safest footing they could. The bridge crew were firing up the real space navigation cogitators while strapping themselves into the bridge’s restraints. Ulrik activated the mag-locks on his armour’s sabatons, clamping himself to the deck, and watched the viewscreen for the first sight of the Eastern Fringe.

The Canis Pax shuddered violently as the Geller fields around the ship flared and the warp drive ripped a hole in the veil between dimensions. There was a sense of a sideways lurching, a nauseating shift in balance, and the image of a stretch of real space crackled onto the viewscreen.

The stars stopped halfway across the screen, for this was the very extreme of the Eastern Fringe, where the galaxy ended. Everything beyond was empty void, with only the smears of distant galaxies to suggest there was anything out there at all. Tales described how men went mad when they reached the edge of the galaxy and suddenly realised how insignificant it was to be a human being.

Ulrik did not feel insignificant. Any part of him that might have once been in awe of oblivion had long since been tempered into something stronger.

The purplish half-disc of a planet hung to one side of the viewscreen: Dactyla, a cold and rocky world in distant orbit around a dying star.

‘Shipmistress, we have contacts in the void,’ said the crewman at the comms helm.

‘Is it the Eternity Fang?’ asked Asgir.

The crewman scanned for a sign of the Great Wolf’s ship.

‘Xenos,’ he replied.

‘Bring them onto the viewscreen,’ said Ulrik.

The image shifted again, cycling through several magnified views of blurry shapes against the blackness. The final one resolved into a spaceship as large as the Canis Pax, surrounded by a shoal of smaller escorts. Its lines were smooth and streamlined, as if designed to swim through an ocean, and its red hull panels were mottled like the skin of a fish.

‘Xenos indeed,’ said Ulrik. ‘Tau.’

‘I fought them at Kolhelo Reach,’ said Baldyr White Bear, darkly. ‘Slippery and cunning things. And the daemon said Grimnar faced the tau here.’

‘The daemon mingles its lies with the truth,’ said Ulrik, ‘so that weaker men believe them.’ But in spite of his words, Ulrik’s teeth gritted when he recalled the daemon’s words. Everything the Changeling had said had so far been proven true.

‘The tau are contacting us,’ said a crewman. ‘They’re requesting… a summit.’

‘A summit?’ asked Ulrik.

‘One of theirs, one of ours.’

‘Tell them I have no need to match wits with an alien. We shall take what we came here for and leave.’

‘More contacts,’ said the crewman at the navigation helm. On the spherical holo-display above his cogitator, several red warning runes were flaring up as the Canis Pax’s sensors picked out more tau ships around Dactyla.

‘Reading one tau capital ship,’ said Shipmistress Asgir, looking up at the viewscreen. ‘The Canis Pax is a fine ship, Lord Slayer, but that xenos craft is her equal. And she’s not alone.’

‘You wish to speak plainly, shipmistress?’ said Ulrik.

‘We cannot break through, my lord,’ said Asgir. ‘Not here. They have many times our tonnage in the void and they can hit us from a damnably long way away. We’ll be drifting metal before we get to high orbit.’

Ulrik made a show of thinking on this for a long moment. In truth, he was quelling the wolf that snarled inside him. The greatest challenge for any Wolf Priest was to cage that inner beast, so he could offer counsel and even overrule the lords of the Chapter without his reason being warped by his anger. It was an unnatural thing to do, for rage was as intrinsic to Fenris as the storms that tore across its glaciers. But it was a necessary blasphemy, for no Wolf Priest can do his duty with the wolf running rampant.

‘Contact them,’ said Ulrik. ‘They have the advantage, for now. I will speak.’

The arranged location was a shuttle anchored halfway between the Canis Pax and the tau fleet. Ulrik waited in the passenger compartment as a ship of the same size, also unarmed, approached. The hull rang as the xenos craft docked with the Canis Pax’s shuttle. Ulrik could hear the hiss as the airlock pressurised.

Ulrik had come here alone. Even the shuttle’s pilot was a monotask servitor instead of a crewmember from the Canis Pax. Ulrik was taking a risk in making himself vulnerable before the xenos like this. It might be a war machine or even an explosive device that greeted him when the airlock opened. But the tau usually observed the protocols of negotiation, if only so their treacheries could be sewn all the more cunningly. It was not a question of Ulrik trusting the tau to honour the rules of the parley – it was knowing that it was in their interest to do so.

The airlock opened. The creature that walked in had a basically humanoid shape, except for the hoofed shape of its feet and the four digits on each hand. Its heavily embroidered golden robes hung over a set of body armour with plates painted deep red. A sheathed knife was mounted on the side of its chest-plate, and the faceplate of its helmet was a featureless bone-coloured oval. Aside from the knife, which looked ceremonial or like a badge of office, the being was unarmed.

A pair of hovering drones accompanied the alien, the disc-shaped devices ringed with eye-like sensors. No doubt they were transmitting everything to the tau fleet.

‘What are you?’ said Ulrik.

The tau removed its helmet to reveal a face with blue-grey skin, a lipless mouth, a vertical slit in place of a nose and large eyes like polished black stones.

‘I am Shas’el Dal’yth Sona Malcaon,’ the alien said, in slightly accented Low Gothic. ‘Commander of this fleet. This world is under the protection of the Tau Empire.’

‘Your kind work in castes,’ said Ulrik. ‘You’re not the ambassador caste.’

‘Our water caste ambassador was lost in action,’ replied the shas’el. ‘Thus, I speak for the Tau Empire here.’

‘What do you want with this world?’

The shas’el’s expression changed, but Ulrik couldn’t read the alien’s face. ‘I have answered your questions. I would have my openness reciprocated. Who are you, and why are you here?’

‘I am Ulrik the Slayer of the Space Wolves, a son of Fenris. I am seeking one of my own, the Great Wolf Logan Grimnar.’

‘This will be the gue’ron’sha who made war on my people,’ said the shas’el, ‘without warning or cause.’

Ulrik did not flinch, but the tau’s words hit hard. The Space Wolves had been here at Dactyla, and they had fought the tau. It was just as the Changeling had said.

Eventually, the story would reach a lie. It had to. The Changeling could not have told a complete truth if it had wanted to. It was a deceiver by nature, and it could not change that nature any more than Ulrik could stop being a Space Wolf. Every step closer to the end of the story brought Ulrik closer to the truth, and when he had it, whatever plan the Changeling had laid would unravel.

‘I have no wish to fight you,’ said Ulrik. ‘When we have the Great Wolf, we will leave.’

‘And then you will return,’ said the shas’el, ‘and exterminate us. This is the way of your Imperium.’

‘We will–’

‘You will leave,’ interrupted the shas’el. ‘You will not make demands of us. You will not be granted shelter on our world, nor a petition to our rulers or mercy from our guns. Turn your ship around, Space Wolf, and leave, or you will be blasted from the void. There is no need of the water caste’s words here. There is no need for negotiation. You will obey us or you will die. This is the Imperial way of diplomacy, is it not? You should know it well.’

‘Let us recover our dead,’ said Ulrik. ‘This is no more than you would ask of us.’

‘We would ask nothing of you,’ said the shas’el. ‘I called for this meeting so I could see you face to face, one warrior to another, and avoid more unnecessary bloodshed. If you possess any of the honour of which your Imperium likes to speak, you will preserve the lives of your people and swallow your pride, and leave this world to the Tau Empire that is sovereign over it. Were I water caste I would speak on, no doubt, but I am fire caste, and I see only war. So the talking is done.’

Shas’el Malcaon turned and walked back to the shuttle’s airlock, twin drones in tow.

‘Wait,’ said Ulrik. ‘You cross one Space Wolf, you cross us all. We are not like the humans of the Imperium you may have encountered in the past. We will swear an oath and pursue you to the end of the galaxy.’

‘You are at the end of the galaxy, Space Wolf,’ replied the shas’el. ‘And we can bear a grudge as well as you.’

The airlock door hissed closed.

‘They are telling the truth,’ said Shipmistress Asgir. ‘They can destroy us if they wish.’

‘This is one of the fastest ships in fleet,’ replied Ulrik. ‘Can we outrun them?’

Asgir looked between the faces of the Space Wolves assembled in her ready room. Their huge armoured bodies crowded the normally spacious room, which was hung with antique star charts and the accumulated trophies of a lifetime commanding ships in the void. Ulrik was accompanied by his force’s pack masters, Hef Sunderbrow and Tanghar Three-Finger, and the Blood Claw Lief Stonetongue.

‘We can outrun their capital ship,’ said Asgir. ‘But the rest of their fleet will get around us to block our path. Wherever we go, they can bring us to bear and hammer us with their weapons.’

‘Can we not shelter on the far side of Dactyla?’ asked Lief Stonetongue. The members of a Blood Claw pack were typically few in years, for the recklessness of a young Fenrisian was suited to the Blood Claws’ close combat method of war. Stonetongue was much older than his charges, for he had proven so proficient in up-close butchery that he had not moved on to the Grey Hunters as most Blood Claws did. The lower half of his face was tattooed blood-red, as was typical of the Stonetongue tribe, and he wore a jangling collection of enemies’ fingerbones from rings though his ear. ‘Redmaw’s flagship pulled that off in the Battle of Ghul Mar Reach.’

‘Redmaw wasn’t fighting the tau,’ replied Asgir. ‘We could get to the sensor shadow behind Dactyla, but we’re being constantly scanned from planetside. The tau have an installation down there that would be watching us every mile of the way. No one on the Canis Pax can make ordure without the aliens knowing.’

‘An installation,’ said Hef Sunderbrow, one of the Grey Hunter pack leaders. ‘Just one?’

‘The planetary scans say it’s a single command centre with several sensors covering all angles of the planet,’ replied Asgir.

‘A command centre we can destroy,’ said Lief Stonetongue.

‘Not from orbit,’ said Asgir. ‘Their fleet would shoot us down before we got close. And they’ll have the place covered with enough point defence to seal it up.’

‘Good,’ said Stonetongue. ‘It’s never satisfying to win a battle from orbit.’

‘Speak for yourself,’ said Asgir. ‘Vaporising xenos from a thousand miles away is what keeps me warm at night.’

‘Loath though I am to deny the shipmistress’ proclivities,’ said Tanghar Three-Finger, ‘I would be much aggrieved to leave Dactyla without wetting the rocks with some xenos blood.’ Three-Finger was solid and predictable, a Grey Hunter who bowed to the chain of command. He had no imagination, but he was trustworthy, which to Ulrik was as valuable a quality. His shaggy mane of red-brown hair hung down over the many honours pinned to his armour.

‘How long can the Canis Pax survive if the tau move against us?’ said Ulrik.

‘If they throw everything they have?’ said Asgir. ‘Twelve hours. After that we’ll be spent, and those flat-faced grox-rutters will be free to do whatever they want to us.’

‘Then we will make twelve hours enough,’ said Ulrik. ‘Three-Finger and Sunderbrow, remain on the Canis Pax to repel any boarders.’

‘And where will I be?’ asked Stonetongue, with a dangerous smile.

‘With myself and the Wolf Guard,’ said Ulrik. ‘On Dactyla.’

Dactyla was as bleak a rock as existed in the galaxy. Its dying star was a smouldering red eye that bled a painful light. The planet itself was a knot of broken rock jammed together into a jagged sphere. The world had once held a sizeable Imperial population, as evidenced by the husks of cities still clinging to its intact land masses. Some time after settlement the planet had been pushed and pulled by a sudden burst of conflicting gravities, shattering the surface and forcing its abandonment. Now it was dead and empty, the dried-out skeleton of a world scattered with ruins.

Njal Stormcaller’s rune-readings had brought Logan Grimnar to this place. Throne knew what was on this planet worthy of the Great Wolf’s attention. Ulrik knew that whatever it was, it was not the corpse of Leman Russ. Nevertheless there had to be something on Dactyla, something that pulled at the threads of fate strongly enough to have Njal’s runes point the way.

Perhaps Dactyla’s secret was the same thing that had stoked the tau’s interest here. Their structures dotted the rocky world, gripping the mountain peaks or floating anchored in Dactyla’s thin upper atmosphere. It seemed that even the industrious xenos were only just clinging to the planet, the spindly transmitters and scanners like scraps of spider web about to blow away on a solar wind.

One of the few stable points on the planet was the southern pole, where a broad plateau of rock was covered in shattered and fallen Imperial ruins. Once a mighty city had stood here, but now only ruins remained. It was here that the tau had set up the heart of their operations, a series of connected domes protected by drone turrets and a hangar of fighter craft. The Canis Pax’s scans had suggested a conventional gunship or shuttle landing would be suicidal, as the tau were a technologically adept race and their anti-air weaponry would swat such a craft out of the sky.

Thankfully, the Space Wolves did not do things conventionally. The Canis Pax’s complement of drop pods was prepped and loaded into the launching bays, and as the strike cruiser fled from the tau fleet past the disc of Dactyla, they were deployed.

Twelve minutes later, just beyond the predicted range of the tau air defences, they landed in a deep, black-shadowed valley, and the Space Wolves invaded Dactyla for the second time.

Lief Stonetongue crept back from the top of the ridge. His Blood Claws waited with uncharacteristic patience just below the ridge. The thin air of Dactyla necessitated the wearing of helmets, even though Blood Claws often showed their bravado by going into battle bare-headed. They had painted their faceplates with the black and red stripes they typically wore as warpaint.

‘Drone patrol’s passing,’ voxed Stonetongue. ‘But we can’t get in unseen. The xenos will be alert to us in a few minutes.’

‘Then we shall teach the tau how to fight,’ replied Ulrik. He was further down the ridge with the Wolf Guard, huge in their Terminator armour, beside him. ‘Lead the charge, Brother Stonetongue.’

Lief Stonetongue let out a long, rising howl, amplified through the force’s vox-net. The Blood Claws joined in, and as the sound reached a crescendo Stonetongue lifted his power sword high and let its energy field leap to life. At the flash of the power field the Blood Claws pack sprinted up the slope and onto the plateau.

It would have been better to do this with the strike cruiser’s armoured vehicles. It would have been better to land the drop pods right on top of their target. But the tau had not given the Space Wolves either option, and so the Blood Claws led the way across the open ground towards the complex deemed most likely to harbour the tau command centre. The strike force could not even use the Stormwolf gunship for air cover – the xenos would bring it down in a heartbeat. This had to be done on foot.

‘Where are you, xenos?’ snarled Stonetongue as he ran. ‘My sword-arm will grow lazy without alien flesh to carve! Would you see my brethren grow fat and indolent, like overfed dogs? Present yourselves and let us teach our bodies discipline by sundering yours!’

The Wolf Guard followed, creating a formation around Ulrik. Their purpose was to protect him as much as it was to play their part in destroying the tau. A tau drone streaked towards the Space Wolves and Brok Oakenheart shot it down with a burst of fire from his assault cannon, the report of the gunfire a strange high thud in the thin air.

The closest dome, one of the smaller outlying structures, lay a short sprint from the Space Wolves. A section of the dome slid aside to reveal a cadre of tau fire warriors armed with long-ranged pulse rifles, flanked by a squadron of a dozen drones each equipped with a pair of automated guns. The tau squad leader activated a handheld device and a series of armoured panels sprang up along the ground around the dome, creating instant rows of cover behind which the tau took shelter.

‘Down!’ ordered Ulrik.

Lief Stonetongue had been on the brink of ordering his Blood Claws to charge in, heedless of the gunfire, to get to grips with the xenos. The tau had superior ranged firepower but up close they could crumble – Stonetongue knew it, and must have been slavering to reap his tally of death in hand-to-hand combat. But by the time his Blood Claws got there they would have been riddled with pulse rifle fire. They might win out, but at the cost of battle-brothers Ulrik could not afford to lose. Not here. Not like this. Every Space Wolf was worth a hundred of these aliens. Ulrik ordered them to seek the shallow cover of the plateau’s dips and scattered rocks, and they obeyed in spite of their instincts.

‘Wolf Guard! Open fire!’ Ulrik pointed towards the tau with his crozius, but the Terminator-armoured Space Wolves beside him did not need much instruction. Oakenheart spun up the barrels of his assault cannon as the other Wolf Guard took aim with their storm bolters.

The assault cannon hammered into the armoured barricades. Storm bolter fire spattered around the tau, who dived into cover as bolter shells burst in miniature explosions. Two drones fell, caught in the metal storm.

‘Now, Blood Claws! Break them!’

The fire had streaked over the heads of the Blood Claws. Now Stonetongue’s brethren leapt to their feet, following up with bursts of bolt pistol fire as they ran. Several of the Blood Claws hurled frag grenades which burst in glittering blasts of shrapnel. By the time the young warriors hit, the tau were barely back on their feet.

Most of the tau had not fired a shot. Gun drone fire fell among the Blood Claws, but there was nothing Ulrik could do about that. He had to trust in their wargear to keep them safe for these few dangerous seconds, and ensure that any who fell would live on as their gene-seed was harvested.

Stonetongue vaulted the barricade. He pounced upon the tau squad leader, who was distinguished by turquoise-coloured flashes on the panels of his red armour plating. Stonetongue crushed him to the ground and followed up with a downwards thrust of his power sword. In the flash of the sword’s power field, Ulrik saw the silhouettes of the other Blood Claws leaping into the fight.

It took seconds. The Blood Claws ripped through the tau. While each fire warrior was a deadly soldier when looking down the sights of his pulse rifle, he had no way to fight back when up close with the raging Blood Claws. Arms were torn from shoulders. Chests were carved open with chainswords. The squad leader’s torso was almost obliterated, leaving a lower trunk and the scorched stumps of his arms and head as the power sword’s field seared through flesh and bone.

The Wolf Guard did not join in the charge. They stayed beside Ulrik, shredding the hovering drones with bursts of fire. Armed with storm bolters and Oakenheart’s cannon, the Wolf Guard sported the firepower of many times their number of unaugmented soldiers.

With the drones scattered and broken, Ulrik joined the Blood Claws at the barricade. They had performed well. Tau blood was pooled liberally on the ground and sprayed across the walls of the dome entrance. Inside the dome, along with banks of alien technology with a purpose Ulrik could only guess at, was the sealed doorway into the covered passageways that connected the domes. The way in.

‘Un-bar the gate, Brother White Bear,’ said Ulrik.

Baldyr White Bear was armed with a chainfist, a massive power gauntlet with a chain-toothed blade extending from the back of the hand. He rammed the blade into the doorway, and the teeth and power field acted in unison to chew rapidly through the reinforced tau construction. In seconds a rectangle was cut away large enough for a Terminator-armoured Space Marine to move through.

Already Ulrik could hear alarms and orders in the tau tongue blaring across the base. The assault had begun scarcely two minutes ago, but the xenos were already reacting. The tau were swift and intelligent in the methods of war. They were adaptable and they possessed exceptionally advanced technology. Fenrisian fury would have to win this fight, fury and speed.

Ulrik felt the wolf inside him snarling at the back of his mind. It wanted to be loosed, to lead him rushing through the tau base killing every alien he found, dragging Stonetongue’s Blood Claws in his wake. But he could not open up the cage. He was the counterpoint to Stonetongue’s recklessness. Without him, the Space Wolves were nothing but headstrong dogs haring after every prey they found, running straight into the gunsights of the tau Fire Warriors.

Ulrik was first through the breach. The passageway was lined with pipes and cabling, and branched off into a web of connected tunnels. At the centre of the web, the scans had suggested, was the eye without which the tau would be ignorant to what was going on over Dactyla. Ulrik’s task was to blind it. If he could not, the Canis Pax would be destroyed and Logan Grimnar would stay lost.

‘They’re trying to get around us,’ voxed Baldyr White Bear. ‘I can smell them. They think they can corner us like vermin in a nest.’

‘Keep moving and do not let them funnel us into a crossfire,’ replied Ulrik. ‘They cannot match us in prowess. They seek to best us with cunning.’

‘There was never a xenos so cunning as my blade!’ snarled Stonetongue through the vox. Ulrik knew the tone in his voice well – his wolf was loose, guiding him headlong. A Space Wolf full of such fury could not be stopped.

Ahead of the strike force was a set of massive blast doors, sealed in response to the Space Wolves’ assault. They were near the centre of the complex now, and there was only one way forward.

Baldyr White Bear did not need ordering to set about the blast doors with his chainfist. These held up better than the previous doors and sparks showered as Baldyr ground his way through the armoured slab. The Space Wolves found what cover there was among the coolant pipes and crates of war materiel.

Ulrik glimpsed a tau warrior at the far end of the corridor behind them, ducking behind cover. This one was accompanied by a handful of drones armed with long-barrelled variants of the fire warriors’ pulse rifles. Its helmet had a set of glowing orange lenses on the front that looked like targeting or magnification equipment.

Mobile projectors were pushed into the corridor, and above the projectors sprang fields of a shimmering milky haze that obscured the tau moving into position. A pulse rifle shot punched through the haze, boring through the wall beside one of Stonetongue’s Blood Claws. Another caught one of the Blood Claws in the shoulder and sent him sprawling, roaring in pain and anger, to the floor. Two shots hit the Wolf Guard Wsyr Flamepelt, one shearing through his greave. His dropped to one knee, grunting angrily through gritted teeth.

‘We are not trapped like prey,’ roared Stonetongue. ‘They have cornered a predator, and we will turn and devour them!’ He had his power sword drawn and the Blood Claws were making ready to mount a charge. ‘Blood Claws, Fenris’ fury, this floor is far too bare of alien heads!’

Ulrik grabbed Stonetongue by his collar and slammed the pack leader against the wall.

‘You will not charge into their guns,’ said Ulrik, his voice low but powerful. ‘We stay together. We fight as one. Let them string us out and we will be slain one by one. Bury your anger. We are not here to give your men’s lives for a few more alien dead.’

More shots hit home. Another of the Blood Claws was hit in the throat and clutched at where the shot had caught the join between helmet and collar. Flamepelt took a shot full on his shoulder pad – he was barring the way to Baldyr White Bear, shielding his fellow Wolf Guard with the wall of his armoured body.

Bolt pistol fire was stuttering down the corridor in return, but the tau were impossible to target properly through the light-bending field. Oakenheart’s assault cannon hammered bursts of fire, but they were random, too, and the sniper drones kept firing. Every third shot seemed to wound a Space Wolf – one sliced a good chunk from Ulrik’s shoulder pad, and sheared one of the vents from the backpack of his armour.

Finally, after what seemed like hours, Baldyr White Bear shouldered aside a section of the blast doors. Ulrik led the way through, more sniper fire pinging and shrieking through the air behind him.

Beyond was unmistakeably the nerve centre of the tau operations on Dactyla. The huge circular room was full of concentric cogitator banks of advanced alien design. Screens were everywhere, with those on the curved surface of the dome overhead showing enormous orbital displays. Information streamed across each screen, making for a glittering constellation of colour.

The tau had prepared for the Space Wolves. Waiting behind the banks of cogitators was a band of creatures who did not resemble the tau at all. They were insectoids almost seven feet tall, clad in vibrant blue carapaces. They had clawed talons and buzzing wings, and each had six compound eyes set into its mandibled face. More than a dozen sheltered in cover, each with a bulky blaster weapon and segmented body armour of unmistakeably tau design.

‘Auxiliaries,’ voxed Baldyr White Bear as he entered the nerve centre. ‘Xenos from the Tau Empire. Vespid.’

Ulrik vaulted one bank of consoles as the first fire came down. The vespids rose into the air, firing from every angle, and whining shots burst around the Wolf Priest as he sprinted and rolled.

Flamepelt was next into the room, supported by Oakenheart. He fired up into the vespids with his storm bolter, shooting down two that were too slow to dart out of the way of the stream of explosive shells. The vespids fell, wounded, and Lief Stonetongue led the Blood Claws in falling on them. Then Thord Icenhelm and Olav Brunn of the Wolf Guard followed, sending chains of storm bolter fire chattering across the dome, forcing the vespids down into the range of the Blood Claws’ chainswords.

Xenos blood sprayed across the consoles. Stonetongue leapt off a cogitator and grabbed a vespid’s trailing limb, dragging it down and slicing the creature clean in two through the abdomen with a slash of his power sword.

Tau reinforcements were making it into the command centre. A squad of fire warriors were accompanied by more auxiliaries, these ones the lanky, avian creatures the Imperium knew as kroot. Beside the orderly tau, they had a feral look, and were festooned with feathers and trinkets. They carried knives of bone and bronze for the kind of up-close fighting the tau themselves eschewed. One of the kroot was holding back a trio of animals with the same savage, scaly appearance. They snarled like attack dogs, and their master let them off the leash.

The kroot hounds bounded towards the Space Wolves. Ulrik felt the weight of his crozius arcanum in his hand, the power weapon an emblem of a Wolf Priest’s authority. The gilded wolf’s skull head was surrounded by a power field, crackling blue-white.

One kroot hound leapt at Ulrik. Its beak-like maw opened wide to snap down on him. Ulrik met it with a swing of his crozius, shattering the bony jaw and driving it back into the creature’s brain. It was dead when it hit the ground, and by the time the second hound closed in, Ulrik’s plasma pistol was in his hand.

The weapon kicked as superheated plasma burst in a plume against the kroot’s shoulder. It burned through skin, muscle and bone, and the kroot hound thudded to the floor a yard from Ulrik. As the pistol’s power coils recharged, Ulrik ducked forwards and drove the crozius down into the beast’s spine. The power field disrupted the gristle holding its vertebrae together and its upper back disintegrated.

The Blood Claws hit the kroot in a thudding, brutal melee. Chainswords sawed into kroot flesh. Xenos knives sought out joints and seals in power armour. Lief Stonetongue stayed up on the console, slicing down with his power sword at the kroot who tried to surround him.

‘Wolf Guard!’ ordered Ulrik. ‘Bring down the fire warriors! Cleanse this place!’

The Wolf Guard hammered bolter shells at the tau. Pulse rifle fire spattered back in return but the Wolf Guard did not duck and scrape for cover as other troops might have – they were relentless, trusting in their armour to hold as they advanced towards the tau.

The tau were disciplined and skilled soldiers. They were veterans of countless battles, exemplars of their species’ way of war, but they had not faced anything like the Wolf Guard before.

Flamepelt roared through the pain of his injuries and smashed into the broken cogitator housings, firing as he went. Baldyr was beside him and Oakenheart took up the rear, ripping out volleys of autocannon fire. The dome was full of bursting shrapnel and through it the Wolf Guard advanced until they were within power fist range.

Flamepelt was bleeding from several pulse rifle wounds, but the pain just seemed to give him more strength. A swing of his power fist caught one tau square in the chest and smacked the resulting gory mess against one of the huge orbital display screens, shattering the image of the stars over Dactyla and spreading xenos blood across the wall. Flamepelt cracked another tau’s skull with a downward swing of his storm bolter.

Baldyr swatted aside the last kroot hound with his chainfist. The creature was thrown across the dome in pieces. Ulrik ran in behind Baldyr to get among the tau, blasting one point-blank with his plasma pistol as the glittering arc of his crozius scattered three more.

It took a lot to keep the wolf caged in the thick of the fight. The Space Wolves were not here just to take alien heads – their mission was to blind the tau sensors watching Dactyla’s skies, and Ulrik could not let the force get split up here pursuing the enemy for its own sake. The son of Fenris wanted to embrace the berserker rage of his people and paint this place with alien blood, but the Wolf Priest reined it in and focused.

The leader of the fire warriors was trying to direct his disintegrating squad from the rear, snapping shots from his rapid-firing carbine as the Wolf Guard closed in and the kroot line threatened to collapse under the Blood Claws’ assault. Ulrik picked him out from the fray and waded through the fight towards him, shouldering aside the fire warriors who tried to bar his way.

The tau leader backed away towards the doorway through which he had tried to storm the dome, firing as he went. Pulse fire cracked and thudded against Ulrik’s breastplate as he pursued. The tau glanced behind him, then back at Ulrik, and in that moment the Wolf Priest saw that he had changed.

Where there had been only the blank surface of the tau’s visor, now there was a pool of formless dark. It plunged down through the tau’s skull and into another reality, where ancient stars boiled away and new nebulae bloomed into existence. It was a glimpse of infinity, a vision of the void beyond the void, and it could ensnare a man’s mind with the endless possibilities it promised.

It could not ensnare Ulrik. He had one of the strongest minds of any son of Fenris, moulded by the icy embrace of his home world and tempered by battles with the fiercest of daemons. He would not fall into the vision’s trap, or feel despair. He was a Wolf Priest. He was the Slayer.

Ulrik tore his eyes away and shook the fog from his mind. He had glimpsed the same thing not long ago, when he had torn the disguise from the imposter speaking in the Great Hall of the Fang.

A daemon. The Changeling. It was here, on Dactyla.

Ulrik barely noticed as he smashed aside a kroot that leapt at him with its blades outstretched. He did not acknowledge the fire warrior who was crushed beneath his armoured feet as he ran. He saw nothing but the daemonic presence, and heard nothing but the echo of the Changeling’s laughter as he had heard it in the Great Hall.

The wolf was loose. Ulrik felt its shackles breaking in his mind. Its howl filled his consciousness. He was running through the chambers of the base now like a hunter pursuing his quarry across a Fenrisian glacier, past banks of alien technology and the scattering bands of tau labourers. The fire warrior leader was just ahead – on open ground Ulrik could outrun the alien, but the base was cluttered and the creature knew his way.

The daemon had followed the Space Wolves to Dactyla, to spring whatever trap it had prepared for them there. Ulrik had outwitted it by ordering the bulk of the Chapter to remain on Fenris. Now it was time to finish his victory over the daemon by trapping and destroying its physical form. If the Changeling could feel regret, it would regret ever having picked out the Space Wolves as the target for its games.

His quarry bolted through a doorway and the door descended behind him. Ulrik slid beneath it and caught it on his shoulder, roaring as he forced it back open. The motors of the doors screamed and smoked as he pushed his way through.

He was outside the dome now, on a stretch of rocky plateau between the base’s structures. Ruins of ancient Imperial buildings filled the area. Overhead, silvery fire streaked across the sky as the Canis Pax led the tau fleet in an intricate dance. Shipmistress Asgir was keeping the strike cruiser alive against the firepower of the whole tau fleet. When the Changeling was defeated, then Ulrik could worry about assisting with her battle in orbit. For now, his objectives had changed.

A pack of kroot emerged from one dome, interposing themselves between the Changeling and Ulrik. Ulrik crashed into them, bowling half of them over with the force of the impact. They carried long rifles with blades attached to the barrels which they wielded like halberds. Ulrik parried one and shattered the knee of the kroot who held it with a downwards strike of his crozius. The power field leapt up and his follow-up strike into the kroot’s chin took the alien’s head clean off its shoulders. Ulrik whirled, catching two more in crozius’ arc, casting them broken and bloody across the rock.

Ahead, another section of dome slid aside. The fire warrior being puppeted by the Changeling disappeared inside. From the dome strode a bipedal battlesuit twice the height of a Space Marine. One arm ended in an energy cannon and the other held a circular shield that cast a force field around it. On the side of its armoured chest was an oversized combat knife in a sheath, worn not as a weapon but an emblem of rank. Ulrik recognised it through his fury.

Shas’el Dal’yth Sona Malcaon. The tau leader who had demanded the Space Wolves leave Dactyla or die. One more tool of the Changeling.

The wolf inside Ulrik howled. If Ulrik had to go through this alien too, then he would. He was a Space Wolf. The blood of Leman Russ burned in him. Nothing could stand before him when he was gripped by the fury.

Ulrik batted another kroot aside. They scattered as the battlesuit approached, propelled on incandescent jets from the exhausts mounted on its back. The suit crunched to the ground just ahead of Ulrik and took aim with its cannon. Ulrik rolled to the side as a tremendous burst of energy ripped into the ground beside him, blasting a deep trench through the rock.

Ulrik was back on his feet. He leapt at the battlesuit. This was a machine designed to keep foes at a distance, and to capitalise on their vulnerability as they fled. Ulrik would not flee. He found a handhold between two armour plates and swung up towards the battlesuit’s head, an armoured rectangle fronted by a nest of glowing lenses. He drew back his crozius and rammed it into the battlesuit’s eyes, letting the power field discharge to blast the head apart.

The battlesuit’s shield arm had an oversized hand that now reached up and closed around Ulrik’s thigh. It threw him off and he landed hard, skidding on his back along the rock. The battlesuit was reeling, blinded.

Ulrik was barely able to focus enough to check his body for injuries. He was battered, but he’d suffered nothing that would keep him from fighting. The rest of his mind was taken up with the rage.

He would tear this machine apart, piece by piece, and when the morsel of alien coward inside was revealed, he would rip it open and hold the bloody chunks up to the sky.

The power field of his crozius had recharged. This time it would tear off the battlesuit’s arm or split its torso open. Ulrik ran at the machine, taking advantage of its blindness to cross the arc of its cannon.

A panel on the battlesuit’s chest opened up like a hatch on a spaceship. Inside, lit by the winking readouts of the battlesuit’s controls, was the shas’el. A faint pane of clouded air suggested an energy field that kept the cockpit’s atmosphere pressurised in Dactyla’s thin air. The tau’s lipless mouth was open and the warning lights inside his cockpit were reflected in the liquid black of his eyes.

He saw Ulrik just in time to bring the shield arm around. The energy shield flared as Ulrik slammed into him at full speed. He bounced off and sprawled on the rock. The shas’el brought the shield down like a guillotine blade into Ulrik’s abdomen. Trapped against the rock by a weight of shimmering energy, Ulrik struggled like an insect on a pin.

The battlesuit’s cannon swung around to aim at him. If the tau ever smiled, Shas’el Dal’yth Sona Malcaon smiled then.

Ulrik forced his arm out from under him and drew his plasma pistol. The weapon was powerful enough to sear a hole right through solid power armour, but its power coil needed a few seconds to recharge after each shot. That meant Ulrik only had one pull of the trigger.

He fired straight up. The bolt of plasma hit the shield generator and the energy field crackled out of existence. Ulrik rolled out of the way as the cannon fired into the ground at the battlesuit’s feet.

The explosion lifted Ulrik off his feet and threw him against the battlesuit’s leg. Ulrik stayed conscious and aware as the side of his breastplate buckled with the force. His inner armour of fused ribs cracked, and shards of bone were driven into his chest cavity. He felt every one, needles of fire shrieking through him as his organs were burst and lacerated.

Ulrik hit the ground and gasped in a breath. His torn lungs flared in pain. Beside him was a glowing crater in the ground where the cannon had vaporised rock. Ulrik still had his crozius in one hand and pistol in the other. He holstered the pistol, ignoring the pain from the torn muscles down his side.

The wolf inside Ulrik was not quietened by the pain. He only heard it louder now. He reached up and grabbed the lower edge of the battlesuit’s open cockpit, pulling himself back up to the level of the shas’el.

Ulrik was face to face with the alien. The shas’el looked surprised to see Ulrik still living. As Ulrik brought his crozius back for the kill, he caught the reflection of his skull-faced helm in the tau’s large black eyes.

The reflection changed. The shape of the wolf’s skull distorted and broke apart in a spray of stars. Galaxies spun away and thunderheads of glowing stellar gas boiled out from an endless void. Millions of years spiralled away in chains of dying stars.

Ulrik was almost lost. Again, he forced his mind away. A terrible realisation was breaking at the back of his mind.

He heard distant laughter, and he understood.

Something slammed into Ulrik’s side. He fell away from the cockpit and hit the ground by the crater again. The tau fire warrior, the one Ulrik had pursued from the command centre – the Changeling – had run up and knocked him away from the shas’el.

Ulrik’s injuries cried out again. The shas’el turned to face Ulrik. The image of the void rippled across the fire warrior’s helm and the shas’el’s face, and Ulrik heard that laughter again, ringing from some dark place.

Of course the Changeling was not on Dactyla. The daemon was on Fenris, lurking at the threshold of the Fang, waiting for its chance to invade the minds of the Space Wolves. It had cast an illusion to distract Ulrik and force him to make himself vulnerable in a way that no Wolf Priest ever should. Because the Changeling knew Ulrik’s one weakness.

The caged wolf. The rage of Fenris. The Changeling knew it was inside Ulrik, and that when it ran loose all the mental discipline the Wolf Priest had created would shatter and be forgotten.

Ulrik rolled onto his front. His strength was bleeding away as he crawled. The anger was gone now, and he could feel only pain. He had suffered physically before – he had no fear of pain alone. But the pain was a reminder of how completely he had been outfoxed by the daemon. It had known every move Ulrik would make, the exact way to make him forget himself and become the furious son of Fenris that lay inside. He had split off from his battle-brothers and made himself vulnerable, and got himself cornered alone by the enemy in a way that would have had him scolding the most ignorant of novices.

The fire warrior backed off. The battlesuit manoeuvred to stand over Ulrik now, the face of the shas’el visible in the open cockpit. The battlesuit lifted a massive armoured foot, and raised it over Ulrik.

In that moment, when death became certain, a strange emotion surfaced somewhere amid the pain and regret. It was a peculiar form of admiration – nothing positive, nothing that suggested forgiveness or kinship. But nevertheless, Ulrik could not help but acknowledge the sheer cunning of the Changeling, the way it had found the one weakness in a man who should have no weakness at all. For all Ulrik took pride in being a Fenrisian and a son of Leman Russ, his homeworld and his primarch had engendered in him the flaw in his mental armour that the Changeling had exploited.

The battlesuit’s foot rushed down to crush and destroy.

Beyond the battlesuit, the void was streaked with starship fire. And somewhere among those stars, Ulrik realised with what would surely be his last thought, lay a Fenris now open to the predations of the Dark Gods.

PART THREE

EYE OF THE DRAGON

STEVE LYONS

The pressure on Ulrik’s chest suddenly eased.

The shadow of the gargantuan battlesuit above him – the shadow of death – unexpectedly disappeared.

He could barely see or hear past the alarms in his helmet. His auto-senses were in overdrive, diagnosing the damage to his armour, to his body, mostly telling him what he already knew. They told him only one thing that mattered: he was alive. His wolf amulet had protected him from being crushed, though it couldn’t have done so much longer.

The venerable Wolf High Priest had been spared to fight yet another day. He muttered a grateful prayer to the Allfather, as he looked for the agency through which his will had been done here.

The sky of this dreary alien world was screaming; its ground was trembling. Drop pods in blue-grey livery, the Space Wolves’ colours, were plummeting through the clouds, striking the ground like meteors. One of them had landed just behind the battlesuit, the force of the sudden impact throwing it off-balance.

Ulrik forced his battered armour, and his equally battered body, to move. Before the battlesuit’s shas’el pilot could regain control – before that heavy foot was raised to crush the life out of him again – he dragged himself out of the dirt and staggered away from it. His damaged lungs burned with every breath of air he gasped in.

The battlesuit loosed a volley of plasma rounds after him. They were comfortably off-target, though Ulrik felt their heat washing over him.

The first of the pods opened to disgorge fresh Space Wolves upon the battlefield. Ulrik recognised a few of them, saw the badge of the Sun Wolf on their shoulders and knew who must have brought them here; as if he hadn’t suspected it already.

Of all the twelve Wolf Lords, only one would have disregarded the High Priest’s orders and followed him here. Only one would have been so eager to prove himself – for the thousandth time – in action.

That one had just saved Ulrik the Slayer’s life.

Krom Dragongaze’s red cloak billowed around him as he stepped out of the drop pod. Its violent landing had sent cracks through the hard earth, but his gilt-edged artificer armour had easily absorbed the brunt of it.

He heralded his own arrival by firing a volley of explosive bolt-rounds into the air. In his other hand Krom clutched his signature weapon, Wyrmclaw, a huge double-bladed frost axe. It only took him a moment to choose his target.

‘Take out the battlesuit,’ he roared into his comm-bead.

Towering above all else, the tau machine was an irresistible lure to him, particularly as it was already damaged. The battlesuit’s head had been staved in and its pilot had thrown open its chest hatch in order to see. As a bonus, it seemed to have beaten the Wolf High Priest. The prospect of succeeding where Ulrik the Slayer had failed made Krom’s mouth water.

His orders were received and understood by his Wolf Guard, his company’s fiercest warriors. With the exception of the Old Wolf’s Kingsguard, Krom’s Wolf Guard was the largest among the Great Companies – thanks to the example he set for his warriors, he was quick to claim.

They leapt from the drop pod a breath behind their lord and fanned out around the enemy, bolt pistols and storm bolters rattling.

‘Keep your distance,’ their pack leader cautioned them over the vox-net. ‘One of those things can shatter power armour with a blow, but we have the advantages of speed and agility over it. Best to weaken its defences with ranged fire, then move in for the kill.’

That was Beoric Winterfang, always the calm voice of reason. His age and wisdom had been cited by some as a useful counterbalance to Krom Dragongaze’s hotheadedness, but he was one of Krom’s disciples all the same, and as loyal as the rest of them.

‘Sometimes, I wonder if you have wolf’s blood in you at all,’ Krom grumbled to himself, not for the first time. Beoric’s centuries of distinguished service, however, demanded his respect.

The battlesuit shuddered and reeled beneath the Wolf Guard’s sustained assault. It was anything but helpless, though. It snapped up a giant arm – more precisely, a multi-barrelled cannon attached to its shoulder joint – and unleashed a blinding storm of plasma rounds upon its assailants.

There was scant cover to be had, so there was little the Space Wolves could do to evade the white-hot fire that swept over them. They could only weather the onslaught as the markings and adornments on their armour blistered and burned.

Jormund Thunderclaw, a head taller than the others in more durable Terminator armour, pushed his way to the front of his battle-brothers. He planted his feet in the ground and brought his cyclone launcher to bear. A cluster of krak missiles screamed out from over his shoulders to blaze a laser-guided path towards their substantial target, bursting against the battlesuit’s energy shield and engulfing it in noise, fire and smoke. Its cannon continued to lash out, but half-blindly now.

Many of Ulrik’s strike force were recovering their wind, and the rest of the tau had begun a hasty pullback, finding themselves outmatched. The remainder of Krom’s Drakeslayers – his Blood Claws, Grey Hunters and Long Fangs – were harrying their foes’ heels, speeding their retreat. The High Priest had rejoined the battle too, in spite of his injuries.

Krom pierced the miasma around the construct with a narrow-eyed glare. His nostrils twitched at the scent of burning electrics. The battlesuit’s cannon had been silenced. Any moment now, he judged, its pilot would make a break for it, try to trample his way over the blue-grey perimeter that was tightening around him. Krom saw his chance and took it.

Ignoring Beoric’s sage advice – as was his right – he charged, lips peeled back from his fangs and axe awhirl above his head.

Wyrmclaw was edged with the ground talons of a Fenrisian ice wyrm; its blade cut harder than diamond and was lent additional power by the arcane runes carved into it. Krom smashed the blade into the battlesuit’s right knee joint, where a missile had already struck. For a moment, the axe remained lodged there, drawing out more smoke and furious sparks. It wasn’t enough.

The pilot glared down at him from the battlesuit’s chest cavity, its black eyes inhumanly cold. Krom threw himself with all his strength, all his fully-armoured weight, shoulder-first against the pylon of the battlesuit’s right leg. Already off-balance, at last it fell. Krom recovered his axe with a wrench as the suit toppled away from him.

His Wolf Guard joined him now, at Beoric’s command. They swarmed the felled machine, hacking through its sputtering shields with frost blades and power weapons. They dragged the hapless pilot from its cockpit and were snapping, howling, vying for the honour of tearing out its throat.

Within minutes of Krom Dragongaze’s arrival, the battle was won. He puffed out his chest with pride and turned to face Ulrik.

‘You’re welcome,’ Krom grinned.

‘I told you to stay behind at the Fang,’ Ulrik snarled.

‘I had a feeling I might be needed here,’ Krom answered him, brazenly.

Ulrik subjected him to his grim helm’s full glower. Most men – even those of Fenris – would have flinched from its judgement in fear. Not Krom, though. It was not for nothing that he was known as Dragongaze, or the Fierce-eye.

Krom’s head was bare, with bright russet hair sprouting from his scalp and chin, spilling over his gorget in plaits. He met Ulrik’s searing gaze with equally fiery red orbs of his own, and showed by the twitching of his lips that he relished the contest. The wolf-skull totem that he wore on his back loomed over his own skull. It appeared to be leering at Ulrik too, eye sockets full of insolence.

‘We have idled too long at the Fang,’ said Krom. ‘My Drakeslayers are impatient to bloody themselves again, after missing out on the Great Hunt.’

A growl formed at the back of Ulrik’s throat, but he let the matter drop. He had made his point – for what good it might do, what good it ever did – and Krom’s disobedience had saved him, after all. His death would have wounded the Sons of Russ grievously – especially with the Great Wolf still missing.

Olav Brunn padded up to him. ‘High Priest, the tau may be licking their wounds for now,’ he counselled, ‘but they will doubtless regroup and attack again. If the Great Wolf is to be found here–’

‘Grimnar came here,’ interrupted Krom, ‘to this planet?’

‘To explore the ruins of the city here, we believe,’ Ulrik confirmed, ‘and Olav is right, we may not have much time to search for him.’

Krom nodded and turned away from him abruptly. He fixed his eyes on the mildewed walls of the city across the plateau, as if he expected them to wither as most men did in the heat of his glare. At the same time, he barked into his comm-bead, jolting his Great Company into action.

Ulrik gave the same orders to the members of his smaller force. The Drakeslayers, however, were hungrier and better rested than the High Priest’s battle-brothers and, spurred on by their Wolf Lord, they took the lead.

Krom had his Wolf Guard form up around him and loped towards the crumbling city gates himself. He made sure to beat the Wolf High Priest through them.

The city reeked of dust and decay, making Krom’s nose itch. Its streets were narrow and winding, lined by the skeletons of half-demolished buildings. He felt hemmed in. A heavy silence had rushed in to fill the void left by the end of the battle, and the grey sky seemed a long way away.

The city had not been lived in for long before the Dactylan catastrophe had forced its evacuation. It felt lifeless, soulless, sterile. An ill place for hunting. Few feet, Krom knew, had trodden these streets in many decades, even centuries.

Few feet, he thought, and yet some...

The dust had been disturbed, and recently. There were too many trails to separate one from another, so he dispensed with the business of trying to follow them. He had his company fan out across the rubble. If there was something to find here – a clue to the Great Wolf’s whereabouts or Grimnar himself, perhaps crippled and in need of assistance – a Drakeslayer would find it or he would know the reason why.

Krom rounded the curve of a great mouldering dome, long since laid low by spiny roots that had risen up beneath it, thrusting outward triumphantly through its shattered doors and windows, only to then succumb themselves to age and blight.

A junction loomed, at which five narrow roads corkscrewed away from each other. Krom split his Wolf Guard into packs and chose the central route for himself: the one least likely, in his judgement, to loop back towards the walls.

Scant minutes later, however, he caught familiar scents on the breeze and came face-to-face with six battle-brothers, treading the same road as him but in the opposite direction. This place is a maze, he thought sourly. A man without his wolfish instincts – and less importantly, his armour’s auto-senses – would have lost himself by now.

The first discovery was made by a novice Blood Claw. His voice burst over the vox-net, proud and hungry to impress. A moment later, Beoric Winterfang delivered a more measured report from somewhere further eastward. The content of his message was much the same as that of the Blood Claw’s. Each had come upon the site of a recently fought battle – and each had found its casualties.

‘I recognise Uri Stormhammer,’ Beoric voxed. ‘A staunch member of the Old Wolf’s Kingsguard. He has been dead for some days.’

‘Then Grimnar was here,’ Krom replied. And may be yet.

‘My lord, I see another corpse,’ chimed in the eager Blood Claw. ‘It’s a Space Marine, my lord, but not of Fenris. He bears the symbol of Caliban.’

Krom’s top lip curled at the mention of the Space Wolves’ ancient rivals.

‘We have Dark Angels here too,’ Beoric confirmed. ‘One has clearly been felled by a chainsword – and, my lord, I see no tau. We have no tau bodies here.’

That could only mean one of two things. It was inconceivable that any Space Wolf had fallen without taking at least one of his enemies with him. So, had the tau simply removed their dead for burial? It was not impossible, but they had engaged Ulrik’s force outside the city – and so far, Krom had detected no fresh tau scents within it.

He clenched his fists inside his gauntlets. It had been a long time since Krom had gone toe to toe with a Dark Angel – and then he had certainly proven which of them was superior. He would relish the chance – an excuse – to prove it again.

He took a moment to consider that happy scenario. Another vox, however, demanded his attention. He recognised the voice of Egil Redfist, the Blood Claws’ commander.

‘Lost contact with three of my Wolves,’ he reported ominously. ‘I’m sending you details of their last known location and leading my pack there now.’

So, there were still enemies – living enemies – hiding in the city. Dark Angels? No, thought Krom, they wouldn’t lurk in shadows. Tau? Perhaps… But the hairs on his neck and down his spine were tingling, as they had been, he realised, since he had passed through the crumbling gate. The air had a scent, a taste of something he couldn’t quite define, but it clawed at the lining of his nose and prickled his throat.

Krom Dragongaze’s instincts were never wrong. There was something evil here.

‘This one can still be saved,’ said Wsyr Flamepelt.

He was speaking of a grey-haired Long Fang, whose hand he had seen protruding from beneath a pile of stones, whose body he had uncovered.

The Long Fang’s wounds were deep, but his enhanced physiology had staunched the bleeding and slowed his metabolic rate to less than a crawl. It might be weeks or longer before he woke – Space Marines could remain in healing comas for centuries – but wake he would.

‘Too late to tell us what happened here,’ Ulrik grumbled.

He ordered that the brother be returned to the Canis Pax where he could be properly tended to, then strode away, his heavy brow furrowed beneath his helm.

He had voxed Krom Dragongaze, and knew that the Drakeslayers had found more bodies. Not enough to suggest a massacre, he considered, but cause for concern nonetheless. What had happened to Logan Grimnar that had kept him from tending to his wounded or burying his dead? For that matter, what brought him – the Dark Angels too, not to mention the tau – to these festering ruins in the first place?

‘Another Dark Angel over here,’ Olav Brunn grunted. This one was far beyond helping. His armour was seared and dented; he lay crumpled against the foot of a spiral staircase that led nowhere.

Ulrik cast a shrewd eye over the corpse, seeking clues to the mystery. The Dark Angels and the Space Wolves had long been rivals, but fighting one another to the death was quite another thing. Unless, he concluded, the Angels had been touched by the taint of Chaos. He studied the body closely, but the Space Marine, Ulrik satisfied himself, was only what he appeared to be.

He updated Krom on his situation, eliciting a cruel bark in response. ‘I make that seven of theirs to five of ours,’ the Wolf Lord boasted. Thus far, thought Ulrik. Unlike Krom Dragongaze, he didn’t see everything as a competition.

He was listening, with one ear, to a vox-report from the Canis Pax in orbit. He had instructed its shipmistress to make continuous scans of the planet’s surface. He voxed the news to Krom.

‘The tau are regrouping on the plateau, with a dozen more battlesuits. There may be advance parties searching inside the city already.’

Could the tau have ambushed Krom’s missing Blood Claws? he wondered.

Krom snarled, ‘Good. Let them come.’

‘No,’ snapped Ulrik, feeling his gorge rising again. ‘We cannot let the tau delay us here. Save that battle for another day. We need to find what we came to this benighted world for and get out of here. Do you understand me, Krom?’

‘As you will,’ the Wolf Lord allowed thickly, then broke off contact.

Ulrik took a breath and reminded himself of the Fierce-eye’s more admirable qualities. He had certainly had to recite them often enough. The Great Wolf had repeatedly threatened to expel Krom from his Chapter; either that or rip out his throat. It had been the High Priest’s thankless task, each time, to ask him to reconsider.

It was Ulrik – an old wolf even then – who had recruited Krom and overseen his training. He had seen Krom’s belligerence and bouts of fiery rage as weapons worth tempering. The many great victories that Krom had since won, the foes left bloodied in his wake, the unshakable loyalty he inspired among his Drakeslayers, all of these things showed Ulrik’s choice to have been the correct one.

And now I owe him my life…

A sudden flurry of vox reports assailed his ears. At the same time, he heard the unmistakable sound of gunfire coming from the north-east, deadened by the intervening stone buildings, and then more gunfire, this time from the south.

The Space Wolves were under attack.

At the very first gunshot, Krom bolted into action.

He sprinted across the dead city’s narrow roads, through the shells of its sundered buildings, scrambling over heaps of debris. He came up short, letting loose a howl of frustration, as a solid wall rose to block his path. He turned and pushed his way back through the Wolf Guard who were following at his heels, seeking a way around it.

He reached the site of the battle too late. It was almost over.

A half-pack of Grey Hunters had surprised a tau scouting party. There had been six tau to three Space Wolves, but the xenos were unskilled in hand-to-hand combat and their attackers had been upon them before they could use their pulse rifles.

Four tau had been efficiently dismembered; the remaining two had fled in opposite directions for their miserable lives. The Space Wolves would have chased them down without a thought – and Krom would probably have joined them – had Beoric Winterfang not arrived at that moment and instructed them to stand fast.

‘The High Priest said we weren’t to let the tau delay us,’ he reminded Krom calmly, in response to the Wolf Lord’s murderous glare. ‘Nor would it be wise to split our forces any further than we have, until we know more about the threat we face.’

The knowledge that Beoric was right did nothing to assuage Krom’s anger. He unleashed it upon the nearest viable targets, the Grey Hunters. He raged at them for letting the tau escape, not being faster, stronger, more alert. ‘When we return to the Fang,’ he swore, ‘you’ll each spend a week training with the Blood Claws, learning to use those blades – and should I ever witness such a clumsy display again, I’ll beat you black and bloody myself. No excuses. I will not have–’

He broke off, realising that was his voice was competing with a new sound.

He whirled around as a craft plunged, whining, out of the sky behind him. It was small and black, the shape of an arrowhead. It bore no Imperial design. Nor was it tau, judging by its harsh lines and angles. It was coming right at him – a suicide run, Krom thought, and he bellowed at his men to scatter and leap for cover.

The craft pulled up short of the ground, tilting to evade the surrounding buildings by a hair; it was more manoeuvrable than Krom had imagined it to be. He glimpsed a pilot behind its glacis, saw two more heads poking out of a weapons emplacement at its stern.

‘What in the warp is it?’ he cried.

Then the gunners got to work, strafing the street ahead of them with thousands of tiny, sharp projectiles spat from a long-nosed cannon. Krom had ducked into an archway, letting its intricate stonework bear the brunt of the assault. Some splinters ricocheted off his armour, however, and a few stuck in it: slender, quivering shards of crystal, glistening with neurotoxins. He knew what he was facing now.

Beoric, with his centuries of experience, had seen it at once.

‘Eldar!’

The shadow of the craft flitted over them, its belly almost scraping the Space Wolves’ heads. Its gunners rotated their cannon to spray out more shards in their wake, forcing the Drakeslayers to scramble for new defensive positions.

Crouched in his archway, Krom emptied his bolt pistol in the enemy’s direction. His targets were the gunners’ exposed heads, but at this range, through a blizzard of poisoned needles, they were nigh on impossible to hit.

‘Use your weapons, you sons of dogs,’ he bellowed at his Wolf Guard and Grey Hunters alike. ‘Bring that damned thing down, and you might just show me you have iron in your blood, after all.’

The black xenos craft, following the road’s curve, had disappeared behind a dome; that gave them some respite from its splinter cannon at least, a precious moment to regroup. Krom could hear its antigravity engines, however – quiet by any normal standards but loud in the city’s silence. It hadn’t gone far.

He pulled two crystal needles out of his forearm, one out of his chest. He dashed them to the ground, where they shattered. He reloaded his bolt pistol.

He heard Wolf High Priest Ulrik’s voice, insistent, through his comm-bead.

‘I have reports of gunfire from your position. What’s happening over there? Krom!’

Krom drew his breath to answer him, but held it. He can wait another moment, he thought, for better news. Other voxes were coming in, in any case, competing with each other to be heard. Egil Redfist, in search of his missing Blood Claws, had come upon a xenos ship too, and three more Space Wolves packs, spread across the city, had likewise suddenly found themselves under fire.

Russ, they’re everywhere at once, thought Krom. How is that possible?

The black craft had climbed out of the maze of streets and banked steeply around; now it came swooping in again, snapping the spire off a square tower as it skimmed over it. For a second time, the Space Wolves found themselves fixed in its cannon sights; this time, however, there was one important difference.

This time, Krom Dragongaze knew what was coming, and he was ready for it.

They leapt from inside the broken buildings, behind the archways. They appeared on balconies and parapets and at the shattered windows of crumbling towers.

Ulrik cursed himself for a novice. He had caught their scent on the wind but misjudged their proximity, concerned about the brothers he had been rushing to assist. He had shouted a warning in the moment the ambush was sprung, and this alone had kept his pack – six-strong at present – from being entirely surrounded. Still, they were badly outnumbered.

He counted over twenty of them: dark eldar warriors in flexible, black armour. Spikes bristled from their shoulders, knees and elbows, horns from their conical helmets. Like all their kind, they had a sun-starved pallor to their skin – those few that showed their faces – and yet they were muscular and lithe, with their tapered ears and chins, filed teeth and silken black or white hair.

‘Their weapons are strong, but their armour is weak,’ Ulrik bellowed. ‘Hit them fast and hit them hard. For Russ!’

But even as he led the charge to battle, he voxed an appeal – to anyone, any Space Wolves who weren’t already themselves besieged – for reinforcements.

The black craft came around for another strafing run: its third.

Krom had feared it might not. His men were well entrenched in doorways and windows along each side of the street – good sniping positions. They had shattered the pilot’s glacis and, he felt certain, winged one of the gunners. He had thought the dark eldar might change their tactics, perhaps even turn tail.

They had drawn blood, however, and they had a thirst for more.

Ulvar Razorfang had ventured too far out of hiding to line up a perfect shot. The splinter cannon had snapped around towards him in a heartbeat, and its crystal shards had shredded him. He had reeled back into his doorway, hitting a wall hard – he was still propped up against it. He hadn’t moved in over a minute.

At least three other Space Wolves were wounded – Krom Dragongaze among them. Like Ulvar, he had chosen to take a risk and had been punished for it. This time, he told himself, he would be faster. No excuses.

Crouching beneath his stone arch, he judged the skimmer’s approach by the whining of its engines. When it was almost on top of him, so close that it had to level out of its dive and its cannon couldn’t target him for a second, he made his move.

This time the climb was easier, because Krom could use the handholds he had punched into the stone already. The numbness in his left shoulder, however, was spreading along his arm into his fingers. Aloud, he cursed the splinter that had found the gap between his gorget and his pauldron, momentum driving it through his power armour. He had yanked out the stem, but the tip had embedded itself in his flesh.

What if the poison spreads to my primary heart?

He didn’t like to think about that. He clambered onto the top of the archway, and this time his timing was near perfect. The skimmer was right there, almost within his reach. Had he lifted his head a second earlier, it would likely have taken it off. Indeed, another ship – with normal engines – could have fried him in its backwash.

The dark eldar gunners hadn’t seen him. They had their backs to him, focusing on the targets strewn across the street ahead of them.

A lesser man – even some Space Wolves, such as Beoric Winterfang – might have taken a moment to think, to assess the situation, and thus been too late to act. Krom trusted his instincts, which had always served him well. He let them guide him now and made the jump. For a heady second, he flew.

Not fast enough! Like a shadow, the black skimmer slipped out from underneath him. Krom howled, reaching for it with straining arms and fingers. His numb left arm threw off his balance, and suddenly he was flying no more but falling. He felt a stab of emotion – not fear, never fear, but shame.

And because Krom Dragongaze refused to bear that shame, because he couldn’t fail in front of his pack, somehow his flailing hands found purchase after all. They caught on a snare chain, trailing from the skimmer’s port wing. He bit back another howl – this one of pain – as his injured shoulder was almost wrenched out of its socket.

The sudden addition of Krom’s plummeting weight threw the craft into a spin; caught unawares, one of the gunners pitched over the side and fell past him. The craft wasn’t high enough for the fall to be fatal, but the nine Space Wolves waiting below would see to that.

It was taking all of Krom’s strength to cling to the chain, but he had to climb it; dangling in mid-air, he was horribly exposed. As the skimmer levelled out, its wingtip struck tortured sparks off the marble skin of a tower – whether accidentally or in a frantic attempt to scrape him off, he couldn’t tell.

He willed his arm to work, to haul him up the chain and onto the skimmer’s stubby wing. It lurched as he planted a foot on it, and its engine pod trailed black smoke. The surviving gunner saw him and wheeled the cannon around towards him. Krom fixed the alien with a menacing glare and half-charged, half-stumbled into its turret.

He wrestled the xenos for control of the splinter cannon. Dark eldar were quick and they were agile – but in a contest of strength, he had a servo-assisted edge over them. The gunner surrendered its cannon and snatched instead for a flail at its hip.

Krom left his axe slung across his back. He grappled with the xenos, pinning its spindly arms to its sides. He felt its lightweight armour cracking in his pincer grip, and only wished he could see the frightened face of his enemy beneath its black, impassive helmet.

Somehow, it squirmed free of him for a second, but it was struggling to draw breath. It reached for its flail again, but Krom delivered a brutal, backhanded blow with his gauntlet, which almost took its head off. As the xenos reeled, Krom barged it, leading with his good shoulder. It tried to brace itself, but a fortuitous lurch of the skimmer betrayed it and sent it tumbling after its late partner.

The dark eldar flipped head over heels in mid-air; it would land on its feet, but the craft was flying higher now than it had been and the impact would likely shatter the xenos’ bones.

The pilot had managed to lift the skimmer’s nose and drag it up above the rooftops, but was struggling to keep it there. Krom drew his axe, intending to cut his way into the sealed cockpit, but was forced to make a grab for the cannon instead. The black skimmer plunged into a barely-controlled dive and careened around the narrow streets, scraping a wing against a building here, ploughing through a mast there.

The engine pod was coughing up gouts of flame; Krom could see through the glacis that the pilot was losing a fraught battle with its controls. It was only by the Allfather’s will that they hadn’t been spread across the city already.

Krom had no choice. He had to jump for it.

Russ, but these xenos are fast – or are my injuries slowing me down?

Ulrik was flanked by a trio of dark eldar. They lashed at him with blades that telescoped into razor-studded flails at the flick of a wrist, making them impossible to parry. In contrast, they evaded each blow of his energy-wreathed crozius, seeming almost to be enjoying the dance. Their eyes shone fervently in the slits of their tapering helmets; above these, each wore the jagged symbol of their warrior kabal. It was not one that Ulrik recognised.

He described ever wider arcs with his weapon, trying to keep them at bay, but they darted between his swings and raked at him again. So far, the force field generated by his amulet had absorbed most of their punishment, but they were wearing him down, and his lungs were feeling the strain again. Ulrik had to change his tactics or he would lose this fight.

The next time a flail lashed out at him, he entangled his crozius in it and yanked on it sharply. His intention had been to disarm, but the wielder clung to its weapon stubbornly, which led to a brief and decidedly one-sided tug of war. As the xenos stumbled into him, off-balance at last, the Wolf High Priest swiped at it with his free hand, sending it reeling into one of its fellows.

In the process, he left his back exposed to the third, and its lash sliced through his fur-trimmed cloak and flayed a layer of ceramite off his forearm.

He had opened a gap in the dark eldar’s circle, however, and he lowered his head and powered through it before they could regroup. He drew his plasma pistol, wheeled around and fired at them as they leapt after him, flattening his back against a stone wall so they couldn’t surround him again.

The odds were still against him, but he suspected that was about to change.

Ulrik counted three brothers felled by flails and venom blades, and two others by splinters fired from the shadows – but many more had responded to his summons, most of them Drakeslayers. I may owe Krom my life again! The battle was spreading to engulf a city block, and the Sons of Russ were no longer on the defensive. They had begun to claim a few kills of their own.

Some packs across the city were not faring half as well. Reinforcements hadn’t been able to find them in time. The vox-channels had been clogged with their voices a moment ago, but one by one they were falling ominously silent. Ulrik hadn’t heard from Krom, but he had contacted Beoric Winterfang and had learned that his Wolf Guard had also been attacked.

They appeared so suddenly, with no warning at all, thought Ulrik, and my ship’s scans didn’t detect them. Could it be…?

The dark eldar were bringing in additional forces too. A pair of hulking, slavering beasts had joined the melee, dwarfing the humanoid combatants of both sides. Ulrik had encountered their like before. They resembled colossal, violet-hued apes, many-eyed and many-toothed with barbed tails and massive, razor-sharp claws.

A lean figure hovered above these clawed fiends on an anti-gravity skyboard: a dark eldar beastmaster. It was driving its charges onward with judicious lashes from a crackling whip. Its chest was bare, its belt hung with animal skulls, and it wore a shamanistic mask that resembled the monsters’ own features – perhaps one of the arcane methods by which it asserted its dominance over them.

Two packs of Krom’s Grey Hunters engaged the beasts. Ulrik voxed them across the battlefield.

‘Bloody them and you’ll send them into a berserker rage,’ he warned them. ‘Take out their master first, and they’re as likely to turn on the dark eldar as not.’ Far easier said than done, he knew.

His own three opponents were upon him again with their flails. Ulrik turned the red-eyed, snarling visage of the Wolf Helm of Russ upon them; one of them faltered for an instant, and he stove in its skull with his crozius.

He filtered a single voice out of the babble that filled his ears: ‘– saw they were outnumbered and fled from us. We ran some of them down, but the rest seemed to melt into the shadows. We have four Blood Claws down. As we arrived, they… the xenos were loading our battle-brothers onto a black skimmer.’

They’re using hit-and-run tactics, Ulrik realised, keeping the bulk of our forces disoriented – and divided – while they pick off our stragglers, one pack at a time. And take them where? He feared he knew the answer to that question.

It was time he took the offensive.

Three dark eldar warriors had been enough to keep him on the back foot; two was a different matter. Ulrik lunged at them, taking the blows of their flails, whirling the sacred crozius – his weapon, but also his badge of office – end over end. One of them managed to dance out of his path, but the other did not. These xenos were fast – but so too were the Sons of Russ.

Ulrik roared as he battered his enemy repeatedly, giving it no time to draw breath, splitting open its helmet and driving it into the ground. When he was done, he rounded on his remaining opponent – to find it gone.

It had not left alone, he realised. No more than a handful of dark eldar lingered on the battlefield – some had fallen, but not enough to justify the drop in numbers – and their snipers’ heads had vanished from the surrounding windows.

His battle-brothers hadn’t noticed yet, or were just too preoccupied to care. The clawed fiends had scented their own blood and been driven into a frenzy, as Ulrik had predicted they would, and it was taking every man at hand to contain them.

He couldn’t see the beastmaster. Had he been shot down or had he withdrawn with the others, leaving his charges behind? He tried to vox Krom Dragongaze, but received no answer again, so spoke to Beoric Winterfang.

‘I assume the Ironpelt is in orbit?’ he asked, referring to the Drakeslayers’ strike cruiser.

‘It is, High Priest,’ Beoric confirmed.

‘Contact your shipmaster. Have him launch his Thunderhawks.’

‘High Priest, the tau–’

‘I know. Our scans told us the same. I don’t need those ships to land, just to look as if they might. I’ll have my own gunships join them.’

‘A distraction,’ said Beoric.

‘Keep the tau’s air defences busy for ten minutes, then withdraw.’

Ulrik didn’t wait for any further questions. Switching to another frequency, he issued a series of orders to his own shipmistress, Asgir. At the same time, he reloaded his plasma pistol. With that done, he bellowed his war cry again – raising an answering howl from as many Space Wolves as could hear him – and returned to the fray.

The smoking wreckage of the black craft was strewn all about him.

Krom could no longer feel or move his left arm at all; on top of that, he had twisted his back and scraped his armour, ricocheting off walls and outcroppings on his way to the ground. Repair cement had patched up the damage to the armour; the damage to his body would require more time and care.

He voxed Beoric, on a frequency that allowed the other Drakeslayers to overhear him.

‘I’ve dealt with the xenos craft. Its crew are dead.’ He made the boast sound almost casual. ‘Making my way back now; I need a fix on your location.’

Krom didn’t reveal how close to death he had come, how soon after his leap from the skimmer it had smacked into the near-intact stone wall of a tower.

Its pilot may have crashed deliberately, he thought, knowing it was dead either way and desiring to take its killer with it. He considered digging the dark eldar’s corpse out of its mangled cockpit, so he could spit on it.

His impromptu flight had carried him deeper into the ruined city. All was quiet here now the wreckage had settled – but he feared that wouldn’t last. Beoric and the others were over five miles away from him. Too far. He had their bearing now, but would still have to find a route through the streets to reach them.

‘We should come to you,’ suggested Beoric. ‘There are more of us. It would be safer. You should take shelter until we–’

The Wolf Lord cut him off with a contemptuous snort. ‘If you expect Krom Dragongaze to hide like a mewling–’

He froze as he felt his hackles rising and heard an all-too-familiar whining noise from above and behind him.

‘What is it?’ hissed Beoric through his earpiece. ‘My lord?’

‘Another skimmer,’ he answered through his teeth. ‘It’s seen me.’

For a moment, Krom was ready to stand and fight. His right forefinger was curled around the trigger of his bolt pistol before he knew he had drawn it; through narrowed eyes, he glared along its barrel at the black shape bearing down on him. He had brought down one dark eldar ship today, why not another?

He hadn’t been hurt last time. Nor had he been alone.

Krom had no choice, but that didn’t mean he had to like it. He put off the decision as long as he could, perhaps a second too long. He emptied his magazine in the enemy’s direction and hurled violent curses at them – futile gestures both, except for giving vent to his impotent fury. The black craft levelled out, careering between the city’s stone husks. Its cannon began to spit, its poisoned darts tearing up the road in front of him.

Krom turned tail and ran for his life.

One of the two clawed fiends had finally fallen.

Even thrashing about in its death throes, it had continued to bloody its claws and fangs and knocked at least two Space Wolves off their feet. It couldn’t beat back all of them, however, and a dozen chainswords hacked at the beast until it shuddered and fell still, dark blood matting its violet fur.

Ulrik had remained on the edge of the melee, firing into it when he had seen a clear shot, reserving the rest of his attention for matters elsewhere. In the sky he could see distant blossoms of light, the only signs of the pitched battle being fought up there. Occasionally, a ship – one of the combatants – would dip into the atmosphere and his enhanced hearing would detect the faint roar of its engines.

At last, he heard the sound he had been waiting for.

‘Rolling Thunder to Wolf High Priest Ulrik,’ a voice rumbled in his ear. ‘I’ve made it through the tau blockade. Descending towards the abandoned city now.’ Simultaneously, he heard engines above his head, deep and throaty, and saw their contrails burning across the heavens.

The remaining clawed fiend was mortally wounded, too angry and stupid to accept that it was dead. The Drakeslayers are capable and numerous enough to take care of it, Ulrik judged, as their commander would no doubt insist if he were here.

He broadcast a general-frequency vox to his own forces, those fighting the monster alongside him and those further afield. He told them to disengage from their battles, those that could, and prepare to rendezvous with him at coordinates to follow.

He was contacted by Rolling Thunder’s pilot again, on cue: ‘I’ve identified a possible landing site, a plaza, on a bearing of oh-seven-four degrees, two point one miles from your vox-signal. It’ll be a tight squeeze, but I think I can–’

‘I’ll meet you there,’ barked Ulrik.

Russ, don’t let me die like this!

Krom hurtled around another sharp bend in the road. He saw a narrow gap between two buildings and plunged into it. It opened onto a circular plaza, where the dismembered legs of mildewed bronze statues still clung to broken plinths. He was too exposed here.

He glanced over his shoulder. He couldn’t see the black skimmer but could hear its whining engines zeroing in on him. He turned back the way he had come, squeezing back between the buildings in the hope of confusing his pursuers.

As soon as he reached the road again, however, they pounced on him. Krom howled as his back was peppered with poisoned splinters. Don’t let me be cut down from behind, running like a frightened man-cub. Don’t let that be how I am remembered. Let me meet my killer face to face and die with his blood on my claws.

He was lucky this time. His armour saved him, preventing the needles from reaching his flesh.

A window loomed in front of him. Without stopping to think, he dived through it. His twisted back betrayed him. He landed on his numb left shoulder, sending a jolt of pain through him. His armour automatically upped his medication, but he countermanded it, needing his senses to be sharp. Splinters thudded into the far side of the wall behind which he was sprawled. At least he had found temporary shelter.

He couldn’t stay here.

Krom scrambled away from the window, avoiding the shafts of grey light that streamed in through the roof. He crouched in the shadows and sniffed the musty air. His keen eyes pierced the gloom, exploring the innards of the dome in which he found himself. Its shell was relatively intact, but its internal walls had crumbled. There were plenty of egress points, designed and otherwise.

He could hear the dark eldar craft circling above him. No doubt they would direct ground troops to this spot to root him out. He couldn’t afford to rest. He had to move, to get away from here, before they arrived.

He picked a window and loped across the rubble towards it, being sure to stay out of the light. He flattened himself against the wall and waited. When he judged that the skimmer was at the farthest point of its circuit, Krom bolted. He tumbled, head over heels, through the window, landed on his feet and ran. He was counting on taking his pursuers by surprise, on his reflexes being sharper than theirs were.

He wasn’t fast enough – or they were too fast. Barely had he taken six steps when the skimmer was riding on his tail again, swooping down on him like a giant bird of prey, its cannon firing. More than one of its needles penetrated his armour this time, and buried themselves in his back.

Krom staggered and almost fell. He realised that the nearest cover was too far ahead of him, so turned back while he could. He scrambled through the same window he had emerged from, back into the broken dome. This time, he knew there would be no escaping from it. He was trapped here.

He couldn’t reach the splinters in his back with only one hand. The injectors in his armour were flooding his system with anti-venoms, trying to counteract the dark eldar toxin – but the only thing holding it in check, he felt sure, was the rage bubbling white-hot in his veins. He embraced that rage like a brother.

He refused to let his legs fold underneath him. He kicked out at what was left of the walls instead, demolishing them and punching a fresh hole in the side of the dome. He voxed Beoric Winterfang, because he needed to scream at someone. ‘Where are you?’ he demanded. ‘Do I have to slaughter every xenos on this planet by myself? What in Russ’ name do I keep a Wolf Guard for?’

From Beoric there was no reply. Krom’s hearts, both of them, were pounding in his ears as if competing with each other. The skimmer still circled overhead. The dark eldar troops, their warriors, would be here soon, he knew. All he cared about now was being on his feet to greet them.

He found a place in the shadows to crouch, from where he could watch every entrance to the dome. He clutched his bolt pistol in his right hand, though he had to concentrate to keep it from shaking. He would cut down two, maybe three dark eldar before they knew where he was. Then, when his gun was empty, the rest would come to him and Wyrmclaw would deal with them.

They would find him surrounded by the gutted corpses of his enemies, and would know that a battle worthy of legend had been fought here. The Sons of Russ would toast the memory of this day at many feasts to come.

They would long tell the tale of Wolf Lord Krom Dragongaze’s last stand.

The narrow streets were empty again, which was no more than Ulrik had expected. It was typical of the dark eldar to spring a surprise attack then retreat with their spoils while their victims were still disoriented. Not this time, he vowed.

Rolling Thunder’s engines now drowned out all other sounds for him; her wolf’s-head shadow blotted out the light momentarily as she passed over him. She was a Stormwolf, an assault ship capable of carrying sixteen Space Wolves into battle.

Ulrik loped around the corner of another fractured hab-block, the five members of his Wolf Guard at his heels. The Stormwolf was sitting there, waiting for him. She almost filled the cramped plaza in which she had put down, wreathed in her own exhaust smoke, looking battered but defiant – as indeed she always had.

Its pilot, Rogan Bearsbane – a ruddy-faced, heavy-set Iron Priest sporting a voluminous beard – flashed him a grin from the cockpit as he lowered the boarding ramp. Ulrik waved his battle-brothers ahead of him, and was pleased to see others – more than he had expected – streaming into the plaza to join them.

One group of three wore the badge of the Sun Wolf. They were members of Krom Dragongaze’s Wolf Guard, though neither the Fierce-eye nor Beoric Winterfang were among them.

A Wolf Guard by the name of Beregelt squared up to the High Priest. ‘You’re taking a gunship in pursuit of the dark eldar’s captives.’ It wasn’t a question.

‘The Great Wolf was here,’ said Ulrik. ‘If they took him–’

Beregelt interrupted him, boldly. ‘We’re coming with you.’

Ulrik growled at him, ‘I have as many Wolves as I require.’

‘They have our Wolf Lord cornered,’ said Beregelt, stubbornly. ‘Beoric is leading a pack to his side, but I fear they may not reach him in time, especially not if there is a gate to the eldar labyrinth in these ruins.’

Ulrik nodded. ‘It may be what brought the Great Wolf here.’

It didn’t surprise him that Beregelt knew of such matters. The Wolf Guard had served long enough to have seen many things.

‘You plan to follow the dark eldar through that gateway,’ said Beregelt. Again, it wasn’t a question. ‘Lord Krom would want his Wolf Guard aboard that ship.’

And just how was Krom separated from his Wolf Guard, Ulrik thought to snarl, especially after I cautioned him against being reckless? He bit back the words. Now is not the right time. ‘Very well,’ he conceded gruffly, then turned his back.

He climbed aboard the waiting gunship, and left Beregelt and the Drakeslayers to follow him as they wished.

They had come at him from nowhere.

Krom Dragongaze cursed them, cursed the splinters in his back, the neurotoxin in his system, cursed himself most of all for his weakness. He had closed his eyes, unwittingly, for a second: long enough for them to strike.

The poison had tightened his chest, making it difficult to breathe. His pulses were irregular, his secondary heart pumping frantically to compensate for his failing primary. He had prayed for his enemies to find him soon, lest he die first and be denied his blaze of glory.

He had rested his brow against a half-demolished wall, though he didn’t remember doing so. His auto-senses warned him that the temperature in the dome had dropped sharply – but, insulated by his armour, he had paid them little heed. He had thrown back his head with a shuddering breath as the cold had touched his lungs. His eyes had snapped open and he had found himself beset.

They were unlike any dark eldar he had encountered before.

They were similar in build and facial features, but their skin was ebony-black rather than milky-white. They had marked themselves with tattoos, which flowed like oil, forming one hideous, blasphemous shape after another. The creatures were wrapped in pale robes, blood-spattered and stinking of death – fashioned, Krom realised, from layers of flayed skin stitched together.

They slashed and thrust at him with sickle-shaped blades, wielded with the precision of surgical knives, but they also tore at him with fangs and claws.

Krom dropped his pistol. He hadn’t had a chance to use it and knew he probably wouldn’t again. He drew his axe. He wasn’t sure how many opponents he was facing: one second he thought there were only three of them, the next he was sure there were five or more. They seemed to phase in and out of the shadows around him.

Shadows…

He had heard tell of creatures like these, long ago. Was it Ulrik who had spoken of them at some point, early on in his training? Tales told by lesser men, he had thought at the time, to frighten their young. How had the High Priest named these semi-mythical creatures? He remembered now: nightfiends!

It was whispered that they could spring from any man’s shadow. Is that how they crept up on me? Krom wondered. The way the darkness appeared to deepen around them, as if they were sucking light out of the world, he could believe it.

He felt cold emanating from their very souls, and when he swung Wyrmclaw at them, even when he was positive that its blade had cleaved their flesh, often they remained unbloodied. They were swift – as swift as their dark eldar brethren – and he feared that the poison in his body was slowing him down, but it wasn’t only that. It was almost as if these creatures were shadows themselves.

He screamed at them until his throat was raw, hurling every curse he knew at them. He called them cowards and challenged them to face him like warriors, one at a time. The only sounds they made in response were vile hisses. Their blades and claws continued to slice through him, chilling his flesh where they touched it.

Krom fought back as fiercely as ever he had. His tiredness, his shortness of breath, were almost forgotten. His armour had dosed him with stimulants, but nothing could replace the natural rush of battle. Still, his efforts so far were proving futile. Worse, he had the impression that the shadow-skinned creatures were holding back. They could have slain him by now, but instead they were sporting with him.

The thought enraged him, and he whirled his frost axe with renewed vigour and laughed as he felt it biting into flesh and splintering bone at last. The tones of the creatures’ hisses changed, then – they sounded affronted, as if they had the right – and some of them melted away, to leave but three arrayed in an arc before him. These three raised their arms, their talons pointed at him like spears.

Krom managed to take a single step towards them before he was struck by another wave of freezing cold.

He tried to raise his good arm to protect his face, but found he couldn’t. He was paralysed and the nightfiends were swarming him again, more of them than ever. They wrenched Wyrmclaw from his helpless fingers; for a moment he thought they would use it to take his head, but they had something worse in mind.

They encircled him, grabbed at him, tipped him backwards off his feet. They shouldered his power-armoured weight between them, and Krom would have howled in rage at this humiliation had his lungs not been frozen.

The cold – or was it the poison? – had spread behind his eyes, stealing his senses from him one by one. Inwardly, he railed at the indignity of his fate: to be shamed in this manner, to be made a wretched hostage. Outwardly, there was nothing Krom Dragongaze could do as the icy shadows claimed him.

Ulrik sat in Rolling Thunder’s passenger compartment, knee to knee with Olav Brunn, Beregelt and Leoric Half-ear, a Rune Priest he had requested join them in case they had need of his particular talents. Ulrik blocked out the deafening roar of the Stormwolf’s engines as he spoke to Asgir, on the orbiting Canis Pax, by vox. He had instructed his shipmistress to make continuous scans of the abandoned city and keep him informed of the results.

‘I see them, High Priest,’ she reported. ‘Dark eldar Venom skimmers in all sectors. They’re fading in and out… I can’t get a lock on them…’

Allfather be praised, thought Ulrik, we still have time.

Rogan Bearsbane voxed him from the cockpit. ‘I have eyes on a skimmer and am in pursuit. We can’t match it for manoeuvrability, though. It’s weaving in and out of the buildings, even through them. If it wants to shake us off, it only has to–’

‘High Priest,’ Asgir cut in on him. ‘Something else. Three signatures closing in... no, taking up positions around you, matching your course and speed.’

‘The tau?’ Ulrik guessed.

The shipmistress confirmed it. ‘I’m reading them as Manta gunships.’

The dark eldar are their enemies as much as ours, he thought. They are watching us to see what we will do. More likely, they have guessed we won’t be their problem much longer.

‘Russ’ teeth!’ Rogan spluttered, suddenly, and he slammed the Stormwolf into a steep, banking turn.

At the same time, Asgir reported that a new icon had erupted onto her tactical hololith. The accompanying data, however, was gibberish.

Ulrik pushed himself up from his seat and pressed his eyes to the slats of a narrow viewport in the forward hatch. From this limited perspective, however, he was too late to see anything of import. ‘What is it?’ he barked at his pilot. ‘What did you see?’

‘Down in the ruins,’ Rogan answered. ‘Some… some xenos artefact. It had three curving pylons, like claws. Then suddenly, between them… It was like… like staring into the heart of the warp itself.’

‘What about the skimmer?’

‘It flew into that… High Priest, what is it?’

‘It’s a gateway,’ said Ulrik. ‘And your orders remain the same. Our captured battle-brothers are aboard those ships. The next one to approach that portal…’ He had switched to a general frequency, allowing his brothers to hear him. ‘You will follow them through.’

For the first time, Rogan demurred. ‘High Priest, are you certain–?’

Beregelt sat forward. ‘They may have taken Lord Krom in there,’ he said, quietly.

That seemed to settle the matter. Some of the other Space Wolves exchanged uncertain glances, but none raised a voice in protest. Nor did Rogan speak again, but Ulrik felt the Stormwolf coming back around.

‘We don’t know what’s in there,’ Leoric warned.

Ulrik turned to Beregelt. ‘Vox the rest of your company. Tell them where we’re going and that we may not return. They are to wait six hours; then, in the absence of further contact from either of us, return to the Fang.’

He was likely wasting his breath. With the dark eldar gone – and even without Krom to lead them – the Drakeslayers would probably find an excuse to re-engage the tau. So, let them. It is none of my concern, he thought.

He peered out through the narrow viewport again. He saw the portal ahead of them, just as Rogan Bearsbane had described it. It was as if the xenos construct had torn a hole in the surface of reality itself – and beyond it…

He could barely look at its blinding, hateful light, even with his eyes protected by the Wolf Helm of Russ. He made the sign of the aquila across his chest and silently asked the Allfather for his guidance. This was either a monumental act of courage or one of insanity; he couldn’t tell which.

But the Great Wolf may be in there…

Ulrik offered another prayer – aloud, this time, for all to hear – that the Allfather might still be able to watch over them where they were about to go, so far from the things they knew. Then a dark eldar skimmer dropped into his line of sight, span into the light and was completely swallowed by it. He voxed his pilot, ‘There it is. Go! Go!’

Rolling Thunder plunged into the seething portal.

And left the tangible universe behind it.

PART FOUR

DARK CITY

STEVE LYONS

His opponents had never stood a chance.

Most likely, thought Krom Dragongaze, they were never meant to.

There had been six of them to his one – slobbering ghouls with flat eyeless faces and rows of trembling nostrils. They had come at him in flurries of claws and teeth, blunting both against his armour. The last one had wrapped its mouth around his forearm, clinging to him tenaciously for all its wounds. He tore it free and dashed it to the floor.

Throwing back his fiery mane, he loosed a howl of triumph to the heavens.

Then his victory soured in his throat. The crowd’s roars washed over him, reminding him where he was. He knew what they wanted from him. The last of his enemies was twitching at his feet. They were baying for him to hurt it again. They wanted him to torture it, to eke out its dying agonies.

He spited them by staving in the ghoul’s skull with his maul, though this was an undeserved mercy. The dark eldar’s cheers turned to jeers, their fine features twisted in displeasure. Russ, if only I had my pistol, thought Krom.

He was barrelling towards them before he knew it.

He jumped off the finely balanced, polished bone disc of the stage. He ploughed through knotted coils of razorwire. He vaulted onto the high wall that separated him from the crowd. He came as close as he ever had to getting over it. Then whips enwrapped his arms, his legs, his throat, as they always did. Krom knew it was useless to struggle against his captors, and yet, wreathed in the red mist of rage, he always did.

The whips crackled with profane energy, and his nervous system burned. The slave masters yanked Krom back into the arena and he writhed in the black sand, convulsing helplessly, coughing up foam and flecks of blood.

The sky of Commorragh had a sullen crimson cast. It rested heavily on the tips of the arena’s jagged spires and the brooding ziggurats overlooking it. Shrivelled black suns glared balefully down at him. When Krom had first arrived here, another prisoner – a dishevelled Imperial Guardsman – had told him he would see no other sky for as long as he lived, which would be until he met his match in combat. ‘Then it will be a long life,’ Krom had boasted. He hadn’t seen the Guardsman again.

The crowd had forgotten him already. Other battles were in progress across the various stages, offering them many more opportunities to sate their lust for suffering. A member of the wych cult that ran the arena was carving up a tau fire warrior. Krom wondered if it too had been captured on Dactyla. Beyond them, he saw clawed fiends, a battered-looking Chaos Terminator – and a figure in a filthy pale robe and black power armour.

Krom’s weapon was torn from his nerveless fingers. Six slave masters hauled him away through one of the many dark portals that led to the arena’s bowels. By now, the descent through the foetid passageways, with their pulsing, green-tinted light, was a horribly familiar one. His footsteps rang off the floor, which felt like marble but was black with sickly-looking veins coursing through it.

An iron gate hissed open for him, and Krom was thrown to the floor of one of the gladiatorial cells. Unable to lift his hands to catch himself, he landed like a sack of grain. He found his voice in time to curse his gaolers as they locked the gate behind him.

It was several seconds before he could lift himself into a sitting position, propped against the wall. He hated letting his cellmates see his weakness, even though they were as battered as he was. He snapped at them, telling them to lift their chins and square their shoulders, show that they would never be bowed, and they shuffled to obey him.

‘What did they have you fight?’ asked Jormund Thunderclaw.

‘Some manner of ghoul,’ Krom spat, and he described in detail how he had slain each of them in turn. ‘I almost butchered my audience too. I was close enough to smell their fear, see myself reflected in their eyes. Next time…’

‘Allfather be praised, we still have that,’ Jormund rumbled. ‘Though we may die here, still we can despatch many more of His enemies ahead of us.’ It disturbed Krom to hear him talking like that.

Each of the Space Wolves bore the marks of the slave masters’ lashes, but Jormund’s Terminator armour was in the worst state of them all. He had fought so hard to begin with. The slave masters, however, had wrapped him in chains that, like their whips, crackled with dark energy. They had stripped out his heavy weapons and shattered his servo-motors, until it was all he could do to stand.

The thought that Jormund was learning to accept his fate made Krom rage. He wanted to leap to his feet. He wanted to yell out to his Wolf-brothers. Three of them shared his cell. There were more in the others. He wanted to remind them that they were the Wolves of Fenris. Most of them were members of his own company, the Drakeslayers. He wanted to tell them to rise up, break through their bars and tear out their gaolers’ throats.

‘Brother Dreadhowl,’ he recalled. The young Blood Claw had been taken to the arena some time before him. Krom hadn’t seen him there, but that meant nothing. ‘Did he… Has he returned?’ No one answered his question. No one had to.

Krom had given up trying to count the days he had been here. His auto-senses suggested that a month and a half had passed, but each of his brothers had a different tally. For the first few days, or weeks, he had been sure that the rest of the Drakeslayers would follow him here. No matter that their journey was impossible – for him, for their Wolf Lord, they would find a way to make it.

He knew now that no one was coming. If he was to escape this hellish place, it would be up to him alone. So what if his captors had the upper hand for now? What if the red sky was teeming with dark eldar ships? And beyond that sky, outside of this dark city…

Krom had been brought here unconscious. Some of his brothers had been awake for the journey, however, and they had spoken of the horrors…

They were lost.

The gunship Rolling Thunder had followed a dark eldar skimmer through an energy-charged portal. Now, she was barrelling her way through a realm of…

It was impossible to describe.

Ulrik the Slayer crouched in the troop compartment, peering through a narrow forward viewport. The Stormwolf’s sensors couldn’t process the data they were receiving, so couldn’t be trusted. Other than an occasional fleeting glimpse of their prey, Rogan Bearsbane, their pilot, had only his instincts to guide him.

‘It’s like flying through an ice storm,’ he said. His voice sounded strained over the vox-net.

‘We can’t afford to lose that skimmer,’ said Ulrik, tightly.

He had thought this would be something like flying through the warp. It was worse than he could have imagined. Through the viewport, he too saw snow and ice, but he knew – perhaps thanks to the relic helm he wore – that nothing they were seeing was real – not as humans understood reality. He couldn’t look into the face of the raging storm for long; it made his eyes ache. Even when he screwed them shut, he could feel the unreality’s substance, like static, in his head.

There are brother wolves aboard that craft, the High Priest reminded himself. I did the right thing, going after them – whatever the outcome.

‘They’ve seen us,’ Rogan growled over the vox. ‘They’re weaving, trying to throw us off their tail. They’re smaller than we are, more manoeuvrable. It’s only a matter of time before they make a move we can’t match.’

Ulrik grimaced and pressed his eyes to the viewport again. Rolling Thunder had dropped back onto the skimmer’s tail, but her engines were howling in protest at the abuse they were receiving.

Then a hole gaped open in the heart of the static storm – a deep, black hole – and the skimmer banked and plunged assuredly into it. Rogan tried to follow it, but the storm closed in again and suddenly he was flying towards what looked like a sheer ice face. He unleashed a stream of colourful curses as he pulled up sharply. ‘I don’t see any sign of them. We’ve lost them!’

In the troop compartment, more curses filled the air. The Drakeslayer Beregelt was more stoic; still, he gripped the sides of his seat almost hard enough to crush them. His own fate didn’t concern him, Ulrik knew, rather that of his captured Wolf Lord.

Ulrik slammed his crozius arcanum into the deck plates, so its winged wolf-skull head crackled with sacred energy. ‘Are we so easily beaten?’ Ulrik roared. ‘Should we cower here, whimpering over the slightest setback? We will find our brother Wolves, if we have to wade hip-deep through dark eldar corpses to do it.’

‘Tear this foul realm down around their twisted ears!’ cried Thord Icenhelm.

‘For Russ!’ bellowed Ulrik, and the others joined their voices to his. He wished he felt half as confident as he sounded.

It was the High Priest’s duty to maintain his brothers’ morale, even when, privately, he feared their cause was hopeless – that they might be trapped in this godless realm forever.

Two more days passed, maybe three – Krom couldn’t tell – before the slave masters came for him again.

They didn’t have to call his name. Everyone knew whom they wanted. He had counted their footsteps as they approached his cell. Six dark eldar always arrived to fetch him, more than for anyone else. He was already standing, waiting for them, when the gate hissed open.

They beckoned to him, speaking harshly in their obscene language. A handful of the senior gaolers had translating machines, which they used to communicate orders to their prisoners. The rest had other ways of making themselves understood.

These six had their whips readied in case of trouble. Had Krom tried to fight them, he knew they would have flayed him gleefully – before dumping him, half-insensate, in front of his assigned opponent anyway. He had barely survived the experience last time.

They took him through the green-veined passageways again. They passed rows of sealed gates, from behind which he heard the occasional muffled howl of pain, anguish or rage. He could hear the roars of the arena crowd growing louder.

Two more Wolves were waiting, each with his own escort, in the cramped muster area. On the closest stage in the arena, a pair of fleshless monsters with clawed tendrils were tearing into each other, urged on by the lashes of their beastmasters.

‘Did you hear about Brother Silverpelt?’ Beoric Whitefang asked him, bleakly. ‘They put him up against a monstrous spider with blades on its legs.’

When Krom had first been delivered to his cell, he had been dismayed to learn that Beoric too had been caught, although he was secretly comforted by his Wolf Guard commander’s stoic presence. He suspected that Beoric had allowed himself to be captured, so as to remain at his lord’s side.

Krom nodded. ‘I hear he removed all eight before the spider’s poison killed him.’ It was important that such stories, and the names attached to them, were remembered. Beoric knew nothing of Brother Dreadhowl, however, when Krom asked him. It seemed that no one had witnessed his fate, so his story would remain untold.

An appreciative roar swelled from the arena crowd. Another contest had ended, on one of the further stages. A minute later, its victor was brought inside, walking upright and proud, and Lars Thorgil was marched out to replace him.

Krom had seen the black-armoured figure before, but never close up. Now he could see quite clearly the winged sword emblem on his robe and the skull-shaped faceplate beneath his hood – the stranger was a Dark Angels chaplain. Krom’s lip curled involuntarily. Krom hated the Dark Angels and their mysterious ways. His experience of them had left him with an impression of secrecy and superiority. He couldn’t trust them because they only trusted themselves – and as rumour would have it, they couldn’t even trust some of the brothers in their own ranks. It was true that an age before there had been tension between Leman Russ and the Lion. It was also true that while the primarchs forgave each other, there were many in their legions – and the Chapters that followed – who could not forgive.

In the arena, the beast fight had reached its bloody conclusion. The victorious creature was being driven away by its master, while shackled human slaves hosed the loser’s remains from the stage.

Then it was Krom’s turn to fight.

He was taken by the arms again and marched out beneath the sullen sky. His appearance was greeted by an audible thrill of anticipation. His stomach turned at the thought of his audience being so pleased to see him. They knew he would give them a good show.

Something was different this time.

He was taken to a stage at the farthest edge of the arena. In the midst of the tiered seating, an expansive podium overlooked him. Squatting upon its lip was an ostentatious ebony throne that, tonight, was occupied. The arena’s ruler was in attendance, surrounded by obsequious servants and sycophantic cronies.

Krom was struck by the creature’s beauty, but was instantly disgusted with himself. It is an evil beauty, he thought, a glamour to disguise a monstrous soul.

The queen was as much a warrior as her followers, clad in barbed leather armour that left her thighs and stomach exposed. She wore a sword belt hung with fetishes, and an elaborate leather headdress.

She saw him looking and returned his gaze coolly, with a twinkle of amusement in her eyes. She had had him brought before her, he realised suddenly. He was fighting at the queen’s pleasure, for her entertainment, tonight.

Krom looked for a weapon. There were plenty strewn across the stage and around it, though few of any quality. He chose an axe with a serrated metal head, because nothing better was available. It was a poor replacement for his own. Wyrmclaw had been prised from his fingers while he lay unconscious. It lay somewhere in the arena, too large and heavy for most to wield it – Ragnek Halfhand had seen it.

His opponent made her entrance to the arena. She was a gladiatrix, a female arena fighter. She wore similar leathers to her queen, although her outfit was less elaborate. As she strode into the arena, Krom’s lips curled back from his fangs. Until now, he had only been pitted against other prisoners. To finally face one of his captors… He had longed for such an opportunity.

He fixed the gladiatrix with a smouldering glare as she strutted towards him. Her dark eyes met his, unafraid. Her jet-black lips smirked at him. He prickled at the creature’s arrogance. Tightening his grip on his axe, he began thundering towards her before she had even fully mounted the circular stage. He let her see his teeth and feel the full force of his lungs.

The gladiatrix had drawn a pair of swords that had been concealed in her bodice. No scrabbling for weapons in the dirt for her. She sidestepped his charge and slashed at him, cutting into his right vambrace. Krom snarled as he swung his axe again, but the gladiatrix pirouetted away and was suddenly behind him. He whirled to face her as her twin blades stabbed towards his eyes. He barely batted them away before they blinded him.

He lunged beneath the gladiatrix’s swords, trying to tackle her. She back-flipped away from him, landing in a taut crouch across the stage, her black lips taunting him. The crowd that had cheered for the Wolf Lord a minute ago screamed now for his enemy to cut him, to let them taste his dying agonies.

He embraced the white-hot rage that they stoked in his chest, let it energise him but not control him. He had to keep his wits about him.

He hacked, sliced and thrust at his opponent doggedly. She evaded each blow with a grace that made him feel slow and clumsy. Russ, this is like battling the nightfiends! he cursed, remembering the shadowy creatures that had beaten him and brought him here. But there had been many of them, Krom reminded himself, and he had been slowed by wounds and poison when he fought them.

He eased back deliberately, making the gladiatrix come to him. He would show her – and her baying supporters – that he could be quick too. She obliged him, and her blades whirled around his ears like turbines. Krom twirled his axe, gripped the haft with both hands and parried each attack with its chipped head, metal striking sparks off metal.

The gladiatrix overreached herself and his haft caught her wrist, breaking the bone. She dropped a sword, and Krom followed through by shattering her nose with his elbow. Startled, the eldar wheeled away from him and dropped into a defensive crouch again. She wasn’t smirking any longer, but Krom, with the taste of his opponent’s blood on his lips, was leering like a beast of prey.

They circled each other, narrow-eyed and alert for an opening or sign of weakness from the other, each tuning out the crowd’s impatient demands and biding their time.

Krom’s eyes kept flickering over the gladiatrix’s shoulder to the queen on her ornate throne. She was craning forward eagerly, moistening her lips with her tongue. Then her gloved hand glided across a rune panel in her armrest, and the throne itself rose into the air and edged over the podium’s lip, straining closer to the spectacle before it.

Krom’s opponent on the stage took advantage of his momentary distraction. The gladiatrix flew at him again in a flurry of razor-edged metal, scoring his armour and forcing him onto his back foot. He defended himself against her, but kept an eye trained on the queen.

In that moment, for the first time in too long a time, he saw a story worth the telling. Krom Dragongaze recognised a deed worth giving his life for.

He went on the offensive, hammering at his opponent with more brute force than precision. As before, his blows came nowhere close to landing – nor were they meant to. He drove the gladiatrix back towards the edge of the stage. Then, as she whirled out of his grasp, he leapt off the stage and, with all his might, he hurled his axe towards the queen’s slender white throat.

To his dismay, she caught the hurtling projectile.

He barely saw her hand move – she just plucked the axe from the air. Krom had lost his weapon and turned his back on an enemy for nothing.

He heard her footsteps running up behind him – too late. The gladiatrix leapt onto his back and slipped her blade behind his gorget, into the side of his neck. If she expected the pain to cripple him, however, clearly she didn’t know the Sons of Russ.

Krom reached over his shoulders, snatched his foe’s head in both hands and wrenched her off him. He slammed her into the stage, breaking her bones, divesting the creature of her second sword and expelling the breath from her lungs. He held her down with one massive gauntlet over her face, almost smothering her.

The crowd roared once again for Krom Dragongaze. They don’t care who wins, he realised, as long as someone suffers – even if it’s one of their own.

This time, he gave them what they wanted.

He kept the wriggling, spitting gladiatrix pinned down, her agility no use to her now. He drove his free fist into her, shattering the rest of her bones and pulping her flesh. When the creature could take no more and passed out, Krom tore her still-beating heart from her chest and displayed it to his audience defiantly.

His gaze remained fixed on the queen and her hovering throne. He bared his fangs and snarled at her, conveying the unmistakable message: You’re next!

She raised the axe to her mouth, unperturbed. She ran her tongue along its blood-encrusted edge, seeming not to care that she cut herself in the process. Then, casually, she snapped the wooden haft in two and tossed the parts back into the arena.

Blood was spurting from Krom’s neck. Even his Larraman’s organ couldn’t staunch the flow entirely. He was forced to clamp his gauntlet over the wound. He needed the ministrations of a Wolf Priest. There were no priests here, however.

The dark eldar slave masters were moving in around him with their whips. Fatigued and weakened by blood loss, he was unable to resist them.

Ulrik blinked and remembered where he was.

He felt as if he had been trapped in a waking dream for weeks, but his chrono informed him that it had been less than a minute.

He wrenched his gaze away from the viewport. Still, tendrils of harsh, white light streamed through it, tearing at his eyes. When men look upon the unfiltered warp, he thought, it drives them mad. Perhaps the same is true of this realm?

His brothers were shifting uncomfortably in their seats, some of them cradling their heads in their hands, shrinking away from the light. He almost ordered the viewport blocked, but he had to be able to see what was out there.

Leoric Half-ear, the Rune Priest, was sitting in a meditative pose, his eyelids flickering.

‘I see… I see the pathways, but they’re tangled together,’ he said, ‘and I see…’ Whatever Leoric saw, it was so terrible that he could not speak of it. His face was pale and clammy with sweat.

Olav Brunn was staring out of the viewport, in a trance. Ulrik leaned forward, seized him by the shoulders and shook him. He waited for the Wolf’s eyes to focus. ‘Have faith,’ he commanded, augmenting his voice to reach all of them, whatever their states of mind. ‘Remember, the dark eldar endure in this realm. They build their cities here. Are we, with the Allfather’s light to guide us and protect us, not stronger than they are?’

He opened a vox-channel to Rogan Bearsbane in the cockpit. Ulrik couldn’t imagine how he was coping up there, with no respite from the realm’s madness. Indeed, he sounded confused, distracted, on edge. The High Priest talked to him, trying to reassure him and keep him focused. It was only because of Rogan’s piloting skills that they were still alive.

‘If you can find a place to land…’ he suggested, hopelessly.

Rolling Thunder was buffeted fiercely, and a series of violent cracks – like the shifting of massive quantities of ice – reverberated through its structure. The Space Wolves looked to the hull above their heads, anxiously.

‘No place… there’s no place for us here,’ murmured Leoric. ‘We’re not welcome… We should leave before… before we are…’

Then, suddenly, they were flying straight and level again, and the hateful light had faded. It was like a weight had been lifted from Ulrik’s soul. He heard Rogan Bearsbane’s breathless voice: ‘The storm… Thank the Allfather, the storm is lifting.’ Ulrik looked through the viewport again. Have we found our destination, after all? he wondered. Or have we somehow blundered our way back into realspace?

All he could see was blackness.

Then, he felt gravity tugging at his stomach, and realised that Rolling Thunder was in a vertical dive. Rising up to meet her were the ruins of an ancient city that looked like it was constructed from a lattice of bones, suffused with a soft internal light.

‘I can see them sheltering behind their walls.’ Leoric whispered. ‘I see them dancing, laughing, feasting… but they are dust.’

Ulrik blinked and suddenly the city was bright and young again, its streets teeming with shadowy phantoms. Then it dropped away rapidly as Rogan raised the gunship’s nose. The tendrils of the icy storm ensnared them once more and the city was gone.

Some of the others had seen the phantoms too. Beregelt turned to Ulrik, his incomprehension written on his face.

‘Time means nothing here,’ the High Priest growled, and the thought could have driven him – even him – to despair. Not only did this realm span known space, its passageways crazed between the layers of reality like capillaries – they extended into past and future too. He lacked the knowledge to navigate it.

He recalled the legends he had heard of those – such as Jaghatai Khan – who had tried before him and been lost. We could fly for centuries, millennia, Ulrik realised, and never find our captured battle-brothers, never meet another living soul, never find a way out.

He suppressed a shudder. Perhaps we already have.

A disturbance rippled through the gladiatorial cells.

Krom felt his hackles rising. He clambered to his feet and strained at the bars, trying to see outside. He hadn’t slept for as long as he had been a prisoner, but he had shut down his brain one section at a time to rest it. This allowed him to remain alert, but he knew it also left him prey to waking hallucinations.

Am I seeing things now? Krom wondered, as a familiar figure stalked towards him through a sickly green haze. If he was, then his brothers were seeing the same. They were on their feet in each of the surrounding cells, unleashing howls of protest. The eldar queen paid them no heed. She had locked gazes with Krom, and they held each other’s eyes until she came to a halt – a step away from the point at which he could have reached through the bars and gutted her. She addressed her entourage of grovelling serfs and slave masters in their own language, in a voice like splintering ice that made Krom’s teeth itch. He spat curses at her, to drown her out as much as anything. The slave masters snarled at him and brandished their whips in threat.

The queen hadn’t taken her eyes off him. Krom felt, as he had in the arena, that she found him amusing – which enraged him all the more. She spoke curtly to her escorts again, then turned on her heel and stalked away from him, the howls of the captive wolves echoing after her.

The slave masters came back for Krom a short time later. They normally gave him longer to recover between contests – his neck still throbbed as his body struggled to heal the gash in it, and any strenuous activity was likely to tear it open again. They beckoned to Jormund Thunderclaw too, who rose with difficulty in his crippled suit of armour.

The journey took longer than it had before. Jormund moved slowly and unsurely, and no amount of threats or punishment could make him go any faster.

‘You should feel honoured,’ a slave master told Krom as they walked. His words emerged from a vox-grille slung around his neck. ‘Janaera herself is impressed with your prowess in the arena.’

‘I couldn’t care less what your bitch queen thinks of me,’ Krom snarled.

‘She has named you favourite of her warriors.’

Krom bridled. ‘A Wolf of Fenris belongs to no one, even less so a–’

The slave master talked over him. ‘Impress the Grand Archite and she may choose to extend your life.’

‘Tell your “Archite” to face me fairly in combat herself. Let her see my prowess close up instead of watching like a cringing cur from the shadows.’

‘You will end your days here all the same, but you could see more of them. The ruling succubi arrange the arena bouts, and for a favourite of theirs they will–’

Krom spat in the dark eldar’s face. It snarled and its whip lashed out at him. Brother Jormund started forward, affronted by this slight to his lord, but Krom motioned him to stand down. He wiped a trail of blood from his cheek with the back of his gauntlet, and bared his fangs in a grin. Getting under his captors’ skins may have been a tiny victory, but still he savoured it.

In the muster area, he was handed a double-bladed frost axe, its keen edge gleaming. Wyrmclaw! He looked at it in surprise, expecting some trick. He took the proffered weapon all the same. It felt good, it felt familiar – it felt right – as his fingers closed around it. It felt like an extension of his hand. He had missed it sorely.

‘There is some advantage in being the Grand Archite’s favourite, after all,’ said Jormund, wryly. ‘She wishes to see you at your best, evidently. Perhaps she will return my missile launcher to me too. Then she will witness a spectacle.’

The slave masters said nothing to that suggestion. Instead, one of them produced a skeletal key, unlocked the massive shackle that encircled Jormund’s left arm and began to unravel the heavy chains that bound him. Krom saw the relief in his battle-brother’s posture as he was able to straighten his back and square his shoulders.

The next thing he knew, the trailing chains were being wrapped around him.

Krom tried to protest, but the slave masters tightened their cordon around him. They clamped the shackle around his left forearm, tightened and locked it. He was bound to Jormund now, a triple length of chain stretching barely more than an arm’s length between them. Whatever was waiting for them out in the arena, they would face it together.

They were taken to the farthest stage, as Krom had expected.

It took them an age to reach it. He and Jormund struggled to coordinate their movements. More than once, Krom was almost pulled over by the larger, heavier Terminator. Some members of the crowd laughed and jeered at them. A fat, rotten, purple-skinned alien fruit burst against Krom’s pauldron.

They rounded a stage that was bordered by bone-carved pylons, like fangs around a daemon’s mouth. The podium came into view and Krom’s eyes darted to it. Sure enough, the Grand Archite was draped across her throne.

He and Jormund had found a rhythm now and made better progress, though Jormund’s right foot dragged behind him. They clambered awkwardly onto the circular stage and their escorts withdrew to the shadows. Jormund reached for a giant, spiked mace, almost yanking Krom off his feet again in the process, to the crowd’s amusement.

Krom took out his anger on the eldar queen. ‘Come down here and fight me,’ he bellowed up at her. ‘You enjoy the taste of pain? I will treat you to agonies like you’ve never before imagined. I will tear out your black heart with my teeth.’

His words were likely unintelligible to her, but his tone and gestures certainly conveyed his meaning. Still, the arrogant expression on the Archite’s pale face didn’t flicker. Krom considered hurling his axe at her again.

He was distracted, however, by a sudden flurry of activity behind him. Half a dozen dark eldar, led by a beastmaster, were hauling a new combatant across the arena. It was fighting them all the way. Even their whips couldn’t subdue the raging creature. They had been forced to bind it, as they had Jormund, with chains.

Krom saw a spiny carapace and six powerful limbs, and knew right away that he was looking at a tyranid organism. ‘A genestealer,’ he muttered, darkly.

‘A broodlord,’ muttered Jormund, ‘to judge by its sheer size and the shape of his head.’ His voice sounded strained, which boded ill.

With much pushing, lashing and cursing from the slave masters, the creature was dragged up onto the stage, whereupon it immediately grew calmer. Krom saw a glint of intelligence in its beady eyes. It seemed to understand that the two armoured figures across from it were being offered up to it as prey.

The beastmaster had the broodlord’s chains removed, and its captors hastened away from it. It dropped into a crouch. A slobbering, spiny tongue, as blue as its hide, flicked out between its fangs. Krom felt a palpable wave of dread washing over him, almost strong enough to freeze his feet to the stage. Jormund stepped in front of him, thinking to shield his Wolf Lord, but Krom pushed him aside.

The monster sprang at them – and rebounded with a high-pitched screech as Wyrmclaw sliced into its hide. Its clawed feet skittered on the stage’s smooth surface, and it leapt at Krom again. This time, he splintered its exoskeleton. He would have done more, had the chains that bound him to Jormund not snapped taut.

Still, the monster flew at Krom a third time, a fourth and again, until Wyrmclaw inevitably missed its mark – glancing off the monster’s shoulder. Then it was upon him. Razor-sharp claws shredded his armour and gouged at his face. The monster’s jaw dropped open, wider than Krom would have thought possible, and he recoiled from its unholy breath. He couldn’t fight it on so many fronts at once.

He thanked the Allfather, then, that he wasn’t fighting alone.

Krom was wielding his axe two-handed, tugging on his battle-brother’s arm with every swipe. That had made it difficult for Jormund to join in the fight thus far. Now, however, the Terminator delivered a crushing mace blow to the broodlord’s spine. When that didn’t deter it, he tried to drag it off his Wolf Lord by its throat, which at least afforded Krom some respite from its breath. The monster’s claws continued to tear at him, however, as it thrashed in the Terminator’s grip, tearing up his greaves with its hind feet.

Krom wrenched himself free of it at last, though he lost his right pauldron and a clawful of flesh in the process. The broodlord squirmed out from between Jormund’s massive arms to slash and snap at him. Krom had no time – and could gain no space – to lick his wounds. Jormund staggered beneath the monster’s vicious onslaught, and so the Wolf Lord staggered too. Then the broodlord turned and flew at him again. It thinks me the weaker of the two of us because I am smaller, he realised, and bridled at the insult.

Krom smashed his axe blade into the monster’s head with all the strength he could muster. He thought he might have snapped its neck – but if he did, it barely noticed. Its claws ripped into him again, and Krom knew his only hope now was to fight in the manner of the monster – with desperate abandon, surrendering himself to the feral part of his own nature, clawing, biting, kicking, gouging.

The red mist descended upon him, and he welcomed it.

Krom wrestled with the broodlord on the ground, though he had no memory of falling. There was blood in his eyes, his nose, his mouth; his armour had been rent, his regal red cloak was in tatters and the gash in his neck was gaping open again.

Jormund came to his rescue once more. Krom heard the repeated impact of metal against flesh, the broodlord snarling and spitting, and suddenly its smothering weight was lifted from him. The wolf part of him didn’t want to let it go, and it howled in thwarted anguish as the creature was wrenched out of his hands. He reached after it, but blood rushed to his head and made it spin.

The stage was sticky with blood that was definitely, at least in part, his own. His fingers found Wyrmclaw’s haft and closed around it. He hadn’t even been aware that he had dropped it. His auto-senses screamed warnings in his ears, but he muted them. His auto-medicae was running dry of painkillers. Slashes from the broodlord’s claws criss-crossed his armour and had cut searing trails into his flesh.

He could hear Jormund and the monster fighting, but the sounds – like the roar of the crowd – seemed somehow distant from him. He tried to use the chains that connected him to Jormund to haul himself up. They were slack; he didn’t understand why. Somehow, he managed to get his knees underneath him and clambered laboriously to his feet. He stood, unsteadily, blinking, and realised that the fight was behind him.

Jormund was on top of the broodlord. He was holding it down with one knee and the ragged stump of his right arm. Incredibly, Krom realised, it had hacked off the Terminator’s forearm, divesting him of his mace and the chain’s shackle alike. Jormund’s left hand, however, had a grip on the monster’s head, his index finger sunk up to the knuckle in its eye socket. He slammed its head into the stage repeatedly, sending splinters of bone and gobbets of brain tissue flying.

Krom lurched towards them, a defiant roar rattling in his chest, his axe raised. The broodlord’s claws were tearing open Jormund’s sides. Krom aimed for its elbow joint – an arm for an arm, he thought – but his blade hewed into the stage instead. He couldn’t tell if his target had moved or if he had simply misjudged its position. He was struggling to focus past the dark red blotches in his vision.

Jormund Thunderclaw sagged, and his limbs splayed out underneath him. He was at least comatose, if not dead – either way, the dark eldar would burn his body.

The broodlord was faring little better. Its remaining eye rolled back into its head, and Krom heard it struggling to breathe. Its claws twitched weakly and it couldn’t drag its mangled body out from beneath the Terminator’s crushing weight.

He sagged to his knees beside it. He took over where Jormund had left off, hammering at the monster’s head. He blotted out everything else, blotted out the arena crowd and thoughts of his brother’s demise. It took all his focus, all his strength, to cling to consciousness, to raise his axe and bring it down, beating out a steady rhythm.

Krom felt heavy hands on his shoulders. He shrugged them off, but they returned in greater numbers, rougher and more insistent. It was over. His enemy was dead. It had died some minutes ago. He had pulverised its skull. He had lost his left gauntlet and pulverised his knuckles too. The crowd had grown tired of him, seeking out other spectacles. The slave masters had come for him, to return him to a cell. Until the next time.

It took four of them to carry him, and he struggled against them all the way. The portal to the cells swam ahead of him and, belatedly, he remembered the Grand Archite. Is she still watching me? He was sure he could feel the creature’s cool gaze on his back. He could imagine her smirk as she enjoyed his humiliation, drank it in.

At least she saw, at least they all saw, that I won, he consoled himself. With that thought, he allowed the beckoning darkness to claim him; and, for the first time in more days than he could count, Krom Dragongaze passed out.

Time had become elastic. Seconds had stretched into days and weeks, while months and years had passed by in the space of minutes.

At some point, another portal loomed in front of them, filled with fire. Flames hotter than the core of a star reached through it and licked at Rolling Thunder’s hull, threatening to draw her in. Cold beads of sweat were forming on Ulrik’s brow, although he had the protection of both the Stormwolf’s ceramite plating and his own armour.

Rogan’s skilled and violent handling of the controls saved them. Shearing away from the inferno, they were snatched by the static storm’s capricious currents again. Their port wing scraped against something all too solid. As Rolling Thunder screamed in agony, Ulrik could only pray that she wouldn’t be torn asunder.

‘The Allfather is with us,’ he assured his brothers as the buffeting finally abated. He said nothing of the vision he had glimpsed inside the fire. It had lasted a fraction of a second, no longer, but it was scarred upon his retinas: a twisted, leering, monstrous face.

Perhaps he had only imagined it…

They ploughed on through a nest of giant insectile creatures, which pursued them angrily for some distance. Repeated bursts from their helfrost cannon eventually discouraged them, but one latched onto the hull. Rogan scraped it off against a wall of ice, but lost the starboard cannons in the process.

Another hour, a month, a decade sped by. The storm clouds funnelled around them, plunging them into a tunnel barely wide enough to fly through. Shadowy creatures invaded the troop compartment, cackling with gleeful malevolence.

Leoric sat bolt upright. ‘The warp,’ he intoned, ‘it’s straining at the barriers… seeping in through the fissures…’

Ulrik had drawn his pistol, but the words jolted him to his senses, made him realise that the Rune Priest was seeing only phantoms. ‘Don’t look at them!’ he yelled. He screwed his eyes shut, but still he could feel the ghosts battering at the barriers around his mind, every one of them bearing the face he had seen in the flames.

‘The Allfather is our shield,’ the Wolf High Priest declaimed, lighting up his crozius. He recited a litany of protection, entreating all those present to join in. Two of his brothers had succumbed, however, one foaming at the mouth, the other trying to claw out his own eyes, while Rogan was screaming gibberish over the vox-net.

Time passed.

Ulrik found himself praying with Rogan, guiding him back to the light. Emund Firetooth, a novice Blood Claw, was beyond such help – Beregelt had granted him the mercy of a bolt round to the temple. The phantoms had receded when they had left the tunnel behind them. Still, Ulrik felt the itch of their intangible claws behind his eyes, at the base of his brain.

Leoric furrowed his brow in concentration. ‘I see something,’ he said, ‘but we have to hurry. We have to–’

‘Did you see Lord Krom and the others?’ Ulrik asked quickly. ‘Can you take us to them?’

Leoric shook his head. ‘No, I did not see them. I thought I saw the way back.’

Ulrik’s hearts sank. He met Beregelt’s eyes and saw the same dismay reflected in them. Inwardly, he railed against the idea of turning tail, of abandoning his brothers to their fates – not to mention the missing Great Wolf whose trail had led them here. But what about the brothers aboard this ship? I am responsible for them too.

He gave Beregelt an almost imperceptible nod. The veteran Drakeslayer lowered his gaze to his feet, but understood.

‘Don’t try to resist it,’ Leoric said. ‘Let it take us where it will. It wants us gone.’ Olav Brunn relayed his words to Rogan Bearsbane.

‘We shall return for them,’ Ulrik swore in a quiet but resolute growl. ‘Somehow, one day, we shall return for–’

‘Russ’s teeth!’

Rogan threw the Stormwolf into a lateral spin, forcing the Space Wolves to cling to whatever they could reach. Ulrik scrambled to the viewport again, as something huge and blue and grey careened out of the static towards them.

‘High Priest!’ Beregelt strained forward beside him, his pale yellow eyes widening in astonishment. ‘Isn’t that… Wasn’t that…?’

‘Another gunship,’ Ulrik breathed.

It was already gone, peeling away from them into a pocket of icy mist. They had come a hair’s breadth from a collision, close enough that Ulrik was left with an afterimage of the pilot’s ruddy, red-bearded face gaping at him open-mouthed through his glacis. He had recognised that face. He had recognised the gunship too. It seemed impossible – but what had Leoric told them? I thought I saw the way back. He remembered his own words too: Time means nothing here…

‘We’re almost there,’ Leoric said, unable to conceal the relief in his voice despite himself.

Ulrik opened a channel to Rogan Bearsbane. ‘Maintain our course,’ he said.

‘But High Priest, I saw–’

‘I know what you saw, Brother Rogan. Maintain our course. The Allfather is with us, he has found us even here – and he will guide us out of the storm.’

Already, Ulrik could feel the turbulence around them easing. A solemn hush descended in the troop compartment, and for a long time – or a short time, it was still impossible to know – the only sound to be heard was that of Rolling Thunder’s engines.

At last, Rogan’s voice buzzed in Ulrik’s ear again, more composed than it had been. He reported a gap in the storm ahead of them. Through the gap all was black, but Rogan said he thought he could see the pinprick sparkle of stars, real stars. Ulrik turned to Leoric, who nodded sagely.

‘Take us through the gap,’ Ulrik ordered, though the words weighed heavily on his heart. After all they had endured, to be spat back out into real space… It was almost more than he could bear. He had failed in his mission – he was no closer to finding Logan Grimnar than he had been. As for Krom Dragongaze and the other captured Space Wolves…

They would have to save themselves.

Krom was woken by the hissing of the cell gate. The slave masters had come for him again. Ragnek Halfhand protested that it was too soon, that Krom needed more time to heal – but the Wolf Lord silenced him with a glare. Wolves did not beg.

Jormund’s sacrifice had left Krom, for one of the few times in his life, despondent. Many may have been surprised to hear it, but there was a limit to the Fierce-eye’s arrogance, after all. He had tried to do his fallen brother justice. He told how fiercely he had fought, and how well – in graphic detail, with embellishments to cover what he had not seen – and ensured that the story was spread. He had set his pride aside, giving Jormund due credit for saving his life. He wasn’t sure what good it would do.

Jormund Thunderclaw’s story would die between these walls. As would the stories of too many others. Krom remembered the Guardsman he had met on his first day here, and knew he had spoken truly. Not even the mightiest champion left the arena a victor. The only way out was in defeat and death – at least, according to the dark eldar’s rules.

His right knee had seized up. His damaged servo-motors were no help to him as he struggled to stand. He began to understand how Jormund must have felt, a prisoner of his own armour. Two slave masters took Krom under the arms and hauled him roughly to his feet. He shrugged them off. He intended to keep his dignity, at least.

He had only three escorts today. He walked unaided between them. He considered snatching one of their whips. He was sure he could take one, even two of them down before they subdued him. Defiance meant certain death, however. He preferred to take his chances – such as they were – in the arena.

The muster area was unusually crowded. A dozen Chaos cultists were waiting there, chained together. They sneered and cursed at Krom, straining to reach him. He bared his fangs at them in return. They had the look of new arrivals, unbloodied and still strong. Krom took some solace in the likelihood that they were about to die.

As they were herded away, another combatant was led through, back towards the cages. It was the Dark Angels chaplain. He turned his head to look at Krom. He offered no greetings, nor even acknowledged the other’s presence. His armour was dented and scored, but he appeared to have weathered his ordeals well, on the whole.

Krom glared at him, but had no chance to speak as the slave masters were jabbering at him excitably, prodding him with their whip handles, and – sooner than he had expected – it was time for him to fight again. He took a deep breath, gathering his depleted energy, focusing his willpower.

Impress the Grand Archite and she may choose to extend your life...

They hadn’t given him Wyrmclaw this time. Had the queen grown tired of him already? So what if she has? he thought stubbornly. The span of my life is for no xenos scum to determine. Not while I have breath in my body and strength to fight.

Krom lifted his head, squared his shoulders. He made the sign of the aquila. Then he stepped out beneath the crimson sky of Commorragh and let the roar of the xenos crowd wash over him.

The arena had been restructured during his absence. The polished stages had been removed to create a single fighting space that stretched from one arena wall to the other. The large surface was covered in sharp black sand that crunched beneath his boots. The eldar were clearly planning for this fight to be a grand finale, Krom realised grimly.

As he crossed the huge space, he glimpsed the queen’s throne. It was empty. Her absence stoked his anger. I’ll give these xenos a show like they have never seen before, he swore, one to leave them cowering in fear of the Allfather’s might!

In the centre of the arena, he found the chained Chaos cultists waiting for him. His lips twitched at the prospect of being the one to slay them.

The cultists weren’t alone, however. Dozens of other combatants were being herded from their cages. There was a group of tau fire warriors to Krom’s left and beyond them, two groups of Imperial Guardsmen. There were orks to his right, including one hulking warboss with a scarred pit in place of its right eye, and a Traitor Space Marine in tarnished black and gold. A Black Legionnaire!

A slave master prodded Krom in the back, mistaking his surprise for trepidation. He shrugged it away from him with a snarl.

Krom was weighing up the traitor, intending to engage him first, when a roar went up from the crowd and he realised that he had misjudged the situation. He was not expected to fight his fellow prisoners. Rather, his true opponents came wheeling out of the sky towards him. The slave masters withdrew and Krom dived for the nearest axe – but the traitor reached it before him, snatching his prize out from under his nose. He dropped into a crouch, empty-handed.

Suddenly, they were all around him – a gang of young dark eldar males, heavily-inked and leather-armoured. There were thirty or more of them, whooping and screeching, poised atop skyboards, which they steered with their feet. They hacked at their prey with double-bladed polearms, and had already eviscerated a pair of cultists.

Two of the hellions flanked a tau and lifted it off the ground between them. Then they were gone, escaping into the sky again, out of reach.

The attack left the grounded combatants in disarray. The surviving cultists pulled this way and that, hampered by the chains that bound them to a pair of bloody corpses. The orks were snatching up every weapon in reach, hurling them at the circling predators. Krom made a grab for an ancient-looking chainsword, while he had the chance.

The hellions were putting on an aerial display. They repeatedly tossed their luckless victim to one another, much to the crowd’s delight. Only when the tau was battered, broken and partially dismembered did they fling its body away from them with casual contempt. As they swooped on the arena again, however, Krom was ready for them.

Three skyboards hurtled towards him. He sprang to meet the centremost of them, hoping to surprise its rider. He brought his chainsword down in a double-handed smash, which the hellion parried, by a hair. The dark eldar swerved away from Krom, the jagged edge of its board clipping his foot. He landed heavily on his injured leg and crashed onto one knee.

The hellion hooked a bone pylon with its polearm, whipped its board around and flew at him again. One of the orks saved him, though that surely hadn’t been its intention. It appeared as if from nowhere, barrelling through the Chaos cultists, pouncing on the low-flying dark eldar with a murderous howl. It had run out of weapons to throw, without thinking to keep one for itself, but its meaty fists alone could crush bones.

The skyboard veered between two pylons and flipped over, depositing one hellion corpse and one thrashing-mad greenskin in the dirt below. Slave masters rushed to drive the latter back into the centre of the arena.

The other hellions were gone again, but for one other that had become separated from its board. The cultists swarmed over it, denying it the chance to stand. About a third of the prisoners had fallen. Krom realised that the hellions had picked off the weakest of them. Most of the tau warriors and several Imperial Guardsmen lay among the dead.

The hellions swooped again, but this time their tactics had changed. They focused their attacks upon a single target. They swarmed around the Chaos Space Marine like angry insects, stinging with their polearms. Swatting at them furiously, he cleaved one through the stomach and caught a second in the throat with his elbow and flipped it backwards off its board.

Once again, the cultists swarmed the fallen hellion.

At last, a hellion swooped carelessly into Krom’s reach. Bones ground together inside his patched-up left gauntlet as he swung his whirring blade, and he sucked in air between his fangs. It was worth the pain, however, to open his enemy’s throat.

The Black Legionnaire had claimed a few kills of his own, as had the orks. When the hellions withdrew, this time, only twelve of them remained. It was less than half their original number. They had whittled the traitor down, however, leaving him to bleed out from a hundred cuts and gouges. They performed a victory circuit of the arena, garnering wild applause, giving Krom and the other remaining prisoners – a handful of Guardsmen and cultists and three orks, including their warboss – a minute to collect themselves.

Krom took charge, barking at the Guardsmen to form a defensive circle, back-to-back. The hellions attacked for the final time, and for Krom, the next few minutes were a blur of ducking, diving, swiping and screaming. He was at the centre of a maelstrom, barely able to react to one threat before the next came at him from another direction. He didn’t dare stand still for a second, so he pushed his battered body as hard as he could to keep moving, keep fighting, stay alive. The sand of the arena was slick with blood, and more than once he slipped and almost lost his footing.

Through a red haze, he saw the ork warboss’ neck being severed. He saw the last of the Imperial Guardsmen speared by three polearms at once. There were dark eldar bodies on the ground too, however, several of them thanks to Krom’s efforts.

Then his sputtering chainsword was parried so fiercely that it span out of his broken hand.

He found himself in a crouch in the middle of the stage, surrounded by mutilated corpses. The final hellion was plummeting towards him, cackling madly. He propelled himself forward, diving beneath the oncoming skyboard, landing facedown – as he had planned – beside the Chaos Space Marine. He prised the axe out of the traitor’s dead fingers, rolling onto his back as the skyboard whipped around again. He hurled the weapon at the skyboard’s underside. Its blade lodged deep inside the board’s workings, sending it careening out of control, skipping and spluttering across the sand, taking its rider with it.

It was over, and Krom was alive. He was the sole survivor.

He tried to stand, but a fresh gash in his side that he didn’t recall sustaining – combined with his old, unhealed injuries – rendered him temporarily incapable. He fell back to his knees. With his hearts hammering in his ears, at first he didn’t hear the ominous thrill that rippled around the arena.

A shadow blotted out the sky’s sullen light. Krom raised his head to find a blurry shape looming over him. He couldn’t tell if it was beast or machine, or a perverted amalgam of both. A pale, muscular torso was hunched inside an armoured carapace, which bristled with implements of war and torture.

It had no legs but hovered, like the skyboards, on anti-gravity motors. A thick, segmented tail coiled over its head, a twitching xenos weapon grafted onto its end like a sting.

Whatever this unholy contraption was, Krom was in no state to fight it. Even if he could, there would only be more behind it. His fate had never truly rested in his own hands, after all. The Grand Archite had decided the time and manner of Krom Dragongaze’s demise, as soon as she had ceased to be entertained by him.

And that time, it seemed, had come.

PART FIVE

THE DARKNESS OF ANGELS

ROB SANDERS

The Dark City rang with the sounds of battle and butchery. From the serrated spires of High Commorragh to the insanity of the Middle Darkness, the miserable industry of the Old City to the degradation of the Sprawls, things were suffering and dying. It was home to the murderous and those they would murder. It was a hellish cityscape of barbed wonder and torment, in which the alien and the depraved lived, died and enjoyed the perversity of everything inflicted in between. Above the corpse-thick slurp of the city’s rivers, the slave revolts of the gateway ports and the dimensional flux of the shadow districts, the cacophony of death rose.

The arenas spread like a dark cancer out from the razored towers and crooked pinnacles of High Commorragh. Dominating the Sprawls, they drew the bloodthirsty and depraved for kilometres around – alien deviants who filled their worthless lives with their daily fix of death and howled their rabid encouragement from their terraces of black stone. They spat curses in a language of shattered syllables that contorted their thin lips and haunted their features with a wretched fury. They wagered in flesh – that of their slaves, their rivals and their own. They pushed, shoved and screamed at each other as the violence of the arena spread through the auditoria. Knives flashed in the darkness, gutting and slitting. Victims bled their last, stamped into the ground by feverish throngs of xenos intent on commanding the best views – views of alien beasts, the gore festival of traps, and prisoners reduced to the brute desperation of murderous survival.

Krom Dragongaze was one such prisoner. A figure stumbling through the black sand of the arena, the grey of his plate stained crimson with wounds suffered in the course of never-ending battle. He fought through fatigue and loss of blood.

The dark eldar arena was a crowded circus of death. Blinking blood from his eye, and with plaits of copper-coloured hair slick with gore, the Wolf Lord could see bodies of Space Wolves in the arena. Krom tried to summon some anger or indignation. This was no way for Wolves to die. But the Sons of Russ did die this way. All over the galaxy. When a brother of the Space Wolves died, it was not asleep in his cell. He died badly, as some savaged mess on an alien world or bolt-mulched corpse at the foot of a traitor. Still, as deaths went, this was not a good one.

Krom screwed his eye shut. He tried to blank out the pain of loss, his personal agonies and the baying, pale-faced hordes of the auditorium. If he was going to die, he would die like a Wolf. In the moment. Savage and deadly before the end. Opening a bloodshot eye and the shattered remnants of a sizzling optic, the Space Wolf beheld the doom that had been chosen for him.

Whipping up the arena sand into coiled wisps with its anti-gravitic motors, a huge, gladiatorial abomination drifted towards him. Looking like a fat, floating black scorpion, the sickly construct was hunched with a thick, armoured shell – with weaponised claws and rearing tail. It clanked and crunched with the rancid change of internal gearing. It belched a light black smoke, while flasks of unspeakable fluids bubbled in the shell-ports. It was ramshackle in nature and dripping with the filth of past atrocities, but nonetheless the monstrosity gave the impression of indomitable efficiency.

The thing seemed unhurried, as though relishing the howls of encouragement and bloodthirsty expectation from the audience. A macabre fusion of pallid flesh and murderous machine, Krom’s opponent was a semi-sentient torture device – a twisted thing that knew only the delights of a slow death and success measured in screams. It existed to inflict myriad agonies. Festooned with tools of pain, it appeared to Krom less as a gladiatorial killer than a cybernetic butcher, intent on chopping him up a piece at a time until there was nothing left.

Krom spat blood at the arena sand and clenched his fists so hard the joints cracked. Spent. Battered. Doomed. The Space Wolf’s hands itched for weapons that were not there. His plate, once a thing of beauty, was a rattling wreck. All he had was the nature of the beast that clawed at his soul and growled to be released.

‘It’s all I need…’ Krom hissed through bloodied lips.

The Wolf Lord didn’t wait for his opponent. He weaved across the arena, his boots crunching in the black sands as he stepped lightly through the dead, giving the pain engine’s flesh-fused weaponry some difficulty in tracking him. The alien deviants in the audience whooped their savage expectations.

As Krom ran towards the half-machine, he felt the thing betray a moment of primal uncertainty. Things the size of a Space Wolf didn’t usually go on the attack. They usually ran screaming from its scything hook and liquifiers. The Wolf Lord would not. As he took his last few steps, he felt his hearts beat in time with whatever stitched fusion of piston-plugs and muscle pumped wretched filth around the pain engine’s veins. He felt for its movements and intentions.

Allfather’s wounds, Krom thought to himself, this thing is fast. The scything hook cranked around in its bone-socket and flashed for the Space Marine. The crowd seethed with delight. Krom rolled across his pauldron, the hook sparking off his ruined backplate. The momentum carried him to his feet just in front of the pain engine’s armoured head. The Space Wolf smashed his fist down at the metal beast. He hit it again and again, his gauntleted knuckles scuffing and cracking against the thick helm. The engine clunked, whirred and gushed hydraulic fluids as it drifted back. Krom’s bare knuckles had barely dented the plate, however, and the thing came at him with the nozzles of its claw.

The Wolf Lord did not want to find out what came out of such weapons. Flipping head over boots, Krom landed messily on the sand, just clear of the nozzles. Such a demanding manoeuvre required strength and concentration and the punishing arena fights had stripped him of both.

Again, Krom had a moment to appreciate the monstrous engineering of the pain engine and its recoiling reflexes. Striking out with the nozzled limb while turning on its whirring gravitic motors, the pain engine swung around a set of chain-flails attached to the bottom-plate of the weaponised claw. Running on retractable chains, weighted hooks tore around in an expanding arc. Where they got purchase, the flails ripped sections of plate from Krom’s back and embedded themselves in the slabs of muscle about the back of the Space Wolf’s shoulders. His pack sparked with the damage inflicted by the cruel hooks.

The hooks sank deep and burned inside his body with some kind of smeared poison. Krom roared, although he was not surprised. Every razor-sharpened edge or cruel point in this foetid, alien place seemed laced with some kind of burning residue or mind-clouding toxin. It was all part of the lethal nature of this dread city. His limbs felt stricken. His breathing was laboured and his hearts thumped to an irregular rhythm. His mind was an addled ache, struggling to stay conscious. Whatever the venom was, it was overcoming his engineered body’s ability to resist its perilous effects. Krom knew that the venom was unlikely to kill him. The pain engine would do that eventually. Like everything else in the crowded coliseum, the venom was a form of theatre. It reduced the transhuman perfection of humanity’s finest to a dazed hulk – a tranquilised beast to be played with for the audience’s satisfaction. Once the gladiatorial machine had shown off its skills and clunking supremacy, however, the mob would demand death. Something spectacular.

Turning, Krom did the only thing he could – he grabbed the chains. With a wild fury, Krom leaned into the agony of the embedded hooks and hauled the chains around. The pain engine began to move, its anti-gravitic motors causing it to drift around. Without legs or tracks, the monstrous fusion of flesh and machine had no traction on the arena sands and floated around with the centrifugal force of the Wolf Lord’s swing. The thing gushed rank liquids through its lines and streamed smoke. It swung out further until suddenly the chains locked, running their course.

Krom felt a tortuous tug through the running lines. Breathing deep and clenching his teeth, he prepared himself for the worst. Letting go of the chain-flails, Krom allowed the drifting bulk of the pain engine to fly off towards the arena wall. The embedded hooks tore free through the Space Wolf’s flesh and suit, pulling him off his feet and into an ugly fling across the sand. As the hooks and chains retracted, the pain engine struck the wall. Bouncing off black stone, the thing’s shell casing split.

Dark eldar spectators ran to the arena edge to look down on the damage. Krom tried to get up. Muscle raged red hot across his back. Strips of skin hung down through shattered plate. All the while the Space Wolf’s mind swam with the plethora of poisons his genetically engineered body was trying to process. He saw the pain engine belch smoke and eject some kind of liquid effusion from its cybernetic body in a squirting stream. The thick fluid hissed on the sand.

While clutching his back, Krom gestured with the fingers of his other hand for the pain engine to try again. The arena crowd went wild. Krom couldn’t tell whether his actions were being celebrated or reviled. It didn’t matter. He was dead for certain now. All about him he felt the weight of his plate. His damaged pack was faltering and the powered suit dying. He would be soon to follow.

The pain engine rattled towards him. Its hook glinted through old blood and filth, still impossibly sharp. Chain-flails snapped back into place and the pair of nozzles forming the claw of the other appendage dribbled a foul concoction in deviant anticipation. The drips and slurps created smoking pits in the sand, giving Krom the impression of some kind of acid.

As it drifted at speed towards him, the pain engine’s tail contracted and the screw-shaped barrel spat a stream of static at the Space Wolf. Krom dived to one side. It was an ugly manoeuvre, the Space Wolf driving his suit on with the pure brute force of his body. He turned to see the static thrash at the sand where he had been standing. Rolling again in the sluggish suit, the Wolf Lord couldn’t avoid a second, silent blast. The horrific weapon made no sound, but Krom was noisy enough for the both of them as the static hit him in the chest. He fell back spasming and screaming. His body was wracked with the excruciating agony the weapon had visited upon him.

Krom clenched a ceramite fist out in front of him. His whole body trembled with pain, and his suit was like an anchor dragging him down. His teeth chattered uncontrollably. He punched the sand and roared the agony away. As the effect of the weapon began to fade, Krom’s blurring vision returned to clarity. The flat of the merciless hook flashed before his face, smashing him to one side. Krom forced his faltering plate on. He crawled underneath the metal beast, feeling the pulse of the gravitic motors wash over him. The thing turned on the spot, as Krom somehow got to his feet and staggered away.

He heard a discharge of liquid as something spat from the appendage nozzles. Krom tried an evasion but failed. Without his powered reflexes he was merely a Space Marine buried in ceramite. Poison, exhaustion and blood loss were taking their toll. Sliding on the sand, the Space Wolf only half managed to avoid the liquifiers. The foul concoction spattered ahead of him, turning the arena floor to a cloud of steam.

Some of the liquid struck his pauldron and arm, however, and began to eat through the ceramite. While his plate hissed furiously near his face, Krom tore at the seals and locks of the pauldron and plate sections. There was no time for ritual or respect. Hooking his gauntlet under the shoulder plate he ripped it off before clawing the ceramite from his upper arm. He felt the flesh-burrowing burn of several droplets that had eaten their way through. Skin, muscle and bone seethed and a feral roar issued from the Wolf Lord.

He stumbled away from the engine, trying to clear his pain-addled brain just long enough to enact some kind of retaliation. He didn’t get a chance to. The metal monstrosity drifted up behind Krom and, firing the stinger pod on its tail, once more blasted a static stream of agony into the Space Marine.

Krom roared, stricken and held there by the agonies coursing through the entirety of his body. The pain engine wasted no time in angling its hook. Coming up behind the paralysed Wolf Lord, it brought the hook up through his ruined plate and back flesh with a sickening thud. Lifting Krom Dragongaze up on the brutal weapon, the pain engine turned, idling on its gravitic motors. It presented Krom and his suffering to the crowds for inspection. For entertainment.

The sounds of disappointment from the crowd rose to the darklight suns hanging in the Commorrite sky. The cut-glass syllables of abuse rained down on the arena. Improvised missiles pranged off Krom’s plate and the engine’s metal shell while members of the audience demonstrated their detestation by tearing off cloaks and presenting weapons – as if they were going to climb down into the arena. They were stopped, however, by a cordon of coliseum guards: warrior females dressed in leathers.

The Space Wolf could not tell whom the crowd were disappointed with – him for failing or the pain engine for providing them with entertainment not twisted enough for their appetites. Allowing his agonised gaze to travel up from the commotion, up through the spiteful ranks of the arena audience, Krom could make out the sheltered box manned by slave-servants and coliseum guards. Ragged banners streamed from the structure depicting a serrated shadow, the symbol of the queen’s coliseum cult. The queen, who had been absent until now, was summoned back to her throne by the hollering of her audience. If she wanted to remain in power, she had to make sure they were getting a good show. Krom bridled at the sight of her. She was clad in extravagant barbed leathers, the uniform of a gladiatrix. Her theatrical headdress revealed eyes steely with focus, while her bodysuit left little to the imagination. She stared down at the Wolf Lord as the pain engine presented its offering. The decision was hers.

Krom faded in and out of consciousness. The pain was unbearable. He had barely the strength to open his eyes and poison raged through his body, afflicting his mind. His limbs felt like lead, his suit was dead and his movements on the hook an agony.

The queen hesitated over the decision.

The terraces of the coliseum were growing riotous. Dark eldar flashed the sharpness of their teeth and blades, savagely pushing one another. There seemed to be a difference of opinion regarding the quality of the day’s entertainment. Female guards in leathers, sporting pistols with long, tapering barrels, were moving through the mobs of disgruntled xenos, ready to mercilessly put down any rioting. With the coliseum in uproar, discontent infectious and the audience seconds away from becoming part of the entertainment, the dark queen had little choice but to act.

Giving a signal of savage disdain, the queen ordered a section of prisoner cages opened. With bars parting and a hydraulic wall of spikes moving through the cells, more prisoners were forced out onto the arena sands. Crucified upon the hook and held high above the arena floor, Krom Dragongaze beheld his replacements.

Part of him hoped for Space Wolves – although he would take no solace in his brothers being thrust into this arena of torture and humiliation – but he could hear his Drakeslayers roaring their fury and throwing themselves at the bars of cages that would not break. They had not been let loose.

The prisoners were a miserable gathering, mostly humans, emaciated, dressed in rags and showing signs of terrible mistreatment. There was a lone eldar, horribly scarred but stoic. Krom spotted a servant of the Machine God in rust red robes, limping on a shattered bionic. All torturer’s fodder for the pain engine. Then Krom saw them. The dark queen’s gambit. Three transhumans, like himself. One he recognised as the Dark Angels chaplain he’d seen a few times being brought to and from the arena. His filthy white vestments were draped over his battle-scarred black plate, the hood pulled up to partially conceal his distinctive skull helm. With him was one of his brothers, a librarian in blue armour.

The monster advancing from the furthest cage might have once been a Space Marine but he was no angel of the Emperor. The armoured figure was decked in spikes and the perversity of blood red plate. A Chaos Space Marine uncaged. A World Eater let off the leash. His face-flesh was daemon red and a single horn erupted out of the side of his head, winding about his skull like a crown. He had the fixed smile of a maniac, drunk on the violence to come. Violence he fully intended to inflict in the name of his fell patron.

Marching up to the priest of Mars, the World Eater smashed the hobbling construct to the sand with obvious relish. Sinking probing fingers into the base of the priest’s back, the Chaos Space Marine ripped the priest’s spine up out of cybernetic flesh. The metal spine dripped with blood and oil and carried with it an armoured cranium housing the victim’s half-brain and cogitator. Shaking wires and interfaces loose, the World Eater took a few experimental swings with his improvised flail. As he marched for the pain engine, Krom had no doubt that the maniac had every intention of destroying the monstrous machine – and then everyone else.

The pain engine lowered its hook and allowed Krom to slide off. Hitting the sands like a pile of scrap, the Wolf Lord let out a bellow of agony. The mobile torture machine drifted overhead, advancing towards its new victims. It would no doubt return later to inflict further horrors on him, the Space Marine thought, for the crowd’s edification and entertainment.

Krom summoned reserves of strength he didn’t know he had. He felt as though the hook had split him in half. Like an infant animal, he tried to stand. He staggered and fell. He could do it, but it was agony. He crashed back down on the sands in the pain engine’s gravitic wake. Everything hurt. Poison coursed through his veins. His shoulder still seared with the acid working its way through his flesh, and his back felt as if a red hot iron had been thrust into it.

He heard screams. Prisoners were dying. The dark eldar pain engine was nothing if not an artist. Like a true gladiatorial showman and torturer, it had zeroed in on the weak for the entertainment of easy kills. It instinctively knew the transhuman prisoners would be more of a challenge and that therefore their suffering should be left until last.

Dragging his forehead off the sand, Krom witnessed what happened when you faced the xenos pain engine without the benefit of a Space Marine’s engineered body and training. Men died horribly. The monstrous fusion of flesh and machine wanted to show off the full range of its torturer’s tools. Prisoners were hooked through the belly, the scything blade ripping slowly up through the sternum and out through the jaw. They were shredded by the poisoned hooks of the arm-mounted chainflails. Some bled to death on the sand, while others were dragged across the ground by chains. Several were left to tremble, convulse and die where they lay as the poison ravaged their mere human constitutions.

Spitting sand from his lips, Krom saw that the cruel xenos audience were satisfied. The queen’s gamble seemed to have paid off. The conflict on the terraces had given way to masochistic delight. Those spectators eager for blood were getting it. Those demanding more challenge and torment for their time and coin were back on the edge of their seats with expectation. Even the leather-bound guards had stopped to soak up the death and suffering.

The screams grew louder, echoing about the coliseum and rising above the city as the pain engine deployed its other instruments of torture. Prisoners either distracted by former abuses or fixed to the spot with present terrors were sprayed down with acid from the engine’s liquifier guns. Like wax sculptures, the thrashing victims dribbled to the sand to form puddles of red and white. Within seconds there was little left of them but the echo of their dreadful suffering.

For a moment it looked like the eldar might put up a fight, but then the xenos decided to run. He shouldn’t have, Krom decided, as for the relish of the audience’s racial hatred, the pain engine hit him again and again with the agonising static from the screw-shaped barrels mounted upon its overhanging tail. The ghoulish dark eldar were treated to the prisoner scratching at himself on the ground, experiencing more pain than he could bear. After an appropriate show of agony, the prisoner died of his torments.

As the last of the human prisoners turned and ran from the pain engine, the wretch found himself face to face with the World Eater. Swinging his metal skull around on its titanium spinal column like a morning star, the Chaos Space Marine stove in the prisoner’s skull. The victim fell before the spiked might of the World Eater, and the traitor splattered the prisoner into the sand with stamps of his gore-speckled boots.

As the two Dark Angels looked on, the gladiatorial pain engine glided up between them and the Blood God’s champion. The Interrogator-Chaplain offered an open gauntlet towards the World Eater to indicate that the pain engine was all his. The maniac’s smile broadened – a simultaneous acknowledgement of the offer and the fact that he was looking at a dead man.

The World Eater broke into a powered run. As the pain engine accelerated to meet him it reached out with its hook. Smashing the limb to one side with his flail, the Chaos Space Marine began to beat the machine back furiously. Ducking beneath a storm of lacerating hooks, the World Eater allowed the chain-flails to pass overhead before hammering the engine with the reinforced cranium of the tech-priest. The xenos audience screeched with excitement and pain lust.

As sparks flew from the liquifier appendage, the traitor’s improvised weapon failed him, the metal skull detaching from the priest’s blood-slick spine. Stamping at the pain engine with his boot, the World Eater seemed unstoppable. The brute became a feverish storm of powered kicks and punches. With a kick knocking the gladiatorial machine back on its gravitic field, the maniac picked the metal cranium up from the sand, carrying the weapon like a primitive might a rock. The stinger pod on the engine’s tail recoiled, sending a stream of static torment at the Chaos Space Marine. The World Eater didn’t move.

‘Again!’ the traitor roared, an infernal echo to his voice. The weapon seemed to do nothing to the monster. The cybernetic menace blasted the World Eater a second and a third time, each time to bawling encouragement from its opponent.

The World Eater yelled and ran at the clanking contraption. Knocking aside the engine’s flaying hook with the metal skull, he proceeded to smash at the armoured shell until the cranium too came apart in a shower of circuits and brains. His maniac’s smile now horribly contorted with rage, the World Eater grabbed the side of the pain engine. Pushing upwards with a furious heave, the Chaos Space Marine flipped the construct over.

Without the stability of its gravitic motors, the horrific fusion of flesh and instrument of torture landed on the thick plate of its hunched back. Sparks flew and the mechanism belched black smoke. It rolled across the sands, each time attempting to right itself. With gravitic motors getting a fix on the ground, the pain engine came to a stop. Shell-mounted flasks were smashed and the monstrosity’s hull sizzled and steamed with its own foul fluids. The liquefier appendage showered the sand with sparks and the stinger pod hung at a crooked angle on its segmented metal tail.

Krom watched as the impossible happened. The World Eater wasn’t finished. He stormed towards the pain engine, intent on ripping the gladiatorial machine apart. He would probably have done so, if it hadn’t been for the stuttering stream of acid the pain engine spattered into his face. With its mechanism damaged and feed lines broken, all the monstrous machine could send the Chaos Space Marine’s way was the acid left in its liquefier guns. The World Eater had never screamed before but as the acid spray ate through his face, he heard the sound of his own suffering echoing in his ears.

‘Get him up,’ Krom heard from behind him. ‘Get him up.’

It was the two Dark Angels. As the brother in blue put Krom’s arm across his back, his compatriot grabbed his other arm and hauled the Space Wolf off the floor. Krom tried to shrug the Dark Angels off him but his heavy plate, its sluggish servos and fibre bundles resisted.

‘Can you fight?’ the Interrogator-Chaplain said, his syllables clipped with a nobility of purpose.

‘My plate has no power,’ Krom growled, almost like an accusation.

‘Can you fight?’ the Interrogator-Chaplain demanded again, his courteous tone laced with authority.

‘Have you ever met a Wolf who wouldn’t?’ Krom bit back.

‘Not yet,’ the Dark Angel admitted.

The three Space Marines stopped as they saw the pain engine, billowing black smoke and bleeding fluids, surging across the sands towards them. ‘Which is as well, for I fear this will require all three of us. Our tainted friend got things rolling but we shall have to finish this monstrosity.’

Krom wasn’t sure he could trust the Dark Angels any more than he could his captors – the rivalry between the Wolf and the Lion was far from dead. Krom was a creature of immediacy, however. He lived and fought in the moment. Necessity made for strange allies and alliances.

‘We shall put an end to this show,’ Krom promised, through his pain. That was all he was willing to say.

‘Brother Othniel will flank right, myself left,’ the Interrogator-Chaplain told Krom.

‘And me?’ the Space Wolf growled with disgust.

‘You will wait for an opportunity,’ the Dark Angel assured him. ‘We shall create one if we can.’

As the pain engine rattled noisily on, the Interrogator-Chaplain and Othniel dragged Krom across the arena, the toes of the Wolf Lord’s boots creating a pair of trenches in the sand. As the machine got close, the Dark Angels dropped Krom without ceremony and peeled off to the sides. Clattering to the ground, Krom pushed himself up on his arms. His plate was like an armoured coffin about him. As the Dark Angels stalked around the pain engine it turned slowly on its gravitic motors, hovering near Krom like a hound defending a buried bone.

Suddenly the Dark Angels ran at the monstrous engine, their robes flowing after them. Othniel reached the gladiator first, skidding to a stop just before the throat-tearing swipe of the machine’s hook. Surging for the weaponised appendage, Othniel balanced the might of his powered blue plate against the hydraulics of the bone-fused limb. The pain engine struggled, but Othniel held fast, forcing the armoured thing back across the sand. Unlike the World Eater or even Krom himself, the Dark Angel’s attack lacked ferocity, but he more than made up for that with stalwart determination.

The Interrogator-Chaplain came from the other side, jumping up onto the side of the pain engine’s armoured shell. Leaping across its hunched back, the Dark Angel cleared the monstrosity with knightly elegance. The pain engine, however, fired the screw-shaped barrels of its stinger pod. Unable to raise the barrel on its broken tail, the pain engine missed the Interrogator-Chaplain and blasted itself in the back.

As the thing drifted backwards towards Krom, Brother Othniel released it. With its gravitic motor stuttering about him, Krom looked up at the pallid flesh of the pain engine. It was muscular, clammy and horrifically interfaced with the dark machinery. With tendons taut and the pain engine’s organic muscles flexing horribly, the Wolf Lord couldn’t tell whether the thing was in some kind of private agony or ecstasy. Then Krom saw his opportunity. The pain engine’s brawny neck ran into its armoured helm, but under its jaw the Space Wolf spotted a weakness. He had to be fast, however, before the monstrosity recovered and slaughtered them all.

Forcing the fingers of his powerless gauntlet straight, Krom thrust his palm up through the abomination’s throat. Helped by the backwards drift of the thing, Krom punched his hand like a claw up inside the pain engine’s armoured helm and skull. The construct spasmed, the muscles of its chest and arms contracting. Smoke belched from the machine and fluids were expelled from all its ports. In that second, Krom Dragongaze knew he had it. With disgust-fuelled violence the Space Wolf reached up inside the engine’s xenos skull and crushed the twisted thing he found inside. Alien gore poured through the holes in its helm onto the sand.

The monstrosity’s gravitic drive stuttered and failed. Withdrawing his bloody gauntlet, Krom heaved himself and his dead plate to one side, moments before the motor failed and the pain engine came crashing down on the arena sands, a smoking wreck.

As Krom lay there, staring up at the dark Commorrite suns with the dark eldar audience screaming for more blood, the Wolf Lord felt the Dark Angels over him once more. Grabbing him by his plate, they hauled him to his feet. The Wolf Lord shrugged them off. As he went to fall again, the Interrogator-Chaplain supported him. Scowling, this time Krom allowed the Dark Angel to help him.

Amongst the audience there was movement. Columns of coliseum guards were filing down through the terraces. Dressed in leathers and carrying a combination of electrified nets and bidents, the dark eldar appeared ready to secure the arena. Jets of flame spouted from nozzles set in the arena wall, growing in length and power. The raging inferno turned blood and sand to glass, forcing the remaining prisoners to gather in the centre of the arena.

The Dark Angels helped Krom across the sand in his dead plate, away from the unbearable heat of the flames. The survivors became a throng of silhouettes. The flames corralled them together before dying suddenly in a great whoosh of heat. As his eyes adjusted to the vanishing glare, Krom saw that the coliseum guards had run up in place of the flames. They encircled the survivors with their number. For the first time, Krom realised that the maniac World Eater was still alive – although a horrifically disfigured mess, roaring into gauntlets he used to cover what was left of his face. The Wolf Lord and the Dark Angels would have killed the traitor, if it hadn’t have been for the dark eldar surrounding them.

The xenos held crackling nets, while presenting the twin tips of their forked spears in a circle of death. As the leather-clad guards closed on the Space Marines, Krom bridled. He was exhausted from the prolonged demands of survival in the arena but his victory already had him bristling with a desire to savage his alien captors. From behind, the Dark Angel Interrogator-Chaplain spoke.

‘If you choose to fight,’ he said, ‘then the Dark Angels shall fight with you. Know, savage prince of the Wolf King, that our lives will be forfeit. I appeal to you. Return quietly to your cage. From there we can make plans for our liberty.’

Krom spat blood at the sand in disgust, the spittle hanging from his chin whiskers.

‘Wolves weren’t meant for cages, Angel,’ Krom growled back at him.

‘There is no honour dying like this,’ the Interrogator-Chaplain told him.

‘I will kill every xenos that tries to lay their filthy hands on me,’ Krom rumbled.

‘Of that I have no doubt,’ the Dark Angel said. ‘But what do you think they are going to do when the corpses of the alien dead are at our feet?’

‘They will flood the arena with flame,’ Krom admitted, managing to shake the effects of the poison from his head.

‘The cages offer us a chance, at least,’ the Interrogator-Chaplain said.

The dark eldar guards tightened the circle about them, the double blades of their spears tapping the plate and dimpling the barbarian flesh of the Wolf Lord. Krom glared his hatred up the length of the weapon at the guard ready to thrust it through his chest.

‘Alright, Angel,’ Krom said, raising his arms in the lifeless plate with difficulty. ‘We do this your way.’ The Wolf Lord turned the hatred in his eyes on the Interrogator-Chaplain, who nodded the blankness of his skull helm in silence. ‘But I hope you are caged with me,’ the Space Wolf snarled.

Surrounded by a forest of spears, the Space Marines were escorted back to their cells. The barred compartments were built into the arena wall so that prisoners could see what was expected of them during the dread games. The cells were little better than the escort, with spikes and razored shafts projecting inwards, limiting the movement of the prisoners and frustrating attempts to batter down the barred doors or rush their gaolers.

Krom wasn’t surprised that the dark eldar took such measures. Compared to even the brawniest of the dark eldar beastmasters, clutching their whips and the chains of their chimeric creatures, the Space Wolves were hulking demigods. They drowned the wretched aliens in their shadows.

Returned to the cells with the remaining members of the Drakeslayers, Krom arrived to grim acknowledgments of ‘My lord’. The Space Wolves had seen what Krom had been forced to suffer out on the sands and had gone wild in their cells. Now they met their captain with grave, whisker-lined faces in the gloom and eyes that burned like candles in the night.

One face that was not there was that of Jormund Thunderclaw. Krom had lost so many of his brothers that his friend’s face was now but a ghostly memory, fading further with each new loss. Krom bit back his bitterness. He had to look out for the brothers that still lived.

Hengist Ironaxe’s features looked greyer and more drawn than usual, while Rorven couldn’t help a mumbled exclamation of ‘By the Allfather’ at the extent of Krom’s injuries. Haegr Fangthane came to the bars, despite his own wounds, and Brorn Grindalson even reached out to touch the Wolf Lord’s ruined plate in reassurance. The Space Wolf was forced back by the thrust of a dark eldar spear. Ulf Horghast, Lars Thorgil and Ingrimm Thunderfell growled, spat and kicked at the bars of their cell, drawing the attentions of the xenos to them instead.

‘You would do well not to antagonise them, brothers,’ the Interrogator-Chaplain told them as he helped Krom along. Grundar Greymane gave him the winter bleakness of his eyes.

‘By the Allfather,’ Greymane spat. ‘My Wolves would savage them all.’

Krom tottered, the poison still potent in his blood and his plate dragging him down, but the Interrogator-Chaplain caught him.

‘I believe you,’ the Interrogator-Chaplain said. ‘But not today, they won’t.’

Krom did not get his wish. The dark eldar guards forced the Interrogator-Chaplain to help the Wolf Lord into a cell with his own – Grundar Greymane, who continued to spit blood, and an unusually reserved Beoric Winterfang. The Interrogator-Chaplain and Brother Othniel were placed in the next cage.

Sitting in the cell, with the points of spikes scraping against his plate and cage-spanning blades beneath his chin, Krom had some time to consider whether he had been right to submit to incarceration. Beoric was no Iron Priest, but with time to kill, the leader of Krom’s Wolf Guard went to work doing what he could with his lord’s plate and damaged power pack. After he had managed to restore partial power, the suit was still a drag on Krom’s bestial reflexes but allowed him some protection and manoeuvrability. Meanwhile, Grundar did his best to tend the Fierce-eye’s terrible injuries.

Feeling well enough to move around the tiny cage, the Wolf Lord kicked away a bowl of slop the gaolers had provided to ensure the prisoners kept up their strength for the spectacle of the show. Krom suspected all the food and water they were given was drugged to keep the dangerous Space Marines sedated until they were once more required for the arena. He had ordered that all such offerings be ignored. The Drakeslayers did not need such comforts. The spilling of blood was their mead and the righteous butchery of the Emperor’s enemies their sustenance.

As the hours passed under the gloom of the imprisoned stars, Krom regained his strength, his coordination and his mind. It had been a battle – every bit as torturous as the one fought on the arena sands – but eventually he felt his engineered body starting to break down the alien poison, though who knew what side effects it still might have.

Krom watched as prisoners from other cell sections were marched out into the arena to fight for their lives against a menagerie of alien beasts and the small army of warrior women that called the coliseum their home. Crowds came at all hours to shriek, hiss and soak up the merciless violence of the arena. The dark eldar came for their fix of death, perverse pleasures to fill the rancid emptiness of their hearts.

When he wasn’t watching the gladiatrix and their monsters, studying their murderous craft, Krom turned his attentions to the cages in which he and his men had been housed. He found Beoric Winterfang, the leader of his Wolf Guard, staring at him. His eyes were glazed with regret, and he quivered with an animal fury bubbling below the surface. Krom knew what was coming.

‘I failed you,’ the sergeant said finally.

‘You fail yourself, sergeant,’ Krom told him, ‘if you entertain such fantasies – for I know it would be a fantasy indeed, if Beoric Winterfang failed anyone.’

‘My lord,’ Beoric said. ‘It is a failing to not be at your side when you need me.’

‘Then I was wrong,’ Krom told him with a grim smile. ‘You’re always failing me. Why, only three days’ past, my mug of mead was just beyond my reach. The day before that I noticed a mark that needed polishing on my plate.’ Krom looked Beoric in the eye and tried to draw a similar smile from his sergeant.

‘Only yesterday,’ Krom went on, ‘I needed to answer nature’s call. I looked around. Where were you, sergeant? Where were you?’

Beoric managed a weak curl of the lips, but his eyes still spoke for the guilt he felt at not fighting by his Wolf Lord’s side in the arena.

‘You jest, my lord,’ the sergeant said, ‘but your life was left in the hands of untrustworthy Angels.’ Beoric gave the Interrogator-Chaplain in the next cage the daggers of his eyes. The Dark Angel nodded slowly at the Wolf Guard sergeant, as though he were acknowledging some thanks or compliment. As Beoric went to get to his feet, Krom grabbed his arm and pulled him back down.

‘My life was in the most capable hands of all,’ Krom assured him. ‘My own.’

‘It’s my opinion, my lord,’ Beoric said.

‘And I respect that, but opinions are like chin-whiskers. We all have them,’ Krom said. He looked over at the Dark Angels. ‘Present company excepted. If you want to worry about something, sergeant, worry about getting out of here.’

Krom stared at the Dark Angel in his dark plate, hood and filthy robes, who hadn’t said a word since they had been returned to their cells.

‘So, Angel,’ Krom called across the spiked death trap of the cell. ‘You have been making plans, I assume.’

‘It’s what they do,’ Beoric said. ‘Scheme, plot and conspire.’

The Interrogator-Chaplain said nothing. He was lost in something like prayer.

‘Plans for our liberty,’ Krom reminded him.

‘Have faith, Fenrisian,’ the Interrogator-Chaplain told him.

‘I’m not interested in faith,’ Krom spat back, the hackles on the back of his neck rising. ‘Faith can’t cut through bars, Interrogator-Chaplain. Faith cannot be wielded like a weapon in the hand or vanquish enemies like a bolt round to the head.’

‘I cannot argue with that logic,’ the Dark Angel said. Krom waited for more from the Interrogator-Chaplain but he returned to his solemn silence.

‘I don’t know why I’m even talking to you,’ the Wolf Lord growled. ‘I should never have listened to you in the first place. We face hundreds of warriors in the arena, thousands in this damned amphitheatre and millions in the monstrous city beyond. Your counsel has simply added a locked cage to those obstacles.’

‘You forget the flames…’

‘A man can walk through flames, Interrogator-Chaplain,’ Krom said. ‘Bars, less so.’

‘You complain like a dog,’ the Dark Angel said.

‘That might be less of an insult than you imagine, Angel,’ Krom said. He growled to himself. ‘It’s only a matter of time.’

‘You’re not wrong,’ the Interrogator-Chaplain agreed. ‘An opportunity will present itself. It is in the nature of opportunities to do so.’

‘A plague take your opportunities,’ the Wolf Lord said. ‘The Sons of Russ come for us. They are on their way.’

Krom thought he heard something familiar on the foetid coliseum air. He turned his head and put an ear between the cold metal of the bars. The Wolf Lord tried to filter one sound from another. The suffering of prisoners in the surrounding cages. The death and spectacle of the arena. The raucous appreciation of the audience as the blood sports played out before them. The sound of the Dark City beyond the coliseum terraces – murderous perversion and the sating of alien appetites. Then he heard it. The rumble of rocket engines, turbofans and afterburners. The distant and distinctive roar of Adeptus Astartes gunships on an attack run.

Staring up through the bars, over the wicked terraces of the coliseum and through the serrated towers of the Dark City beyond, the Wolf Lord thought he spotted the silhouette of Thunderhawks against the gloom of the Commorrite suns. As they blasted towards the city outskirts at attack speed, the grey of their hull plating became clear.

The Space Wolf stood transfixed as his brethren dropped from the sky. The Wolves were coming. The Emperor’s executioners, falling like the blade of an axe on the Dark City. Coming for Krom and his Drakeslayers.

The Space Wolf Thunderhawks announced their arrival with the flash of dorsal-mounted battle cannons. Krom visualised the dark eldar of the labyrinthine shardscape watching from their leaning towers, stripping bodies in the alleyways of the Sprawls and picking through the ruins of the Commorrite outskirts. They would look up at their stolen suns, and see the streaming silhouettes of the gunships, arriving to deliver the Emperor’s justice to this benighted place. There would be panic. Havoc would reign supreme. The sadistic would come to know no mercy. Slavers would know the wrath of the enslaved. The raiders would become the raided…

Krom found himself gripping the bars of his cage. His teeth were bared and he was licking his lips. He shook his head to clear it and looked again up at the sky. The Space Wolves were not coming to rescue them. Such fantasies were probably the result of some remnant of the poison in his veins or just the potent desire for vengeance. Instead of Thunderhawks, Krom realised that he had been staring at a constellation of shadowy blots drifting across the webway sky.

‘Nobody is coming for us,’ the Interrogator-Chaplain said. He seemed to read Krom’s mind. ‘Not the brothers of the First. Not the Wolves of Fenris. The webway is an alien environment: another dimensional reality, even. We cannot cross such a realm in our mighty warships. We’ve tried. Innumerable vessels, hopelessly lost or spat back out upon the galactic plane. Some say that forgotten gods and primarchs still roam the labyrinthine expanse of its passageways. It is a place of elegance and alien intuition that we couldn’t hope to understand, let alone navigate.’

‘It sounds like you have given up, Angel,’ Krom snarled. ‘And that is something a Wolf can never do.’

‘I’m glad to hear it, brother,’ the Interrogator-Chaplain said. ‘Do you think you are the only Adeptus Astartes with unfinished business in the galaxy? I firmly believe that we can escape our present incarceration, this city and perhaps even this alien realm. It is simply a matter of waiting for the inevitable. Before the suns set on this benighted place I am sure we can find a way to help each other out of these less than ideal circumstances.’

Krom had a pithy response prepared, but he stopped himself. He was too proud to truly acknowledge what he owed the stranger, but also too proud to fail.

‘Shall we work together, then?’ Krom said.

‘We are all of the Emperor’s blood,’ the Interrogator-Chaplain said.

‘So are many who have betrayed such a covenant,’ Krom said. The Wolf Lord had killed enough renegades and traitors in legionary plate to know.

Once again the Interrogator-Chaplain seemed lost in thought.

‘Of course, you’re right,’ he said, his words heavy and knowing. ‘A Wolf’s wisdom indeed.’

‘What about him?’ Krom said. ‘Is he of the Emperor’s blood?’

The Interrogator-Chaplain looked across at the cage containing the World Eater. The monster sat silent in his spiked, blood-red armour. His face was a ghoulish mess, a gore-stained skull with a single remaining eyeball staring right through the Interrogator-Chaplain, through Krom, and his own agonies.

‘He is not for this world,’ the Interrogator-Chaplain said. ‘By all that is right and true, we should finish off what’s left of him, but I fear we won’t get that far. He won’t give us a choice.’

Krom nodded his agreement. The pair went silent for a moment, only the clash of blades and the deviant roar of the crowd filling the space.

‘And just so you know,’ Krom corrected the Interrogator-Chaplain, ‘I don’t think that those suns ever go down.’

A roar of appreciation from a new crowd of dark eldar sadists drew Krom’s attention. The coliseum was spilling over with pale-faced spectators, their features sharp and cruel. Extra leather-bound guards had been rushed out onto the arena wall with razorflails, impalers and bidents. As the screeching applause continued, Krom came to understand that some new gladiatrix, torture machine or monster had taken to the arena.

As the Space Wolves and Dark Angels came to the bars, it became clear, at least, who some of the combatants would be. With an agonising clunk, the barred entrance to their cages rose.

‘Eyes open, Drakeslayers,’ Krom said. ‘Round two.’ As spiked panels began to ratchet through the cells, forcing the Space Marines back out onto the sand, Krom felt Beoric Winterfang at his back. The Wolf Lord’s plate felt like sluggish scrap about him.

‘Do you hear that, Fenrisian?’ the Interrogator-Chaplain asked. ‘That’s the sound of opportunity knocking.’

‘Now all we have to do is find the door,’ Krom said.

As the Space Marines ventured out onto the blood-wet sand, Krom remembered the World Eater. Turning, he saw the skull-faced maniac advancing upon Brother Othniel and the Interrogator-Chaplain.

‘Chaplain,’ Krom warned.

The Dark Angel turned and Othniel put himself between the Chaos Space Marine and his chaplain.

‘Traitor,’ the Wolf Lord called, his voice burred like an unfinished metal edge. ‘After, yes? Supposing any of us survive this – whatever it is.’

‘Whatever it is, this barbarian will survive it,’ the Interrogator-Chaplain warned. ‘Best we kill him now, while we have the numbers.’

‘Won’t we need him if we start losing those numbers?’ Krom asked.

The Interrogator-Chaplain and the World Eater stared at each other with burning eyes.

‘The agony of choice,’ the Interrogator-Chaplain said.

An alien roar of nerve-shredding intensity and bombast took the Space Marines’ attentions off the World Eater. Krom felt the sand quake beneath his boots. Something big was crossing the arena. As the prisoners emerged they saw the monster they were expected to fight.

It was a xenos horror, the height and bulk of a three-storey bunker. Despite its size, it moved with predacious assurance on its colossal hooves. A chitinous abomination, the beast was all armoured shell, fang-filled maw and bio-weaponry: a powerful tail, terminating in a hammer-head thagomizer; shoulder-sprouting battering rams; a monstrous crusher-claw and a huge, wrecking-ball symbiont that draped from its other appendage on a fibrous tendril-cord of twisted tendon and sinew.

‘Sergeant?’ Krom said.

Beoric Winterfang hesitated, then understood what the Wolf Lord was asking. ‘It’s a tyranid,’ Beoric said, identifying the beast for the rest of the Drakeslayers rather than Krom. ‘Carnifex sub-type. Some kind of stone-crusher or siege creature.’

‘Weaknesses?’

‘None,’ Beoric answered honestly, ‘as I recall.’

‘Remember Delta-Phrakaasi?’ Krom asked.

‘We had Land Raiders, missile launchers and grenades,’ Grundar Greymane said.

‘What I wouldn’t give for some grenades,’ Haegr Fangthane said.

‘We can’t kill this,’ the Dark Angel Interrogator-Chaplain said.

‘Oh, I don’t know,’ Krom said. ‘You could talk it to death.’

‘We’re not meant to kill it,’ the Dark Angel said. ‘It’s meant to kill us, one by one, for entertainment.’

‘No torture, no suffering?’ Krom asked.

‘Suffering was earlier,’ the Interrogator-Chaplain said. ‘Something to stimulate the appetite. This is the main course – and these deviants can’t get enough of a sudden and bloody death.’

As the Space Marines spread out on the black sand, brawny beastmasters wrangled the monstrosity on huge chains connected to hooks embedded in the creature’s armour plating. The thing was clearly an arena veteran. One of its shoulder battering rams was smashed at the top and had a metal spike hammered into the stump as an extra weapon. The creature had lost an eye and wore a leather hood over the punctured orb like a bird of prey.

Sections of chitinous shell that had been ripped away had been staked back into the creature’s flesh and bound with coils of razorwire.

‘What if we tried to topple it?’ Ingrimm Thunderfell said. ‘I’ve seen these things go down before.’

‘Right,’ Grundar Greymane said, ‘but then what? We can hardly punch it to death.’

‘We could go for the other eye,’ Ulf Horghast offered.

‘It’s a tyranid,’ Winterfang reminded him. ‘It could be trailing innards from its headless body and it would still be lethal.’

‘Interrogator-Chaplain?’ Krom asked.

‘This beast could be a solution, rather than a problem,’ the Dark Angel said.

‘Agreed,’ Krom said. ‘We’ve got to stop playing this game for the xenos and start playing it for ourselves. That thing is a biological siege engine, but it’s cut off from its species. It will be confused and easy to draw. Let’s spread out and direct its talents – perhaps get it to take out one or two of these walls and provide us with an escape route.’

As the beastmasters released their chains, the tyranid monstrosity began stomping towards its prey. The dark eldar audience hissed their excitement – the unstoppable tyranid construct was clearly an arena favourite.

‘Understood?’ Krom asked.

‘Yes, my lord,’ the Drakeslayers returned.

‘For the Allfather,’ Krom said.

‘For Russ,’ his Space Wolves roared, before spreading out across the arena.

Moving towards the arena walls, with the dark eldar guards in all their svelte repugnance watching over him, Krom waited for the carnifex that was thundering across the arena towards him.

‘Interrogator-Chaplain,’ Krom called. ‘I know your Chapter likes its secrets, but you can at least tell me your name before we die.’

‘Balthus,’ the Interrogator-Chaplain told him. As they prepared for the alien horror to reach them, the pair saw the World Eater stride out into the middle of the arena. ‘Would you look at that?’

‘Maniac,’ was all Krom had to offer on the spectacle.

As the carnifex charged across the sands, shaking the walls of the arena, Krom watched the World Eater walk out before it. He was curious what the Blood God’s champion was going to do. Within horrible seconds, the Wolf Lord found out. As the monstrous tyranid screeched its way across the killing ground it stamped down on the World Eater with the splayed hoof of a chitinous leg. With the full weight of the monster hammering down on the Chaos Space Marine, plate was crushed, bones ground to meal and what was left of the World Eater’s hate-curdled flesh splattered into a sand-soaking mess on the arena floor. If ever the coliseum had told a cautionary tale it was now. Krom was glad he hadn’t authorised a more direct attack.

‘Remember,’ he called across to his Drakeslayers as they spread out along the wall. ‘Do not engage. Be a moving target. Direct the beast’s attentions at the wall.’

As the tyranid approached it skidded in the sand. Krom could see that the beast was reluctant to get any closer to the perimeter wall, no doubt having been doused in flame by the projectors one too many times.

‘Run!’ Krom ordered, and run the Wolves did. They needed to disorientate the monster enough for its instincts to overcome its conditioned wariness of the wall. Stomping through the sand with powered steps, the Drakeslayers spread their number and tried to stay ahead of the alien abomination. Its grotesque head, filled to the brim with daggered teeth, reached out from a clinkered nest of chitinous plating. Bringing up its hammerhead tail and angling its shoulder rams parallel with the ground, the thing stretched its neck and opened its mouth. Two colossal tusks erupted from its bottom jaw, waiting to guide prey in.

As the young Kjarli Tyrvald set the pace, drawing the creature on, Hengist Ironaxe ran the gauntlet of an about face. Turning and accelerating back along the wall the way he came, he caught its attention. Scrambling heavily through the sand, the beast reached out with its crusher-claw. Pushing himself off the wall, to the spiteful abuse of spectators and arena guards alike, the Space Wolf ran between the monster’s legs. As the heavy crusher-claw struck the wall where Hengist had been, spidery cracks spread through the wall section. A guard lifted the telescopic shaft of her bident but the incensed organism wasn’t interested in her.

Pivoting on its hooves, the beast roared its strange, tyranid ire before setting off after Grundar Greymane. As Grundar criss-crossed paths with Ingrimm Thunderfell, the horrific beast stomped its way along the wall. As Thunderfell held its attention, the tyranid’s shoulder-column spike scouring a trench through the stone, Brother Hrothgar attempted to take up the chase. Uninterested in new prey, the carnifex charged down on Thunderfell, tearing away wall-mounted spools of razorwire and arena torture racks.

‘Ingrimm,’ Krom roared. ‘Don’t look behind. Just run!’

It didn’t help, however. The tyranid’s neck stretched out and the beast swept the Space Wolf up in its plate-mangling jaws. Krom watched another of his Drakeslayers die, disappearing into the creature’s maw.

Krom heard the cruel laughter of the audience and felt something wet hit the back of his head. Turning, he saw that the dark eldar guard behind him, a thing of extravagant hair, shredded leather and alien nakedness, had spat at him. Wiping the spit from his scalp with his gauntlet he pointed a thunderous finger at the guard. She flashed a needle-toothed smile of derision.

The Wolf Lord felt it before he saw it. The quake of the beast approaching. Hrothgar had tried to lead it away from his doomed brother and the wall, only to have the abominate alien construct run him down. As it reached out with its crusher-claw, other Space Wolves ran in, daring the beast to chase them.

‘Here, you mound of galactic spoilage,’ Krom roared, waving his arms. ‘Here!’

The tyranid snatched Brother Hrothgar up in its crusher-claw and snapped the huge appendage shut. What came out between the mashing force of the claws was beyond description.

A predator spoiled for choice amongst a bounty of kills, the thing simply wouldn’t stop, thrashing and turning like a creature half its size. Space Wolves, drawn in to save their brother, now found themselves within reach of the beast’s monstrous claw, snapping maw and swishing tail. Knocking an escaping Lars Thorgil into the sand with a pounding ram of its shoulder column, the tyranid pinned the Space Wolf to the ground with a hoof. As Thorgil roared, the carnifex leaned in with its horrific jaws and bit the Space Marine in two.

The tyranid’s tail swept around as the creature re-orientated itself. Beoric Winterfang was there. As promised, he hadn’t left his captain’s side. As the hammerhead end of the tail came around, the sergeant ran at Krom. Knocking the Wolf Lord out of the thagomizer’s path, Beoric was struck with the full force of the creature’s tail. Hammered across the sands like a rag doll, he landed some distance away, a tumble terminating in a pile of shattered plate. As Krom got back to his feet, Grundar Greymane and Hengist Ironaxe made it over to the sergeant. After a brief inspection, Grundar nodded an indication that the Space Wolf was alive. Signalling with two armoured thumbs to the sky and then two pointing fingers, Krom gave them the order to get the sergeant away from the tyranid and the death that surrounded it.

‘Fenrisian,’ Interrogator-Chaplain Balthus called. ‘The wall.’

Krom nodded. The coliseum boomed with the malicious jubilation of alien spectators. The carnifex screeched its disorientated desire to end them all. Like all tyranid spawn, it had been constructed to kill until nothing about it was left living. Krom had no doubt that the monstrosity would act upon such instincts, given the chance.

Picking up Hrothgar’s helm, a gore-filled receptacle that had rolled across the sand, Krom emptied the contents onto the arena floor before throwing the helmet at the beast. Bouncing off its chitinous skull and leather hood, the helmet got the tyranid’s attention. Everything so far had run away from the stomping, snapping nightmare. It looked at Krom with the predatory blankness of its remaining eye. Kicking at the black sand, Krom sent a cloud of dust spiralling up about him. It was enough. The huge creature leant into an acceleration. As its maw crunched on what was left of Lars Thorgil, it pounded the arena floor with death-hungry steps.

As Krom ran towards the wall, his plate grinding and pack sparking with the effort, he saw the guard who had spat at him looking down the length of her spear at him. The Wolf Lord felt the arena shake with the steps of the monster behind him. He counted the closing quakes beneath his own footfalls. Then there it was: the delay he had been waiting for.

Skidding down through the blood and dust, Krom put his rattling plate down on the ground. Sand turned to glass where the flame projectors had roasted the arena perimeter, taking Krom onwards. As he crunched to a stop, the soles of his boots hit the wall. There was a whoosh. The monstrosity had stopped to swing the wrecking-ball symbiont attached to its appendage. The weapon swung on a thick tendril of tendons, constricting to destructive tautness. Instead of obliterating the Wolf Lord, the wrecking-ball struck the wall, dashing into the stone.

Rock dust billowed out across the sand. Chunks of stone fell about Krom, further denting his plate. Hooking his thumbs under a large piece of rock, the Wolf Lord heaved, his powered arms faltering.

Through the maelstrom, Krom heard coughing. A slender silhouette bled into focus. It was the dark eldar guard. Having fallen from the wall, she was now back on her feet and aiming the twin blades of her impaler at Krom.

‘Fenrisian,’ Krom heard Balthus call a warning through the murk.

Krom released his grip on the boulder.

The dark eldar coughed again before baring her sharpened teeth. She was going to enjoy slipping her spear into the Space Marine’s throat. The tyranid’s tail cut through the rock dust like an aftershock, the work of the wrecking-ball unfinished. It broke the guard, the hammer-head thagomizer smashing her aside and into the wall. Pushing at the boulder, Krom managed to lift it enough to scrape his armoured legs free.

Scrambling up the mound of rubble, the Wolf Lord climbed through the improvised exit he had created. Beyond, he could hear the seething threats of nearby spectators and the clack of boots as guards converged on the breach.

Blinking the dust from his eyes, Krom sniffed the air. He smelled fuel. Some foul chemical accelerant. The Wolf Lord allowed himself to skid back down the scree. He once more heard the crunch of something approaching across the sand. Turning, he picked up a sizeable chunk of stone and held it over his head. The carnifex punched through the rubble, its chitinous battering rams surging up at Krom. It scrambled up at the Space Wolf, crusher-claw and death trap maw snapping. Hurling the boulder down on the tyranid beast, Krom shattered the stone on the thing’s armoured head.

Krom leapt from the rubble as the monster blinked some semblance of sense and murderous instinct back into its skull. Landing, the Space Wolf felt the servos and hydraulics in his suit protesting. As he pushed himself to his feet and ran from the wall back into the arena, the carnifex did the opposite. Scrambling on up the scree slope and over the demolished wall, the tyranid sensed prey beyond the settling dust. Victim hordes. A captive audience. As Krom ran from the monster, he found Interrogator-Chaplain Balthus and his Drakeslayers closing on the breach.

‘Back!’ he roared. ‘Get back!’

The explosion blasted Krom from his feet and sent him skidding on his chestplate across the arena floor. The Space Marines were knocked back, losing their footing on the sand. Rolling onto his side, Krom watched a fireball reach up towards the sky. As the carnifex had tried to breach the perimeter wall, something implanted in its flesh by the beastmasters had set off the flame projectors. A fail-safe device to prevent the monster escaping. The wrecking-ball had ruptured the tanks of exotic fuel in the decimated section of wall so when the tyranid tried to cross the projectors set off the leaking accelerant.

Getting to his feet, Krom stumbled away from the raging wall section with his Drakeslayers. After a few moments the carnifex re-emerged, a furious inferno of chitinous flesh. It stomped out of the flames, shrieking from within the blaze. In a blind rage of raw suffering, the abomination ran across the arena.

The Wolf Lord expected that such a spectacle – a wall breach, an explosion and a gladiatorial monster aflame – might have grabbed the attention of the audience. He was wrong. Looking across the ghoulish faces of the spectators, he saw that they were looking up. Peering up at the sky also, Krom could see why.

The shadow he had seen earlier – the blot on the miserable heavens upon which he had projected fantasies of Thunderhawks, rescue and city-wide slaughter – was a shadow no more. The Wolf Lord’s instincts had been right. The flying craft had been on a trajectory for the coliseum. They weren’t bringing salvation from beyond the webway, however, but enemies from within.

Krom watched as an attack flotilla of dark eldar grav-craft, skiffs and barges emerged from their optical shielding and circled above the coliseum like a stirred-up swarm of insects. All aethyrsails, razorvanes and black bulwark plating, the raiding vessels crawled with Commorrite warriors. Like the coliseum guards and gladiatrix, they were all female savages, dripping with blades and black-hearted cruelty. The differences were subtle but they were there. Something in the way the killers wore their leathers, their hair and malicious intent. Unlike the coliseum cult, whose banner bore a serrated shadow, the pendants trailing from the raiders displayed a black talon, the symbol of a rival cult.

While the longer and more extravagant craft carried out their impossible manoeuvres with a sickly hiss, smaller gunships and transports screamed by, overladen with lithe murderers. Trophy racks braced terrified prisoners across the prows of the vessels and scaling nets allowed mobs of dark eldar to climb down into the coliseum crowds, while others dropped like poison from the skies – leaping from swooping craft with dire grace to land in the arena.

Krom watched the deviant warriors of the Serrated Shadow and Black Talon clash. They shredded one another with tapered pistols, impaled foes on bidents, slashed with wicked knives and cut through crowds with razored flails. The audience was not spared the horror and within moments the entire coliseum was a free-for-all, with spectators drawing blades and pistols of their own.

‘I think the show is over,’ Krom said of the madness.

‘Or just beginning,’ Balthus added.

The Interrogator-Chaplain narrowed his eyes. The prisoner cages were firing. With cage doors rising and advancing spikes forcing prisoners from their captivity, the arena was suddenly awash with gladiatorial prospects, all released at the same time, looking warily at each other and the riotous slaughter taking place on the terraces above. The sand suddenly rippled up about the Space Marines.

‘Look out!’ Krom called.

A length of razor wire running across the arena, carefully hidden, had been cranked to flesh-slicing tautness. One moment Brother Ragnek was there, the white of his battle-gritted teeth showing through his beard. The next, the Space Wolf crashed to the arena floor in two pieces.

Krom tasted blood in the back of his throat mixed with the bitterness of adrenaline. He waited for another wire to sever him but it didn’t happen. All across the sands, a razor sharp web of death sang to a metallic strain, making the arena more dangerous than ever. The newly liberated prisoners backed towards the arena wall but the perimeter only offered the illusion of safety. Movement sensors situated below the surface of the sand set off shooting spikes, streams of mutagenic gas and gouts of projected flame. As more razor wires criss-crossing the sand twanged to tautness, heads were whipped off, limbs lost and bodies cut in half by a network of sprung cables. Krom saw blundering victims torched, speared and transformed into formless abominations of bubbling flesh by the wall defences.

Krom had seen such traps deployed before. He had heard the audience roar its bloodthirsty delight at their murderous activation. He had not seen all of the traps deployed at once, however. It did not play to suspense or the theatrical nature of the coliseum.

‘A malfunction?’ Balthus asked. The place had turned into a full-scale murderous riot, with dark eldar guards and raiders cutting each other down with barrel and blade.

‘Or prisoner stock being purged,’ Krom said grimly. ‘Perhaps these wretched xenos want to deny us to their back-stabbing cousins. Are we going to wait to find out?’

Balthus and the Wolf Lord looked back at the raging inferno that was the wall breach.

‘The flames?’ the Interrogator-Chaplain said, shrugging. ‘You said that we could walk through them.’

‘I didn’t actually think that we would be doing it,’ Krom growled. He led the prisoners through the carnage of the arena and the corpses, both human and alien, that littered the blood-soaked ground. Away from the clean-sliced corpse of Ragnek Halfhand and visions of gladiatorial gore. Towards the raging swirl of heat and flame through which their escape route lay.

An armoured skiff swept in between the Space Wolves and the breached wall. Several of the grav-craft above, circling like vultures, had seen the liberated prisoners flood the arena death trap. Driven by a desire to secure such stock or simply to enjoy the arena’s gladiatorial bounty, female raiders dropped from their skyborne chariots in their leathers, whipping blades and flails about them.

The warrior women who had athletically landed before the Space Marines smiled with malicious beauty. Their leader, a vision of intoxicating repugnance, waggled a finger back and forth in mock remonstration, even her long nails filed to serrated shivs.

The warrior women worked their murderous way across the sands. A whirlwind of envenomed blades and black leather armour that barely covered the lithe obscenity of their xenos forms, they athletically negotiated the death trap of the coliseum. They leaped and rolled beneath triggered razor wire. They danced through the fired spikes with a cruel grace while executing freed prisoners with unparalleled skill and merciless bladework. Each artistic death resulted in a fountain of orchestrated gore as the dread beauties closed on the Space Marines.

‘Brothers,’ Krom seethed. ‘Break them.’ He and his Space Marines would be playthings for the xenos no more.

The new dark eldar stepped elegantly through the cadavers and body parts left behind. Krom knew that they were playing with the unarmed Space Marines. He swore by the Allfather, through sharpened teeth, that he would be ready – ready to disappoint her, her kindred and the howling hordes who had come to watch him and his men die. The Space Wolves would survive the alien madness of this nightmare realm and make it their solemn pledge to end all pirates, raiders and deviant dark eldar that crossed their path.

With a creak of their gauntlets, the closest of his kindred rushed the leading warrior woman. They intended to bury the murderess and her blade maidens in plate and Fenrisian muscle. The dark eldar of the Black Talon were too fast, however, and anticipated their clumsy attack. Invited it. Revelled in it. Moments later, heads had left shoulders, hearts had been skewered and blades bleeding venom had turned proud Space Wolves into convulsing corpses still foaming at the mouth.

As blades sang through plate and gauntlets smashed, more warrior women dropped to the ground. Young Kjarli Tyrvald was turned into a streaming blur of blood and brains by the half-naked dark eldar heralds who flanked their mistress with swirling razorflails. While the lead murderess leapt cables and elegantly butchered fleeing prisoners with a double-bladed glaive, her heralds blessed her path with spilled blood. Advancing with razorflails swinging about them in slaughterous arcs, the warrior women were like a pair of bloody hurricanes. Appalling in their beauty and calm like the eye of the storm, they controlled the speed and reach of their weaponry, swinging the blades of the flail expertly about their bodies.

Krom stumbled back before the deadly arc of one weapon, watching for the change of its air-shredding passage. The dark eldar whipped the razorflail about her, tearing it through the sand at Krom’s feet before leaning into an arc that sent the weapon searing above the Space Wolf’s ducked head. He pulled back – just in time for the end of the other flail to hiss off the surface of his chestplate. It was a dance of death and Krom had been invited to be part of the entertainment. He knew there was little he could do to combat such a deadly weapon. It couldn’t be deflected; it could only be dodged for so long. He needed to turn the razorflail against its wielder.

The Wolf Lord readied himself. Once again he would have to draw the enemy in.

He allowed the weapon its terrible arc and embraced its flesh-tearing impact. The weapon sliced into his side, cutting through his plate and ripping into muscle and carapace. Krom roared as the flail bit into him. Snatching it like a rope with both gauntlets, the Space Wolf hauled on the length of the weapon with all his feral might. The herald lurched forward, off-balance. Refusing to let go of her gore-dribbling weapon, the dark eldar was torn towards Krom and he was ready for her. Opening his right gauntlet like an outstretched claw, he brought it down on the warrior’s head. Tearing his armoured fingers through the bone of her slender skull, Krom brained the xenos, smashing her down into the sand.

The Wolf Lord stood over the corpse of the dark eldar and pulled the length of the razored flail from his side. Blood ran down his grey plate from the clean slice. A shriek brought Krom back to the moment. The second herald, who had been dicing fleeing prisoners with her own razorflail, had seen her sister felled. Running at Krom with her flail tossed about her like a lasso, she issued a mind-splitting war cry.

Stomping through the black sand, Krom accelerated to meet her. As the herald’s razorflail came around in a devastating arc, he made a clumsy swing of the same weapon in his hands. Entwining and tangling, both flails were quickly abandoned. Krom had not intended anything else but was surprised at how ready the dark eldar was to release her main weapon. By the time the knotted flails thudded to the ground, the warrior had already drawn a pair of thin, willowy blades. She ran down on the Space Wolf, her weapons like extensions of her lithe body.

Krom intended to smash straight through the warrior with his engineered strength and the bulk of his armour. The dark eldar leapt, however, jabbing at the Space Wolf like a scorpion. He felt the blade squeal between his plates and stab through slabs of muscle. Hitting the ground, the herald rolled before slashing the monomolecular edge of her blades across Krom’s pack and pauldron.

The Space Wolf reached out for her with grasping fingers but the dark eldar moved with alien reflexes and a dreadful grace. She was incredibly fast, her painted face a vision of hateful concentration. She weaved and ducked. She leapt and cartwheeled. With each feint and manoeuvre the tip of her blades came in, slipping through Krom’s defences to skewer his flesh.

The Wolf Lord’s grey plate became a bloody, punctured mess. Krom waited, gritting his sharp teeth through the pain. As one of the dark eldar’s blades squealed between two pieces of plate, he tensed, closing the seal about the sword like a clamp. Clinging to the blade for just a moment too long, the herald’s hand was still clutching the hilt when Krom grabbed it.

Crushing the delicate bones against the hilt of the weapon with his gauntlet, Krom saw the savage concentration on the face of the xenos shatter. As she brought her second blade up to slash his face, Krom tore her arm around. He felt the crunch of the herald’s shoulder. This time the dark eldar let out an involuntary screech. With her back to him, the dark eldar tried an awkward stab at the Wolf Lord’s throat. Leaning back away from the gore-stained point, he tugged the warrior back towards him with her broken arm. Lifting his leg he kicked out at the herald. Servos fired and fibre bundles contracted, sending a powered kick and the sole of an armoured boot into the warrior woman’s back.

Krom heard the back break. Her screams were joined by those of the xenos audience. Her blade fell from her hand and her slender body fell after. Paralysed, the dark eldar looked up at the Space Wolf from the floor. She was an untidy heap of broken bones and burning hatred but Krom would not leave her unfinished. Towering over her he pulled her blade from where it was still trapped in his plate. The Wolf Lord flung it down at his opponent, sending it thudding into her chest. Krom watched the blade and the dark eldar’s armoured bosom rise and fall one last time before all was still.

The lead dark eldar gladiatrix moved with barefoot grace through the carnage of the arena. Corpses, both human and alien, littered the blood-soaked ground. She turned the double-bladed glaive about in her hands like a dancing girl with a baton as she stepped over the butchered corpse of Haegr Fangthane.

Like a predator scenting prey, she started gaining speed. Holding the shaft of her glaive streamlined along the length of her body, she moved lightly through the carnage. As she ran on she casually twirled the weapon, cleaving a deranged prisoner that came at her in two from the jaw to the hip. She skull-stabbed a fleeing Tarellian and smashed to pieces some captured cybernetic abomination.

Krom tore the short, cruel blades from the bodies of her svelte handmaidens. They were light and alien to his grip. His furious steps took him towards the murderess. With a roar he struck out for her, the short blades clutched like daggers in his gauntlets. The stabbing lunge had every right to rip the dark eldar gladiatrix apart and spill her alien innards on the sand, to turn the perfection of her abominate form into a ruined carcass. It was not to be, however.

The gladiatrix was all silky, unnatural speed and Krom’s opponent simply wasn’t there as his vicious attack was launched. Somersaulting the Space Wolf, the dark eldar landed behind him. As the Wolf Lord turned, she brought one of the blade-heads of the glaive around and smashed a blade from his hand. Spinning, the other blade came around to slice down through the ceramite of Krom’s ruined pauldron. He felt the weapon bite into the flesh of his shoulder and the burn of some caustic coating bleed from the metal.

Krom would not be put off. Instead of withdrawing, the Space Wolf moved in closer. With his remaining blade clutched against his chest, ready to thrust forth and gut the gladiatrix, he reached out with his free hand. A leather strap, a chain or a lank limb, anything to get an anchor on the alien warrioress. Flipping back, she escaped the clawing grapnel of his gauntlet, the shaft of the glaive turning and twirling. Sparks flew from the back of the armoured hand as his gauntlet was smacked away. The flat of the second blade batted Krom’s remaining weapon free from his grip.

Before he could react – his movements a slow-motion nightmare – the gladiatrix had jabbed with her glaive, the blade flashing forth in place of her retreat. Gouging a hole in the Space Wolf’s grey plate at his thigh, the shaft came at him again and again. Each thrust was a different angle, the glaive darting forth through Krom’s grasping defences and retracting before he could lay his fingertips on the weapon. A flashing stab through the cabling of the Wolf Lord’s midriff. One to the muscle of the right arm. A deeper gouge to the chest. The spinning blades of the glaive glinting in the dull, darklight of the captured suns, ready to take Krom’s head. The Wolf Lord imagined the fountain of gore that would follow. The murderous ecstasy of the dark eldar about them.

Krom looked up into his killer’s eyes. They sparkled with hatred and glee. Her taut musculature rippled beneath the pallor of her skin.

As the glaive came around, Krom ducked his head. As he did so, one of his red plaits bounced upwards, only to be sliced free by the blistering passage of the glaive blade above him. He bellowed as he pushed himself up from the sand. It was an ugly lunge. His hands came up, his fingers grasping for the dark eldar’s slender neck.

Momentary disappointment crossed the gladiatrix’s face. She pulled the glaive back and spun it overhead, intending to cleave the blade straight down through the Space Wolf. The shaft of the weapon hit Krom’s outstretched gauntlets. Locking his fingers about its length like a vice, the Wolf Lord held her there. The gladiatrix’s body contorted about the glaive, every muscle of her sickly slender form contracted to bring the weapon down. Krom’s arms burned from the wicked stab wounds the dark eldar had visited upon him. His lips retracted about his sharp teeth and a low growl issued forth from his chest. He would deny the gladiatrix her death fetish.

Krom heard footsteps approaching across the sand. His gaze was locked with his enemy. He dared not look away. A moment’s distraction could end him. He entertained the possibility of more warrior women, padding forth in bare feet to stab and gut him as their murderess held him in position. The sand-crunching steps were heavier than the coliseum killers, however. An angel of death approached.

Krom watched as the gladiatrix’s headdress was knocked from her head. Her face was suddenly covered by filthy, dun white material, pulled so tight that the Space Wolf could see the sharpness of her alien features through it. It was the Interrogator-Chaplain – come to end the xenos. A punishment suitable for the crime of the alien’s mere existence.

With the hem pulled across her throat, Krom saw the dark eldar’s mouth open in a silent scream, her sharp teeth piercing the material. As the chaplain hauled back on the material cutting across the gladiatrix’s throat and covering the abominate beauty of her face, Krom realised that he was strangling the alien with his own robes. The dark eldar released her glaive, which remained in the Wolf Lord’s vice-like grip, and tore feverishly at the material with her stiletto fingernails. There was little she could do, however. The garrotting robes were held by one of the Emperor’s Angels. The power of his engineered muscle and determination to do his xenos-eradicating duty were more than a match for the fell skill of an alien murderess.

The gladiatrix began to thrash. For her it was no longer about air. The chaplain was breaking her neck. She smashed the sharpness of her elbow uselessly into her enemy’s plate. She clawed at him and his hood-buried helmet. As he lifted her up off her bare feet, ready to end the arena’s deadly champion, Krom saw her spasmodic hands reach for a thin blade in her belt. Snatching it up, the warrioress made ready to stab the chaplain. Krom saw the discoloured metal and the concentrated venom that smoked from the blade. It was not like the glaive. The glaive was a show weapon. Something to please the audience with its twirling glint. Something to slow down opponents in preparation for a theatrical kill. The knife, however, looked like it could kill at the slightest nick or slice.

With his hearts thudding in his chest and mind swimming with blood loss and doom, the Wolf Lord willed himself to his feet. He thrust the double-bladed glaive back at the gladiatrix, slamming the blade into her chest. The chaplain released his quarry and stumbled back as the tip of the blade erupted from the dark eldar’s back. As he backed his filthy robes went with him, revealing the cold shock on the face of the warrioress. As her knife tumbled from her fingertips, landing blade first in the sand, a trickle of blood made its way down her face from the corner of her thin lips.

The Wolf lord roared and lifted the gladiatrix above his head, holding her there as she died, the impaled warrior woman working her horrible way down the blade and shaft of the weapon. But there was no audience to applaud his efforts or shriek its displeasure. The arena was a nest of pistol-blasting, blade-stabbing havoc. Black Talon raiders. Dark eldar guards of the Serrated Shadow. The deviant wretches that made up the coliseum audience and Commorrite citizenry. All were at each other’s throats, while two dark queens fought through the vicious slaughter.

Krom saw the coliseum queen in the spikes and extravagant leathers wielding an impossible length of barbed blades about her nightmare form. Her opposite was a lean killer, whose flesh was powdered theatrically to whiteness. She wore black boots and gloves that reached up her legs and arms. The gloves whipped with finger blades like razored wings, threatening to dice anything that got too close. Krom dropped his trophy, sickened by the alien butchery.

Above the warrior queens, shrieking skiffs visited blistering destruction upon the coliseum with exotic grav-craft mounted cannons. As bombs dropped from the gunships and blade-vaned barges, Krom hauled Interrogator-Chaplain Balthus forward.

‘Incoming!’ the Wolf Lord barked to what was left of his Drakeslayers, but as the bomb hit the arena floor it did not explode as he expected. Instead, a sizzling storm of dark energy tore up the sand, growing to form a dome of immaterial transference. As reinforcements in leathers, clutching tapering pistols, blistered forth from the globed gateway, Krom could see that it was a portable portal used to rush further troops into the coliseum.

Krom looked to Balthus and Grundar Greymane, who had Sergeant Beoric over one pauldron.

‘Do you hear that?’ Krom said. ‘I hear knocking.’

Grundar looked unsure.

The Interrogator-Chaplain wasn’t about to abandon such an opportunity.

‘It’s death to stay here,’ Balthus said to the Space Wolves.

‘It could lead anywhere,’ Grundar said.

‘Anywhere but here,’ the Interrogator-Chaplain shot back.

‘I don’t think we have a choice,’ the Wolf Lord said, moving towards the nearest portal. ‘Space Wolves: to me!’

As a walk became a run and both Space Wolves and Dark Angels converged on the sizzling dome of unnatural energy, dark eldar came at them. Splinter shot blasted from pistols ripped at their plate and warrior reinforcements put themselves and their blades between the prisoners and their escape route. The Space Marines would not be put off their path, however. They barged their way through the surprised xenos, and before the dark eldar could stop him, Krom had plunged into the interdimensional static of the portal. It washed over him like rising waters, filling the Wolf Lord with a feeling of pain and dreamy disconnection. For a moment his heartbeats died away and his stomach plunged in all directions at once. What felt like an eternity passed in several agonising seconds, as Krom emerged from the other side of the searing dome.

His plate immediately registered the cold. It bit at his flesh through the mangled suit. Balthus, Brother Othniel and Grundar followed. Everything was quiet but for the evil hiss of the portal. They found themselves in a dark chamber, the architecture of which was twisted and rachidian. As the other Drakeslayers made it through the portal, Grundar laid the unconscious Sergeant Beoric down on the floor and made a brief inspection of his injuries. He was out cold, but apart from cracked plate and similar damage to his ribs and black carapace, Beoric looked like he was going to make it.

The Space Marines spread out to search the chamber.

‘Rorven,’ Krom said to the Space Wolf. ‘Watch the portal – wait, where’s Hengist?’

Looking about the drawn faces in the chamber it was clear that Hengist Ironaxe was not with them.

‘He was last to enter,’ Rorven said. ‘He was behind me and then–’

Krom made to enter the alien portal once more. He would not leave the Grey Hunter behind, not while he still lived.

‘My lord, wait,’ Grundar Greymane said, reaching out for him. At that moment a silhouette blazed through the interdimensional static. The Space Wolves tensed. Hengist Ironaxe appeared, his forehead betraying several deep gashes he had not had moments before. He clutched in his gauntlets something that Krom had never thought to see again. Wyrmclaw. The Wolf Lord’s rune-carved frost axe.

Krom cracked the caked blood about his face with a smile.

‘We thought we had lost you, brother,’ he said.

‘I thought you had lost this,’ Hengist told the Wolf Lord, ‘until I saw some xenos looter leaving the cell block with it.’

Taking the frost axe and admiring the blade, he took the Grey Hunter by the fist and held him there in appreciation. He looked behind Hengist at the unnatural energies of the portal.

‘Rorven, Hengist,’ Krom said. ‘Find a way to destroy that damned thing.’

As the Space Wolves searched, they found nothing but bodies. Dark eldar, with their throats slit and hearts cut out. A swift and brutal massacre had taken place – presumably by the Black Talon reinforcements that had entered the arena from the portal. Other than the dead, the building into which the Space Wolves had walked was deserted.

‘Fenrisian,’ Interrogator-Chaplain Balthus called. Following the voice, Krom and Grundar found the two Dark Angels out on a spiked watch-balcony. Looking around, Krom saw that they were standing on a crooked tower that stabbed up into the dust-choked void. The darkness of the sky was all nebulous reds and blue, reflected in the sulphuric snow that clung to the tower and caked the rocky twilight below.

‘We’re out of the webway?’ Krom said. It sounded like a question but was more of a statement. Balthus didn’t bother to answer.

‘This must be a dark eldar outpost,’ he told Krom. He pointed out the Serrated Shadow banners that fluttered in the gelid breeze. ‘A supply tower or base of piratical operations.’

The Wolf Lord nodded: ‘We found bodies.’

‘Some private war of xenos cults or clans,’ Balthus said.

‘Vicious dogs, eh,’ Krom said. It was one thing to attack a rival cult and their coliseum, but to launch reinforcements from the very bases from which the coliseum expected their own was especially black-hearted. For all the Space Marines knew, however, it could have been a daily occurrence in the Dark City.

‘See that?’ Balthus asked, pointing up towards a bright collection of five stars, like a rash blotting through the nebulous dust of the system.

‘They look close,’ Krom said.

‘They are,’ Brother Othniel said, the light of the stars reflecting off his blue plate. ‘It’s a quintuplet system – two binaries and a lone companion. Rare – and therefore easy to identify.’

‘So,’ Krom said. ‘Where are we?’

‘At a guess, one of the rocky, outlying moons or dwarf planets of the Skarapaz System,’ Brother Othniel told him.

‘I’ve never heard of it,’ Krom admitted.

‘Which is probably why the xenos pirates are using it for a system outpost,’ Balthus said.

‘It’s not far from Harrow Worlds,’ Othniel said.

‘Damn, that’s close,’ Krom said. ‘My Wolves hold station over Dactyla.’

‘The Angels of the First are not too distant, either,’ Balthus said. ‘Now we are free of the webway, Brother Othniel will use his talents to contact the Librarians and astropaths of our respective fleets.’

Krom grunted and extended a grey gauntlet.

‘My thanks,’ he told the Interrogator-Chaplain. ‘For this. For the arena.’

‘Without cooperation, I am certain that we would all be dead,’ Balthus said plainly. ‘Emperor knows we have both lost brothers. But I take your hand anyway.’ The Interrogator-Chaplain took Krom’s gauntlet and the Space Marines shook on their shared deliverance.

‘Hopefully,’ Krom said, looking up at the dust-streaked heavens, ‘we would have made our primarchs proud.’

Balthus nodded slowly.

‘When our brothers arrive,’ the Dark Angel said, ‘I fear our truce will come to an end.’

‘Yes,’ Krom agreed.

‘For what our legions could never see,’ the Interrogator-Chaplain said, ‘was that the Lion and the Wolf were so similar in their differences. It is a blindness and burden that their sons bear to this day.’

‘Aye,’ Krom said, peering up into the blackness of the void. ‘A darkness indeed.’

‘Yes,’ Balthus said. ‘The darkness of Angels.’

PART SIX

THE WOLF WITHIN

ROB SANDERS

An ornament hanging silently in the void, the Space Marines strike cruiser took station above the tiny world of Skarapaz XVIII.

‘It’s the High Priest,’ Sergeant Beoric Winterfang announced, identifying the vessel from its rugged outline. Still recovering from his injuries, the sergeant held his shattered ribs as he spoke. It was painful, but he did not let on. ‘Ulrik is here. Grandfather Lupus has come for us.’

Krom Dragongaze joined the sergeant out on the frozen rock of the unassuming world, sulphuric snow crunching beneath his boots. The plummeting temperatures would have killed any normal man. To the dark eldar who had made an outpost on the outlying world, it was no doubt a painful fetish. To Fenrisians, it was nothing. The mild chill of a world orbiting far from its five suns.

The pair watched as a Stormwolf gunship dropped from Ulrik’s cruiser, the Canis Pax, and made its way across the surface of the rocky planet.

As the Stormwolf came in to land, Krom read the name Rolling Thunder emblazoned on the gunship’s scarred side. It was a venerable craft and the veteran of many furious engagements. Putting down on the outpost’s primitive launch pad, the gunship whipped up snow and grit about it. Walking up behind the Wolf Lord and his sergeant were Grundar Greymane and the surviving Space Wolves. Behind them were Interrogator-Chaplain Balthus of the Dark Angels and Brother Othniel, the Librarian who had sent word of their location to both their Dark Angels brethren and the Wolves stationed over Dactyla. It was the Sons of Russ, however, who had received the message and come for their kindred.

Grundar Greymane started the chant, which was picked up by Sergeant Beoric and the Space Wolves about him. Before long it became a roared mantra.

‘Lupus, Lupus, Lupus…’

The transport compartment ramp lowered as the Rolling Thunder landed and cut its engines. A Space Marine emerged. It was not the High Priest, but the Wolf Guard Beregelt. He smiled at seeing his master.

‘My lord,’ the Space Wolf said. ‘Ulrik the Slayer offers you greeting.’

‘We are obliged to you and the venerable Slayer,’ Krom said, as Ulrik’s men filed out to assume a cordon about the gunship. Ulrik himself, a vision of doom in his wolf skull helm and furs, stepped off the ramp last, out onto the rock and snow.

‘Lord Dragongaze,’ Ulrik greeted Krom. ‘Scion of the Sun Wolf – it is a pity we should meet in such a benighted place.’

‘You are well met, wherever duty finds us,’ Krom told him honestly.

Ulrik’s optics settled on the Dark Angels behind.

Krom glanced back and forth between the two. ‘This is…’ he hesitated.

‘Balthus,’ the Dark Angel said. He gave the Slayer a slow nod, which the Wolf High Priest returned with suspicion.

‘And Brother Othniel,’ Krom said, ‘who was responsible for determining our location and summoning aid.’

‘Yes,’ Ulrik said, his breath misting about him. He let the word hang there in the freezing air. ‘You can’t imagine how surprised we were to receive your message from an Angel of the First.’

‘The Interrogator-Chaplain and Brother Othniel were instrumental in our escape from the xenos.’

‘Yes,’ Ulrik said again. ‘You look like hell.’

Finally the Slayer stood aside, extending an arm towards his gunship. Sergeant Beoric and the surviving Drakeslayers filed between them and into the troop compartment. The Space Wolves were eager to get weaponry back into their hands and join their brothers under the High Priest’s command.

‘Interrogator-Chaplain,’ Ulrik acknowledged, using the appropriate term of address, as the four of them mounted the ramp. The door closed on the dark eldar outpost and the tiny, frozen world of Skarapaz XVIII. The engines fired and the Rolling Thunder took off.

‘Incoming transmission,’ Beregelt told Ulrik. ‘It’s the shipmistress, my lord.’

‘Shipmistress Asgir,’ the Slayer said, changing vox channels. ‘This is Ulrik. Our mission has been a success. We have extracted Lord Krom and his Drakeslayers. Prepare the ship. I want you to make way as soon as the gunship is aboard.’

‘The Canis Pax stands ready to receive you, Master Ulrik,’ the shipmistress voxed back.

As Balthus and Brother Othniel came up behind, Beregelt and another Wolf Guard took them by the plate of their forearms and slapped a pair of manacles on the two Dark Angels. The Interrogator-Chaplain did not resist, instead simply giving Ulrik the blank gaze of his skull-helm optics.

‘Is that really necessary, High Priest?’ Krom felt compelled to say. He had expected some friction, perhaps harsh words from the High Priest, who had lived long enough for the rift between their two Chapters to become a prejudice, but Krom had not anticipated such measures.

‘The Angels fought side by side with us. They have already known with us the cold touch of bar and chain.’

‘And they will know it again,’ Ulrik the Slayer said, ‘if they are to board the Canis Pax with us.’

The Space Marines in the troop compartment reached out for bars and supports as the Stormwolf banked. Before Krom could protest, the compartment voxhailer came to life above his head.

‘High Priest,’ a voice crackled across the voxhailer. It was the Space Wolf pilot, Rogan Bearsbane. ‘I have targets.’

‘Targets?’ Ulrik said.

‘Out here?’ Krom echoed.

‘The strike cruiser augurs told us nothing of this,’ the Slayer said.

‘They do now, my lord,’ the pilot said. ‘Canis Pax reports the approach vector between us and the cruiser crowded with enemy vessels. They were cloaked by the dust and some kind of alien field technology.’

‘Do you have numbers?’ Krom asked.

‘Hundreds of fighters and assault craft,’ Rogan Bearsbane confirmed, as the Stormwolf swerved this way and that on the approach.

‘And our foe?’ Ulrik asked.

‘Xenos pirates, High Priest.’

‘Dark eldar,’ Interrogator-Chaplain Balthus said.

‘Too many for a raiding party,’ Krom said. He looked at Ulrik. ‘There must be larger vessels in the area – veiled, like the attack craft.’

The Slayer reached up and clunked a thick switch on the voxhailer.

‘Canis Pax, are you monitoring this?’ the High Priest asked.

‘Aye, my lord,’ Shipmistress Asgir returned. ‘We are awaiting your instructions.’

Krom gave the Slayer a grim look. His Drakeslayers had been dogged by misfortune. Now they had brought the same misfortune down on the High Priest and his venerable strike cruiser.

‘Have the navigation officer plot his solutions and ready the warp engines for immersion,’ Ulrik ordered.

‘But, High Priest,’ Asgir protested. ‘We can’t leave you behind.’

‘You won’t have to,’ the Slayer insisted. ‘Have the flight deck prepare for our arrival.’

‘The enemy crowds the approach, my lord,’ the pilot insisted, as Ulrik threw the vox switch back. ‘They block our progress with their darkness.’

‘We are the claw that tears its way through such darkness,’ Ulrik the Slayer told him. ‘We make way for the Emperor’s light. Proceed.’

‘Yes, my lord.’

Krom held on as the Rolling Thunder accelerated away. He heard the boom of harpoons and grapnels smashing against the gunship’s armoured hull as the dark eldar craft attempted to gain purchase. He looked up as thick spiked chains rattled cacophonously across the top of the Stormwolf.

Krom felt the gunship swerve suddenly to avoid a collision, pull up and then plunge into a further acceleration. Balthus stumbled back a little, his manacled gauntlets struggling to find anchorage on the compartment wall. Ulrik watched the Dark Angel, his optics burning bright, while the Space Wolves assigned to watch over him stuck close like a shadow. Krom felt the gunship’s skyhammer missile launcher fire again and again, before hearing the whoosh of detonations and a prang of debris wash across the hull. The explosions were followed by the searing blast of lascannons, underscored by the rhythmic chatter of heavy bolters. Krom marvelled at the number of targets the gunship crew were contending with. Rogan Bearsbane had not been exaggerating. The Rolling Thunder was punching its way through a veritable swarm of twisted dark eldar ships. Krom heard the rattle of heavy grade splinter fire shattering its way across the gunship.

‘Prepare for impact,’ the Space Wolf pilot called across the vox.

Krom readied himself. Everyone inside the compartment lurched forward as the Rolling Thunder smashed through the blizzard of dark eldar fighters and boarding craft. A shockwave passed down the superstructure of the gunship from the armoured prow to the engine columns. Space Wolves were knocked forward, their mag-locked boots clunking to new anchorage. Even Ulrik staggered, and the Dark Angels were forced to steady themselves as best they could with their manacled hands. Alarms and klaxons fired in the compartment, indicating the collision.

‘Report!’ the Slayer barked into the wall vox.

‘The Rolling Thunder is clear,’ Rogan Bearsbane confirmed. ‘But the enemy intends to pursue.’

‘Prepare for evasive manoeuvres, on the shipmistress’ mark,’ Ulrik said as the Stormwolf accelerated again. The Slayer changed channels. Shipmistress?’

‘Standing by, my lord,’ Asgir replied.

‘Load and prime your weaponry,’ Ulrik said. ‘We have company. I want you to welcome them with the primarch’s own thunder. Do you understand?’

‘Yes, my lord. Understood,’ Asgir said.

Krom moved up amongst his surviving Drakeslayers, checking in with his brothers. The blood and filth on their faces and the sorry state of their plate told him how much they had suffered. They were not beaten, however. The arrival of their brother Wolves had re-energised Krom’s men. As he moved through them they returned his enquires with an obedient eagerness. In the dark eldar arena they had been cornered animals: tormented and caged. Now, back among the ranks of Russ’ own, their eyes glinted with a predacious pack mentality. Their score with the dark eldar would not be settled with bolt and blade, however. The xenos challenge would be answered in fire and thunder.

Krom felt forces tear at him as the Rolling Thunder banked sharply to avoid streams of dark energy from pursuing fighters. The Wolf Lord could only imagine the swarm of dark eldar ships pursuing them. Vehicles of spike, blade and serration, trailing chains and razored anchors. Slave ships laden with miserable specimens forced to fight. Torture craft brimming with dark eldar warriors.

‘Rolling Thunder,’ Shipmistress Asgir said, her voice intruding on the compartment from the open voxhailer. ‘Cannons in range. You are cleared to leave your plane of approach and enact evasive manoeuvres.’

Krom felt the Stormwolf ascend. Already blasting through the void at maximum speed, the pilot put the gunship into a steep and sudden climb.

‘You are cleared to fire, Canis Pax,’ Ulrik told Asgir.

‘Very good, my lord,’ the shipmistress answered before the vox communicated the ear-splitting boom of the strike cruiser’s cannonry firing in monstrous unison. The Space Wolves in the compartment added their roaring cheers to the firepower, willing the pursuing swarm of dark eldar craft to be decimated.

‘Status?’ Ulrik demanded.

‘The enemy have sustained catastrophic losses, my lord,’ the shipmistress said, ‘but so great are their number that their pursuit continues.’

‘Shall we never be rid of this alien scum?’ Krom rumbled.

‘I’m priming the gundecks for another broadside,’ the shipmistress told him, but the Slayer seemed to have lost interest.

‘Belay that,’ the High Priest ordered. ‘One day the Wolves will return and raze the dark place that spawned these foul xenos to the ground, but today our escape must be clean and complete. Have the flight decks cleared for a high-speed landing. Make way, Shipmistress. I want my ship on a translation approach by the time we arrive.’

‘I await you on the bridge, my lord,’ Shipmistress Asgir said.

‘Rogan, take us in,’ Ulrik commanded.

The compartment rolled to one side as the Rolling Thunder changed coursed. Krom held onto the section wall. Firing its mighty sub-light engines, the Canis Pax pulled away, forcing the gunship, and presumably the pursuing pirates, to change the angle of their approach to meet the moving strike cruiser. The voxhailer crackled with the pilot’s countdown of the reducing distance.

‘Brace for impact!’ Rogan Bearsbane said finally. Krom put himself behind the Dark Angels to prevent them falling back. He saw that Ulrik noticed this gesture, although the High Priest said nothing. Krom felt the gunship bounce beneath his mag-locked boots. The pilot had brought the Rolling Thunder in at speed and on her armoured belly to save the landing gears. A horrific shearing sound passed through the compartment as the gunship skidded across the flight deck, leaving behind a shower of sparks. Krom prepared himself for the impact, but it never came. The gunship drew to a soft halt, lamps inside the compartment flashing. The ramp slowly lowered to the deck.

As Ulrik and his Space Marines filed out, Krom hit the stud on the voxhailer.

‘My compliments, brother,’ he told Rogan Bearsbane, before exiting with his Drakeslayers.

It felt good to be back on the void-chilled iron of a Space Wolf deck. It was only now, however, that Krom could truly appreciate what the Space Wolves had passed through. Krom beheld the swarm of dark eldar craft. Like an ink stain spreading across vellum, the dark eldar approached through the nebulous dust of the system – the obscurity in which they had lain hidden. Krom turned to see Ulrik behind him, taking in the dread spectacle. Interrogator-Chaplain Balthus and Brother Othniel were with them, under guard. The Slayer turned to leave, heading for the bridge. There was no time to lose.

‘Bridge, this is Ulrik,’ he said into his helmet vox. ‘Get us out of here. All I want these xenos wretches to see is the blaze of our engines until they can see it no more.’

‘Understood, High Priest,’ Asgir returned.

‘With me, Lord Dragongaze,’ Ulrik said. ‘Bring your prisoners.’

Krom bit back a snarl. He looked at Balthus and Brother Othniel and the Space Wolf guard that the High Priest had put on them.

‘This way, Interrogator-Chaplain,’ Krom said, leading them off the flight deck. Looking to Beoric Winterfang, he added, ‘Sergeant, get yourself and our Drakeslayers to the Apothecarion.’

‘And you, my lord,’ Grundar Greymane said, for indeed, Krom was a mess.

‘I will be along shortly,’ the Wolf Lord said. ‘In the event of a boarding action, you should be where you are most needed: defending this ship.’

As the mighty Canis Pax made its manoeuvres, Krom accompanied Ulrik and the Dark Angels to the strike cruiser’s command deck. The danger Krom had brought upon the High Priest and his ship became ever more apparent on the bridge, where reverse lancet screens revealed black tendrils of smaller craft reaching out for the Canis Pax like a monster of the deep. As the strike cruiser completed its turn, the shipmistress ordered the warp engines primed.

Ulrik growled to himself as the blaze of a full burn torched countless vanguard fighters and alien boarders intent on being the first to reach the Canis Pax’s hull. With the rumble of engines passing through the deck, both Space Wolves and Dark Angels watched as the dark cloud of raiders receded, the xenos pursuit craft no match for the colossal engine columns of the Spaces Wolves strike cruiser.

‘Forward screens,’ Shipmistress Asgir called as deck serfs took the Canis Pax at full speed towards the system’s Mandeville point. The bridge lancet screens admitted the bottomless glory of the void. The bridge lamps flickered. Runebanks and command deck cogitators faded for a moment and tripped in their workings, before returning to functionality. Deck serfs and servitors began calling out warnings as their instrumentation fed them new data. The shipmistress moved down the line of machines, checking the readings for herself.

Krom didn’t need the Canis Pax’s augurs and scanners. Standing with Ulrik, he could see the three vessels growing on the forward screen. The ships surfaced from the warp, piercing the static super storm of a dimensional transference. The opening bled colour as an agitation of alternate realities rubbed against one another. Even prow on, coming straight at the Canis Pax, Krom could make out the belligerence of Adeptus Astartes cruisers, the vessels smashing back into reality. The noble green of the hull was unmistakable. They were the proud vessels of the First Legion.

Ulrik the Slayer snarled.

‘Strike cruisers, my lord,’ Shipmistress Asgir reported. ‘They are arming their prow weaponry.’

Krom turned, but Ulrik was fast, even for a Space Wolf of half his age. The High Priest had grabbed Interrogator-Chaplain Balthus by his robes and slammed him back into the command deck wall. Even the Space Wolves guarding the Dark Angel were surprised at the sudden violence of Ulrik’s movements.

‘A little surprise for us, Interrogator-Chaplain?’ the Slayer said, their skull helms almost touching.

‘You seem surprised,’ Balthus replied evenly.

‘Ulrik,’ Krom called, grabbing both by the arms, trying to prise them apart.

‘Do you know why they call them Interrogator-Chaplains?’ Ulrik asked Krom.

‘Ulrik…’ Krom said.

‘They judge and are judged,’ the High Priest spat. ‘They are happy to keep their secrets while they expose the secrets of others.’

‘And I’m sure you have plenty,’ the Interrogator-Chaplain intoned.

‘My lord, we must act,’ Shipmistress Asgir warned. Krom Dragongaze feared what the Slayer’s next order would be.

‘Intensify forward shields,’ Ulrik barked, his blood-bright optics burning into Brother Balthus, ‘and ready the prow cannon. We shall end this before it begins.’

‘Ulrik, don’t,’ Krom said.

‘First blood shall be ours, brother,’ Ulrik told Krom before looking back at the Dark Angel. ‘For ’tis a dangerous thing to corner a wolf…’

It was too late, however. In that moment, looking through the lancet screens, Krom knew that he had been wrong. He saw the flash of the vessels’ prow cannons, engaging in unison.

‘The Dark Angels are firing,’ Shipmistress Asgir confirmed from her augurbanks and cogitator.

Krom stared at Interrogator-Chaplain Balthus in disbelief.

‘Fire!’ Ulrik the Slayer roared. Letting go of Balthus, he clasped his gauntlets around the pulpit rail, projecting his fury at the attacking Dark Angel vessels on the lancet screens.

Krom Dragongaze prepared for impact. Fired upon by three Dark Angel strike cruisers, the Canis Pax was about to take an incredible hit. The Space Wolves ship could even be destroyed. With the Wolf High Priest bellowing orders across the command deck, Krom grabbed Brother Balthus from where Ulrik had abandoned him. Snatching the Interrogator-Chaplain by the robes, Krom held him against the bridge wall. Something didn’t seem quite right to Krom, however. Like a scent out of place or a too-easy kill, the attack simply didn’t make sense. The Dark Angels seemed to know Balthus was on board and yet they would fire on the ship carrying him.

Krom grabbed for anchorage on the bridge wall and engaged the magnetic soles of his boots. The blasts rocketing away from the three strike cruisers converged upon the Canis Pax. They would hit any second.

‘Prepare for impact,’ Shipmistress Asgir called to her command deck, clutching the pulpit rail near her command throne.

But the impact never came. The Canis Pax didn’t buck or shake. Wiring didn’t cascade from the ceiling or flame roll through the section. Deck serfs and servitors were not knocked from their consoles and Space Wolves did not rage at the mendacious Angels.

A light rumble went through the strike cruiser’s superstructure as the blasts rocketed down the length of the Canis Pax. Ulrik stared at Asgir and then about the command deck.

‘They missed,’ the shipmistress said.

‘Not likely,’ Krom said.

‘Aft feeds,’ Ulrik barked.

With a sizzle of static, Asgir had a deck serf change the lancet screens to a pict-feed of the strike cruiser’s rear. Magma bomb warheads streaked behind the Canis Pax, and they did indeed appear to have missed.

But then their true target revealed itself. From amid the swarm of dark eldar fighters and assault craft the Canis Pax had left in its wake, three larger vessels were pursuing them. They had managed to avoid the Canis Pax’s augur arrays and pict feeds by using some kind of exotic field technology to obscure their presence, but now they were shedding their ambush shielding.

Firing upon the pursuing shadows, the Dark Angel strike cruisers had turned the disguised torture ships into crackling tempests of erupting destruction. Krom got the brief impression of graceful, spindly craft – all blade-vanes and willowy darkness. One moment the piratical cruisers were stealthily moving up behind the Canis Pax, like great black scorpions of the void ready to strike – the next they were a chain reaction of ghostly explosions. As the ships detonated with alien energies, the shattered architecture flew in all directions, like a primed grenade of wicked, gargantuan shrapnel.

The bridge was silent. Krom looked to Brother Balthus, who gave him an emotionless stare. The Wolf Lord released his hold on the Interrogator-Chaplain.

‘Ulrik,’ Krom said, when no one else spoke. The Slayer put up his gauntleted hand.

‘Screens,’ Ulrik growled. The lancet screens returned the bridge to a view of the closing Dark Angel cruisers. The Canis Pax had struck the centre vessel with a blast of its own, turning the starboard sections of the dark green cruiser into a battle-scarred mess of mangled architecture and rupturing detonations. Ulrik ordered, ‘Open a channel with the Dark Angel cruisers.’

‘Which one?’ Shipmistress Asgir asked.

‘Any bloody one,’ Ulrik said. ‘And be lively about it.’

‘Balthus,’ Krom said. There was necessity in the Wolf Lord’s voice. The situation had to be salvaged. The Emperor’s Angels had fired upon one another. Damage had been done. Lives had been lost. The appearance of treachery once more dogged the Adeptus Astartes. Krom would not allow such misfortune to escalate. ‘Interrogator-Chaplain, please.’

When Balthus spoke, his words were heavy and cold, like the pitted steel of an ancient weapon. He pointed with a ceramite finger.

‘The Calibos,’ he said, identifying one of the vessels. ‘The ship you opened fire on is the Semper Fortis. Mine is the Repentance.’

‘Channel open,’ Asgir reported.

‘Repentance, this is the Canis Pax,’ Ulrik said. ‘Please respond.’

Static proceeded from the bridge voxhailers.

‘Repentance,’ the Slayer pressed, ‘I am Ulrik, High Priest of the Space Wolves. Your flotilla has sustained damage at my hand, but your destruction was not our intent. The galaxy is broad and wide and the mistakes made within its borders are many. This is one such mistake. We thought we were under attack and responded, as any of the Emperor’s blood is engineered to do. We seek parley to repair the damage we have done and atone for the offence committed. Please respond.’

Once more the Space Wolves’ patience was rewarded with static. All the while the Dark Angels vessels grew larger in the lancet screens. Krom turned on Brother Balthus.

‘Tell them,’ the Wolf Lord insisted.

The Interrogator-Chaplain, however, said nothing.

‘We have two of your brothers among our number,’ Ulrik said, the annoyance obvious in his aged voice. ‘A Chaplain and a Librarian that we should like to return to you.’

Krom detected it first. Something in the air. A heat without temperature. The sizzle of scorched reality.

‘Teleporter signatures!’ Shipmistress Asgir called out. While the Space Wolves had been concerning themselves with making contact, the Dark Angels had simply transported themselves aboard. A lead mist bled into manifestation on the command deck. Shapes in bone white terminator armour appeared on the bridge. Boltguns were primed as the Dark Angels peered down barrels and muzzles at their Space Wolf targets. The Space Wolves on the bridge, in turn, thrust their own weapons with ferocity and shock at the armoured interlopers.

Krom marvelled at the perfect execution of the boarding. He grabbed Brother Balthus once more by the filthy material of his robes and pulled them apart to reveal a teleporter homer on the Interrogator-Chaplain’s belt. Balthus must have had it on him the whole time.

Krom snarled, to himself rather than Balthus, but that didn’t stop a Dark Angel officer thudding the muzzle of his bolt pistol into Krom’s temple.

Balthus shrugged off the Space Wolf’s grasp, straightening his robes.

‘It doesn’t have to be this way,’ Krom said, as Balthus moved through the stand-off, uncaring of the boltguns and furious glares being cast across the command deck.

‘Angels are dead, Wolf,’ the officer hissed through his helmet’s vox-grille.

‘We have all lost brothers to the desperation of these shared circumstances,’ Krom said.

‘We share nothing,’ Brother Balthus said.

‘But we could,’ Ulrik suggested quietly. He stared at the Interrogator-Chaplain. ‘We have worked side by side in brotherly accord against a common foe.’

‘You opened fire upon our vessels,’ the Dark Angels officer said, his words sharp like the blade that sat in the scabbard on his belt.

‘We thought we were under attack,’ Krom said.

‘You were,’ Balthus told him, ‘but not by warriors of the First.’

‘Forgive me,’ Ulrik the Slayer said. The word seemed unnatural proceeding from the cracked lips of such a venerable Space Wolf. ‘Is that not what you are empowered to do, Interrogator-Chaplain? Forgive me. For it was my vessel that opened fire upon your own. My order that authorised that attack. Forgive the blunt words of diplomacy, that catch on the sharpness of my teeth and are an ill-fit for the mouth from which they come. Forgive one, like you, of the Emperor’s blood – who wishes a brotherly alliance out here, where the void is empty and humanity’s foes myriad. Accept a mistake for what it is and together we shall lay your kindred to rest.’

Krom looked from the High Priest to the Interrogator-Chaplain. Balthus had stopped wandering across the bridge and was now staring out through the screens at the Dark Angel ships holding the Canis Pax in their sights.

‘Interrogator-Chaplain–’ the Dark Angels officer began.

‘We are Adeptus Astartes all,’ Krom interrupted. ‘We have all come to this miserable corner of the galaxy on the Emperor’s business.’

Balthus turned to face them. He seemed to have reached a decision.

‘Very well. I seek a traitor of the Alpha Legion,’ the Interrogator-Chaplain began. ‘He has escaped from our custody and is to be punished for his many crimes – but first we have to find him, and that task has proven... challenging.’

‘We seek someone too,’ Ulrik said. ‘The Great Wolf. We hunt for him as he hunts for our Lord Russ. I know that in the past our fathers have not always seen eye to eye. I know that in the stormy present our Chapters have had precious little upon which to build brotherly love. I would ask you, Interrogator-Chaplain, to allow for a future in which our two Chapters work together for the accomplishment of separate deeds. Allow the Space Wolves, in recognition of the losses you have suffered at our hand, to hunt down your quarry with you. In turn, permit us to learn what we can of our lost leader from this transgressor – for the arrival of the Great Wolf with his warrior host in this wretched region of space will not have gone unnoticed.’

For the longest time, the Interrogator-Chaplain did not speak.

‘Stand down,’ he told his Dark Angels finally. The officer hesitated before re-holstering his pistol. The barrels of aimed boltguns drifted slowly towards the floor before the chaplain’s orders were conveyed to the Calibos, the Semper Fortis and the Repentance. Balthus nodded to Krom and then to Ulrik, the Wolf Lord and High Priest returning the solemn acceptance. ‘Once more,’ Balthus told them, ‘the galaxy shall witness the sons of the Lion and the Wolf hunting together.’

Krom could feel the lightness of his steps. It was welcome. His injuries were still healing and his artificer plate had only benefitted from the most basic of repairs. As he ran the suit still rattled about him and his armoured boots pounded the marble underfoot to shattered stone. On the low-gravity world of Stratovass Ultra, however, his plate weighed significantly less than it did on Fenris, or aboard the Canis Pax.

The Blood Claws of Squad Greymane ran beside him with Grundar following, a ravenous pack of Fenrisian wolves snapping and seething on adamantium chains. The beasts had the scent and were leading the Space Wolves through the mighty spirehalls and palatial pinnacles of Eyriax – the capital hive city of Stratovass Ultra.

Interrogator-Chaplain Balthus had brought them there on the trail of the Alpha Legionnaire, Sathar the Undone. The Ironpelt had followed the Canis Pax to this world from Dactyla. Ulrik the Slayer and Sergeant Beoric Winterfang had remained with the Space Wolves vessels, while Brother Othniel and the other Dark Angels had returned to the Repentance. The strike cruisers, both Space Wolf and Dark Angel, held station high above the hive world. Meanwhile, Krom had unleashed his Fenrisian beasts and the neophytes of his Drakeslayers on the world’s surface. With the Interrogator-Chaplain’s gathered intelligence and the hunter’s instincts of the Space Wolves, Krom was confident that they would catch Sathar the Undone.

Planetfall had taken them to the rusted dunes of Stratovass. The traitor’s scent had led them through the stilt shanties in the capital hive’s towering shadow. The Space Wolves had followed Sathar up through the Chartist dry docks, where the skeletal frameworks of merchant freighters, haulage brigs and tenders were under construction.

Krom had got his first look at their quarry in the nest of cloud-swathed spires that reached up from the surface of Stratovass like a spiked crown. Sathar was a broad, imposing figure in dark armour and robes, his face lost in a hood. Great bat-like wings erupted from the space between his backplate and pack, but it was impossible to tell whether they were real appendages or a theatrical affectation. Carrying the broad blade of a sword that was almost as tall as him, Sathar was fleeing through the vaulted halls and palaces of the spires. Krom caught sight of him on one of the myriad walkways extending between the nest of towers, moments before he disappeared in the clouds.

Without the pack of wolves and the keen senses of the indefatigable Blood Claws, they would have lost the traitor, since the clouds of Stratovass didn’t only bury the palace towers in a beautiful haze but manifested within the spirehalls, high corridors and great chambers.

As the wolf pack snaggled and snarled their way through the luxurious accommodations, their claws tore up rugs and flagstones. Grundar Greymane let the beasts have their head and run on their adamantium chains. His Blood Claws, young and short of hair, whiskers and fangs, moved through the palaces with a feral grace. In the low gravity, the slick glide of their movements took them over ornate furniture, through stained-glass windows and up grand staircases with ease. They were the headstrong Sons of Russ and the Emperor’s genekin, with nothing to fear from even the most powerful of the hiveworld’s inhabitants. Heavy-set, with a lifetime’s worth of muscle and experience, Grundar and his Wolf Lord were slower and more measured in their movements, with Brother Balthus in his fresh, streaming robes coming up behind.

‘Grundar,’ Krom said. ‘Bring him down.’

The Drakeslayers were so close. They had hunted the renegade up through the hive. Cornering him in the pinnacle palaces, the Space Wolves had given their quarry nowhere to go. Krom could not risk the possibility of the Legionnaire reaching a launch pad or pick-up from a terrace balcony.

At his Wolf Lord’s order, Grundar Greymane released one of his Fenrisian beasts. The wolf surged away from the pack, finally at liberty to run its prey down. The Space Wolves followed the creature as it weaved through pillars, bounded balustrades and made short work of hall expanses. It disappeared into the mists hanging in the palace chambers but its fellow beasts, still on Grundar’s chains, showed the way.

Suddenly Krom heard the most awful sound. The shriek of a beast in agony and shock, followed by a dismal moan of death that echoed perversely through the misted chambers. It wasn’t long before the Blood Claws found the wolf. It had been skewered through the jaws and the length of its body, by what Krom could only imagine was the Chaos Space Marine’s monstrous blade. Striding through the mist-cloaked antechamber, Krom found himself outside on a platform. Three bridgeways, made of chain and lightweight metal planking, spanned the gap between the palace tower they were in and the other spires reaching up out of the clouds. The jangling walkways themselves were lost in the haze.

Behind him, Grundar’s wolves snapped and spat, while the Blood Claws caught their breath and awaited orders. Laying his gauntlet on the chains of one bridge and then the others, Krom felt for the tremble and bounce of a recent crossing.

‘This one,’ the Wolf Lord said. A Blood Claw with a mane of red hair and side whiskers went to follow but Krom put his hand up. Sending a jangle through the chain walkway with his gauntlet, the Wolf Lord waited. He looked at Brother Balthus, who gave a nod of approval. A sharp clang cut through the cloudy obscurity in which the hive spires were lost. The sound of metal upon metal. Krom stepped back, the chain feeling suddenly loose in his grip. He listened for the sound of the falling walkway, the tangle of metal and chain cut away by Sathar the Undone on the other side. The traitor had waited for them, feeling for their crossing as Krom had done before intending to send the Wolves plummeting to their deaths. Stratovass Ultra was a low gravity world but a fall from the towering hive spires of the Eyriax would still mean certain death.

Krom studied the other two walkways. They vanished into the mist, so he could not be sure where they led. He turned to Balthus.

‘You’ve pursued this traitor before,’ Krom said to him. ‘What is the best course of action?’

‘We’ll separate and entrap him,’ Balthus said. ‘I’ll go this way.’ He indicated the walkway on the right. ‘You take your Wolves by the other route. We shall cut him off and attack from all sides.’

Krom nodded, and without another word Balthus set off across the jangling walkway. He was quickly swallowed by the looming mist.

Krom moved over to a Blood Claw called Skvaldigar Frostfang, an eager Drakeslayer whose scalp was a nest of short braids. He knew Skvaldigar to be savage and hungry for promotion.

‘Brother,’ Krom said, ‘do you think you and your Claws can make that jump?’

Skvaldigar grinned, showing his needle teeth.

‘Or we’ll die trying,’ the Blood Claw said.

‘Bring me that traitor,’ Krom ordered. ‘Alive.’

It was the Wolves’ best chance to corner him. The Blood Claws would attempt to jump across to the mist-wreathed spire while Krom, Grundar and the Fenrisian beast pack traversed the chain walkways between their tower and another. From there they could cross back to cut their quarry off.

‘Grundar, with me.’

Krom led the way towards another chain walkway. The jangling bridge drooped between the tower and the central spire. Grundar reached the light metal of the planks first, dragged on by the ferocious insistence of the wolf pack.

Looking back, Krom could see the hazy silhouettes of the Blood Claws leaping from the spire. In the low gravity of the hive world, their bounding steps took them far across the open space between the towers of the Eyriax. Krom lost the Blood Claws as they dropped through the clouds. The Wolf Lord knew that as the Space Wolves hit the tower lower down they would sink their gauntlets into the elaborate architecture and latch on. Then they would scramble up the side of the spire and surprise Sathar the Unbound from below.

Krom and Grundar ran, the wolves snapping ahead of them on adamantium chains. The walkway led them up onto another spire platform and in through the glorious, gothic antechambers of the planetary governor’s palace. The outlying spires through which the Space Wolves had worked their way had been largely deserted. The ruling elite of the tower top villas and palaces had abandoned the musty grandeur of their homes to pillaging servants and exotic pets left to pick over the food of their banquet tables.

Before they had reached these ostentatious dwellings, Krom and his Drakeslayers had moved up through the industrial sectors and rancid habs of the capital hive. There the Space Wolves had encountered mayhem. Sectors in full riot. Manufactorums ablaze. Hivers screaming for lost friends and family members. The city was alive with reports of stalking monsters, things of claw and fury that tore hivers apart. As Krom and his Drakeslayers moved up through the levels in pursuit of Sathar, the Space Wolves received no warm welcome. Workers in rubber suits and underworld wretches in rags and tattoos ran from the sight of the Space Wolves in their imposing grey plate. Grundar had questioned such behaviour but Krom had put the reaction down to the presence of the Chaos Space Marine and his compatriots.

The havoc that afflicted the capital hive had not been restricted to the riots and butchery of the underhive and mid-levels. The villas and palaces of the high and the mighty had been affected also. Unlike the hivers far below them, the planetary governor of Stratovass Ultra and his inbred kindred could leave and seek sanctuary in nearby hives. As Krom moved through the decimated door of a banquet hall, he got a taste of what the hive nobility had left behind.

As the two Space Wolves moved through the governor’s palace with its dust-thick halls and ghastly décor, Krom’s nose detected the coppery tang of death on the air, the unmistakable smell of slaughter. Grundar’s wolves picked up on it also, dragging him along on their unbreakable chains.

The air in the hall was thick with a red mist. Walls, paintings and tapestries were splattered with gore. The floor was slick with blood, while mounds of bodies and body parts sat like small islands in a sea of gore. Rusted chains criss-crossed the floor, with manacles still attached to hands and arms that were no longer connected to torsos. Krom was no stranger to slaughter, much at his own hand. He was a Space Wolf, one of the Emperor’s executioners. But this was something else. The huge hall had been full of people. They had not been killed out of necessity with bolt and blade. They had not even been sacrificed with cultish ceremony. They had been savaged. Torn limb from limb. The chamber had the feeling of an agriworld abattoir: the rawness of blood and fresh meat was overpowering. Krom licked his dry lips. He tasted the death that waited for him there.

‘Grundar,’ Krom said as the wolf pack nuzzled their way around the piles of mutilated corpses and across the bloody expanse of the banquet hall floor. Grundar Greymane looked about him.

‘The doors were locked and reinforced from the outside,’ the Space Wolf said, confirming what Krom was thinking. He cast his gaze across the bodies in their ragged, gore-soaked clothing. ‘The chains. Hivers imprisoned in the palace halls. Some kind of ritual perhaps?’

Krom had encountered many false prophets and Chaos cults on myriad doomed worlds. He had interrupted dread ceremonies where bloody sacrifices had been used to bring forth monstrosities from the beyond. This did not seem to match those experiences.

‘Where’s the paraphernalia? The faithless heretics who would benefit from such dark arts?’ Krom asked.

Grundar hauled back on the chains of the drooling wolves and moved a dismembered arm over with the tip of his boot. Mind-aching symbols and scripture were carved into the skin of the ragged limb.

‘Perhaps they brought forth an abomination that wreaked havoc upon those that summoned it,’ Grundar hypothesised.

Krom took in the slaughter.

‘No,’ the Wolf Lord said finally. ‘The doors were barred from the outside. Whether these wretches were meant for sacrifice or not, I don’t think they got that far. No summoning took place. Something else got to them first.’

‘You can bet the Interrogator-Chaplain’s quarry or his accursed allies are behind this,’ Grundar said, before his wolves began pulling on their chains and barking furiously. Their sudden savagery was turned on the end of the chamber where the hall opened up into a balconied area where banqueters would have once talked and relaxed after their meals.

‘My lord,’ Grundar said, responding to the animals’ ire.

Krom already had his bolt pistol clutched in one grey gauntlet. At the wolves’ warning, he quickly drew Wyrmclaw. The glazed blades of the frost axe reflected the red of its bloody surroundings.

Suddenly the light from the balcony died. An armoured figure had landed, a silhouette against the bleak mist, the figure’s rippling cloak and bat’s wings filling the opening. It was the Interrogator-Chaplain’s quarry: Sathar the Undone, the heretic Krom and his Drakeslayers had hunted up through the Eyriax hive. The traitor had embraced his darkness indeed. As a silhouette he cut a figure of ragged ruin. Sathar bled danger and a rank-hearted confidence into the air. His plate was a thing of twisted beauty, buried in a hood and robes that cloaked the monster’s dread presence.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The accusation produced a nasty chuckle from Sathar the Undone.

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

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

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

Sathar nodded at Krom.

‘Do it, Wolf,’ Sathar told him.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Where have you been?’ Krom demanded.

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

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

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

‘You had him?’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It saw him. Grundar Greymane, Son of Russ and proud wolf of Fenris. Reflected in the burning urgency of the monstrosity’s eyes, he was a victim, taunting the beast with breath and pulse. He was flesh to be torn with tooth and claw. Gore to be adorned. A thing to be savaged.

‘Brother…’ Grundar Greymane managed. He knew his killer. The Space Wolves knew them as the Wulfen. Lost brothers bearing the genetic curse that made them more beast than man. The sacrificial slaves that had been assembled in the palace of the planetary governor might have been intended for some bloody ceremony orchestrated by Sathar the Undone and the Alpha Legion. They had found their terrible end not at the edge of a heretic’s blade or some monstrous abomination brought forth by the warp. No – the wretched hivers had come to know death sudden and savage, by fangs that slashed open their throats and claws that ripped through their torsos.

‘Brother–’

It was too late. The Wulfen was upon him. Not one but several creatures. Tearing. Raging. Roaring. Grundar’s smashed plate was nothing before their ferocity. His fraternal flesh was a site of frenzied butchery.

And then it was over. The horrific sound of his torso being ripped apart was gone, as was the thrash of jaws. The Wulfen were gone, launching themselves back into the terror and bedlam of the main massacre.

Grundar lay there. His face was awash with his own blood. His innards – mulched and shredded – decorated his savaged form. His mind faded. He drifted down into the darkness of encroaching death. The surrounding butchery became nothing as the Space Wolf was acquainted with the intimacy of his end.

‘Greymane, this is command,’ the Space Wolf’s vox fizzled. It was Krom Dragongaze. ‘Grundar, where are you?’

Grundar tried to speak. To form at least one word. A word with which to warn his Fenrisian brothers of the horror to come. To tell his Wolf Lord that Wulfen were there on Stratovass Ultra. ‘Greymane, please respond.’

The mangled lips of the Space Wolf’s slashed face could not form the sounds. The warning burned within Grundar’s mind but his torn throat and his mouth full of blood would not answer. With such failure afflicting his shredded hearts and Krom’s words in his ears, Grundar Greymane let the darkness take him.

PART SEVEN

SCENT OF A TRAITOR

C. L. WERNER

The grizzled Wolf Scout leaned close to the wall, his nose half an inch from the grimy surface. His face scrunched back in a bestial grimace as his nostrils flared, taking in the manifold odours of the hive. Lopt Redtooth closed one eye as his mind identified the superfluous smells, separating them from the scent he was hunting for. His other eye, long ago replaced by a bionic mechanism, clicked and whirred as it kept the dimly lit corridor in focus.

Ulrik watched the scout work. Of all Krom’s Drakeslayers, it was Lopt who was best suited to this task. He had the instincts of a thunderwolf when it came to following a trail, something more primal than skill and experience could bestow. He had honed his abilities tracking ice trolls through the black caverns beneath Asaheim, bringing back the scaly ears of the monsters as trophies. Unlike the wolves of Fenris, however, Lopt had the mind of a man, able to interpret what he smelled in ways beyond the capacity of any beast. This was why Ulrik had given the duty of following the trail to the scout instead of one of the mighty canines. In this task, intelligence would prove as vital as speed.

Lopt lifted a tiny tube of paper from the ground. It was only the most minute of fragments, crushed and burnt, further stained by the industrial grime that caked the walls of the alley. Ulrik could smell nothing but the smoky residue of charred plant fibres rising from the discarded lho-stick. The Wolf Scout, however, was able to pick through a maze of odours to find the scent hidden underneath.

‘The same man,’ Lopt said, his bionic eye still prowling the shadowy corridor. ‘There’s more fear to his scent now. I think he knows he’s being hunted.’

Krom Dragongaze grinned at Lopt’s words. ‘If he knows he’s being followed, he’ll go to ground. He’ll go where he feels safe.’

Beregelt stroked the fur of the great Fenrisian wolf at his side. He had taken charge of the beasts since their former master, Grundar, had been lost. ‘Say the word, and Vangandyr will run the heretic down.’ A low growl rattled at the back of the animal’s throat, as though it caught the meaning of Beregelt’s words and was eager for the hunt.

‘Lopt’s nose has brought us this far,’ Krom said. ‘I’d not offer him insult by letting Vangandyr steal his catch.’

Ulrik took the lho-stick from Lopt, turning it over in his armoured hand. There were a dozen Space Wolves ranged along the corridor, with many more spread out through the district. This region of the hive city was a labyrinth of maintenance shafts, service ducts, transport channels and load-paths used by the processing plants and factories to conduct raw materials from the ring of collection centres outside the hive. There was a confusion of walkways, alleys and sneak-tracks that squirmed their way between the hab-blocks and industrial complexes – tier upon tier of trails for the Space Wolves to prowl, rising in successive layers up into the spires some miles above. It was a lot of ground to cover. Formidable as the Drakeslayers were, Ulrik would have welcomed more help.

The Wolf Priest could sense the unease in Krom’s words and knew the question the Wolf Lord wanted to ask. The Space Wolves had discovered the trail of their prey when they found the Traitor Space Marine’s scent on some hive-serfs. Through Lopt, they had been able to track one of the menials away from the scene of one of the gruesome sacrifices that had been plaguing the hive.

If this hiver were indeed to lead them to the traitor, Sathar, then the Dark Angels would want to be there. After his trail had been lost three days ago, Interrogator-Chaplain Balthus had gone his own way, arguing that they stood a better chance of finding their quarry if they split up. Now that the Space Wolves had picked up this scent, it was Ulrik’s duty to let the Chaplain know, but he hesitated.

It seemed that before his escape from their custody, Sathar had learned much about the Dark Angels and their tactics. Familiarity with his hunters was how the traitor had been able to elude the Dark Angels for so long. If Ulrik informed Balthus of the trail they were following then the Dark Angels would demand to lead the pursuit. The traitor would be ready for them and the hunt would be a failure. Ulrik had a duty to his allies, but he felt a greater duty to the Allfather to bring down this traitor. Of equal importance was the information Sathar might have – there was a good chance that he knew what fate had befallen Logan Grimnar.

Ulrik turned towards Krom. ‘This trail has been given to the Sons of Russ to follow. The burden is upon us. We will share the victory with the Dark Angels, but not the hunt.’

This seemed to satisfy Krom. ‘My other packs will gather on the flanks and run alongside the trail Lopt has found. The prey will not slip past,’ he growled.

‘The hive-serf we track may have been deceived,’ Ulrik cautioned the Wolf Lord. ‘It may be that our quarry is innocent of treachery. Keep that in mind.’ The last was spoken with emphasis, his voice carrying to the Space Wolves further down the corridor. They had an obligation to defend the Allfather’s servants. It would taint the glory of their purpose should they allow innocent blood to stain their tracks. Ulrik suspected that the Dark Angels wouldn’t be so reserved in their own methods.

At a gesture from Krom, Lopt hurried along the alleyway. The Wolf Scout seldom paused to examine his surroundings now, more certain of the trail since finding the lho-stick. When the path ascended up gantries or dropped into service tunnels, Lopt gave voice to a quick bark to alert the rest of the pack, then swiftly pursued the scent.

In a short time, a low snarl sounded across the vox. Ulrik recognised the distinct pattern of Lopt’s voice. The meaning was clear. The Wolf Scout had cornered the hive-serf.

‘My warriors will cordon off the area,’ Krom told Ulrik. ‘We’ll hold on to anybody who even thinks about leaving.’

A menacing growl rose from Vangandyr.

‘I don’t think any runners will get far,’ Beregelt said, tightening his hold on the wolf’s chain.

Ulrik nodded. Though a Space Wolf could stalk doppegangrels and ice wyrms across the tundra with the stealth of a snow panther, the bowels of a hive city weren’t ideal for stealthy manoeuvres. The hab-blocks around them were teeming with inhabitants and the presence of dozens of giant warriors of the Adeptus Astartes wasn’t something that could be hidden from them. The hive-serfs knew the Space Wolves were there, and that knowledge had sent them cowering inside their hab-units. Any that emerged from hiding now would only be those with some vital purpose. Those perhaps seeking to warn their dark master.

The snarl of small arms fire rang out from around the bend. Lopt barked a hasty warning over the vox, then fell silent. Ulrik could pick out the distinct report of the scout’s bolt pistol mixed into the chatter of stubbers and shotguns. The Wolf Priest drew his plasma pistol and glanced over at Krom. The Wolf Lord was already motioning his retinue to spread out in support of Lopt.

‘Looks like the serf stopped running,’ Krom growled, fangs gleaming in a fierce smile.

‘Try to take him alive,’ Ulrik advised.

Like grey shadows, the Space Wolves fanned out. Beregelt led Vangandyr down an alleyway, two other Wolf Guard climbed up into a maintenance gantry and another pair rushed along a side street. Krom led the last of his retinue in a charge directly towards the sounds of combat. Ulrik followed the Wolf Lord’s course.

The ambush had caught Lopt at the junction of three streets, a broad ramp at one end of the crossroad rising up into the next layer of the hive city. The fugitive he’d been tracking must have slipped word to comrades somewhere along the trail, and it was here that the hivers had decided to spring their trap. Converging upon the scout from three sides, the mob had forced the Space Wolf to take cover behind one of the plasteel columns supporting the rampway. From this improvised fortification, Lopt was delivering staggered fire. He was careful to shoot just enough to keep the mob back, but restrained himself from inflicting enough casualties to send the ambushers into flight. His purpose was to keep them right where they were until the rest of the Drakeslayers could secure the area and cut off any avenue of retreat.

A fierce, booming howl thundered from the Space Wolves as they rushed into the junction. The ambushers, a motley mixture of drab hive-serfs and garish gangers, were thrown into confusion as the huge power-armoured warriors charged towards them.

‘Strength is honour!’ a tattooed ganger shrieked as he spun around and aimed a snub-nosed stubber at Krom. Before the man could shoot, Krom’s pistol barked, the shot ripping through the ganger’s knee and hurling his maimed body out into the street.

The mutilation of their spokesman set the rest of the mob into furious retaliation. Men dashed out from behind pillars and pipes to blaze away at the Space Wolves with shotguns and pistols. One, wearing nothing but a breechcloth and a crazed grin, charged at them with a massive chainsword clenched in his fists. From a nest of conduits and pipes overhead, a man swathed in a dark cassock sniped at the Drakeslayers with a lasrifle. Darting about the edge of the ramp, a pair of burly ruffians in the coveralls of factory workers lobbed firebombs at the Wolf Guard.

Bullets and solid slugs clattered harmlessly from the thick ceramite armour. A sweep of Ulrik’s crozius disarmed the ganger with the chainsword, leaving the mangled hiver screaming in a pool of his own blood. A burst from Krom’s pistol brought the sniper crashing down from his nest above the junction. Wading through the pools of flame left by the firebombs, the Space Wolves pushed their assault against the mob.

‘Strength is honour! I shall be worthy!’ The cry was accompanied by a searing surge of flame that went sizzling past Ulrik’s shoulder. One of the Drakeslayers cried out, dropping back as he was engulfed by a torrent of flames.

Ulrik sprang towards the hiver with the flamer. He was a brawny man, his muscles swollen with chem stimulants. There was a latticework of tattoos covering his face, a writhing mixture of swords and snakes entwined around an aquila. There was a vicious gleam in the thug’s eyes, the look of a cornered ice-vermin that fights despite its fear because it knows it has no other choice. Ulrik could see his opponent trying to discharge another blast of flame, but the weapon was sputtering.

‘Submit to the Allfather’s justice,’ Ulrik warned, swatting the flamer from the hiver’s hands with his crozius. ‘Repent and you may find mercy.’

Terror transfixed the hiver’s visage as he stared up into the Helm of Russ. ‘I shall be worthy,’ he almost sobbed, reaching a hand to his neck. Ulrik just had time to spring away before the hiver detonated the grenade hanging from his necklace. The brunt of the explosion caught him in the shoulder, sending him sprawling in the middle of the street.

Ulrik started to rise, but was struck from behind. Looming above him was an enormous ganger, nearly as large as a Space Marine. The filth of mutation disfigured the man’s body, lending him an idiot expression as well as a prodigious musculature. The mutant held a plasteel girder in his hands and as the Wolf Priest tried to stand, the ganger brought the bludgeon down again. As his head bounced against the street, Ulrik could see several hivers rushing towards him to take advantage of his distress.

‘Only strong is worthy,’ the mutant dullard slurred as he brought the girder crashing down again.

‘You aren’t strong,’ Ulrik snarled back. The old Wolf swept his leg underneath the mutant’s, pitching his foe to the ground. A kick of his boot smashed the ganger’s face and a blow from his maul pulverized the man’s left arm. Ulrik left the groaning wreckage and turned to face the pack of hivers coming for him, only to see that they had already been intercepted. Emerging from an alleyway, the huge bulk of Vangandyr smashed into the men. The gigantic wolf locked its jaws around one hiver’s leg, tossing him aside with a twist of its head, then spun around to crush another man beneath its lupine bulk. Beregelt wasn’t far behind, his fire discouraging those the animal had failed to send fleeing.

The ambush had been turned upon itself. With more Drakeslayers converging on the position, none of the mob would escape. When it came time to interrogate those they captured, however, Ulrik found there was little they could tell him that he didn’t already suspect. Sathar had preyed upon the hivers, pressing them into a cult of his own creation. Hive-serfs from the factories and gangers from the underbelly of Eyriax had been drawn into the traitor’s service, acting as his eyes and ears within the city in exchange for the protection and power he promised them.

The one detail that did interest Ulrik was how the hivers relayed information back to their master. They communicated by passing intelligence through Ecclesiarch collectioners, laymen who prowled the hab-blocks seeking contributions for the endowment of shrines and temples.

The Space Wolves looked more closely at the sniper Krom had brought down from the ceiling. Lopt bent over the body, sniffing at the monk-like cassock. His face wrinkled in distaste at the pungent reek clinging to the robes. There was a greasy mix of incense and promethium so prominent as to almost blot out the man’s own scent.

Ulrik nodded as the Wolf Scout gave his report. There was one place in particular where such a curious combination of smells could be expected. A snarl rattled at the back of his throat as he considered the audacity of the traitor to conceal himself in the very shadow of the Allfather.

Expansive in its dimensions, the crematorium was an incongruous medley of temple and factory, a place where the dead of Eyriax were brought for final disposal, and where mourners came to pay their last respects. Bronze iconography a hundred feet wide adorned the outer walls, displaying the symbols of the Ecclesiarchy and scriptures from the Imperial Creed. Statues of saints and martyrs stood within niches cut above each doorway, their granite faces slowly crumbling beneath a patina of soot and industrial grime. Great vents in the roof spewed a greasy grey smog into the air, a mixture of fuel and incense with a strong undercurrent of burning flesh. A steady flow of load-carriers drove around the immense structure, bearing stacks of metal caskets to the receiving bays at the back of the building.

Ulrik didn’t need to see the Drakeslayers to know that they were moving into position. He could feel them all around, could smell their eagerness, hear the impatience in their breath. Krom had dispatched them to cover every approach to the target, not leaving so much as a maintenance hatch without a team of Space Wolves ready and waiting to smash it open.

‘Inside will reek,’ Krom reminded Ulrik. The Wolf Lord held his grey helmet in one hand, contemplating it with a calculating eye. ‘The wolves will be utterly overcome by the stink. We’ll have to leave them out here. I’ve ordered the Drakeslayers with the sharpest noses to stay with them and to act as reserve. They’ll be more use out here keeping guard than they will inside. If our prey slips through, they’ll be ready to pick up his trail.’

‘You give this traitor a great deal of credit,’ Ulrik said.

Krom laughed. ‘He’s managed to evade the Dark Angels for a long time. That makes him better than them. Although it doesn’t mean he’s as good as a Space Wolf.’

At Krom’s command, the Drakeslayers mounted their assault. The doors and hatches fronting the building crumpled under the armoured boots and whirring chainswords of the Space Marines. Howling their battle cries, the giant warriors surged into the crematorium.

Krom’s Wolf Guard smashed the ornate double doors of the main entryway. Ulrik rushed into the wide reception hall beyond, stunning the robed attendants inside by the abrupt violence of his entrance. Crying out in shock, their faces transfixed by a mix of awe and terror, the men prostrated themselves before the black-armoured Wolf Priest. In their quivering babble, he could hear appeals to the God-Emperor for protection and forgiveness. Briefly Ulrik wondered if their imprecations were sincere or if these men were also minions of Sathar. The Space Marines following behind Ulrik swept past the shivering attendants, sparing them small notice as they pursued the sounds of activity beyond the hall.

A thrill rushed through Ulrik’s veins, the primal eagerness and anticipation of battle that had been with him ever since he was a Blood Claw. The sensation was dulled beneath the layers of restraint and experience he’d acquired over his many centuries of service to the Chapter. Impulsiveness and instinct didn’t control him. They were tools, assets to be tapped into and focused towards the objective at hand.

Sathar the Undone. Ulrik’s lips curled back in a snarl as he contemplated their prey. He could still remember Svane Vulfbad, the turn-pelt renegade who’d betrayed the Space Wolves and taken much of his Great Company down the path of Chaos. It was easy to appreciate how fiercely the Dark Angels despised traitors. Yet their hate hadn’t been enough to catch their enemy, any more than the Space Wolves had been able to visit justice upon Vulfbad. That was why Ulrik had advised Krom to stage an immediate assault on the crematorium. The Dark Angels might have displayed more caution, waited until they were certain of catching Sathar before committing themselves. That would give the traitor time to prepare. With a sudden assault, Sathar might be caught off-guard.

The Drakeslayers stormed the sanctuaries and chapels that ringed the reception hall. Each chamber was filled with crowds of mourners, come to offer prayers for departed family and friends. Ancient pews groaned under the weight of the sombre throngs while still more hive-serfs stood in the aisles and along the walls to make their representations. Waxen seals affixed to each mourner’s forehead proclaimed the serial number of the casket that had received the departed they had come to honour. Scrolls pinned to their sleeves displayed the amount of their contribution to the Ecclesiarchy’s coffers to petition a personalised eulogy for the deceased. Behind the stone altar at the fore of each chapel, a lay-priest chanted a litany for the dead, sometimes pausing in his droning chant to utter a special commendation for the spirit of someone whose grieving family had been especially generous in their tithe.

When the Space Wolves intruded upon these chambers, disrupting the mortuary rituals, mourners and lay-priests alike were thrown into alarm and confusion. It took but a single snarled command to send them rushing out into the reception hall and from thence into the streets beyond. Seeing the hurried exodus, Ulrik noted cloaked figures emerging from shadowy alcoves. Obscure and sinister in their aspect, the lurkers made no move to obstruct the Drakeslayers. He could guess their purpose – guards to monitor the funerary ceremonies and report anything suspicious to their dark master. It was likely they’d already informed Sathar that the Wolves had come. The best way they could serve their master now was to delay the Drakeslayers by arousing their suspicions. It would be no small effort to extricate the sentries from the mass of frightened mourners.

‘Forget Sathar’s rats,’ Ulrik voxed the other Space Wolves. ‘If we need to find them later, we’ll set the wolves on their track. For now we hunt bigger game.’

Behind the crematorium’s outer chambers lay the Halls of Eternal Dreaming. The contrast was that of day and night. From the sombre sanctuaries and chapels, the Halls expanded into a vast cavern of machinery, a cathedral of industry rather than spirit. Rotating belts slithered between great vats and presses. Hooks and mechanical claws swung above, their gruesome talons poised to seize the bodies that were laid out upon the belts. Immense oven-like furnaces squatted at the far end of the hall, flames crackling behind the steel grilles. Huge pipes pumped fuel into the furnaces, drawing promethium and other incendiary chemicals from mammoth tanks clustered about the opposite side of the building. A brigade of pallid servitors shuffled around the machinery and the furnaces. With the aquila branded into their foreheads and their bodies covered in strange cloaks that at once suggested the coverall of a labourer and the cassock of a pilgrim, the servitors were twisted parodies of the human form. Arms replaced with grasping claws of iron, legs substituted for whirring treads of steel, each of the attendants was part machine, programmed to perform his duties with neither complaint nor fatigue. They didn’t react even as the first of Krom’s Blood Claws came loping into the factory, simply continuing to operate the machinery they had been assigned.

‘Damn this incense,’ Krom cursed behind his helm. ‘It’s enough to set the oldest Long Fang on edge!’

With the incense saturating the air, the Space Wolves found their vision murky and their sense of smell overwhelmed. Ulrik had expected the incense to be an obstruction, but he hadn’t anticipated it to have such a pernicious effect. For the first time a troubling thought came to him. He had tried not to underestimate Sathar or to let contempt for the traitor cloud his judgement. Even so, he wondered if he had given their prey enough credit.

The groan of heavy chains grinding their way through pulleys thundered overhead. Ulrik swung around, watching as a massive cauldron was hauled across the hall on a suspended rail. The immense metal vessel abruptly lurched to a stop, hanging for an instant above a pack of Grey Hunters making their way along the factory floor. The Space Wolves scattered as the hook supporting the cauldron released it. Gallons of bubbling chemicals slammed into the floor, spilling over the ferrocrete foundation. Noxious liquid splashed across the Grey Hunters, sizzling against their ceramite armour.

Across the crematorium, other mechanisms suddenly developed violent faults. The doors of a furnace swung open and sent a blast of flame searing across the advance of some Blood Claws, forcing them to leap back and swat at the burning wolf-pelts and talismans hanging from their armour. The nozzle of a sprayer meant to bathe corpses in purifying unguents burst and sent a stream of liquid streaking across the hall with enough force that a pack of Long Fangs were knocked off their feet.

‘Damn that traitor! Does he think he can stop us with these petty tricks!’ Krom aimed his bolt pistol at a nearby servitor, exploding the half-machine’s head. The servitor slumped beside the flywheel it had just started to turn, arresting the opening of a furnace door.

‘Stay alert,’ Ulrik warned. ‘Don’t let your warriors lose focus.’

He knew his order would be difficult to follow. The whole of the factory was descending into a bedlam of amok machinery. Hydraulic claws dropped down from the ceiling, scrabbling for the Space Wolves below. Pneumatic pincers slashed at the Drakeslayers from behind banks of pressure gauges and lubricant feeds. The rattle of bolters and the screech of chainswords rose in answer to the rampaging machinery.

Some of the servitors now shambled away from their machines. One, holding a great hydraulic hammer clenched in its metal claws, lunged at a Wolf Guard, the head of its tool-turned-weapon cracking the pillar behind the Space Wolf as he dodged from its path. A kick of the Drakeslayer’s boot crumpled the servitor’s leg, pitching it to the floor. A burst from the Wolf Guard’s bolt pistol exploded its head in a spray of blood and lubricant.

Across the factory floor, the Grey Hunters were confronted by a murderous file of maintenance servitors. Each of the automata had a tank of caustic purifiers bolted to its back, hoses snaking out from the canister to connect with the wide-nozzled sprayer that replaced one of its arms. The servitors sent blasts of acidic granules billowing out towards the Grey Hunters, forcing them to take cover behind a bank of machinery before retaliating with a withering fusillade of bolter fire. Engulfed in a cloud of shimmering granules as the canister burst, one of the servitors was quickly consumed down to the bone as its flesh dissolved.

More servitors moved to the attack, turning a medley of instruments and tools against the Drakeslayers. The whirring abrasives of buffers and grinders scraped across ceramite as automata emerged from storage lockers, surprising one of the Blood Claw packs. The young Space Wolves replied with bolters and swords, tearing through their ambushers in a riot of violence. Servitors with promethium projectors turned against a squad of Long Fangs, sheets of rolling flame sizzling against their armour and blackening their tribal talismans before a missile barrage obliterated their attackers.

Something more instinctive than thought made Ulrik turn away from the fray and towards one of the great presses where the ashes of hive-serfs were compacted. Above the gigantic press, standing upon an elevated walkway, was a lone figure.

Gripping his crozius and plasma pistol a little tighter, Ulrik rushed forwards. When the lurker started to climb higher into the maze of gantries and walkways that stretched across the crematorium, the Wolf Priest gnashed his fangs in frustration. If there was some passage connecting the roof of the building to the next level of the hive, their prey could avoid the warriors Krom had left outside. He’d gain a valuable lead. Ulrik didn’t intend to grant the traitor such an opportunity.

The hulking presses loomed before him as Ulrik hurried after his quarry. Leaping over one of the conveyor belts that brought boxes of ashes from the furnaces, the Wolf Priest found himself at the edge of the descending ram. Beyond, he could see the stairs leading up to the walkway. Without a flicker of hesitation, Ulrik sent a ball of plasma searing into the pipes fitted to the side of the press. Oil and fluid erupted from the broken tubes, spraying across the hall. Ulrik dived under the dropping ram, crawling across the bottom of the press. The loss of fluid retarded the descent, causing the plate to lose impetus with each passing second. Just the same, Ulrik felt his backpack squeezing him before he wormed his way free. His boots were barely clear before the heavy ram completed its descent and struck the base with a dull metallic boom.

The thunderous impact wasn’t enough to blot out the other sounds that now drew Ulrik’s attention. The rattle of bolters had increased, but there was a difference in the reports now, a shift in quality that warned Ulrik not all of the weapons being fired were from the armouries of the Fang. The Dark Angels – had they come to help the Space Wolves or to contend their right to the hunt? Ulrik cast the question aside. Interrogator-Chaplain Balthus could argue his case after the traitor was caught.

The Wolf Priest charged the stairs, lunging up them in great leaps as he took advantage of the planet’s low gravity, hurtling across the first walkway and rushing up to a second. A lupine snarl of satisfaction rumbled at the back of his throat when he spotted his prey ahead. The lurker had lingered instead of fleeing. He’d stayed to gloat over the Drakeslayers and the confusion his menagerie of traps had wrought. That was a mistake he was going to regret most dearly.

‘Sathar!’ Ulrik cried out in challenge. ‘Your days of mocking the Allfather are over! Justice has come for you on the fangs of wolves!’

The traitor turned. He wore a heavy cloak that appeared stitched from human skin, but the garment wasn’t enough to hide the bulky power armour he wore beneath it or the great leathery wings that sprang from his back. The helm that peered out from beneath the cloak’s hood was pulled out into a beak, the optics fashioned from a yellow transparency that somehow lent them a jaundiced quality.

‘I hear you bark, but can you bite?’ the traitor snarled. Sathar lunged at Ulrik with the jagged edge of his broken blade. Krom had shattered the sword with Wyrmclaw when the two had fought in the governor’s rooms, but the original had been so huge that the remnant was still the size of any normal blade, and just as deadly. The weapon seemed to soak up the shadows around it, blurring its outline as it came slashing towards the Wolf Priest. Narrowly was he able to dodge aside as the blade came smashing down, shearing through the framework and sending a tangle of twisted steel crashing to the floor far below.

Ulrik retaliated, bringing his maul around. He tried to shatter the sword again, but Sathar was too fast, feinting and veering away. A hiss of amusement rasped from Sathar’s helm as the traitor struck at Ulrik once more. This time the blade slashed through the guardrail a few inches from the Fenrisian, the severed length of the rail whipping back at him like a snake.

Bringing his crozius crackling across the walkway, Ulrik sent a mass of torn metal flying into the traitor’s face. Sathar staggered back, his broken sword incapable of fending off the spray of debris.

‘I don’t duel traitor scum,’ Ulrik growled. He leaped across the pit his maul had gouged in the walkway floor, springing at the traitor like a thunderwolf.

Sathar’s sword lashed out, striking at the supports connecting the walkway to the ceiling. The blow sheared through the metal girders. The walkway crumpled, part of its length sliding away to hang forlornly from the rearward span. In an instant, Ulrik found only empty space beneath him. Without hesitating, he hooked the flange of his crozius in the angle between support and walkway, using his momentum to turn his fall into a flip. Pivoting, he flung himself over the guardrail and onto the walkway behind his foe. By his own action, Sathar had trapped himself between the Wolf Priest and a plummet to the factory floor below.

Still there was fight in the traitor. Raising his sword, Sathar rushed towards Ulrik. The Wolf Priest fired his plasma pistol. The impact ripped the weapon from Sathar’s hands and pitched it down into the crematorium.

The traitor took a step back and reached for the bolt pistol holstered at his side. A snarl of warning rose from Ulrik.

‘Balthus wants you alive, but that’s the only thing he said about your condition.’

Sathar moved his hands away from the gun.

‘So you have caught me,’ he said, slowly pointing his hand to the factory below. ‘Or have you? It is a tricky prospect when the hunter finds himself trapped.’

Ulrik could hear the sounds of conflict raging below, the battle cries and combat orders swirling through the inter-squad vox channel. Krom was trying to redeploy his Drakeslayers, to answer the ambush that had suddenly engulfed them. From his vantage point high above the factory floor, Ulrik had a better appreciation of the situation than Krom. He could see how disunited and scattered the traps had left the Space Wolves. More than that, he could see the enemies his battle-brothers now faced. Not a rabble of cultists or rebels, but a force of Space Marines. Even in the fumes of the crematorium, he could tell they weren’t Dark Angels.

‘You aren’t the only one with friends,’ Sathar said. ‘For now, my associates are only trying to keep them busy. It will be much different if they decide to apply themselves in earnest,’ he cautioned.

‘Your traitor friends are outnumbered,’ Ulrik scoffed.

Sathar shook his head. ‘They would surprise you. Besides, they need only hold your comrades long enough for us to talk.’ His voice dropped to an unctuous whisper. ‘I know who you are seeking, who it is you are really hunting.’

Ulrik took a step towards the traitor, his maul ready to strike the turncoat down.

‘You know nothing,’ he snapped, rage boiling within his heart at Sathar’s effort to manipulate him.

‘Logan Grimnar,’ Sathar said, thrusting the name at Ulrik as though it had the bite of his lost sword behind it. ‘That is who you were looking for before you were distracted by Balthus.’

‘You know nothing,’ Ulrik repeated, but even he could hear the lack of conviction in his voice. Sathar had planted a seed of doubt in his mind. Did the traitor really know something? Could he let this chance slip away?

The traitor glanced back down at the factory floor. ‘If the fighting gets much worse, I worry that my associates may want to press the issue. Make your choice while it is still yours to make.’

A sick feeling boiled inside Ulrik’s stomach. To even contemplate a compromise with something like Sathar was an outrage. He would carry it with him as a blight upon his honour for the rest of his days. Yet if there was truly a hope of picking up Grimnar’s trail again, he had to take it. His own honour was small concern beside the welfare of the Chapter.

‘I’ll hear you out,’ Ulrik said. ‘Call off your dogs.’

‘I’ll keep my pistol, just to reassure myself of your sincerity. If you are so inclined, you can try to disarm me once you’ve listened to me,’ Sathar told him. ‘Comrades!’ he spoke into his vox bead. ‘I am captive of the Space Wolves! There is no purpose to further fighting. Withdraw. Withdraw and proceed as planned.’ The traitor swung around to Ulrik. ‘I have called off my dogs, now call off yours.’

‘Lord Krom, I have taken the traitor,’ Ulrik spoke into his helm’s vox-bead. ‘Do not pursue the others. We must remain committed to our cause and not spend our resources on distractions.’

The Wolf Priest glared at Sathar. He knew whatever the traitor wanted to say would be designed to tempt him. He also knew none of it could be trusted. He’d need more, something he could trust.

‘Send Leoric Half-ear to me,’ Ulrik said. Whatever deceit was in the traitor’s words, the Rune Priest Leoric would be able to sniff out the truth in his mind.

Sathar the Undone led the Space Wolves into a concealed chamber above one of the crematorium’s sanctuaries. Ulrik grudgingly admired the craft with which the traitor had hidden his refuge. Even knowing it was there, he was hard-pressed to spot the break where a carved finial in the sanctuary pivoted to expose the elevator leading up to the room. The niches in the walls and the stone plinths arrayed about the room made it clear that the place had been intended as a mausoleum at one time, a place to inter those too wealthy and privileged to have their remains reduced to fertilizer. Now the mausoleum was given over to Sathar’s use. Light shone down upon the chamber from panels fitted into the ceiling, illuminators designed to mimic the clean light of unpolluted skies long-since extinct above the surface of Stratovass. Flickering through the warm glow of dawn, passing onto the bright blaze of noon, the panels sent a panoply of shadows wheeling about the room.

The walls were adorned with star charts, the niches converted into caches of data-sheets and pict-slates. Upon the stone plinths were assembled curious devices and artefacts – trophies and mementos that must have been claimed by Sathar during his wanderings across the galaxy. Some Ulrik recognised: the narrow helm of an eldar witch-prophet, the severed talon of a giant genestealer, the broken blade of an Inquisitor’s power sword with the grim iconography of that organisation engraved upon the guard. Others were things beyond even Ulrik’s vast understanding. Among these was a three-foot-tall prism of black glass. There was an oily, creeping atmosphere about the object that made the Wolf Priest’s hackles rise. Leoric Half-ear removed his helm and glared at the thing.

‘You can smell the stink of the warp even over the reek of the furnaces,’ the Rune Priest growled in disgust.

‘A curiosity I came upon rather recently,’ Sathar said. ‘I haven’t had a chance to study it properly, but you must agree it is unique.’

Leoric was peering closer at the glass now. ‘There are... things moving inside,’ he muttered. ‘I can almost...’

The traitor laughed. ‘It is dangerous to peer into the abyss unless you know what to look for. You can never be certain what might be looking back.’

Ulrik drew the Rune Priest away from the dark prism. At his touch, Leoric shook his head, as though stirring from a stupor. ‘I came to hear about the Great Wolf, not abominations from the warp.’ His face contorting into a lupine snarl, he drew his pistol and aimed it at the tainted relic.

‘That might be unwise,’ Sathar warned. ‘I have taken great pains to prevent a doorway to the warp from opening in this city. Shoot the prism and you may accomplish in a heartbeat what the slaves of Chaos have been trying to achieve for months now.’

Ulrik gripped Leoric’s arm, pushing the bolt pistol downwards. ‘Leave the prism for now,’ he told the Rune Priest. ‘I need your talents focused upon the traitor. I need to know how much he says is lie and how much is truth,’ he elaborated over their private vox channel.

Ulrik’s eyes glared from the depths of his skull-helm as he turned towards Sathar. ‘Speak quickly, traitor. Balthus is waiting.’

Sathar leaned against one of the plinths. ‘Again you call me “traitor”, but I tell you I serve the Emperor more completely now than you could possibly understand. A profound revelation came to me, an epiphany. It is this – to destroy monsters, you must become a monster. To defeat the enemy, you must turn its weapons against itself. There can be no measure afforded for honour and morality. All that matters is victory, however it is achieved. Turn Chaos against itself. Use the instruments of heresy to destroy the heretic.’

A low, threatening growl rumbled from behind Ulrik’s mask. ‘For such madness you abandoned your heritage?’

The runic talismans chained to Leoric’s armour shivered with eerie energies as his psychic powers reached out to probe Sathar’s thoughts. ‘The vermin’s mind is consumed by his delusions. Even now he imagines himself a servant of the Allfather.’ The Rune Priest’s voice seethed with revulsion over the vox.

‘You wouldn’t understand,’ Sathar repeated. ‘It is beyond your ability to understand. You have deluded yourselves with conceits of honour and morality. You couldn’t possibly appreciate what it means to–’

Ulrik sprang forwards, seizing Sathar by his robe. ‘I’ve heard enough of this madness. Tell me about Logan Grimnar. Where is the Great Wolf?’

‘The key to that information isn’t so easy. You will have to work for it,’ Sathar pointed at Leoric. ‘Your Librarian will tell you I don’t lie when I say that I am not responsible for the ritual murders afflicting this city. I have fought against those responsible, but now they are driven to an outrage of such scale that it may be beyond the abilities of my resources to overcome. We need your strength, the ferocity of the Space Wolves, to guarantee victory.’

‘You’re not only mad, but a fool to think we would aid you,’ Ulrik snapped. He tightened his hold upon Sathar, dragging the traitor towards him. ‘There can be no compromise with a heretic.’

‘Wait!’ Leoric’s voice crackled with hate, his eyes shone with bloodlust. ‘I have seen into his mind. The enemy he would loose us against. The leaders controlling this cult. They are of the brood of Magnus!’

Ulrik felt the blood pumping through his hearts blaze with a vengeful fury as he heard the traitor primarch’s name. There were no foes in the galaxy the Space Wolves despised and hated more than the murdering sorcerers of the Thousand Sons. The old Wolf Priest could feel the savagery of the Canis Helix rippling through his flesh, responding to the magnitude of his rage. By an effort of will, he subdued the primal energies, forcing them to recede back into the darkest corners of his being.

‘This is why you were certain we would help you,’ Ulrik seethed. He felt like a beast lured into a trap, baited by his own instincts. How deep did Sathar’s machinations go? Had he intentionally lured the Space Wolves here so that he could exploit their hatred of the Thousand Sons?

‘No. You will help me because it is the only way to find your Chapter Master,’ Sathar said. ‘The Thousand Sons command House Morvane, an entire merchant guild corrupted and sworn to the Ruinous Powers. Their leader, a sorcerer called Medeb, has crossed paths with the Great Wolf. My spies have kept me informed of the cult’s activities for some time now. So far the cult has attempted only minor rituals, lesser obscenities to test the waters. Tonight, however, they intend a far greater abomination.’

‘Convenient timing,’ Ulrik told the traitor.

Sathar nodded. ‘It is because Medeb knows you are here. I was able to hide my presence from the sorcerer, but the same cannot be said of you and the Dark Angels. Medeb intends to open a doorway to the warp, a channel between Stratovass Ultra and the Eye of Terror. Medeb was cautious before, uncertain that the doorway could be stabilised. Now he has cast aside such reserve. Whether the door remains or not, he will open it all the same.’

Ulrik looked over at Leoric. The Rune Priest shook his head. ‘It is what the traitor believes to be true,’ he said. ‘But that is only perception, not reality.’

‘Would you lose the chance to find the Great Wolf because you will not believe me?’ Sathar asked. ‘If you need further convincing, let this speed your thoughts. I trusted to the honour of the Space Wolves to allow me to speak with you, but I knew there could be no such compact with the Dark Angels. So to gain their aid, my associates have laid a false trail for Balthus. The Dark Angels will follow that trail thinking it will lead to me, but instead they will find the cult. They will be destroyed if they fight alone. Only by combining our forces can victory be assured. If the Space Wolves don’t fight, then the Dark Angels will meet their fate. It is in your power to spare them an ignoble doom.’

‘You scheme without honour,’ Ulrik snarled at Sathar. ‘You offer a despicable choice and then explain that it isn’t a choice at all. Save Eyriax, save the people, save the Dark Angels, but only if you cooperate.’ The Wolf Priest slapped his hand against the plasma pistol holstered at his side. ‘Whatever happens, you will be beside me. The first sniff of deceit, the first hint of betrayal, and you can be certain of one thing. I will burn a hole though that scheming brain of yours big enough to fly a Thunderhawk through.’

‘I would expect nothing less from Ulrik the Slayer,’ Sathar said. ‘But do not be too keen to make an enemy of me. There will be foes enough for all of us where we are going.’

Thrusting out from the side of Eyriax, many miles above the surface of Stratovass, the spire of House Morvane was a soaring tower of plasteel and crystal rivalled only by the residences of the planetary governor and the High Ecclesiarch in magnificence and extravagance. Masts of meteoric iron bound in electro-runes of the Adeptus Mechanicus defended the spire from lightning and discharges of the polar aurora. Chemical misters sprayed solutions across wall and roof to combat the ravages of smog and pollutants. Leering gargoyles fashioned from lunar granite shielded the tower from psychic and spiritual malignancies.

It was this last defence that had failed in its purpose. Blessed and sanctified by all the saints, the gargoyles couldn’t protect a place that freely welcomed corruption, that invited the powers of darkness into its halls. What had driven House Morvane to swear themselves to Chaos was unknown. Fear, ambition, revenge – it didn’t matter what had lured the merchant guild into heresy. All that was of consequence was that they had been tempted and they had failed the test.

As the Space Wolves prowled along the darkened service corridor, stealing down the maze of passages that wound their way between the opulent galleries and chambers used by the merchants themselves, the hair on Ulrik’s arms bristled. Whatever cause had led them to this defilement, it couldn’t justify such obscenity.

Ulrik glanced over at Sathar, feeling even greater disgust for the traitor. Sathar had been chosen to transcend humanity, to receive the greatest gifts the Emperor could bestow upon his servants. He had become a Space Marine, superhuman in body, mind and spirit. To him had been bestowed a legacy of honour and courage that was beyond the grasp of common man. He had been entrusted with relics steeped in the blood and bravery of heroes, sacred wargear that had led his battle-brothers to victory in a thousand wars. All of it had been thrown away, cast aside because of a delusion, a madness that through heresy Sathar could find still greater purpose. If not for the oaths he had sworn, if not for the information he might have, Ulrik would like nothing better than to end Sathar’s perversion here and now.

The smell of blood drew Ulrik’s attention away from the cloaked traitor. A quick click across the inter-squad vox told him that Lopt’s scouts had encountered guards in the corridor. Patrolling well ahead of the Drakeslayers, the scouts were thorough in their elimination of any resistance they found. The main body of Krom’s warriors would find the remains slumped against the walls, tunics and surcoats stained with gore. Sometimes there was the slash of a knife, other times the bodies bore the marks of tooth and claw. Lopt was too cautious to allow his pack to risk the report of a bolt pistol and too swift to give their victims a chance to fire a shot of their own.

‘Your scouts are to be commended,’ Sathar remarked. ‘I don’t think a rat could slip past them.’

Krom ignored him. ‘How long have you been watching this place?’ The Wolf Lord gnashed his fangs in a fierce display. ‘You seem to know all its secrets, all the hidden trails. Just remember this, heretic – if this is a trap, you die first.’

‘It won’t be a trap,’ Ulrik said. He glared at the traitor. ‘A trap would be almost honourable. No, he waited for us. He waited for someone to run this risk so he wouldn’t have to. He’d try to contain the cult, keep them from going too far, but actually destroying them was a task he intended to leave to others.’

Sathar shook his head, the optics of his helm focusing on the Space Wolves all around him, each warrior seething with loathing for the traitor in their midst. ‘You forget, I share the same risks as you,’ he reminded Ulrik.

‘Yes, and that worries me even more than whatever evil the Thousand Sons have been conjuring,’ Ulrik said. ‘At least they make no pretence about who and what they are.’

The traitor laughed. ‘There is a saying from ancient Terra – the enemy of your enemy is your friend.’

‘There is a Fenrisian custom that a broken sword is never reforged,’ Ulrik said. ‘It is thrown into the sea, a dead thing. There is no trust for something that has already betrayed one master.’ He looked across the Drakeslayers, appreciating far better than Sathar how greatly they were struggling to restrain the instinct to destroy the traitor. ‘Do not tempt your doom,’ he warned. ‘It will find you soon enough.’

‘Perhaps all of us,’ Sathar said, gesturing to a mark hidden in the gilded scroll work that adorned the sides of the corridor. ‘A sign left by my spies. We are near to the Grand Arcade overlooking the Chancellery of House Morvane. Your brothers need hold back but a little longer. Soon they will have foes enough.’

Almost as Sathar spoke, muffled sounds reached the keen senses of the Drakeslayers: a dolorous, reptilian susurration of many voices raised in a grisly chant. Beneath the chanting, more vibration than sound, was the clamour of primitive drums and woodwinds. Ringing out above the ghoulish cadence was an invocation, an inhuman appeal that raved and shrieked with piteous horror. Every Space Wolf felt his hair crawl in agitation, felt his hearts quicken in response to the abject threat laced within the noise. The cult had started their terrible ceremony, their profane appeal to the powers of Chaos.

Lopt slipped back down the hallway. He stopped before Krom and Ulrik, giving the leaders a hasty report.

‘We’ve found a door in the wall ahead,’ the scout sergeant said. ‘It opens upon an arcade overlooking a hall the size of the Ironpelt’s docking bay.’

‘Enemy numbers?’ Krom asked, fingering the hilt of his sword.

‘Hundreds,’ Lopt answered. ‘A dozen or more Thousand Sons among them.’

‘Just as I promised,’ Sathar stated. ‘It would seem you have your work cut out for you.’

Ulrik rounded on the traitor. ‘If the Allfather wills us to be victorious, I will yet deliver you to Balthus. Until then, you remain in my keeping.’ The last was uttered in a low growl, a reminder not just to Sathar but to the other Space Wolves. The Chaos Space Marine was Ulrik’s responsibility and he intended to carry that burden through.

The Drakeslayers hurried up the corridor. Lopt’s scouts were deployed around a door hidden in the wall, fashioned so that it merged seamlessly with its surroundings. Part of the scrolling slid down at Lopt’s touch, revealing a hidden recess and an angular nub of ivory projecting slightly from the exposed panel. At a gesture from Krom, Lopt pulled the ivory nub, drawing out a rod-like shaft of metal. In response, the concealed door receded into the wall.

The instant the door slid open, the sounds of the ritual swelled to an almost deafening fury. Smells of boiling fat, smouldering offal and singed hair struck the sharp noses of the Space Wolves. A slimy, insidious chill pawed at them, sinking through their ceramite armour with an intensity that had nothing to do with physical temperature. It was the icy clutch of sorcery, the frigid emanations of the warp itself, a malignant pulse that offended the soul. Leoric Half-ear winced in momentary pain, fingers tightening around his rune staff with such force that the ancient relic groaned beneath his touch.

‘They must... be stopped,’ the Rune Priest whispered as he tried to shake off the psychic emanations. He waved away the Grey Hunters who moved to offer him aid, pointing a commanding finger towards the Grand Arcade.

The Drakeslayers began to filter out onto the arcade. It was a broad, colonnaded hallway overlooking the vast expanse of a courtyard below. Tier upon tier of arcades rose upon three sides of the court while the far end was given over to a colossal sheet of crystal. Tinted with a crimson lustre, the crystal looked out upon the storm-swept skies. Strange lightning crackled and flashed beyond the panes, ribbons of electricity snaking out to crash against the iron rods projecting from the walls.

The Chancellery itself had been designed for the obscene rites of House Morvane. Broad enough to accommodate the immense throng of cultists, the centre of the court was dominated by a raised platform cut into a nine-sided wedge. From each angle of the nonagon a smouldering brazier of brass and bone rose, the impaled husk of a butchered sacrifice slowly roasting above the chemical flames. A macabre pattern of indentations cut into the floor allowed blood from the victims to flow through the hall, pouring down the gutter-like slits to form weird patterns and arcane symbols. In the middle of the platform, a ring of rough stones was arrayed, their pitted surfaces aglow with eldritch harmonies. It was here, among the stones, that the despicable priesthood of the cult performed their abominable rites and a grinning hierophant shrieked the inhuman invocation that dominated even the clamour of the chanting thousands who filled the courtyard.

Ulrik glared at the vile scene, feeling the abhorrent energies the cultists had evoked. His eyes locked upon a clutch of towering figures who held themselves away from the main throng – observing rather than partaking of the ritual unfolding around them. There was no mistaking the fluted vanes that fanned out from the sides of their helms or the golden accents that adorned their ancient armour. At their head stood a sorcerer carrying a staff.

They were the children of Prospero, the archenemy of Fenris. The Thousand Sons.

‘They’re here,’ Krom snarled, hate dripping from his fangs. ‘And here they die,’ he vowed. The Wolf Lord started to swing around to snap orders to the Drakeslayers.

Whatever deployment Krom intended for his warriors, whatever strategy he planned to seal off the courtyard and prevent the heretics from escaping, it all came crashing down in an instant. Far below, beneath the tier that flanked the arcade on which the Space Wolves stood, the steel doors sealing the entrance were ripped from their fastenings, blown inwards by powerful explosions. The huge portals careened across the hall, mutilating scores of cultists as they tore through the throng, crushing dozens more as they came smashing down. The grisly chant exploded into a cacophony of alarm and outrage; the eerie drums and flutes fell silent. Only the diabolical invocation persisted, somehow rising louder and more malignant than before.

Through the shattered doors huge warriors in bone-coloured armour rushed. The Dark Angels had arrived, pursuing the trail Sathar had left for them. The Space Marines, confronted by the obscene spectacle of the massed cultists, exhibited no mercy.

‘Purge the traitor’s flock!’ Interrogator-Chaplain Balthus’ voice boomed, joining his battle-brothers in righteous fury.

‘A bit ahead of my projections,’ Sathar grumbled, as he watched the Dark Angels cutting down robed cultists with flaring power swords and the explosive shells from boltguns. Still, the traitor had a dour tone when he turned to Ulrik. ‘They will need your Wolves if they are to survive.’

Before Ulrik could comment, he saw the cultists begin to react to the attacking Dark Angels. From beneath their robes, the heretics produced a motley array of weaponry. Stubbers growled while slender laspistols sent beams of energy searing across the hall. Crazed worshippers threw themselves at the hulking Space Marines, knives and hatchets clenched in their fists. A few cultists, amok with their obscene devotion, reached into the braziers and scooped the blazing chemicals onto themselves. These living torches, tortured screams ripping from their lungs, hurled themselves upon their attackers.

These weapons were no match for power armour, though. The Dark Angels pressed their attack, penetrating deeper into the hall. It was then that the first of them fell, stricken not by bullet or blade, but by the malignant energies leaping from the mind of a black-robed psyker. The malevolent conjurations sent the Dark Angel crashing to his knees, blood spilling from the vents in his helmet. An instant later, the hulking warrior fell unmoving to the ground.

‘Long Fangs along the gallery! Target the Thousand Sons!’ Krom bellowed. ‘Grey Hunters, strike down the psykers! Blood Claws and Wolf Guard, with me!’

As he roared out the last order, Krom swung up and over the balustrade. It was a simple matter for someone who had climbed the craggy slopes of Asaheim’s mountains to lower himself from one tier to the next. With their Wolf Lord leading the way, the Drakeslayers followed, eager to join the fray.

Ulrik caught hold of Sathar, pulling the traitor behind the cover afforded by the balustrade. Steel and stone were shredded as a concentration of bolter-fire peppered it. The Thousand Sons had noted the arrival of Krom’s warriors and were taking action to stem their descent. Several Blood Claws were sent hurtling to the floor below as shells slammed into them or ripped apart the columns they were climbing. In the next instant, the arcade trembled as the Long Fangs loosed a barrage of lascannon and missile fire at the Chaos Space Marines. Ulrik could feel the impact of their concentrated fire as a still greater tremor, yet when he looked out from behind the shattered balustrade, the Thousand Sons were unharmed.

‘The enemy is not without protection,’ Leoric snarled. ‘They use sorcery to shield themselves from our guns.’

‘Nor is that their only trick,’ Ulrik swore. Below he saw the Thousand Sons sorcerer – surely the one called Medeb – stalk away from his comrades. Sparks crackled all around him as the fire from the attacking Dark Angels smashed against his arcane shield. Medeb pointed his staff towards the Dark Angels standing between him and the platform. Instantly, the Space Marines were flung back, sent flying across the hall by some unseen force.

‘Our fight is down there,’ Sathar declared, his words surprising Ulrik. The traitor was already swinging out over the side of the balustrade, shells tearing into the column beside him.

‘Try to counter their sorcery,’ Ulrik told Leoric as he pursued Sathar.

The moment the Wolf Lord showed himself, a shell slammed into his shoulder, splitting the pauldron. He lost his grip, hanging by one hand from the balustrade. Instinctively, he swung his body, using the momentum of his near-fall to propel himself towards a column on the tier below. More fire from the Thousand Sons struck at him, pitting and splitting the column. Again, Ulrik was forced to rely on his finely honed reflexes, casting himself out and away from the exploding stonework. His leap brought him slamming against another column thirty feet below, his armoured fingers digging gouges in the stone as he tried to arrest his momentum. Still the Chaos Space Marines pursued him with a vindictive fusillade, pushing the old Wolf to another hurried leap and another violent drop. The low gravity of Stratovass Ultra lessened the impact, but couldn’t entirely compensate for his fall.

Finally Ulrik reached the floor. He’d been spared the attentions of the enemy when he dropped the last couple of tiers. He quickly saw the reason. The Thousand Sons were falling back towards the ring of stones, pursued by a pack of Blood Claws. It was an eerie contrast – the young, ferocious Space Wolves and the ancient, lifeless pawns of Prospero. The Thousand Sons moved with an uncanny gait, neither organic nor mechanical in nature. There was little of the Space Marine left within the warriors of the Thousand Sons, just a malignant essence and dust.

Ulrik swung around, looking for Medeb. He found the fiend stalking among the stones, using his psychic powers to send charging Drakeslayers and Dark Angels flying. The sorcerer was striving to protect the cult leaders and especially the hierophant who continued to give voice to the profane invocation.

That invocation was now exhibiting its effects. Strange energies coruscated from the middle of the platform, whipping around the standing stones. The malignant forces rippled harmlessly about the armoured forms of the Space Marines, but against the bare flesh of the cultists the results were far more pronounced. Some of the heretics exploded in bursts of blood and bone, while others wilted into puddles of quivering flesh. Yet more were transformed, their bodies twisting and contorting into grisly new shapes. Arms erupted into masses of tentacles, heads expanded into fanged maws dripping with venom. One cultist shrivelled into a reptilian dwarf while another bloated into a feathered giant. The mutated throng renewed its assault against the Space Marines, striking out at Dark Angel and Space Wolf alike.

Ulrik met the assault of a hideously mutated creature. The thing rushed at him, crackling and laughing, its body already crumbling away as rampant mutations boiled through its flesh. A brutish paw slashed out, narrowly missing the side of his helm. Ulrik swept his crozius across the beast’s breastbone, collapsing the loathsome spawn like a balloon. For an instant, the thing tried to resist the annihilating force of the crozius, then with a snarl it sank into a puddle of oozing corruption.

‘Nicely done,’ Sathar’s voice rang in Ulrik’s ears.

The Wolf Priest spun about to find the traitor beside him. His cloak was slashed and torn and his armour stained with blood – little of it his own. ‘I tried to keep up with you, but it is daunting to keep pace with a wolf on the prowl.’

Ulrik gestured at the carnage unfolding all around them. ‘I understood that your fellow traitors would be lending a hand. Perhaps they aren’t as loyal as you think them to be.’

‘They are in reserve,’ Sathar said. ‘And I fear we will soon need them.’ As he spoke, the traitor aimed his pistol at Medeb, but the shot was diverted from its target, shearing away from the sorcerer to blast apart one of the cult leaders.

‘We’ll have the sorcerer soon,’ Ulrik declared.

Krom and his Wolf Guard had joined the assault against the Thousand Sons. Already two of the ancient traitors had been destroyed, their armour distorting in a blast of warp energy. Balthus and several of his Dark Angels were forcing their way through a cordon of giant mutants to reach the periphery of the platform.

‘They’ll be too late,’ Sathar swore. ‘He knows he’s finished. Now he wants to take everyone with him.’

Ulrik saw what Sathar meant. Medeb turned upon the cult hierophant, cutting the cultist down with a sweep of his staff. The invocation, however, didn’t falter. It was immediately taken up by Medeb himself. Now the cadences became more strident, less nebulous. There was imperative behind the spell now – not an appeal but a command. The sorcerer was pouring his own spirit into the conjuration, ripping asunder the barriers between reality and the immaterium.

Pulses of hideous power now spilled from the platform, rushing down among the remaining cultists. None were left unchanged, their bodies distorting in the most atrocious discord. The mortally injured, the hideously maimed: wherever a spark of life yet lingered, the greedy daemons swept in to control and reshape it.

Orbs of gibbous light dissipated from the midst of the circle, expanding and swelling until they assumed monstrous shapes. Beaked fiends bounded across the hall, immolating victims in blasts of daemonic fire while fish-like horrors fluttered up into the arcades upon winged lobes.

The battle had turned, the rampant horde of mutants and daemons forcing the Space Marines back. The Dark Angels became surrounded, and packs of Drakeslayers were cut off from their battle-brothers. All through the hall, the conflict degenerated into isolated combats pitting superhuman endurance against inhuman malevolence. A towering nightmare, its feline body bristling with psychic fires and spectral flames, charged through a swathe of Wolf Guard to snap and claw at Krom. Only the Wolf Lord’s reflexes kept the beast from landing a killing blow. Across from the embattled Krom, Balthus was similarly beset by a serpent-like fiend with six heads, the flattened husk of a Dark Angel caught in its coils.

‘I fear it is time to deploy my assets,’ Sathar told Ulrik. ‘Try to remember who is the enemy.’ The traitor issued orders into his vox bead.

Sathar’s signal brought an almost immediate response. His associates, the resources he’d kept in reserve, had been lingering on the periphery of the Chancellery. Now they filed into the great hall, deploying along the lower arcades. Like the ones Krom and Grundar had fought in the governor’s rooms, they were from the Alpha Legion. Ulrik could scarcely believe he was in this hideous situation – fighting alongside the traitors he longed to tear apart.

Yet as disaster loomed, it was the Alpha Legion who brought relief to the reeling loyalists. From the lower arcades, their fire raked the mutant throng. The great crystal face of the window was shattered as missiles came shrieking into the courtyard to batter the largest of the monsters. Ulrik had a fleeting impression of a gunship circling through the storm.

With the sudden onslaught of the Alpha Legion throwing the cult into disarray, Ulrik saw his opportunity. Medeb had overplayed his hand and exposed the nature of his ritual. He was the key; without him the spell would lose focus. Perhaps the gate would even shut itself entirely.

‘I’m going for the sorcerer,’ Ulrik told Sathar, nodding at the traitor’s pistol. ‘Cover me... or at least don’t shoot me in the back.’

Ulrik knew if he hesitated, his chance might be lost. For the moment, the forces raging across the hall had left a breach. Any instant might see it close again. He had to act. Lunging forwards, the Wolf Priest hurtled up the platform. He felt the rampaging energies of the gateway rippling around him. Some of the Fenrisian talismans he bore were reduced to ash by the eldritch assault. Only by holding his crozius before him was he able to force a path through the maelstrom. Even then, he found his progress barred. The Thousand Sons, those still animated by the spirits bound within their armour, moved to intercept him.

Raising his plasma pistol, Ulrik sent a ball of energy searing through one of the Chaos Space Marines. The ancient armour exploded, burst apart by the fury of the escaping spirit. He scowled at his spent weapon. The plasma would need time to cool before it could be unleashed again. That left two opponents in his way. As one, the ghostly warriors lifted their boltguns and took aim at their foe. Ulrik glared back at them. He might reach one, but doing so would leave him open to the other.

Snarling a prayer to Morkai the death wolf, Ulrik sprang towards the enemy on his right. His crozius swept out, smashing across the Chaos Space Marine’s helm, splitting it open. The traitor staggered back, an uncanny light bleeding out from the crack in its helmet. The boltgun fell from its fingers and it pitched backwards, collapsing in a burst of warp energy.

Ulrik was surprised to find that the other had failed to fire upon him. The closeness of Sathar’s scent told him that the traitor must have intervened, striking down the Chaos Space Marine before it could attack.

‘Leave Medeb to me,’ Ulrik warned Sathar. The sorcerer had to be taken alive, had to disclose what he knew about the Great Wolf.

Medeb saw Ulrik coming. Until the last moment, the sorcerer maintained his invocation, keeping the daemonic gateway open as long as possible. It wasn’t until Ulrik brought the crozius swinging towards his head that Medeb ended his incantation. Bringing up his staff, he blocked the energised mace. Sparks erupted from the antagonistic energy fields, the unholy emanations of the warp-infused staff straining against the sacred properties of the crozius.

‘You find no victory here, cur of Russ,’ Medeb taunted. ‘All you can do is meddle.’

Ulrik glared into the beaked mask of his foe. ‘Magnus said the same thing before we burned your world.’

Twisting the crozius around, he brought his boot crashing into the sorcerer’s gut, pushing his foe back. When Medeb swept his staff around to parry, Ulrik ducked beneath his adversary’s strike, pushing the staff away, and struck the sorcerer’s left wrist. Ceramite, flesh and bone were obliterated in an instant, pulverised by the destructive field surrounding the crozius.

The stricken sorcerer stumbled back, staring in disbelief at his severed hand. As he started to raise his staff to retaliate, the Wolf Priest’s crozius crashed down upon it. Instead of merely breaking the staff, the impact caused it to explode, unleashing the malefic energies Medeb had drawn into it. The resultant blast obliterated the sorcerer’s head, leaving only a smoking stump behind.

Ulrik scowled down at the dead sorcerer. Drained by the ritual he’d performed, Medeb had been unable to protect himself from his own power. It was a fate the traitor deserved, but with his destruction the Space Wolves had lost the hope of picking up Logan Grimnar’s trail.

The discord of battle still raged through the courtyard, the Dark Angels and Space Wolves finishing the daemons and mutants conjured by House Morvane’s ritual. The Alpha Legion, Ulrik noted, had already withdrawn, stealing back into the shadows before they could be confronted by those in service to the Allfather.

Sathar had remained behind.

‘You have kept your word to me,’ he told Ulrik. He gestured to where Balthus was despatching a knot of cultists. ‘But you must break your word to him.’

‘Never,’ Ulrik snarled at the traitor. He reached for his plasma pistol. The weapon was ready to fire again, ready to cripple Sathar if he tried to flee.

‘I know you will,’ Sathar said. ‘It is why I took such a risk. You aren’t hunting me.’

Ulrik’s voice became a bestial growl. ‘You said Medeb had crossed the Great Wolf’s trail,’ he declared.

‘So he did, but I think you’ll agree killing him was necessary,’ Sathar said. ‘Besides, there is a better way to track down your Chapter Master. Trust that I can help you find him. Even a Space Marine must sometimes show a little faith.’

Ulrik was sickened by the debate that tore at him. What should he choose – his duty to his Chapter or his obligation to his allies? Sathar might be twisted, but the traitor hadn’t yet told a lie. If he said he had knowledge of Logan, then he probably did. It was his hold-card, the piece he had kept off the table until he could use it to buy his freedom.

‘What do you offer?’ Ulrik demanded.

Sathar smiled.

‘The prism,’ he said. ‘Have your Librarian stare into it, only this time have him think only of your Great Wolf. The vision he finds in the lens will guide you. Of course, the prism is a thing of the warp. If Balthus learns of it, he will demand its immediate destruction. He will consider anyone who uses it tainted and corrupt – heretics to be destroyed.’

The revulsion boiling inside him was unlike anything Ulrik had ever experienced. Duty and obligation fought within him, but he knew where his loyalty must fall. ‘Go,’ he snapped at Sathar. ‘If our paths ever cross again, I will show you no mercy.’

Sathar nodded and hurried across the platform towards the shattered window. ‘If our paths cross again, old wolf, it will be by my design.’

Ulrik saw the traitor leap through the broken window, his grisly cloak whipping about him as the polluted winds of Eyriax lashed at his body. Sathar’s lunge brought him to the wing of the Alpha Legion gunship. The Wolf Lord’s last sight of the Traitor Space Marine was of him being pulled into the aircraft as it peeled away and rose into the smoggy sky.

PART EIGHT

WRATH OF THE WOLF

C. L. WERNER

As he accompanied Interrogator-Chaplain Balthus up into the old mausoleum above the crematorium, Ulrik considered the strange events that had brought him to this place. Every creak and groan that rattled through the elevator gnawed at him, worrying at his conscience, reminding him that it was the traitor Sathar who hid from the light of the Emperor, not Balthus. Yet circumstances had conspired to make the Wolf Priest honour his compact with the Traitor Space Marine over his alliance with the Dark Angels.

The smell of blood and battle was still in his nose. It hadn’t been so long ago that he’d stood in the halls of the corrupt House Morvane, fighting alongside Sathar against the cultists and their masters from the Thousand Sons. The sorcerer Medeb had been prevented from opening a doorway between Stratovass Ultra and the Eye of Terror only through the agency of Sathar and the Alpha Legion. It wasn’t recognition of that service which had moved Ulrik to forsake his agreement with Balthus and allow the traitor to escape. It had been the clue Sathar had provided the Space Wolves... a clue that might lead them to Logan Grimnar and his vanished companions.

The moment the elevator reached the traitor’s abandoned refuge, Balthus was prowling around the plinths, studying the niches in the walls. The Dark Angels had removed everything once the Space Wolves had told them about Sathar’s lair. Even so, Balthus was paranoid that they had missed something. At least, that was his excuse for bringing Ulrik back with him to the mausoleum. Now that they were alone, the Dark Angel felt at liberty to voice the suspicions that had been growing in his mind.

‘The agreement was that we should help one another in our hunts. The sons of Caliban have kept their side of the arrangement. Can the same be said of the sons of Fenris?’ Balthus asked.

The Interrogator-Chaplain stalked through Sathar’s stronghold like a predator on the prowl, studying every inch as he went. At the moment, the Dark Angel seemed more like a Space Wolf than a product of the Lion’s gene-seed. The resemblance impressed upon Ulrik that for all their differences, there were many points of kinship between the two Chapters. They fought to protect the same Imperium and their loyalty was to the same Emperor. They should be united in purpose. Instead, as had happened so often in the many millennia since the Heresy, they were at odds.

‘Be careful, Interrogator,’ Ulrik advised. ‘Calling the honour of the Space Wolves into question is a reckless thing. Such accusations are typically answered by blade and claw. You are fortunate that I’ve been around long enough to make allowances for those who speak before they think.’

Balthus stood beside one of the plinths. It was the same one upon which the prism had stood. The Dark Angels had seized the dataslates, star charts and other paraphernalia that Sathar had left behind. After permitting the traitor to escape, Ulrik had felt duty-bound to give the Dark Angels every possible clue that might put them back on the traitor’s trail.

Every clue, except one. The prism had been removed before the Dark Angels were shown Sathar’s lair. Even now, it was hidden inside the Stormwolf, the Rolling Thunder.

‘The Angels have ever been a temperamental lot,’ Balthus declared. ‘Some do indeed speak without thinking. It is left to Wolves to act without thinking.’ He spun around, facing Ulrik, the optics of his helm glowing like embers. ‘Sathar was here! So close I could reach out and touch him! You caught his scent, found his lair! We were so close...’

‘Thwarting the ritual the Thousand Sons were orchestrating was more important,’ Ulrik said. ‘Every soul on this world was imperilled. Had we delayed even a moment, there is no saying how dire the consequences would have been. You lost six of your battle-brothers in the fight against House Morvane. How many more would have been slain if we’d ignored the cult and pursued Sathar instead?’

‘Only because he saw no profit for himself in their triumph!’ Balthus scoffed. ‘I tell you, there is no villainy Sathar would not commit. Six battle-brothers, a hundred battle-brothers, they would be a small sacrifice to bring this monster to justice!’ The Dark Angel walked across the chamber towards the entrance where Ulrik stood. ‘Forgive any insult my anxiety draws from my tongue. You cannot understand the frustration, the disappointment this has brought upon me. There is nothing more important to me than putting an end to Sathar’s infamies. Here, the hunt has come closer than ever. I am not too proud to accept that we came so close because of our comrades from Fenris.’

Ulrik clapped his hand on Balthus’ shoulder. ‘I know what you would ask of me, but it is impossible. We are sworn to our own hunt. We have vowed to seek out the Great Wolf and learn what has befallen him. There is nothing that can make us turn away from our purpose.’

The Dark Angel brushed Ulrik’s hand away. ‘Then you have found some new clue to your Chapter Master’s fate. I suspected as much. I will not ask how you came by such information or where.’ He turned around and pointed at the plinth. ‘I will not ask you why Sathar only took with him the object that made that imprint in the dust and left everything else behind for us to recover. No, I won’t ask such things of you.’

Balthus marched past Ulrik. ‘Just as you will not be turned from your hunt, neither will I stray from my own. I will find Sathar. When I do, I will ask him these questions. Then we of Caliban will better understand the ways of Fenris.’

Ulrik watched the Interrogator-Chaplain as he stalked away into the battle-scarred halls of the crematorium. He knew Balthus would be as good as his word.

The corridors of the crematorium were silent now. Save for some enforcers conducting an investigation into the subversion of the facility’s staff, the place was empty of activity. It would be some time before the damage inflicted on the factory could be repaired and the disturbed machine-spirits appeased by the tech-priests. The Ecclesiarchy had already dispatched some of its less influential clergy to begin recruiting a new cadre of laymen to fill the positions vacated by Sathar’s minions.

Emerging from the crematorium, Ulrik made his way back to the Rolling Thunder. The gunship had landed in the centre of the plaza, its formidable grey bulk filling the space. Crowds of nervous hivers were gawking at the ship and the fabled Adeptus Astartes who were making their last inspections before their departure. As Ulrik crossed the square, Krom Dragongaze approached and fell into step beside the Wolf Priest.

‘I’ve stashed that damned curse-stone the traitor gave us on the gunship,’ Krom reported. ‘It’ll take a sharper eye than Balthus’ to find it.’

‘Let’s not put that to the test,’ Ulrik said. ‘He’s just suspicious enough to try.’

‘Once it’s on the Canis Pax and Leoric Half-ear sniffs out what we need from it, I’m of a mind to toss it out an airlock,’ Krom said. ‘The sooner we’re done with the thing the better.’

Ulrik could appreciate the Wolf Lord’s sentiment. The prism was a thing of the warp, thus pernicious and deadly. Before the Rune Priest exposed his mind to the visions locked inside the crystal, Ulrik wanted to sanctify Leoric with prayer and ceremony, to invoke the Allfather’s blessing and safeguard him against the horrors that awaited him.

‘Let us move swiftly,’ Ulrik advised. ‘Leave this planet and set Leoric to his ordeal. The sooner we can find Logan Grimnar’s trail, the sooner we can reclaim our honour.’

It had taken Leoric Half-ear considerable effort to unlock the secret of the prism. The process had been far more difficult than Sathar had implied, and Leoric had discovered the prism to be a treacherous and conniving thing. It put visions and distractions in his mind, continually trying to tempt him away from his purpose. Every fleeting glimpse he was afforded would be smothered beneath a flood of noise and distortion. Whispers scratched at his brain, voices clawed at his soul, intelligences malignant and inhuman tried to reach into him from the warp-tainted glass. A less disciplined will than that of a Space Marine would have collapsed under the strain – driven to madness or worse. But Leoric was able to prevail against the deceits of the prism and at length unlock the knowledge the Space Wolves needed.

In the prism, Leoric saw the planet to which Logan Grimnar’s strike cruiser, the Eternity Fang, had gone after it left Dactyla. He saw the ship apparently destroyed, annihilated by some cosmic force, but he also saw that the Great Wolf and his companions hadn’t shared their ship’s fate. They’d made planetfall. What became of their brothers after that, Leoric couldn’t say. Even his stamina had reached a point near collapse. It was enough for their purposes that the Space Wolves had managed to identify the planet.

Dargur was a world recorded in the sagas of the Fang. The blighted, forsaken planet had played a role in the first Great Hunt. A wasted sphere orbiting a crimson dwarf just within the Eye of Terror, it had been the place of battle and horror for millennia. The Great Wolf Bjorn had led his warriors there in search of their primarch, finding instead only daemons and the remnants of a debased xenos civilization.

Now it was to this desolate world that Logan Grimnar had led his own Great Company. Ulrik wondered if his old friend had discovered new evidence that Russ had visited Dargur or if he had been led here by the same broken trail Bjorn had followed so long ago. That the Great Wolf had failed to return to Fenris, or at least send word back to his Chapter, was proof enough that some distress had befallen the Champions of Fenris.

Penetrating the Eye of Terror was formidable enough a task. Even the most powerful navigators didn’t risk straying too close to this cosmic blight. It was a place where the energies of the warp bled out into physical space, distorting the laws of reality and providing sustenance for all manner of daemonic horrors. Complicating the ordeal still further were the jumbles of asteroids littering the system, the shattered remnants of Dargur’s sister worlds. Around Dargur itself there was a ring of semi-daemonic satellites, perverse constructs of a vanquished xenos’ science.

Ulrik was impressed by the skill Rogan Bearsbane exhibited as he steered a path through the satellites. Rogan displayed an uncanny facility for detecting which of the defence drones were inactive and which yet possessed a flicker of malignance within their corroded frames. Only twice was the ship hit during its descent to Dargur’s surface. The damage wasn’t sufficient to cripple the ship, though Rogan was leery of tempting the fates again until full repairs were made. Some of the other Stormwolf gunships were battered far worse before they reached the surface.

Making planetfall on Dargur was an accomplishment devoid of victory. Ulrik could smell the uneasiness that gripped his warriors as he watched them ready themselves to disembark. They couldn’t forget that this was the world Bjorn had visited in search of Leman Russ. They couldn’t forget that his hunt for the primarch had failed. Would they too find only defeat here?

‘All is in the hands of the Allfather,’ Ulrik told his warriors as he moved among them. ‘If you prove yourself worthy of triumph, then he will grant it to you.’ He reached out and took a wolf-tail talisman a Blood Claw held towards him, bestowing his blessing upon the totem before returning it.

Near the hatchway, Ulrik found Leoric waiting for him. The Rune Priest had driven wolf-bone talismans into his forehead, the runes etched into each marked with his own blood.

‘The dreams are quiet,’ Leoric told Ulrik when he felt the Wolf Priest’s eyes on him. ‘The spirits of Fenris have subdued the cries of Chaos.’

‘For how long?’ Ulrik wondered, unconsciously brushing his fingers across the heft of his crozius.

Leoric closed his eyes and bowed his head. ‘Long enough to lead us where we need to go,’ he vowed. Blood trickled down his face and over his lips. Dragging one finger across his mouth, he daubed the image of claws across his cheeks. It was an almost forgotten custom, sealing his promise in blood.

Ulrik slammed his hand against the stud that controlled the Rolling Thunder’s hatch. The rumble of groaning plasteel and servo-motors filled the hold as the doors opened. The lower ramp shuddered outwards, folding upon itself as it slammed down on the surface of Dargur.

Ulrik recalled vividly the data recorded about Dargur in the sagas. He remembered, too, listening to Bjorn describe the place when the Dreadnought was roused from his rest. The descriptions hardly compared to what he saw now. The caprices of the Eye of Terror had wrought awful changes upon the cursed world. The sky was a purple bruise blotched by ugly stains of black and ochre, smudges too nebulous to rate being called clouds. The earth was a waste of black dirt, parched and barren. It lay around the gunship in an undulating course of hills and gullies. Beyond, in the distance, scabrous formations reared up into the sky, monstrous growths of rock that might have been the skeletal echo of mighty mountains. The sun, sullen and spiteful as it loosed its crimson glow upon the planet, reminded Ulrik of a kraken’s eye – watchful and fearsome.

The other gunships were landing nearby. Scarcely had the Wolfhowl settled upon the desolate ground than the ramp came slamming down and Krom Dragongaze launched himself forwards in a great leap that carried him several feet from the hatchway. He crashed down in the grimy black dirt, a cloud of dust rising all around him.

Krom rose from his crouch, Wyrmfang clenched tight in his right hand while a fistful of dirt trickled through the fingers of his left.

‘Daemons of Dargur!’ he bellowed. ‘Cower in your lairs! Hide in your holes! The Space Wolves have returned and I, Krom Dragongaze, have brought them!’

The defiant howls of their lord brought Krom’s Wolf Guard charging down the ramp. Ulrik and Leoric adopted a more measured pace. The horrors of Dargur, they were sure, would still be waiting for them.

As he reached the ground, Leoric fell to his knees. Carefully, the Rune Priest reached into a wolfskin bag hanging at his side. Muttering an invocation to the spirits of Fenris, he cast a handful of tiny bones onto the ground, then leaned over them, studying them with a cautious eye before probing them with one armoured finger, turning them from side to side, examining each angle as it was exposed.

Other Space Wolves came over to observe Leoric consulting the bones. Wherever they fought, however far they travelled, the traditions of Fenris bound them, gave them the strength to defy any adversity. When Ulrik looked into the exposed faces of Blood Claws and Wolf Scouts, he saw the uneasiness of tribal superstition there, but he also saw a gleam of hope.

‘Well, do the spirits tell you anything?’ Krom asked as he stood above the Rune Priest.

Leoric looked up, snatching the bones from the ground in one fist. He pointed towards the horizon. ‘The howl of Fenris is strongest in that direction,’ he said. Each word seemed to fight for purchase on his tongue and his face was marred by the strain his divinations had inflicted.

Krom nodded. He brought Wyrmfang up and pointed the blade to the west. ‘Lopt and the scouts to the fore!’ he commanded. ‘Keep your noses keen for the scent of our brothers! Keep your eyes sharp for the claws of our enemies!’

Forming up around their Wolf Lord, the Drakeslayers set out across the desolate wastes of Dargur. Ulrik gathered his strike force and followed Krom towards whatever doom lay before them.

‘Troll-sucking vermin!’ Krom bellowed as his axe swept through the ropey neck of a shrieking slytherfang. The twelve-foot reptile slopped away from Wyrmfang, splashing across the rocks in writhing sections. All around him, the Space Wolves were beset by a swarm of the mutated creatures, a slithering horde that had erupted from the ground in a seething mass of fangs and coils.

Ulrik slammed his foot down on the neck of one reptile, breaking its spine and pushing organs out of its mouth. A second creature perished as the field of his crozius blackened its scales and vaporised its blood. The thing flopped about for a moment in a mindless display of agony.

Beasts though they were, the attack was staged like a carefully planned ambush. Not until the Space Wolves were in the very midst of the swarm did they crawl out from between the broken rocks. They’d waited until they could bring their full strength against the Fenrisians, displaying a patience beyond simple vermin. That fact troubled Ulrik immensely. Throughout their trek across the wastes of Dargur, from the hills of dirt to the scummy swamps of amber slime and now these flatlands of stone slabs, creatures of every description had harassed and tormented them. Not with the stubborn tenacity of beasts, but with the deliberate persistence of a higher intelligence.

It was an impression that Ulrik couldn’t shake as he watched the swarm of reptiles crawl from their burrows and hurl themselves at the armoured Space Wolves. The beasts attacked without fear or hesitation, dying by the droves on the blades and claws of the Fenrisians.

Ulrik smashed another of the reptiles with his maul. The vermin didn’t represent a real threat to the Space Wolves, at least not one that could drag them down in battle. It was the constant harassment that was taking its toll, wearing away at the discipline of the Space Wolves, provoking more and more the savage instincts that were the legacy of the Canis Helix. With each attack they became that little bit more reckless and feral in their reactions. Bit by bit, the cohesion that made them a company of warriors was being eroded.

The last of the slytherfangs perished upon Krom’s axe. The Wolf Lord glared at the dying creature, then flung its carcass from him and threw his head back in a victorious howl. The cry caught in his throat as he spotted something in the sky overhead.

‘Beware, brothers!’ Krom shouted. ‘The enemy falls upon us from above!’ Ripping his bolt pistol from its holster, he sent a burst of fire streaming upwards.

From the sky, a great flock of ebon-winged horrors swooped downwards. Heedless of the bolter fire that rose to greet them, the monsters descended, sickening shrieks rising from their misshapen beaks and fanged jaws. Fiery ichor dripped from their torn flesh, sizzling as it struck the rocks below. Like the mutant lizards, the winged fiends threw themselves at the Space Wolves with an amok ferocity, but unlike the reptiles there was a malicious determination burning in their eyes. More than mere beasts, the foes the Drakeslayers now faced were entities of the warp – daemons.

One of the furies fell upon a Blood Claw, raking the warrior’s exposed face with its claws, tearing away great ribbons of flesh. Another sank its talons in the shoulder of a Grey Hunter, seeking to drag the armoured Space Wolf with it as it rose back into the sky. Both daemons soon discovered the folly of their efforts. The Blood Claw, ignoring his ghastly wounds, caught the flying foe with his chainaxe, ripping it apart in a welter of gore. The Grey Hunter, lifted a few feet into the air, fired a burst from his boltgun that exploded the fury’s head and sent fragments of its skull clattering across the rocks.

Everywhere, the Space Wolves were wreaking havoc upon the daemons, yet still more of the horrors came. Ulrik swept his crozius into the faces of shrieking furies, the sanctified field of energy shattering their obscene essence and exploding them in bursts of sizzling ichor. Leoric, raising his rune staff, drew upon the ancient powers of Fenris, calling lightning from the diseased sky to immolate clutches of winged daemons. Krom, roaring his defiance, brought axe and bolt pistol against the flock of enemies that dived down upon him, littering the rocky shelf with dismembered fragments that slowly steamed away into crumbling bits of cinder.

Amidst the carnage, a sudden impulse gripped Ulrik, drawing his attention to one of the furies. The daemon soared about the periphery of the fray, but unlike its fellows, the fiend refused to commit itself to the battle. A primal instinct of warning flared through Ulrik’s mind, crying out to him that the circling fury represented a threat greater than the entire flock. Ignoring the daemons swarming around him, the Wolf Priest aimed his plasma pistol at the soaring creature and sent a ball of fire blazing towards it.

Either by chance or infernal design, one of the other daemons dropped down between Ulrik’s shot and his intended target. The stricken fury exploded in a dazzling coruscation of fire and light, the charred remnants of its wings flittering to the ground like falling leaves. Ulrik’s target dropped down, streaking for the earth some distance from the battle. Ulrik saw it shift and change as it fell, transforming into one of the slytherfangs before hitting the ground and slinking away into a rocky crevice.

Ulrik knew that this creature was the guiding intelligence behind all the harassing attacks the Drakeslayers had endured. He had seen for himself the formless doppelgangrels of Asaheim, shape-shifting haunters of the forests. This, however, was something even more dangerous, a malignant entity that could both change its form and command lesser creatures to obey its commands. His thoughts turned back to the daemonic Changeling, the monster that had mocked them within the Great Hall itself.

Had the fiend followed them? Had the Changeling been dogging their trail from the very beginning? Ulrik wasn’t certain if that possibility was less troubling than the other: that the Changeling had been waiting for them on Dargur all this time.

The Drakeslayers were exterminating the last of the furies, Long Fangs burning them out of the sky with heavy flamers and frag missiles. The rocky shelf was stained with their odious residue, a mephitic vapour rising from the greasy stains left by their dissolution. Ulrik took a step towards the hole into which he’d seen the shape-shifter disappear. He shook his head in dismay. It was doubtful the thing had lingered, even more doubtful that it had maintained the same form. He might search for days without finding the creature’s trail. And if it truly was the Changeling, then any delay at this point would put the entire hunt in jeopardy.

‘Lord Ulrik!’

The Wolf Priest turned as he heard himself being called. He could see a pack of Blood Claws gathered around the prostrate form of a comrade, the mangled carcasses of several furies scattered around him. There was a hideous rent in the fallen Space Wolf’s chest plate, strips of meat caught in the torn ceramite. Even at a distance, Ulrik could smell the stink of death rising from the stricken Blood Claw. Already the warrior was standing before the Gates of Morkai. There was nothing that could be done for him, but by harvesting his progenoid glands, Ulrik could ensure the warrior’s legacy lived on.

Sombrely, Ulrik removed the Fang of Morkai from his belt and began to recite the prayers that would commend the fallen warrior’s spirit to the Allfather. He wondered, before the hunt was over, how many more times he would be called upon to harvest the legacy of the dead.

Hours after the attack by the furies, the Drakeslayers saw an end to the rocky flatland. The cracked shelves of stone gave way to an eerie vista – a vast forest of crystalline trees. The crimson light of Dargur’s sun sent weird reflections shimmering from the angular facets of the translucent trunks and branches, creating the mirage of a rolling sea. As soon as the forest came into view, Lopt and his scouts set out ahead of the main body, intent upon ferreting out any unseen hazards that might be lurking ahead.

They didn’t have long to discover the threat the forest posed. As Lopt drew near, the crystalline trees hurled slivers of themselves at him. The shards sheared through the rocky shelf and several stabbed their way into the scout’s armour before he could retreat back out of their range. Lopt’s comrades took hold of the old veteran, helping him reach the rest of the Drakeslayers. The ferocity with which Lopt was cursing his misfortune told Ulrik the scout was in no danger. Morkai wouldn’t allow anyone with that much anger into his halls.

Briefly, the Space Wolves considered going around the forest. Leoric consulted his runes again, but his divinations directed them through the obstacle, not around it.

Krom pulled at his beard a moment, peering into the shimmering forest. Even his vaunted stare could discern no hidden secret amidst the strange trees. ‘We’ve enough weaponry to level a few miles, but this stuff might stretch on for hundreds before we see the other side. I find myself wishing we had a psyber-raven. A view from above would be worth a gallon of mead right now.’

Ulrik studied the forest ahead of them. Everything was still, exhibiting an eerie silence. A thought occurred to him. Taking a rock from the ground, he tossed it into the trees. As it clattered against one of the crystalline stalks, it gave off a loud crack. Instantly the trees loosed a salvo of slivers. A second stone, tossed with more care, landed on the sandy soil without sound. This time there was no barrage from the trees.

Behind the lupine Helm of Russ, Ulrik smiled.

‘The trees lack eyes to see, but in some fashion they are able to hear.’ He nodded towards Lopt, who was being attended by the other scouts. ‘Lopt must have made a sound that drew their notice and so they fired upon him.’

Krom ground his fangs together.

‘Lopt is the best hunter I have,’ he said, his voice lowered so his words of praise wouldn’t reach the other Drakeslayers. ‘He can sneak into a thunderwolf’s den and steal her cubs with the mother sleeping right beside them. If he made too much noise to slip past these trees, then none of us will be equal to the task.’ The Wolf Lord paused, a toothy grin appearing on his face. ‘Maybe the answer isn’t less noise, but more.’

Without further explanation, Krom stalked towards the forest, angrily waving back his Wolf Guard when the warriors would follow him. Step by step, he approached the trees, eyes locked upon the tracks left by Lopt, judging when he’d be close to where the trees had reacted to the scout. When he reached the spot, the Wolf Lord stopped. Facing the crystal growths, Krom threw back his head and howled.

The howl Krom gave voice to didn’t sound from his own throat, or at least so it seemed to the Drakeslayers watching him anxiously from the rocks. The noise appeared to reverberate out in the midst of the forest, a trick of ventriloquism the Wolf Lord had employed to amuse his entourage many times before in the halls of the Fang. Now the trick deceived more than the ears of Space Wolves. The trees, reacting to the howl, cast splinters not towards Krom, but at the distant spot from which the howl seemed to issue.

Still throwing his howl, Krom began to walk towards the trees. He crossed the line where Lopt had aroused the forest. Steadily Krom pressed onward, still howling, still meeting no resistance to his own advance. When he’d pressed several feet past the point where Lopt was attacked, he stopped howling. Turning around, he sprinted back towards the rocks. Crystal splinters flew at him, dogging him until he was out of range.

‘There’s the riddle solved!’ Krom laughed, walking proudly before his warriors. ‘The trees can be tricked! Give them a choice of targets and they will strike at the loudest!’

‘I should think the Drakeslayers aren’t eager to lose their Wolf Lord,’ Ulrik told Krom. ‘Unless you think there’s someone louder than you.’

Krom chuckled at the Wolf Priest’s humour. ‘No, old one, we’ll not howl our way across. We’ll blast our way across.’ He pressed his hand against the grenade dispenser on his belt. ‘We toss a grenade out among the trees to either side of our path and while they’re busy shooting at the noise, we slip through.’ He shrugged as he conceded one point against his plan. ‘Might be slow going, but at least we can be sure of seeing the other side.’

As the Wolf Lord had feared, progress through the forest was a slow, tedious affair. But it was progress. Each set of grenades the vanguard threw kept the trees occupied long enough for the column to gain twenty or thirty yards at a run. Speed rather than caution dictated the pace during the brief spurts between grenades. Ulrik was impressed by the cohesion with which the warriors executed the arduous operation. The Space Wolves froze in place with an almost mechanistic precision whenever things were quiet. Beregelt had already taken the precaution of muzzling Vangandyr and the other wolves.

After several hours of the gruelling advance, one of the vanguard nudged Ulrik and nodded at the trees ahead. The crystals here had grown thinner, exhibiting a less concentrated pattern of growth. Beyond them could be seen rolling dunes of emerald sand. Krom’s ploy had worked – they were through the forest.

Ulrik started to turn, intending to signal to the rest of the company that they were almost out of the forest. As he did so, however, a dark shadow fell across him. The Wolf Priest bit down on the instinct to cry out as he felt powerful talons snatch at him and drag him up into the sky with a sickening lurch.

Craning his head back, Ulrik could see that his attacker was a giant rodent-mosquito creature. There was a monstrous impression of intelligence in its gem-like eyes, a hint of malignant mockery as it stared back at him. He was caught in the grip of a daemon.

The Wolf Priest drew his plasma pistol as the daemon-fly carried him out over the forest. A crackle of sadistic mirth oozed from the creature’s proboscis. The pincers gripping Ulrik abruptly loosened their hold, sending him crashing downwards. As he fell into the midst of the hostile forest, he fired a shot at his foe. The ball of plasma seared upwards, but already the unnatural substance of the daemon was morphing into a new shape, shrinking and twisting into a moth-like being that darted from the path of his shot. The Changeling circled once, as though to assure itself of its victim’s distress, then sped away towards the horizon.

Crashing down through the mineral branches of the trees, the crystalline growths themselves broke the impetus of Ulrik’s fall. On their own, the spiny shards were incapable of piercing ceramite plate. It was the murderous velocity with which they were impelled towards prey by the trees that made them a threat. The violence of his descent sent a loud clamour ringing out through the forest. From every direction, trees hurled slivers at the sound.

Ulrik was shielded from the worst of their attentions. The trees he’d struck in his fall had been denuded of spines on those facets that faced him. Instead of posing a direct menace, the disarmed trees became his bastion, absorbing the impacts of the slivers flung at him from deeper in the forest. Even so, many slivers crashed against his armour and three pierced through to dig into his flesh, stabbing him in calf, thigh and forearm. Worse, the ground all around him was strewn with brittle fragments that crumbled at the slightest weight, the crackling sound drawing further salvoes from the forest.

The Changeling had flown him far from his comrades, well into the expanse of crystalline spires. Even if they picked up his trail, Ulrik doubted that there were enough grenades in the whole company to reach him and make it back out. He prayed Krom would have sense enough not to risk it. Finding Logan Grimnar was more important than rescuing a foolish old wolf who’d let himself be caught by a daemon’s wiles.

Ulrik noticed a sound in the distance. It was the slicing, rending discharge of spines from some of the trees. At intervals, the noise was repeated. He strained his ears, trying to catch the explosive clamour of grenades, but it eluded him. Instead, after a time, he began to hear a faint howl. It was a voice he recognised – that of Krom Dragongaze. Ulrik had known the Space Wolves would never leave him. At the same time, Krom wasn’t willing to put the entire hunt at risk and send the whole company back into the forest. It was typical of his pride and bravado that he’d taken it upon himself to seek his missing mentor.

The howls drew closer. Finally Ulrik could see Krom picking his way through the trees. A few spines were caught in his armour and blood dripped from a wound in his side, but the Wolf Lord still presented a miraculous sight. He scowled when he saw the litter of crystal lying all around Ulrik. With one hand he motioned for the Wolf Priest to keep still. Throwing another howl out amongst the trees, Krom brought one boot stamping down on the fallen shards. The crackle of crushed crystal wasn’t enough to distract the trees from his feral cry. Krom waved Ulrik forwards.

Tense minutes followed as the two Space Wolves started back along the trail Krom had blazed. Again and again, the crystalline trees sent their slivers knifing towards them. During a pause, Ulrik shared a worried look with Krom. They still had far to go, yet the violence of the trees was becoming more pronounced. It seemed like the things were adapting to Krom’s trick and turning their attentions to the real prey. A shake of the Wolf Lord’s head told Ulrik that his friend had reached the same conclusion. As things stood, they’d be ripped to pieces before they made it out.

Abruptly, the trees around them shivered with agitation. They began to loose their shards at some distant point. It was inexplicable, for Krom hadn’t thrown one of his howls in that direction. The two Space Wolves knew better than to question their good fortune, however. Whatever had distracted the trees, they would exploit it. Swiftly they dashed ahead, rushing through the grisly trees. Despite their reckless haste, the mineral growths continued to ignore them, firing instead on some target in the distance.

It seemed a boon from Morkai himself that the trees remained indifferent to the Space Wolves until they were clear of the forest. Among the emerald dunes beyond, Ulrik could see their comrades waiting for them. The warriors raised their arms in a silent cheer when they saw the two heroes emerge from the forest. Even with such cause for celebration, they had sense enough not to risk provoking the trees.

Turning his head, Ulrik considered the crystal trees and the peculiar agitation that had come upon them. As he looked out over the strange forest, a faint sound reached his ears. Bitterly, he dismissed it as a trick of the wind – for it seemed to Ulrik that he’d heard the howling of a wolf somewhere in the distance.

The emerald dunes fell away behind the Drakeslayers, giving way to a somehow even more desolate landscape of crumbling mesas and jagged ravines. So bleak were the surroundings that Leoric felt a sense of foreboding and paused the march so that he might consult the bones again. Once more they followed his divinations, their trail leading them through a haunted land of rock hoodoos and burbling geysers.

The march came to an abrupt halt when the land fell away into a wide canyon, stretching away as far as even the sharp eyes of Krom could follow. Lopt walked to the edge of the fissure and tossed a stone down. The rattle and clatter of the falling rock ended in a steaming sizzle. The Space Wolves peered down to watch as the rock dissolved in a mire of corrosive sludge that carpeted the bottom of the canyon.

‘Morkai take this cursed planet,’ Krom growled. ‘It seems there’s no choice but to go around this damned pit.’

Ulrik shared the disappointment and disgust of his battle-brothers. They’d come through many ordeals to reach this place, travelled far from the halls of the Fang in search of the Great Wolf. Now, when every warrior began to sense the end of their hunt, Dargur had thrown yet another obstacle in their path.

‘There’s a bridge across,’ Lopt offered. The scout indicated a narrow span some thirty yards below the rim that stretched across the middle of the canyon. It was almost ethereal in its slenderness, barely three feet across and scarcely half as thick. The winds in the canyon appeared to have eroded it down to this state and it looked like one more good gale would send the entire span crumbling into the acidic sludge below.

Yet as he studied the bridge, Ulrik was struck not by its fragile appearance but by the material from which it was made. Doubting his eyes, he turned to Leoric.

‘Isn’t that the same crystal Sathar’s prism was made from?’

Leoric was discomfited by the mention of the prism, but the Rune Priest closed his eyes and stretched out his hand. Bone fetishes and tiny runestones dangled from his fingers on leather straps, each talisman shivering in a spectral breeze as Leoric muttered an incantation. After a moment the charms grew still once more and he opened his eyes.

‘You are right,’ he told Ulrik. ‘There is a resonance between that bridge and the prism. The harmony is too distinct to be accidental. The crystal was cut from this span.’

Ulrik turned away, staring out across the expanse of the canyon. The Space Wolves would lose too much time trying to get around the obstacle. The bridge represented the only alternative, but it looked so feeble that even he was hesitant to put it to the test.

The Wolf Priest thought again of Sathar and how the traitor had insisted that he and his Alpha Legion allies remained loyal, albeit in their own deviant fashion. Something Sathar had said came back to him, an admonition that even a Space Marine needed to have faith. Advice? A challenge? Or was it the traitor’s way of testing Ulrik’s trust? Had Sathar sent them this far only to bait them into this trap? Just how far was the traitor prepared to go?

‘I’m going down,’ Ulrik told Krom.

‘It’ll never hold,’ Krom swore. ‘If you insist on testing the thing, let one of us do it. The Drakeslayers will mourn a lost comrade, but all the Fang will mourn Ulrik the Slayer.’

‘I have made my choice,’ Ulrik said. ‘Sathar knew about this place. I am certain of it. He brought us here as a test of our faith.’

Krom was unconvinced. ‘At least let us fashion a rope to haul you back if you’re wrong.’

Ulrik lowered himself over the edge of the gorge, sinking his claws into the rock.

‘To doubt is to question your own resolve,’ he said. ‘Faith is to be without question. The bridge will hold, because I believe it will hold.’

Lining the edge of the canyon, the Space Wolves watched as Ulrik picked his way down the side. He could smell the agitation in their scent, the concern that wracked them. There wasn’t one who wouldn’t have offered himself in the Wolf Priest’s place, and there wasn’t one who lacked the respect to accept his decision to act on his own. They could only watch as he slowly descended to the crystal bridge.

When Ulrik’s boots came to rest upon the narrow span, he felt a thrill course through his body. There was an almost electric shock, a numbing surge that pulsed through his armour. He could feel a dull hum rushing up his feet. The old wolf smiled to himself. This was how the span maintained its cohesion, not through the solidity of its construction but from the magnetic flow of energy that ran through it.

‘It is stronger than it looks, brothers,’ Ulrik called up to his comrades. He actuated the mag-clamps built into his boots, finding they gripped the bridge as readily as they would the hull of a starship. ‘The clamps in your boots will hold you fast to the surface. Let me cross first, then follow one at a time.’

The excited barks and boasts of his comrades rang down from above. Ulrik couldn’t quite embrace the acclaim. The Space Wolves were celebrating his courage when it was his belief they should be praising. His faith in a traitor’s words, his trust in his own instincts to tell deceit from truth. To venture out onto the span was an act of courage, but not the kind many of his brothers would understand.

The canyon was hours behind them when the Space Wolves noticed the eerie change that had come upon the sky. Upon the purple horizon there now shone a jaundiced glow, a leprous blemish that cast its eerie rays into the atmosphere. Leoric closed his eyes and gripped his rune staff tight. The icy winds of Asaheim flowed about him as the Rune Priest drew upon the magic of his familiar spirits.

‘There,’ Leoric hissed through clenched fangs. ‘Within that glow our hunt will end.’

‘In victory or disgrace?’ Krom asked.

Ulrik interposed himself between Wolf Lord and Rune Priest.

‘Some questions are best left unasked. If we feed Morkai this day, will knowing it make us retreat from our purpose?’

Krom shook his head at the admonition. ‘You suggest I am either a fool or a coward,’ he grumbled. ‘Only Ulrik would be so bold.’

‘Of all your many faults, my friend,’ Ulrik said, ‘foolishness and cowardice are not numbered among them. I only advise that warriors fight the better if they do not feel the hand of destiny or the claw of doom hovering over them.’

The Wolf Lord pulled at his long beard, digesting his mentor’s counsel. ‘I recant my question, Leoric. Let the future see to itself. Whatever shape it takes, it will bear the marks of our claws!’

The Space Wolves moved out across a blighted plain, shrivelled clutches of cacti the only evidence of life. Gradually, as they drew nearer to the glow, the plain became peppered with jagged heaps of stone, toppled megaliths of almost unfathomable antiquity, their angles contorted to suit the aesthetics of an alien geometry. The scars of an ancient battle marked the fallen constructions, ragged craters blown by missiles and melted pits left by plasma guns. The Space Wolves thought of their Chapter’s history with this world and of Bjorn’s long-ago foray against the xenos inhabitants who claimed Dargur as their own.

Ahead, the Space Wolves could see the desiccated shell of an alien structure, a colossal building with great soaring columns and the decaying fragments of tremendous spires. The moons of Dargur hung in the heavens above, casting their rays down upon the ruin and evoking the eldritch glow from its broken walls. The sight put the Fenrisians on edge, provoking their primal repugnance of all things marked by Chaos.

‘It is a temple,’ Leoric whispered. Blood trickled from the bones he had set into his forehead and there was a ghoulish shine in his eyes, reminding Ulrik of Sathar’s prism. ‘Here the Thnalys held their murderous bacchanals and paid tribute to the Ruinous Powers. Here they sacrificed nations to placate the Dark Gods and preserve themselves from the corruption of the warp.’

‘Bjorn put paid to their xenos wickedness ages ago,’ Krom declared.

Leoric fixed his shining gaze upon the Wolf Lord. ‘Where the Chaos Gods have been honoured once, they may be honoured again.’

Before the Rune Priest could explain more, Lopt came running over to report to Krom. The Wolf Scouts had ranged ahead of the main pack, patrolling the terrain ahead lest Dargur spring still more surprises on them. What he had was a surprise, but for once it was a pleasant one.

‘I’ve caught the Great Wolf’s scent,’ Lopt said, tapping the side of his nose. ‘It hangs heavy about the ruins. The place is thick with the smell of Fenris.’

Krom clapped the scout on the shoulder and smiled at Ulrik. ‘The hunt draws to its end,’ he declared. ‘We’ve found the Great Wolf and his companions.’

‘Yes,’ Ulrik agreed, ‘but we don’t know what holds them here. That is a riddle we’ve yet to solve.’

‘It will be solved,’ Krom growled, drawing Wyrmfang. ‘It will be solved with blades and guns! No, old wolf, do not try to hold me back. For too long our kin have been kept from us. Now let whatever force holds the Great Wolf discover what it means to trifle with the Sons of Russ!’

Ulrik could feel the rest of the Drakeslayers rising to the agitation of their Wolf Lord. The hunt had been long and arduous, dragging them across the stars. Now that the end was in sight, their discipline was being overcome by their more feral instincts. The Wolf Priest made an appeal to Krom, playing upon the respect and admiration in which the young Wolf Lord held his old mentor.

‘Now, at the end of things, is when caution is most needed,’ Ulrik warned. ‘We must spy out the terrain, discover what it is that has kept Logan Grimnar from returning to the Fang. We must learn the challenge that awaits us.’

Slowly, grudgingly, Krom bowed his head and returned his axe to his belt. ‘As ever, old wolf, your wisdom makes me feel like an impetuous Blood Claw fresh from the Trials of Morkai.’

There was still a smell of impatience in Krom’s scent, in the scent of all the Drakeslayers, but for the moment, at least, it was curbed, held in check by their discipline.

‘Then let us find what has befallen the Great Wolf and see for ourselves how this hunt will end,’ Ulrik said. He motioned for Lopt to lead them towards the ruins, to follow Logan Grimnar’s scent into the alien temple.

It was only a matter of minutes before the Space Wolves stood beneath the temple’s shattered roof. They crept around the cyclopean columns, slipping into the shadows of broken walls. To their right rose a great shelf-like tier of platforms, to the left the crumbling rubble of a gargantuan altar. Before them, arrayed in a great concentric spiral, were jagged pillars, their capitals still supporting fragments of the collapsed roof.

Details of the architecture held the interest of the Space Wolves for but the briefest moment, however. It was the figures chained to the pillars that claimed their attention – massive, hulking shapes far larger than the hooded men that pranced around them with gleaming knives. The hearts of each Space Wolf froze when their eyes settled upon one of the captives. None of them could mistake the snowy mane of hair or the long pleated moustaches, the sharp hawk-like nose and thick craggy brow. They had found Logan Grimnar and some of his warriors. The missing Space Wolves had been taken prisoner, stripped of their armour and readied as sacrifices. The Fenrisians had been savagely beaten, many of them slumping unconscious in their chains.

‘The ritual on Stratovass Ultra,’ Leoric hissed. ‘They are seeking to perform the same rite, using the lives of our brothers to fuel their spell!’ Blood stained his face, bubbling up from the runes etched into the wolf bones piercing his flesh. ‘There is something more. A presence...’

The Rune Priest’s distress was unnoticed by the Drakeslayers. Krom and his warriors had heard Leoric’s words, and that had been enough for them to abandon all restraint. Seizing their weapons and howling their battle cries, the pack rushed towards the pillars, intent upon freeing their captured brothers and annihilating the enemies who dared to hold them prisoner.

Ulrik cried out to Krom, urging the Space Wolves back. His words were too late, however. They were already committed, and hurled themselves upon the foe with the ferocity of thunderwolves. Axes and swords sheared through the hooded men, and claws slashed the cultists to bloody ribbons. Bolt pistols barked, exploding heads and chests with each shot. The cough of a flamer was punctuated by the shrieks of burning heretics.

The Wolf Priest rose from the stricken Leoric, shaking his head in dismay. Lost in their fury, the Drakeslayers were oblivious to the ease of their combat. They didn’t question how such feeble foes could have overcome Logan Grimnar and his warriors. The realisation would come to them soon, but by then Ulrik feared it would be too late.

Below, Krom had reached the pillar to which Logan Grimnar was chained. Casting aside the gory remains of a cultist, the Wolf Lord brought his axe whipping around to sever the Great Wolf’s bonds. As he did so, there was a thunderous crash and a blinding flash of purple light. Wyrmfang was torn from Krom’s hand and sent clattering across the ground. He glared at the pillar, then barked a warning to his warriors. So near to their comrades, so close to victory, and their triumph was being snatched away from them. Some infernal barrier surrounded the captives, a sorcerous shell they couldn’t pierce.

Anger and frustration gripped the Drakeslayers. They lashed out at the corpses around them, venting their fury. As their rage swelled, monstrous laughter rippled through the temple.

Upon the tiers, armoured shapes appeared, manifesting with such suddenness that it was as though a veil had been thrown aside. There was no mistaking their gilded armour and the vane-like crest that framed their helms. They were Traitor Space Marines of the Thousand Sons. Dozens of them spread out across the tiers, their guns trained upon the Space Wolves below.

Towering over the Thousand Sons, a malicious cackle still bubbling from its blackened beaks, was an even more monstrous foe, an enemy steeped in the worst infamies recorded in the sagas. It had the withered body of a colossus, great wings stretching out from its back, mighty talons tipping each of its shrivelled claws, and two heads perched upon scrawny, vulturine necks, their eyes swirling pits of magic and madness. Clasped within one monstrous fist was a massive staff of ivory and gold, a monstrous tome of obscene lore chained at its apex.

Ulrik felt a surge of loathing and horror rush through him. The thing was nothing less than the Oracle of Tzeentch, the daemon known as Kairos Fateweaver.

The daemon lord’s mockery reverberated through the shattered temple, each echo adopting fresh nuances of cadence and tone. Kairos stretched forth its staff, the pages of the ghastly book rustling in an arcane wind. It pointed the staff downwards at Krom.

‘Thirteen to feed the spell,’ the daemon’s left head cried while its counterpart shrieked the same words in reverse.

From the heights of the tiers, the Thousand Sons opened fire upon the Space Wolves. Ambushed by the Chaos Space Marines, the Drakeslayers scrambled for cover, seeking shelter behind the pillars and the shattered rubble from the altar.

Still on the periphery of the temple, Ulrik and his strike force seemed to have gone unnoticed by the Thousand Sons and their daemonic master. Hastily, Ulrik split his command into two forces, sending half the warriors to circle around the temple and strike the opposite flank. He would lead the rest against their foe from the nearer side. He had no delusions about the kind of damage they could inflict upon so many Chaos Space Marines and a greater daemon, but he hoped they might sow enough confusion to grant Krom and his warriors enough respite to recover.

As Ulrik led his handful of warriors towards the side of the temple, he found that their presence wasn’t as unnoticed as he’d hoped. Spheres of purple light crackled through the air overhead, swiftly coalescing into vicious ray-like shapes. Swimming through the air on lobed flukes, the grisly daemons shrieked wrathfully.

Knowing the daemons had taken from them the element of surprise, the Space Wolves unleashed a fusillade of bolter fire into the monstrosities. Ulrik blasted his plasma pistol into the flying daemons, burning one of them from the jaundiced sky. For every daemon they brought down, it seemed there were two left to swoop down upon them. The Wolf Priest saw one Grey Hunter crushed to the ground beneath a screaming fiend. A Blood Claw had one of his arms bitten in two by the snapping jaws of another.

Ulrik met his own attackers with his crozius. The maul crackled as it tore through one diving daemon, exploding it in a burst of ichor and light. A second monstrosity had its fanged maw ripped open by the weapon, its mangled form lifting back into the air with broken fangs dripping from its mouth. The third daemon-ray, however, prevailed where the others had met failure. Its hurtling mass slammed into Ulrik, smashing him to the ground. The Wolf Priest could feel its jaws snapping against the back of his helm, trying to find some weakness it could exploit.

A fierce howl rang out and the daemon’s crushing weight no longer pinned him. Rolling onto his side, Ulrik saw a feral shape of fangs and claws ripping into his daemonic adversary. He blinked in disbelief at the battered war-worn armour that clung to the savage figure, recognising it to be an old pattern of power armour.

Similar fearsome creatures were helping the others, springing up from behind the rubble to pull daemons out of the sky. Hairy, half-human brutes crushed the daemons to the ground and savaged them with flashing claws, ripping gibbets of corrupt flesh from their monstrous bodies. One of the daemons, seeking to flee, was burned from the sky by a bolt of crimson lightning.

Ulrik turned from the grim spectacle of the feral creatures to see the warrior who’d saved him. He found himself gazing upon an old Rune Priest, his patched armour displaying a riotous disarray of styles and patterns, each piece daubed with protective marks and runes.

As for the bestial fighters, Ulrik wondered, could they be Wulfen? The afflicted beasts were rarely seen. Driven wild by the fault in their gene-seed, they were a secret source of shame that the Chapter usually tried to keep hidden. Ulrik had never heard of the creatures amassing in such a number – apart from in the case of the fabled Thirteenth Company...

‘My thanks for your intervention, but my brothers are beset by enemies within the temple,’ Ulrik told the Rune Priest.

The old warrior nodded his head. Turning towards the ravening Wulfen, he uttered a sharp bark. The half-human creatures swung around, locking eyes with the Rune Priest before loping off once more. They hurled themselves at the walls, digging their claws into the old masonry and pulling themselves upwards. Ulrik watched them climb for a moment, then rallied his own men and hurried to the gap that had been their objective.

When the Wolf Priest reached the base of the tiered platforms, he found the Thousand Sons slowly advancing upon Krom’s besieged forces. The twin-headed Kairos hung back from the fighting, content to direct its minions and loose the occasional spell against a hapless Drakeslayer. The ambush was slowly closing around Krom, forcing his warriors to abandon the cover of the altar as the Chaos Space Marines brought their heavy weapons to bear.

Then, from their rear, the Thousand Sons found themselves beset by a foe even more ferocious than the Drakeslayers. The Wulfen came charging down the platforms, flinging themselves upon the stunned traitors with animalistic viciousness. Bestial claws ripped into gilded armour, tearing it from the ancient traitors. Finding only emptiness within the armour increased the frenzied wrath of the Wulfen.

The Thousand Sons retaliated with emotionless precision. While a few of their warriors moved to form a perimeter, those behind unleashed a withering stream of fire into the feral warriors. Two of the Wulfen were ripped apart under the salvo. A third was reduced to a mangled pile of meat even as he was pulling down one of the Chaos Space Marines.

It was Ulrik and his warriors who now aided the Wulfen. Their fire served as a distraction to the Thousand Sons, diverting some of their attention away from the feral creatures. When Leoric and the rest of the Space Wolves appeared at the far side of the temple, the fire from the Thousand Sons was split still further. Unlike their monstrous allies, the Space Wolves were able to duck back down behind the outer walls and gain some protection from the vengeful attentions of their foes. Even so, the Chaos Space Marines were leeching away at their strength, picking off the odd Grey Hunter or Blood Claw who was too slow to seek the protection of the walls.

With their foes reeling from the surprise assault of the Wulfen, Krom rallied his own warriors. Rushing out from behind the pillars, the Drakeslayers added their fire to the savage assault unfolding in the tiers. It was the Thousand Sons who now found themselves trapped. They fought with the determination of the damned, but their casualties were mounting. One after another their shattered armour was clattering down from the tiers and the dust of their mortal essence was drifting away on the wind.

Kairos glared with its gibbous eyes at the packs ravening all around it. A spell from one of its talons reduced a Grey Hunter to a charred smear. A bolt of flame from one of its beaks transformed a Long Fang into a pile of steaming meat. From its staff, a crackling whip of power flayed flesh and fur from one of the Wulfen, leaving its bloodied carcass strewn across the temple. More and more, however, as its minions fell, the daemon was compelled to employ its magic to defend itself, to ward away the salvoes of missiles and bolter fire that were directed against it.

In the midst of the carnage, Ulrik spotted one of the Thousand Sons turning to fire at a chained Space Wolf. The Chaos Space Marine blew apart the captive’s head. The sight filled Ulrik with rage. Snapping a shot from his plasma pistol, he blew apart the murderous traitor.

Ulrik turned to the nearest of the Wulfen, locking eyes with the ferocious creature. More by gesture than word, he indicated to the feral warrior his plan.

‘Try to break their chains,’ he told the half-beast. The Wulfen growled, but to his relief went loping down towards the pillars. Ulrik prayed to Morkai that these strange warriors would be able to succeed where Krom had not before any more of the Thousand Sons decided to kill their prisoners.

‘Krom,’ Ulrik called out across the vox. ‘Have your warriors cover the Wulfen. I’m hoping he can break the chains.’

Ulrik’s command was quickly executed. Krom’s Drakeslayers concentrated their shots on the Thousand Sons who were trying to bring down the Wulfen loping towards the pillars. The Chaos Space Marines were forced back, denied the opportunity to pick off their target. The Wulfen reached the temple floor and sprang to the nearest pillar. As Ulrik had predicted, his claws had no problem seizing hold of the chains and breaking them. The first of Logan Grimnar’s companions was free.

Other Wulfen now seized upon Ulrik’s idea. Great as their savagery towards the Thousand Sons had been, loyalty to their pack was an even greater force within them. In ones and twos they broke away from the fighting, rushing down to free the Champions of Fenris.

A grisly shriek of rage rose from the beaks of Kairos. The huge daemon lunged for the Wulfen, seizing the warrior moving to break the chains binding Logan Grimnar. Fateweaver’s clutch transformed the snarling fighter into a bloody paste. While the Wulfen perished, Krom rushed to finish the job, Wyrmfang once more in his hands to strike a blow against the Great Wolf’s chains. Kairos saw him and lashed out, seeking to seize hold of the Wolf Lord.

Before it could act, Kairos was assaulted by an elemental storm. Thunderous bolts rained down upon the daemon, driving it back. The fiend fixed its baleful gaze upon Leoric. The instant Leoric faltered, Fateweaver sent magic of its own blasting into the Space Wolf. He cried out as the destructive energies seared through him. His eyes exploded in a blaze of fire, the flames swiftly reducing his face to a leering skull.

Fixated upon Leoric, Kairos now found itself beset on all sides by its other foes. Those Wulfen not freeing the captives were helping to dispatch the last Thousand Sons. The full force of the Drakeslayers was now turned upon the Lord of Change. Shrieking in rage, the giant monster reached out with its claw, tearing a hole in the air behind it. The next instant, the creature had slipped through the rent in reality.

‘Don’t let it escape!’

The command rang out across the chamber. All eyes turned upon the bloodied figure of Logan Grimnar. This time Krom’s axe had succeeded in breaking his chains. The Great Wolf waved his fist at the vanished daemon. ‘It holds more of our brothers beyond the barrier!’

Ulrik was the first to reach the boiling rent through which the daemon had vanished. The Rune Priest who led the Wulfen was the second. Closing his eyes and raising his staff, the Wulfen compelled the rent to stay open. He cast an imploring look at the Wolf Priest, urging him on. Ulrik didn’t hesitate, but rushed through the portal.

Beyond the doorway was another world, a ghastly ruin of floating plateaus suspended within a skyskape of shimmering incandescent vapour. Close to the rent, surrounded by broken battlements, was a circle of petrified trees, their stony bark etched with sinister, cabalistic designs. To each of the trees, just like the pillars in the alien temple, one of Logan Grimnar’s Great Company was chained. Ulrik stared in shock when he saw that one of the captives had an all-too familiar mane of snowy hair and long pleated moustaches. Somehow, in this world, Logan Grimnar was still a prisoner!

Kairos was stalking towards the trees when its left head swung about, eyes widening in surprise as it saw Ulrik running out of the rent.

‘I did not foresee this.’ The daemon’s voices somehow conveyed a tone of unease. It started towards Ulrik, raising its staff. Then it reeled back, crying out as it saw other warriors rushing out of the rent. The Wulfen howled with fury as they caught the daemon’s scent, charging at the monster in a frenzied mob.

With the daemon focused upon the Wulfen, Ulrik charged for the pillars. Raising his crozius, he brought the maul cracking against the chains binding Logan Grimnar to the stone. An electric shock coursed through his body, almost tearing the crozius from his hand. Staggering back, Ulrik tried to fight down the numbness that dragged at his mind. It was the sight of the Great Wolf, the confidence that shone in his eyes as he saw Ulrik beside him, that gave the Wolf Priest the determination to fight through the effects of the sorcerous shield.

Tightening both hands about the grip of his crozius, Ulrik brought the weapon crashing against the chains once more. Again there was a tremendous shock, a searing pain that flared through every nerve in his body. This time, however, the chains snapped. Logan Grimnar’s body sagged forwards, but the Great Wolf had enough strength left in him to keep from crashing face first into the dirt.

A baleful roar thundered across the floating plateau. Ulrik spun around, putting himself between the source of that enraged cry and the weakened Great Wolf. Kairos fixed him with each of its baleful eyes. The daemon’s malignance slammed into Ulrik like a physical blow.

‘You’ll not cheat me of my prize,’ Kairos snapped. A sphere of swirling flame erupted from its outstretched claw, leaping towards the Wolf Priest.

Ulrik held his ground, ready to die to protect Logan Grimnar. As the fiery sphere hurtled towards him, he could feel his skin blister inside his armour. Before it could engulf him entirely, the malefic conjuration dissolved into a fizzle of sparks. Ulrik saw one of the Wulfen climbing his way up the daemon’s arm, tearing feathers and flesh away with each rake of his claws. The sudden attack had broken the monster’s concentration, sparing Ulrik at the last moment.

‘Make for the portal,’ Ulrik told Logan Grimnar, gesturing towards the rent. ‘I’ll keep the daemon busy.’ Before the Great Wolf could object, Ulrik was already rushing towards Kairos.

The Fateweaver plucked the Wulfen from its savaged arm. The feral warrior’s body writhed in a hideous fashion as Kairos focused its malignance upon him. Bones rippled in obscene displays, flesh bubbled and flowed like water. What had been a fearsome warrior was reduced to a confusion of ruptured tissue under the daemon’s magic.

Kairos’ right head spotted Ulrik as the Wolf Priest came charging towards it. The fiend shrieked in primordial rage, dipping its staff to direct the relic’s hideous power against him. Before the daemon could work its magic, Ulrik threw himself forwards in a desperate lunge. His arm wrapped about the ivory and gold length of the staff. He could feel the mutating energies of Kairos’ conjuration rippling through the shaft and seeking to penetrate his own armour.

‘Foolish mortal!’ Kairos cackled, peering at the Wolf Priest. ‘You cannot hurt me.’

Ulrik glared back at the daemon, the fiend that had caused his Chapter so much sacrifice.

‘Maybe not,’ he barked back, ‘but what about this!’ He slammed his crozius down against the immense tome lashed to the ivory rod. Ancient pages were ripped free by the blow, sent skittering away across the plateau.

Kairos cried out in shock, lunging after the torn pages. Laughing, Ulrik repeated his attack, ripping another fistful of sheets from the tome. The daemon’s left head fixed upon him, the eyes blazing with unspeakable hatred. It started to raise its claw, to pluck him forcibly from the staff, but even as it did, the daemon’s right head shouted in alarm. The Wulfen that had been darting about its legs, biting and clawing at the fiend, now gave up that pursuit, instead rushing after the scattered pages.

‘My book,’ Kairos squawked. Whirlwinds sprang from its eyes, whipping around the Wulfen, trying to catch the pages before the savage creatures could.

Ulrik seized upon the daemon’s distress, sending still more pages fluttering away from its book. Kairos, unwilling to risk any magic that might harm his precious pages, could only try and shake its foe loose by whipping its staff back and forth.

Ulrik endured the vicious motion, biding his time until he saw his chance. As Kairos shook the staff towards its body, the Wolf Priest released his hold. Momentum sent him crashing against the daemon, the flanges of his crozius slashing the feathered flesh of its shoulder. Ulrik grabbed a fistful of Kairos’ robe, trying to use it to arrest his fall while he brought his maul cracking against the fiend’s neck. Ichor oozed up from the gash he inflicted, but before he could strike again, the daemon used its mighty wings to rise into the air. The huge pinions beat at him, breaking his tenuous hold and sending him plummeting to the plateau.

The Wolf Priest felt bones break as he slammed into the ground. Clenching his fangs against the pain, he forced himself up, drawing his plasma pistol and making ready to meet the daemon’s next assault.

The attack didn’t come. Conjuring more of its whirlwinds, Kairos was focused upon snatching the pages Ulrik had knocked loose from its tome.

‘Keep today, whelps of Russ. For I have seen tomorrow!’ Kairos roared. Again, the daemon stretched forth its claw, ripping a hole through reality into which it could retreat.

Ulrik glared after the escaping daemon.

‘Take heart that you thwarted its purpose,’ the weary voice of Logan Grimnar came to Ulrik. He turned around to find the venerable warrior limping towards him. Behind the Great Wolf came the rest of his warriors, freed from their chains by the Wulfen. ‘Its intention was to open a permanent doorway between the Eye of Terror and Fenris. By using the spirits of Space Wolves to power its ritual, the daemon could have created such a gate.’

‘Will it try again?’ Ulrik wondered.

Logan Grimnar frowned. ‘We’ll have to make sure it doesn’t get the chance.’ He scowled at the rent through which Kairos had retreated. ‘If I had my armour and the Axe of Morkai, I’d chase the wretched creature down right now.’ He turned a worried look to Ulrik. ‘Did you find the rest of my warriors? Are they safe?’

Ulrik started to answer when he saw a figure emerge from the rent leading to Dargur. It was the old Rune Priest in the ancient armour. As he joined them, he bowed low to Logan Grimnar. A low growl rattled at the back of the wizened warrior’s throat as he pointed firmly at the Great Wolf and then at the portal to Dargur. Tapping himself on the chest, he pointed to the rent through which Kairos had fled. Both portals were slowly starting to close.

‘I think he means us to hurry back to our comrades and leave the pursuit of Kairos to his pack,’ Ulrik said.

Logan Grimnar didn’t seem to hear the Wolf Priest at first, staring instead at the symbol adorning the Rune Priest’s armour.

‘We must hurry, my lord,’ Ulrik said, recalling the scene he’d left behind. It was impossible that Logan Grimnar could be both here and on the other side of the rent. One had to be an imposter. Which one was the problem that now faced him.

Logan Grimnar said something to the Rune Priest. Ulrik couldn’t make out his words, but the only response was a shake of the warrior’s head and another gesture towards the portal Kairos had escaped into. Frowning, the Great Wolf nodded.

‘Brothers, let us be gone from this place,’ he called to the other Space Wolves.

Ulrik waited until the last of Logan Grimnar’s warriors was through before slipping into the rent himself. It seemed to be collapsing around him as he clawed his way between worlds. Reality itself was bleeding away, and for a hideous moment he felt the enormity of nothingness reach out for him. Then something far more physical caught hold of him. A fierce grip closed about his arm and pulled him from the rent.

‘I’m not staging another Great Hunt to look for you,’ Krom cursed as he dragged Ulrik from the rent. The wound in reality closed up behind him. The Wolf Priest had narrowly escaped being lost within the void.

‘You’d have the Great Wolf to help you,’ Ulrik said. The comment brought a severe look to Krom’s visage.

‘Which one?’ he grumbled. Krom pointed at the Space Wolves Ulrik had sent through the rent. Logan Grimnar stood among them. But there was another Logan Grimnar who stood with the captives rescued on Dargur. Of the two, it was the Logan Grimnar of Dargur who presented the more convincing aspect, arrayed as he was in power armour and with the Axe of Morkai clenched in his hands. He glared at the Logan Grimnar Ulrik had rescued.

‘You’ve been gone six days,’ Krom reported. The Wolf Priest shook his head. It was almost unbelievable that so much time could have passed here when it had only been a few moments on the other side. If the Logan Grimnar of Dargur was an imposter, he’d had a good amount of time to convince the other Space Wolves otherwise.

All around them, weapons at the ready, stood the warriors who’d risked so much to rescue these men. They were a grim sight, their faces hard – for these were warriors who’d just had the taste of victory turn to ash in their mouths.

‘One of our Great Wolves is an imposter,’ Ulrik said. ‘If I hadn’t gone through the rent, its deception might have succeeded.’

Logan Grimnar of Dargur pointed at his opposite. ‘Or the daemon decided upon this deceit only when its plan here was thwarted. If it can’t open a doorway between here and Fenris, the next best thing would be to leave one of its minions in control of the Fang.’

Logan Grimnar from beyond the rent bared his fangs. ‘You wear my armour and hold my axe. Tell me, if you were a cunning daemon, would you leave such things within reach of the Great Wolf or would you have them available for your spy?’

‘There is one certain way to tell them apart,’ Ulrik abruptly declared, stepping between the two Logan Grimnars. ‘We can have Krom’s wolf Vangandyr sniff them. A daemon might be able to trick a Fenrisian’s senses, but it can’t deceive a cyberwolf.’

Both of the Great Wolves frowned when Ulrik made his statement. It was the Logan Grimnar of Dargur who answered first. ‘We are both so drenched in the stench of Chaos, I would be surprised if he knew the scent of either of us.’

The Logan Grimnar from beyond the portal laughed. ‘A nice effort, but you are fooled,’ he told his double, ‘for Vangandyr is a thunderwolf, not a cyberwolf.’

‘I knew I could count on you to know your wolves,’ Ulrik said. He spun around, his crozius slamming against the imposter’s hand even as he began to lift the Axe of Morkai. An inhuman wail of fury sounded from the false Logan Grimnar as its stolen visage began to slide and flow into a soup of twisted flesh. The Changeling lashed out from within the Great Wolf’s armour, a writhing coil of voidstuff whipping about Ulrik’s neck. Before it could tighten, the real Logan Grimnar pulled the Axe of Morkai from the ground and brought its magic blade chopping down. The daemon’s distorted head went flying from its shoulders to land among the standing stones, where it faded to nothing. The coil wrapped about Ulrik’s throat lost coherence, writhing and ebbing away. The empty shell of power armour crashed forwards with a clatter onto the ancient stones.

‘Do you think it’s dead?’ Krom asked Ulrik.

The Wolf Priest shook his head. ‘With daemons it is never easy to tell.’ Inwardly, he doubted the Changeling was gone, merely abandoning a disguise it no longer had use for.

Logan Grimnar stood glaring down at his armour. ‘Taking my face is one thing, but taking my armour is too much. I’ll have to polish it for a decade to get the stink out.’ Looking up, the Great Wolf smiled at the warriors who had come so far and risked so much to find him.

‘Brothers, let’s be on our way,’ Logan Grimnar declared. ‘It’s been too long since I’ve had the smell of Asaheim in my nose and the taste of Fenrisian mead on my tongue.’

As the Space Wolves withdrew from the alien temple, bearing their wounded and carrying their dead, Ulrik felt his eyes drawn to the mound of stone beneath which they’d entombed the fallen Wulfen. Somehow it felt wrong to leave them behind.

‘You seem troubled, old friend,’ Logan Grimnar told Ulrik when he caught him looking back towards the cromlech.

‘They were brothers in arms,’ Ulrik said. ‘It sits ill with me to leave them here.’

‘This was their hunting ground,’ the Great Wolf said. ‘Their work here is not complete.’ Logan Grimnar shifted uneasily in the borrowed armour he wore.

‘They were of our gene-seed? They were Sons of Russ?’ Ulrik asked. ‘Were you able to communicate with their leader?’

Logan Grimnar nodded slowly.

‘What did you ask their Rune Priest?’

‘I asked him if they were the Thirteenth Great Company,’ Logan Grimnar answered. ‘He said that Great Company is a legend.’ The Great Wolf stared into Ulrik’s eyes. ‘And a legend is how they must remain.’

Ulrik nodded, casting one last look at the cromlech. ‘Yes, they are legend,’ he said.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Ben Counter is one of Black Library’s most popular Warhammer 40,000 authors, with two Horus Heresy novels to his name – Galaxy in Flames and Battle for the Abyss. He is the author of the Soul Drinkers series and The Grey Knights Omnibus. For Space Marine Battles he has written The World Engine and Malodrax, and has turned his attention to the Space Wolves with the novella Arjac Rockfist: Anvil of Fenris and a number of short stories. He is a fanatical painter of miniatures, a pursuit which has won him his most prized possession: a prestigious Golden Demon award. He lives in Portsmouth, England.

Steve Lyons’ work in the Warhammer 40,000 universe includes the novellas Engines of War and Angron’s Monolith, the Imperial Guard novels Ice World and Dead Men Walking – now collected in the omnibus Honour Imperialis – and the audio dramas Waiting Death and The Madness Within. He has also written numerous short stories and is currently working on more tales from the grim darkness of the far future.

Rob Sanders is the author of The Serpent Beneath, a novella that appeared in the New York Times bestselling Horus Heresy anthology The Primarchs. His other Black Library credits include the Warhammer 40,000 titles Adeptus Mechanicus: Skitarius and Tech-Priest, Legion of the Damned, Atlas Infernal and Redemption Corps and the audio drama The Path Forsaken. He has also written the Warhammer Archaon duology, Everchosen and Lord of Chaos along with many Quick Reads for the Horus Heresy and Warhammer 40,000. He lives in the city of Lincoln, UK.

C L Werner’s Black Library credits include the Space Marine Battles novel The Siege of Castellax, the End Times novel Deathblade, Mathias Thulmann: Witch Hunter, Runefang, the Brunner the Bounty Hunter trilogy, the Thanquol and Boneripper series and Time of Legends: The Black Plague series. Currently living in the American south-west, he continues to write stories of mayhem and madness set in the worlds of Warhammer and Warhammer 40,000.

An extract from
Curse of the Wulfen.

‘The sky is blue today, governor.’

Andras Elsener, Lord Governor of Nurades, looked up from the sea of parchment and data-slates on the vast iron table before him. Everything was a priority, and everything had to be decided now. And this was merely what he had to wade through for the next hour. It was early in the day yet. The interruption was welcome, though he knew he would pay for the break in his concentration later.

Klein, his major-domo, stood at the chamber window. Elsener’s quarters were high in the spire of Hive Genos. The view from his office looked out across the spires of the hive from a point that was frequently, although not always, a little below cloud cover. Sometimes Elsener could see many kilometres of the sprawl of the hive. Sometimes he saw nothing but a choking, industrial grey-brown. Twice in his life he had witnessed the weak disc of the sun visible through unusually thin clouds.

He had never seen a blue sky.

Elsener approached the window in wary awe. Klein seemed just as uneasy. He was about to open the door to the balcony but Elsener stopped him.

‘No,’ said the governor. ‘Wait.’

The sky was clear. The blue was startling. It was searing. As Elsener watched, the last of the cloud cover peeled away like burning paper. The blue became brighter and brighter, though Elsener could not see the sun. The colour became painful. Elsener squinted. Klein shielded his eyes.

And then, though the colour still grew more intense, it also became darker. Blue became violet.

‘The Emperor save us,’ Elsener muttered.

Violet turned to a dark, grimy crimson. The colour of rotting blood stabbed at the back of Elsener’s eyes. He could not look away. At the height of the searing, the sky ignited. Flames burst across the firmament. They were huge, arcing, roiling, as if Nurades had been pitched into a molten cauldron. The sky burned all the colours of the spectrum at once, destroying them with fury. As they died, the colours gave birth to other things, things that existed instead of colours, things that bled the eyes and tore at the mind.

The ground heaved. The central spire of Genos swayed back and forth. Narrower towers collapsed. But new spires rose, piercing up through the layers of the hive, thrusting towards the sky like monstrous daggers, and they were towers of bone.

Elsener saw dots appear in the sky. They fell – dark, tumbling, blazing orbs. Closer, and he saw they were skulls. They were a laughing, screaming hail. Jaws agape, they smashed onto the roofs and walkways and roads. They shattered on Elsener’s balcony. Where each landed, its fire spread. It grew taller. It took on a shape. Now it had arms, legs. Now a head. Horns.

Muscle and sinew and blood-red flesh. It carried a sword.

Elsener cried out and hurled himself away from the window. He must not look. He must not see. Already he could feel his brain squirming as if it would change into an animal inside his skull.

Klein shrieked. He clawed at his face hard enough to tear open his cheeks. He clutched at his ragged flaps of skin, then ran at the governor, howling and drooling. Elsener drew his personal laspistol and shot the major-domo through the neck.

Then he ran. He did not look back, not even when the window smashed, and a snarling abomination called out to him in a voice of rattling bone. He knew what would happen if he looked. Perhaps he would die in the next few seconds, but if he did not look, he might yet retain his soul.

He prayed to the Emperor as he charged through the door and down the halls of his residence. He prayed the Father of Mankind would grant that he reached the astropathic choir in time. He prayed someone would hear Nurades’ cry for help.

The next time Lord Governor Andras Elsener dared to look at the sky, it was weeks later, and he saw the cry answered.

He saw salvation slash through sky with bloody claws.

In the strategium overlooking the bridge of the strike cruiser Alpha Fang, the great predator leaned over a hololithic map of Nurades. A mantle of troll hide was draped over his armour, a trophy made of the prey itself. His gestures suggested contained force. At any moment, they could turn into the strike of a hunter. And moment by moment, he chose restraint. His calm was that of a wolf that had already chosen when and how to attack.

Harald Deathwolf pointed to the sigil for Hive Predomitus.

‘We begin there,’ he said. The hive was located at the base of a high mountain chain dividing the Lacertus Peninsula from the rest of the continent. ‘We break the daemons’ hold.’ He moved his hand south-west, passing over Hive Genos. ‘And push them into the sea.’

Canis Wolfborn looked from the map to the oculus. It showed the void riven by the mad flares of the warp storm, and the planet turning in agony. The atmosphere quivered like maggots. The Deathwolf champion grunted. ‘Saving that?’

The huge warrior was more restless than Harald. His mane and beard were a lighter shade and longer, more unruly. If Harald was the wolf assured of closing its jaws on its prey, the Feral Knight was the beast barely held back. The bridge was not his natural domain. He belonged in the field, unleashed and roaring.

‘Mistress of the vox,’ Harald called without looking up from the map. ‘Any traffic planetside?’

‘Some, lord,’ Giske Ager replied. ‘Fragments only. There are brief bursts of coherent data. Orders perhaps. There are many cries.’

Harald nodded. He addressed the assembled Wolf Guard, not just Canis. The Deathwolf huscarls varied widely in age. But whether they counted themselves among the Riders of Morkai, the Thunderclaws or the Redhowl Hunters, they were all riders of wolves, and there was a kinship in their countenance – a narrowed, farseeing, predatory gaze.

‘We have answered a plea for help,’ Harald said. ‘We have not come to enact Exterminatus. This planet will not be lost. I will see it returned to the embrace of the Allfather.’

‘A hunt then,’ said Vygar Helmfang.

‘A great one.’

‘Good.’ Canis growled in satisfaction and anticipation. His question, Harald understood, had not been an expression of doubt in the mission. Canis wanted reassurance that he would not be cheated of prey by cyclonic torpedoes.

The assembled Wolf Guard also sounded pleased with Harald’s deployment strategy. The Lacertus Peninsula was the most densely populated and industrially active region of Nurades. When the Space Wolves took it, they would hold the key to the rest of the world.

Harald wondered if it might also unlock something else. The encounter before Murderfang’s vault troubled him. He was waiting for whatever event it heralded to make itself manifest. He did not know if the plight of Nurades meant more than it appeared, but there were unusual circumstances. From what had been gathered from the astropathic shriek that had reached Fenris, the coming of the warp storm had been extremely sudden. A matter of seconds. There was something about that arrival that did not seem like the result of the vagaries of the warp and a chance weakness in the materium.

Harald sensed a larger game behind the incursion. He could not guess what it was, nor what, if anything, it portended for the Space Wolves.

No matter, he tried to tell himself. His Great Company would stamp out the daemonic taint, and end the game before it began.

The Deathwolves fell upon the daemonic hordes much as the warpspawn had attacked the people of Nurades – with sudden, lightning violence.

The drop pods came first, streaking through the tormented sky in a cluster towards the plain between the mountains and the gates of Hive Predomitus. The Stormwolf gunships followed in their contrails. They hammered the landing site with twin-linked lascannon and heavy bolter fire, annihilating daemonkind in the vicinity.

The flanks of the pods slammed down and the Space Wolves stormed out. Grey Hunters howled their eagerness for war. Their helms bore totemic skulls and tails. Some were fashioned into snarling lupine form. They thundered away, in pack after pack. They hurled frag grenades ahead of them, then followed up the blasts with a stream of bolter fire. Monstrosities disintegrated. The Deathwolves pushed the enemy further back, allowing the gunships to land. Caught in the heat of first blood, the Grey Hunters would have followed their instincts to charge on if their pack leaders had not held them back long enough for the rest of their brothers to disembark.

The wait was a short one. Harald’s full company launched a blistering assault on the enemy within seconds of having their boots on the ground.

Before the gates of Predomitus, a mass of horned, scarlet-scaled abominations rioted.

‘Swordlings of Khorne.’ Canis spat his contempt. His breath came in low growls.

‘They have not been idle,’ Harald said.

In the midst of the daemons rose tall hills of blackened skulls. Millions of Nuradeans had been sacrificed to Khorne, but the hunger of the god and his servants was unending. From the open gates of the city, the daemons dragged thousands upon thousands of howling victims.

‘I can see the hills growing,’ Canis said. His face was dark with horrified fury.

‘So vast a slaughter,’ Harald growled. ‘Let our answer be more terrible still.’

The Stormwolf squadrons took to the air, pounding the warpspawn with guns. Lasbeams and shells burned daemons and blew them apart. They cut a seared, smoking furrow through the mass of wyrdflesh.

‘The hunt is on, brothers!’ Harald called. His roar was a clarion call to war, and Grey Hunters and Wolf Guard answered with a roar of their own. The battle cry thundered from the throats of men and beasts, and the thunderwolf cavalry led the charge into the furrow. Harald was at the front atop Icetooth, with Canis at his shoulder, as the immense Fangir shook the earth as he loped forward. Alongside the cavalry sped the Huntbrothers and the Frostrunners, Fenrisian wolves, some pure animal, others cybernetic hybrids, all of them monsters, flesh with strength of steel and steel with the wrath of flesh.

The cavalry slammed into their lines with the force of a nova cannon. Tens of thousands of daemons massed on the plain. They were hatred embodied. But they fell back, trampled into oblivion by the wolves, blasted apart by bolter fire. Harald felt the exultant ferocity of war flood his veins. The vastness of the enemy army meant nothing except a near-inexhaustible supply of prey. His view turned from the hills of bodies and the burning towers of Predomitus to the horrors that surged, grasping for him. He swung his right arm out. The storm shield on his forearm smashed horns and skulls. He relished the impact. The jar was solid, crunching. He fired his bolt pistol as he swung. Wyrdflesh erupted before him. With his left hand, he wielded the frost axe Glacius. Its huge, wedge-shaped blade was a single crystal shard. It glinted the blue of razored cold. The edge was as long as Harald’s arm. Daemonic flesh and muscle and bone ruptured at its strike.

Moments into the charge, Harald’s senses were filled with the stench of roiling smoke and spraying ichor. Daemons howled with unnatural voices. The air shook with the clash of rages.

The swordlings tried to surround the charge and bring the cavalry down in a tide of blood. No matter how many of them rushed in, they could not stop the Deathwolves’ momentum, although they exacted a toll. Harald heard the agonised snarls of a thunderwolf and the growls of Rangvald, its rider. He heard the crash as Wolf Guard and beast hit the ground under a mass of clawing, slashing daemons. There was an explosion of bolter fire as the brothers nearby sought to blast the swordlings away from the fallen rider.

‘Ride on, brothers,’ Rangvald shouted, fighting to the last.

And they did. The charge could not slow for anyone. Its success against such a vast horde depended on relentless violence and speed. With each fallen brother, the wrath of the Space Wolves and the thunderwolves grew, and they smashed the daemons with ever-greater ferocity. Harald saw only red – the red of the abominated flesh, the red of flame, and the red of his anger. Icetooth crushed daemons in his jaws. He smashed them to nothing beneath his enormous claws.

At Harald’s shoulder, Canis’ snarls were expressions of wrath and laughter. He swept his huge wolf claws back and forth, embracing the enemy with destruction. Every blade was as long as a gladius. Harald glanced to the right in time to see Canis slash a daemon’s spine into sections with a single swipe.

‘A good kill, brother!’ Harald called.

The champion grinned, his yellow eyes blazing. He shouted something back, but all Harald heard was an inarticulate snarl. Canis was already deep into primal ferocity. He was in the realm of the beast now.

It would be easy to join him. Already Harald growled with triumph at each of Icetooth’s kills. They were as one alpha predator in the field of battle. The bloody charge was exhilarating. The smoky wind blew back Harald’s hair and beard. The beat of his hearts matched the pounding of Icetooth’s paws. The thundering anger of bolters, wolves and men carried him forward. Even the stench of ichor, a miasma both clutching and jagged, was a goad.

The call of absolute frenzy was strong. He held back, though. Not much, but just enough to hold on to his awareness of the wider field of battle.

The Deathwolves battered their way forward to victory and slaughter. The thunderwolf charge blew apart the lines of the Khornate abominations. It reduced hundreds of them to a thick sludge of ichor. The power of the wyrd crackled over them, and the foul liquid did not dissipate. Icetooth’s paws splashed through a deepening mire. Their anger could not summon the strength to meet the challenge of the Deathwolves. Without pause, without mercy, Harald cut through the daemons and reached the wall of Predomitus.

He did not lead the charge through the gates. Instead, he turned right along the ramparts, then turned again to smash back down through the horde. At his back, he felt the blasting wind of two gunships. They made low passes before the gates, hammering the ground with heavy bolters and lascannons. The gap in the wall became an inferno. Harald looked back to see volcanic destruction, the earth and bodies heaving skyward. Daemons burned as they flew. The horde within the city could not break out. The other Stormwolves flew in from the rear of the lines to meet the advancing cavalry, scything a swath of annihilation as they came.

A daemon leapt high over Icetooth’s jaws. It came down directly at Harald, its sword descending to cut his head in two. He brought up the shield and smashed it aside. He finished it off with a bolt shell to the skull. Icetooth seized another abomination by the neck and bit through with a single clamp of his jaws.

Harald seized the moment to look left. In the wake of the cavalry charge, the infantry was advancing, the speed more deliberate but the destruction no less total. The Grey Hunters were still moving towards the gates, cutting an even wider swath. Harald heard their massed war shouts over the cries of the daemons.

Behind the gunships and infantry came the tanks. Predators, Vindicators and Land Raiders in tight formation became a giant grinder, an unstoppable mass of metal and cannon fire. Icetooth ran towards the explosions. Purifying flame pushed back the wyrd-light.

‘Riding close!’ Canis yelled, coherent again, his voice still guttural. He impaled a swordling through the throat and hurled the creature away to the right, into the blades of its kin. ‘Straight to the blasts?’ he asked.

Harald could almost believe Canis was ready to pursue the slaughter right into the tank fire.

‘Not quite,’ he said. But he grinned at his champion. ‘Close though.’

He waited until the smoke was choking, shattered stone was raining down on the field, and the concussions were deafening then swerved off to the right, clearing the way for the tanks. The clanking, booming vehicles moved past the cavalry, rolling over the daemons that had been in pursuit.

Canis growled in disappointment. The field before the Thunderwolves was almost empty of daemons.

‘We aren’t done, brother,’ Harald said. ‘We’re a long way from done.’ He turned Icetooth back towards the wall, and they rode a short distance to the flank of the armour. They came around a hill of skulls, and fell upon another horde.

The abominations were in disarray. They could not mount a counter attack. Their numbers worked against them as they tried to respond to the sudden changes in the Deathwolves’ vector of destruction. All the thousands in the plain became fodder for the claws of the Space Wolves. The daemons could not attack at once. They hindered each other’s movements as Harald triggered conflicting currents of attack. In their rage and frustration, the creatures fell to fighting each other.

The cavalry charge was unrelenting. Hours into the battle, the Deathwolves raced with the same speed and fury as their initial assault. And when at last Harald called a halt, the nature of the plain had changed. The sky overhead remained a storm of dark, mad flame. Smoke rose from the hills of skulls, and blood pooled at their bases. But the cracked earth was barren. The enemy was gone.

Slaughter and victory. So often, they were the same thing. On this day they were. While the gunships continued to pound the gates of Predomitus, Harald regarded the dead land with satisfaction. This much of Nurades was purged.

Beside him, Canis said, ‘A good start.’ He was hungry for more.

We all are, Harald thought. His blood was up. The annihilation of the enemy in this first encounter, and the imperative to keep up the pressure pushed the concerns of the war’s significance to the back of his mind. The plan of a foe was meaningless if the foe was exterminated. And Harald felt the strength of extermination in his hands. He was a predator unleashed, and there was prey on the other side of the walls.

‘Yes,’ he said to Canis. ‘A good start to the hunt. Let us continue.’

The battle for Predomitus took days. Days of unending massacre. In the stages of the purging, the Deathwolves broke though a crush of daemons at the gates, then moved up the primary thoroughfares of the hive. The war was an interior one now. Only rarely did the company emerge into open air, though the pilots of the gunships kept as close to the position of their brothers as possible, strafing the exposed positions of the hive. They blew up towers where the concentration of daemons was so great that the buildings themselves had begun to distort, rockcrete walls turning into scaly flesh.

In the hive, the daemons answered the challenge of the Deathwolves. They poured in from halls and chambers. They crashed through skylights and ventilation shafts. They erupted from the floors of the route. The Great Company cut them down. Harald kept up the speed of the attack, moving almost as quickly as the initial charge. There was no chance of surprise when the battle was continuous, as unbroken as the flow of a burning river of blood.

The Deathwolves moved fast, with the savagery of the beasts they rode. But Harald chose the path of their assault with care. Aboard the Alpha Fang, he had studied hololithic schematics of Nurades’ hive cities. The frenzy of his hunt was tempered by strategy. He embraced the wolf. He fought as if he were one. As if he were one. There was a difference. Never to be forgotten.

Once the gate was taken, Harald began the second stage of the assault on Predomitus. He split his forces to take the cavalry and infantry down the narrower passages, while the tanks moved implacably down the main arteries. The smaller routes were large enough to permit rapid deployment, but not so wide the daemons could mass sufficient numbers together to slow the advance. The daemons took the bait, and Harald exterminated them.

‘This is the long charge, brothers,’ Harald voxed the Great Company as the Wolf Guard and Grey Hunters slaughtered daemons, rejoined the tanks on the great avenues, then split off to repeat the pattern. ‘This is how we will take back Predomitus. Our victory rests on momentum and speed. Depend upon that.’

Canis tore a swordling in half then gestured at the vista of towering walls and branching avenues lying ahead. ‘This is a vast hunt,’ he said.

Harald switched to a private channel. ‘We do not seek a complete purge,’ he said. That would be impossible. ‘It will be enough to break the daemons’ grip.’ He pointed up and to the left, where the upper storeys of a spire flashed with lasbeam fire. ‘Nurades still has uncorrupted defence forces. We will give them the means to mount their war of reclamation, then move to the next target.’ He thought the prospect of an unending, savage advance would please Canis.

He was right. The champion howled as he and Fangir hurled themselves at the next group of daemons.

A BLACK LIBRARY PUBLICATION

Feast of Lies first published in 2015.
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Eye of the Dragon first published in 2015.
Dark City first published in 2015.
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Scent of a Traitor first published in 2015.
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