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WARHAMMER 40,000

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 Imperial Guard 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.

KRAKEN

Chris Wraight

He wore their names on his armour. The words had been graven deeply; a parting gift from the Iron Priest before he’d left Fenris. Nearly a centimetre deep, now crusted with the filth of years, just like the rest of him.

Eight names: four on the right side of his dented breastplate, four on the left. One was barely legible, scraped away by some massive, crunching impact a long time ago. The others were all faded, or obscured by burn marks, or bisected with scratches.

He remembered them all anyway. They came to him when he slept, whispering to him in old voices. He saw their faces, looming up out of the dark well of memory, their flesh still marked by tattoos, scars and studs. Sometimes they were angry, sometimes mournful. Their purpose in appearing, so he’d realised, was always the same: to urge him on, to stir him into action.

And so he never rested, not truly. He respected the demands of his vocation and kept moving. Oaths had been sworn, and they bound him more tightly than bands of adamantium. One world after another, blurring into a morass of sense impressions; some cold, some hot, all struggling, all playing their tiny part in the galaxy-wide war that had long since ceased to have boundaries.

It would have been easy to lose his sense of significance in all of that. It would have been easy, after twenty years of it, to give in to the darkness that lurked behind his eyes and forget the faces. He’d seen it happen to mortals. Their mouths drooped, their eyes went dull, even as they still clutched their weapons and made a show of walking toward the enemy. Then, as sure as ice follows fire, they died.

That was why he had the names put on his armour. The carvings would continue to fade or sustain damage, but some mark would always be there, some small impression to register what had once been lives as vital as his life.

And as long as there were marks to remind him, he would not slope off into despair. He would keep moving, seeking the final trial that would restore lost honour and still the whispers in the dark.

One world after another, blurring into a morass of sense impressions; some cold, some hot. None that made much of an impression on his sullen mind; since their wars gave no opportunity to achieve the goal he craved.

None, that was, until the last of them.

None of those worlds made an impression on Aj Kvara until, following the eddies of fate, he came to Lyses, and the raw beauty of it stirred even his old, cold soul.

Morren Oen shaded his eyes against the morning glare, squinting as the green light flashed from the waves. Fifty metres below him, the downdraft of the flyer’s four rotors churned the water.

There shouldn’t even have been water down there. There should have been several thousand tons of dirt-grey plasteel, designation Megaera VI, humming with life and machinery. There should have been lights blinking along the smoothly curved tidewalls to beckon the flyer down to land, and the low grind of algal processors working their way through the endless harvest.

Instead there was a thin skin of floating debris bobbing on the emerald water. He saw a plastic hopper tumble by, rolling amid a web of tangled fibres. Below the surface, there were dark shadows, perhaps the outlines the struts and flotation booms, still half-operative even after the main structure had gone down.

‘Emperor,’ he swore, sweeping the scene of devastation for something, some sign of resistance or survival.

Four other flyers hung low over the water, each one full of men with lasguns. They pointed their barrels uselessly down at the debris. Whatever had happened to Megaera VI had moved on long before they got there.

Preja Eim leaned a long way over the edge of the flyer’s open-sided crew bay and took a few more picts. Her auburn hair fluttered in the warm breeze, catching on the upturned collar of her uniform.

‘Have enough yet?’ asked Oen, turning away from the view and leaning back against the juddering metal of his seat-back.

Eim carried on clicking.

‘Information,’ she said, her face screwed up in concentration. ‘There might be something. Some clue.’

Oen looked at her wearily. She was so young. Her freckled skin looked healthy in the sun, almost translucent. Perhaps, once, he’d been as enthusiastic in his work.

For the first time since joining up, he felt too old. Forty years of service on Lyses, rising steadily through the ranks, had taken its toll. Rejuve was expensive, and he had other commitments that prevented him splashing out. And so he felt the skin of his jawline sag a little and his stomach bulge out over his heavy old regimental belt. Watching Eim made him feel worse. It reminded him of what he had been, and how long ago that was.

‘Snap away,’ he said. ‘Don’t think you’ll get anything we haven’t already scanned for.’

He looked out aimlessly, keeping his hand over his eyes. The curve of the ocean ran unbroken across the horizon, deep green and smooth. The pale rose sky shimmered above it, warmed by the diffuse light of both suns.

Oen was used to the view of open seas. All of Lyses was open seas. All of it, that was, except for the floating hubs, strewn across the endless ocean like motes of dust, separated by thousands of kilometres and gently drifting.

And they were being picked off, one by one. That thought, when he chose to entertain it, was quite thrillingly disquieting.

‘Procurator,’ came a voice over his earpiece.

‘Go ahead,’ said Oen, welcoming the distraction. Whatever news there was, it was unlikely to make him feel worse.

‘Grid Nine have a comm-signal. Ship entering the orbital exclusion zone. The hails all check out, but they thought you ought to know.’

‘Nice of them. Why, especially?’

‘It’s not in-system, nor Navy. They think it might be Adeptus Astartes, but they’re not sure.’

At the mention of the magic triplet of syllables, as-tar-tes, Oen felt his heart miss a beat. He didn’t know whether that was born of fear or excitement. Probably a bit of both.

‘They’re not sure? What are they not sure about?’

‘Perhaps you’d better get back to Nyx, procurator. They’re not going to try to stop it, and by the time you get back it’ll be in geostat.’

‘Fine. Keep them quiet until I get there. We’re just about done here.’

The link broke. By then Eim had stopped taking picts and was looking intently at the wreckage.

‘No signs of explosions,’ she murmured, watching the pieces float by. ‘It’s like some giant hand just… pulled it apart.’

‘Did you hear all that?’ asked Oen, ignoring her. ‘We’re going back in. You can take another flyer out here if you want to keep at it.’

Eim looked at him, and her freckled face was wide-eyed. There was a strangely childlike look of desolation in them.

‘What’s doing this, procurator? Why can’t we stop it?’

‘If I knew that, do you not think I’d have ordered something more potent than overflights?’ He smiled, trying to be reassuring, and knowing he’d probably failed. ‘Listen, the distress signals have been picked up. Trust in grace, Eim. There’s probably a whole company of Space Marines lining up on Nyx as we speak, and, believe me, there’s no more impressive sight in the Emperor’s own galaxy.’

He slumped in the chair in the reception chamber, leaning both hands on the only table, smelling like old meat. His scraggly beard spilled over the breastplate of his enormous armour, snarled and tangled. Grey streaks shot through it, making him look like an old, sick man.

Do they get old? thought Oen, observing him through the one-way plexiglass viewport in the corridor outside. Would they die of age, if given long enough?

Accounts of the newcomer’s landing from atmospheric control had been garbled. One transmission implied that the newcomer had blasted his way through the upper defensive cordon without warning, while another, from a low-order servitor-controlled station, indicated nothing but impeccable orbital manners.

One way or another, though, he’d gotten through, and his ship, now standing five hundred metres up on the landing stages, was like nothing Oen had ever seen – dirty, angular, covered in plasma burns and with a blocky aquila picked out in bronze on the sloping nose. It didn’t look big enough for inter-system travel, though it must have been, since its occupant certainly wasn’t from Lyses.

From the look of it the ship’s crew was entirely composed of servitors. They were strange looking creatures, with clunking servos and spikes and animal bones hanging from their pearl-white flesh. They’d stayed on board the ship after the pilot had stomped down the landing ramp, which Oen couldn’t be too sorry about. Not that the pilot was any less strange.

‘I thought you said…’ began Eim, gazing through the viewer, fascinated. Her query trailed off.

Oen knew what she meant.

‘I’ve been told they vary,’ he said, rather stiffly. ‘The only picts I saw were from a rogue trader who’d run a squadron out through Ultramar. Those ones were… different.’

Eim nodded slowly, running her eyes over the bulky figure sitting at the metal desk on the other side of the viewport.

His head was bare and bald. A knotwork tattoo ran across the tanned flesh from behind one ear, over the skull and down toward one eye. His face seemed to have several metal studs in it, each one a slightly different shape. His armour was pale grey, like dirty snow, and had carvings all over it. The lettering wasn’t standard Gothic – it was angular and close-typed, covered in marks and bisected with slashes like those made by animal claws.

Oen had imagined the armour of a Space Marine to be clean, polished and flawless, just like the ones in the devotional holos sent out by the Ecclesiarchy’s Office of Truth Distribution. He’d imagined bronze shoulder-guards and bright cobalt breastplates glimmering under the white lumens.

He hadn’t imagined the mess, and the dirt. He certainly hadn’t imagined the smell.

‘Finished gawping?’

Both Oen and Eim jumped. He’d spoken. The words were thickly accented, as if Low Gothic were a foreign language, and muffled by the dividing wall. He hadn’t looked up. His strange yellow eyes remained fixed on his loosely clasped hands.

Oen readied himself, shot Eim a reassuring glance, and went round the corner to open the door. As he entered the room, the newcomer looked up at him.

‘I’m sorry, lord,’ said Oen, bowing before taking a seat opposite. ‘Standard observational procedure. We have to be careful.’

The newcomer, massive in his armour, gazed at him with a profoundly disinterested expression on his savage face. He didn’t smile. His scarred and tattooed features looked almost incapable of smiling.

‘A pointless gesture,’ he said quietly. ‘If I’d wanted to kill you, you’d be dead already. But since you’ve started, observe away.’

Oen swallowed. The newcomer’s voice was worryingly deep, underlined with a permanent, breathy growl and made eerie by the unusual pronunciation.

‘Do you have, er, a designation? Something I can use for the reports?’

‘A designation?’

‘A title, lord. Something I can–’

The huge figure leaned back, and Oen could see the metal chair flex under the huge strain.

‘I am a Space Wolf, Procurator Morren Oen,’ he said. As he spoke, Oen caught sight of long, yellow fangs flashing out from behind the hairy lips. ‘Have you heard of us?’

Oen shook his head meekly. He felt his heart beating a little too quickly. Something about the man in front of him made it very hard to retain composure.

Except he wasn’t a man. Not like Oen was a man, anyway.

‘Good,’ said the newcomer. ‘Probably for the best.’

Oen cleared his throat, trying to remain something close to professional.

‘And your name, lord?’

‘My name is Kvara.’

Oen nodded. He was aware he was gesturing too much, but he couldn’t stop it.

‘I’d expected… more of you.’

That had come out wrong. Kvara looked at him with amusement. His eyes were circles of gold. Animal’s eyes, lodged in a lined, worn and battered face.

‘You do not need more of us. One of us is more than enough.’

Oen nodded again.

‘Quite so,’ he said, casting around for something more intelligent to say.

Kvara stepped in then, tiring of Oen’s stammering enquiries.

‘The data in your sending was clear,’ he said. As he spoke, he lifted a gauntlet and flexed the fingers of it absently. Oen stared at it, distracted by the casual, supple movement. ‘You’ve lost five of your harvester stations in five local months. No survivors, no readings. Nothing but debris. Something is coming out of the water. A beast.’

Kvara let his gauntlet fall to the tabletop with a dull clang.

‘I have hunted beasts before.’

‘We’ve men assigned to this already,’ Oen said. ‘I’d hoped that–’

‘That I might join them?’ Kvara shook his head. ‘No. Tell your men to stand down. In this, as in everything, I work alone.’

Oen looked up into the golden eyes, and thought about protesting. Perhaps this… Space Wolf didn’t know how big a hub harvester was. Anything that could take down one of those things must be massive, far bigger than the flyer he’d returned to Nyx in. The security detail he’d had on alert for three months consisted of nine hundred men, and he’d been considering expanding it.

‘I’m not sure–’

‘You’re not sure I can handle whatever it is you’ve got attacking your people,’ said Kvara. ‘You’re not sure something looking as dishevelled and terrible as me could do much more than get himself killed.’

He leaned forward, and the metal of the table bowed under the pressure of his forearms. Oen recoiled, feeling the hot-meat breath wash over him.

‘This is not about you, Morren Oen,’ whispered Kvara, taking a cold pleasure in running his tongue around the words. ‘This has nothing to do with you.’

Oen tried to hold the gaze from those animal eyes, and failed. He looked down at the rivets on the table, ashamed of himself.

‘I need a flyer,’ said Kvara, sitting back. ‘Fastest you have. Then you can forget about me, and forget about your problem.’

Oen nodded for a third time. Being in the presence of Kvara was intensely tiring. He found himself happy to do almost anything to get the encounter over with.

‘It will be done, lord,’ he said, knowing that, whatever he’d expected to get out of that first meeting, he’d failed badly. ‘I’ll get straight on it.’

Eim looked sympathetic as Oen emerged from the room. She placed a hand lightly on his shoulder.

‘How’d it go?’

Oen shrugged and smiled wryly.

‘Not what I expected,’ he said, shaking off the hand and walking down the corridor. He went quickly, keen to be out of there. ‘Though I don’t really know what I thought would happen.’

Eim trotted after him, looking up anxiously.

‘How many of them have come?’

‘Just him.’

‘You’re joking.’

‘No.’

Eim snorted.

‘I’ll get the ’paths sending again.’

‘That may not be necessary.’

‘Of course it’ll be necessary,’ said Eim, scowling. ‘We need men. There must be Guard somewhere within range – they’d send a whole company soon enough if they thought tithe production was about to fall.’

Oen halted, looking thoughtful. Now that he was out of Kvara’s intimidating presence, he was beginning to think more clearly.

‘He doesn’t think he needs help.’

‘That’s his problem. I mean, did you see what he looked like?’

‘Right up close,’ said Oen, ruefully. ‘It wasn’t pretty.’

Eim shook her head irritably.

‘One!’ she snorted. ‘I didn’t think they ever worked on their own. I thought they came in squads – you know, like you see on the holos.’

Oen shrugged.

‘So did I,’ he said. ‘Maybe different types have different ways. He’s a Space Wolf. Heard of them?’

Eim shook her head.

‘Nice name,’ she said. ‘Suits his looks.’

‘Careful what you say,’ warned Oen, looking over his shoulder and back down the corridor. ‘His hearing’s very good.’

‘Okay, okay.’ Eim sighed, and ran a weary hand through her hair. ‘But, procurator, this is the last thing we needed. We lose another hub, and we’ll miss the next quota even if I keep the crews on triple rotation. For a minute there I was daring to hope we’d find a way out of this.’

This time it was Oen who put a reassuring hand on her shoulder.

‘You never know,’ he said. ‘He may be more impressive than he looks.’

He leaned closer to her, and lowered his voice.

‘He’s taking a flyer out, soon as I can requisition one,’ he said, covering his mouth. ‘And, whatever he says, I want it tracked and a team placed ready for rapid deployment, just in case he finds anything. Can you do that?’

Eim shot him a tolerant, affectionate look.

‘Sure I can,’ she said. ‘Just in case.’

The flyer skimmed low over the ocean, casting a deep green shadow on the waves. Kvara drove it hard, irritated by the lack of the explosive speed he was used to. One engine was already burning close to capacity, and the dashboard in front of him was active with red warning runes.

Kvara ignored them and concentrated on the view from the cockpit. Lyses stretched away in every direction, formless and empty, a wasteland of pure water and pure sky. The first sun was up, and the arc of the atmosphere was bleached salmon pink. The ocean was calm, veined with lines of white where the massive swells rolled under him.

It was pristine. In an Imperium where the hand of man fell heavily on everything it touched, Lyses was a rare jewel. In its inviolability it reminded Kvara of Fenris. On the death world, everything below the Asaheim parallel was barely touched by humanity. Lyses was more benign, but had the same vast, untouched quality.

Despite everything, that spoke to his soul. It had been a long time since anything had done that, and he found the experience, on the whole, uncomfortable.

There is one objective left, one mission, one task. Remember it.

He pushed the flyer down further, skimming it barely a man’s height above the waves. Spray flashed down the sleek flanks of the machine, spinning and frothing as he banked around in a long arc. Then he powered it up, sweeping along the trajectory the procurator had given him. For a moment, just a moment, he could have been back on a drekkar, relishing the steep pitch and yaw of the heavy wooden hull as it ploughed through the endlessly violent seas of his home.

But Lyses was too beautiful for that. Too beautiful, and too forgiving.

Below him, the algal blooms began to intensify. Deep green and cloudy, they hung just below the surface, bathed by the light of the sun. They extended for hundreds of kilometres, a vast mat of nutrient-rich matter, stuffed with proteins.

It was for them that mankind had come to Lyses, to suck up the endless stream of life-giving algae, to process it into foodstuffs ready to be transported off-world to the famished hives and forges elsewhere in the sector. Hub harvesters, mobile floating industrial behemoths, prowled the waters endlessly, slowly ploughing furrows through the infinite bounty, dragging it up and packing it into billions upon billions of dried and pressed pellets ready for transport to gigantic processing manufactoria on other planets.

According to the records Kvara had accessed in Nyx, Lyses hadn’t had a serious security incident for over five hundred years. The harvesters had just kept on going, criss-crossing the ocean, working the algae and scooping it into their maw-like hoppers, as if it would go on forever.

But nothing lasted forever – everything decayed, everything was tainted.

Kvara allowed himself a grunt of cynical satisfaction. A world without strife was an affront to his battle-hardened sensibilities. All that could exist in such a place was softness, and softness opened the door to corruption.

The blooms grew ever thicker as the flyer sped on. The green darkened, forming a solid mass under the waves. If things had been working properly, he guessed, it would never have been left to become so overgrown.

A green rune blinked on the forward scanner. Kvara sat back in the pilot’s seat, cramped in his bulky armour, and watched the ruin of the hub approach. He came in low, observing the way the broken struts still speared up from the waves.

The harvester had been massive. Wreckage littered the surface for a square kilometre or more, floating on the gentle swell or lodged in thick knots of algae. Kvara applied the air brakes, swivelling the engines forward to arrest his speed and achieve a low hover. He flicked a dial on the dashboard, and the bubble-cockpit slid back.

Warm, softly fragranced air rolled over him. The smell of the algae was rich and faintly sweet. Kvara hauled himself out of the seat and leaned over the side. His weight caused the flyer to tip violently and the engines whined as they compensated.

He narrowed his eyes, poring over the debris. No burn marks or signs of explosions marked the surfaces. Where the plasteel was broken, it looked like it had been snapped cleanly. Other pieces had the jagged evidence of claw-rakes on them.

Kvara studied each piece carefully, spending time observing the angle of the impacts, the force used, the frequency of them.

Is it worthy? Is it enough?

Early signs were promising. He felt a tremor of excitement in his hearts, and swiftly suppressed it. There had been too many disappointments for him to start thinking along those lines.

Keeping the cockpit-bubble open, Kvara sat back in the pilot’s seat and started a slow circle of the wreckage. As he did so, he abstracted his mind from the particular, and drifted into the general.

There were huge channels gouged through the algae blooms, marking the passage of something truly massive. Though there were several of them, Kvara had the sense that only one beast had made them.

Prey.

He closed his eyes, just as he would have done on Fenris where the spirits of hunter and hunted intertwined closely, haunting the high mountain airs and staining the unbroken snow.

I see you. I see your path. I will follow it, and then comes the test.

He saw the trail of the beast in his mind, just as if it were a herd of konungur, twisting away into possible futures. He saw it plunge down into the frigid depths, as dark as the void of space, writhing along the jagged ocean floor.

He opened his eyes. Below him, a wide furrow in the algal carpet stretched off into the distance, jagging back and forth.

I see you.

Kvara nudged the flyer after it, following the trail. As he did during every hunt, he put himself in the mind of his prey, imagining the mental processes of the beast and the strange, sluggish thoughts in that giant mind. He had learned to do it with such acuity that, for a moment at least, he might have been one himself.

As he travelled, his certainty grew. He powered the flyer back into full propulsion.

Kvara sat back, eyes half-closed, the warm wind racing past him. He let his instincts play loose, running down the prey, chasing after it as if a physical scent had lodged in his nostrils.

It was the same then as it had always been. For a moment, the hunt took over, the quest became everything.

In simpler, harsher times, that was all there had been.

In the past that was now faded and hard to recall, he had lived for nothing else.

I see you.

The drekkar took a heavy hit and buckled over to starboard. It rolled across the heavy, gun-grey sea, lashed by the torrential rain. The deluge lanced down from the low cloud line, spears of liquid that bounced and rattled from the deck.

Everything moved. Waves crashed against the high flanks and cascaded down the deck, as cold as mountain-ice and hard as bullwhips. The masts screamed against the rigging, taut with ice crystals and shivering.

‘I see you!’ roared Thenge, bounding up to the prow with his long, white pelt in tow.

Olekk and Regg followed him, clasping tight to the railing, their boots slipping on the sodden deck-boards. Each one of them carried a long spear in their hands, crowned with a biting edge ground out of the iron by the priests.

Lighting flickered across the northern sky, followed by the crack, roll and boom of thunder.

Fenrys was angry, just as ever, and the seas boiled with that anger.

Aj Kvara hung from the high foremast by one hand, swaying far out over the water as the ship tilted and tipped. He hadn’t seen anything but the driving rain and riot of moving water.

He swore to himself, and hurried down the rigging. If Thenge had seen something from the prow, then his eyes had been the keener. That was bad. Kvara’s youth was supposed to be his advantage.

Then, before he was halfway to the deck, the sea off to port boiled up in a mass of bubbles and lashing, slapping fronds.

‘Here it comes!’ yelled Rakki, his voice high with excitement. From somewhere else in the longship, furious laughter broke out. Kvara dropped to the deck, grabbed a spear and raced to the side.

Ahead of them, breaking the surface a dozen fathoms off, something vast and black slipped above the turmoil of the waves before sloping back down again. Kvara saw a glossy shell, pock-marked with barnacles, rolling away from the pursuing hunters and diving smoothly. A geyser of water puffed up as the beast exhaled and drew in more air.

‘Hvaluri!’ roared Olekk, laughing like the others.

Kvara felt excitement spur up within him, and he leaned further over, craning for another glimpse. The drekkar carried over thirty warriors. Taking a hvaluri would feed them and their families for weeks, as well as providing much else of value to the tribe.

‘Faster!’ Kvara shouted, up at old Rakki who was master of the ship.

The big man, one-eyed and scar-faced, glared back at him from the tiller.

‘You hunt!’ he blurted, outraged. ‘I sail!’

The creature broke the surface again, closer that time, sweeping up through the choppy water and letting out a muffled bellow of anger.

Maggr was still up in the rigging, and was first to throw. His spear shot down through the rain, spinning on its axis. It hit hard, burying the jagged iron blade deep into the hvaluri’s armoured hide. The beast roared and went down again.

‘Hjolda!’ Maggr bellowed, balling his fists and sending his face red with fervour.

Other spears shot down, missing the target and splashing into the walls of moving water.

Kvara bided his time, waiting for the hvaluri to surface again. The ship slipped steeply down a precipitous leading wave, wallowing at the base of it before climbing up the next one. The deck rolled and swung like a berserker’s axe-lunge, testing the warriors’ precarious footing. They braced themselves against the ropes, edging closer to the tilting side of the ship, peering into the storm-lashed murk for a glimpse of the prey they hunted.

‘Round left!’ bellowed Thenge, getting frustrated and reaching for a second throwing spear.

The drekkar shivered as its prow came across, buffeted by the crashing seas. The skinsails, those had hadn’t been furled against the storm, stretched out taut, making the ship race through the spray like a loosed crossbow bolt.

‘I have it!’ crowed Olekk, leaping up on to the sharply pitching rail and taking aim.

Something long and sinuous flashed out of the water, lashing across at Olekk with spiked barbs and dragging him over.

There was no scream. He was gone in an instant, pulled down into the icy depths from which no living man ever returned.

Kvara ran across the deck, springing up to where Olekk had been standing. He had a brief glimpse of black tentacles thrashing in the water, covering a foaming patch of dark red before that was swept astern by the racing sea.

He hurled his spear down, but the edge of the ship bucked wildly, sending his aim wide.

‘Skítja,’ he swore, jumping down and reaching for another spear.

Then the drekkar shuddered heavily, as if something vast had hit it from below. Thenge lost his footing and sprawled across the deck like a drunkard. The whole ship shot up, briefly thrown clear of the waves, before crashing back down again, snapping whole lengths of rigging and making the loose ropes flail like scourges.

Maggr jumped from the broken ropes, still flushed from his success, and barrelled up to the prow, leaping over the grappling form of Thenge.

‘Ha!’ he crowed, grabbing two throwing spears and taking the lead warrior’s place.

Kvara chuckled at the presumption of it, leaping away from the rolling edge and grabbing a fresh spear of his own.

Everyone was still laughing and roaring – the ragged, caustic laugh of hunters gripped by the manic touch of the kill-urge. The whole ship was febrile with it, spilling over with savage, raw energy.

‘I want this kill,’ spat Kvara. His blond hair had come loose of its plaits, and lashed round his clean, ruddy face in the wind. He grinned as he spoke, and his white teeth flashed in the storm.

‘Then throw quicker, lad,’ said Maggr, taking up a spearing position and scouring the churning waves.

It came up again then, huge and glistening. Kvara saw a single eye the size of his chest, as round as the moon and grey like an oyster. It glared at them, burning with bestial hatred and fury.

He didn’t hesitate. Fast as a whip-snap, Kvara hurled the spear. It whistled through the air, striking straight through the heart of the eye. The shaft trembled, and it lodged fast.

The hvaluri bellowed, its roars making the water drum and vibrate, before rolling heavily away from the boat.

‘It won’t go down!’ shouted Thenge, back on his feet and braced for another throw. ‘Not now!’

Kvara raced to fetch another spear. His heart was thumping with glorious, brutal energy. Every muscle ached, every sinew was taut, but his heart sang.

I speared the eye! I did it!

The creature reared up, thundering out of the boiling sea, throwing water across its hunched, gnarled back in huge tumbling sheets.

‘Morkai!’ swore Regg, hurling a spear at it and somehow managing to miss.

The beast was massive, at least the size of the drekkar and much, much heavier. It thrashed around in a wallow of agony, the spears still protruding from its body. A huge shell of barnacle-crusted blackness rolled around, crowned with spines and bone-ridges. A mass of tentacles flashed out from under the skirts of the shell, twisting and writhing like a nest of prehensile tongues. Spray shot out, splattering against the masts and cascading down on to the warriors.

‘Too close!’ warned Rakki, heaving on the tiller.

The ship came round, but not quickly enough. Tentacles shot out, latching on to the railings and dragging the drekkar back. It tilted heavily, listing over nearly to the tipping point.

Thenge lost his footing again, raging and cursing as he slipped down the steepling deck. A tentacle spun out, clamping on to his ankle and gripping tight. He grabbed his axe from his belt and hacked down, severing it cleanly and freeing himself.

Other warriors charged, hurling their spears at the exposed underbelly of the beast. Some of the blades bit deep, disappearing into the forest of thrashing members, provoking fresh roars of pain. The sea frothed with a thick black sludge as the monster began to bleed. Some of it splashed out across Kvara’s face, hot and salty.

‘It’ll drag us down!’ shouted Rakki, toiling uselessly at the tiller.

More tentacles latched on to the ship, some reaching all the way across to the far side. The drekkar listed further, and water began to lap across the lower edge of the deck, washing up across the already drenched planks.

Thenge raced over to the nearest tendril, hacking away with his axe. He cut through it sharply, but two more fronds quickly whipped across. All across the ship, warriors swapped their throwing spears for short-handled axes and began chopping frantically at the strangling lengths of tentacle. Even as they worked, the ship slipped further down, dragged through the mountainous swell by the wounded beast.

Kvara drew his throwing arm back, only to feel a viscous, slimy wall of flesh hit him full in the face. He crashed back heavily, cracking his head on something unyielding on the way down. He had the blurred impression of a black tube the width of his arm snaking across his field of vision and falling over him. A hot wash of pain ran through his skull, and he felt blood running down the back of his neck.

Acting on instinct, he swept up his spear, still grasped in his right hand, shoving the blade of it up through the tentacle. It carved through sweetly, separating it into two pieces. The broken-off end continued to writhe on its own, jerking and spasming across the sodden wood.

Kvara staggered to his feet. The ship was going down. Waves rushed up the tilted deck, flooding into the hold below. For every tentacle the warriors slashed apart, more shot out, wrapping the drekkar in a morass of dripping, slippery tendrils.

‘Hjolda!’ he roared, grabbing his axe from his belt and throwing his arms back in challenge.

The beast loomed up at him, sweeping up out of the waves and roaring its own booming call of anger.

Kvara sprinted down the listing deck, leaping over the bodies of the fallen and veering past the flickering ends of searching tentacles, ignoring the hammering pain in his head. He ran straight at the huge domed shell, hacking away the snaking tubes of meat as they swept into his path.

It felt like he was running down a cliff-edge, straight into the depths of the bottomless ocean. He could see the bulk of the hvaluri below him, wallowing in a messy broth of broken spars and bloody water.

He leapt, flying away from the ship and through the air, plummeting for a moment, his long hair streaming behind him and his axe held high.

Then he landed, crunching on to the shell of the beast, feeling the hard surface flex from the impact.

He nearly skidded straight across it and over the far side, but managed to clutch at a bone-ridge with his trailing hand. He yanked to a halt, nearly blinded with spray and buffeted by the gusting wind.

The creature let out a deafening roar and hauled itself further out of the boiling sea. Tentacles shot up, trailing across its shell, reaching out to rip him from its back and hurl him into the water.

Kvara pulled himself to his knees, balancing precariously on the bucking, rolling curve, hacking at any tentacles that reached him. Blood still ran from his head wound, making him dizzy. Through the clouds of spray, he could just make out the drekkar rolling away, righting itself as the hold of the tentacles was released.

Kvara batted away a flailing length of tentacle, then slammed the axe-head down. It cracked open the shell, plunging deep into the translucent, sticky matter beneath.

The beast bellowed, thrashing and yawing in the waves. Jets of black ink spouted up, splashing across Kvara’s chest. He pulled the axe free, drew it up and chopped down again. The blade cracked open a new wound, shattering the beast’s armoured covering and tearing up the soft flesh beneath. More ink welled up, boiling hot and fizzing.

Kvara kept attacking it, ripping up the outer layers and burying the axe-head deep into the yielding blubber beneath. The tentacles lashed out, feebly now. The cries of the beast became plaintive rather than angry. Gouts of black murk pumped from its wounds, turning the roiling waves dark and viscous.

Kvara heard a heavy crunch close by. He looked up and saw Thenge by his side, scrabbling for purchase on the shell before getting to his knees. The big warrior grinned at him, an axe in each hand.

‘Brave work, pup!’ he laughed, whirling the blades in his hands before hacking them down. ‘We’ll make you a man yet!’

Then the two of them got to work, gripping the tilting shell and hacking it open, burrowing down, slicing through the hide of the beast, breaking up what remained of the hard barrier between them and the pulpy mass beneath. Out of the corner of his eye, Kvara saw the grappling hooks fly out from the drekkar, latching on the foundering creature, ready to haul it to the side of the ship. Other warriors were preparing to make the leap across, brandishing hooks and cleavers.

Kvara kept his head down after that, working hard. His pain at the back of his head wouldn’t abate, though it didn’t stop him working.

Amid all of it, he still grinned. He couldn’t help himself. The flush of victory ran through his veins, keeping his arms moving and giving his legs the strength to hold him in position.

This is my kill, he thought as he hacked away furiously, trying not to let his stupid, childish grin show too much.

My kill.

A day later and the storm lessened in its fury, though the seas ran hard for much longer. The drekkar made heavy work of it, labouring in the deep swell. The central mast still stood but much of the rigging had been ripped away. Several holes had been punched below the waterline, and no matter how fast the crew bailed it out, the bilges sloshed with seawater where the makeshift repairs had been hammered on.

Aside from Olekk, three other warriors had been dragged over the edge. That was a heavy toll for the tribe, through the scale of the prize compensated for that. The meat of the hvaluri would keep them fed for many months once the women had smoked and salted it. The tough shell would provide tools for them and the beast’s blood would be distilled into both fuel and food.

The ship ran low in the water, laden down with every piece of hide and blubber the warriors could fit aboard. It stank of the sea, acrid and salty, but no one minded that. It was a good haul, worth setting out across the blade-dark ocean for.

As they neared home Thenge sat with Kvara in the prow, chewing on a long piece of sinew and letting the grease run down his beard.

‘Feeling better?’ he asked good-naturedly.

Kvara nodded. He’d broken his arm on the leap back to the ship after the hvaluri had given up the fight, much to the raucous amusement of the rest of the crew. Even after it had been bound up with a rough splint, it still ached – not that he would ever show it.

His head was the worst of it. He didn’t dare to get it looked at by the priests. The blood still oozed thickly from the wound, and the pain grew with every passing hour. His vision was beginning to blur. It wasn’t healing.

‘I mean what I say,’ said Thenge, jabbing his finger at the blond warrior. ‘That was brave. The test of manhood awaits, and you’re ready.’

Kvara took up a string of sinew himself and chewed on it.

‘Not sure?’ asked Thenge.

‘I’ll do it,’ he said. ‘Not now.’

Thenge snorted.

‘Why wait?’

Kvara looked away from him, down the longship where the rest of the crew laboured. They were his people, the ones he’d lived with all his short life. They’d never made him feel anything less than part of their world. The test of manhood – the long, solitary hunt across the icy wastes, daunted him. He didn’t fear death, and certainly didn’t fear danger, but something about the ordeal made him hang back.

He would do it, but not soon. The time wasn’t right.

‘I don’t know,’ he said, truthfully enough. He took another bite of the sinew, feeling the slippery flesh slide around his mouth. The action of eating dulled the pain slightly. ‘I’m not ready.’

He looked up then, up at the grey walls of cloud that shrouded Fenrys. In a rare break, where the sheets of occlusion gave way slightly, he thought he saw something up there, shadowing them. A huge bird, perhaps, but its profile was strangely angular. It seemed to hang motionless in the air.

‘Perhaps you’re not ready to be out on your own,’ said Thenge, resignedly.

Kvara nodded, not really paying attention. His head was getting worse. The clouds closed back together, hiding whatever it was that he’d seen.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Perhaps that’s right.’

Kvara ran his finger over the names on his armour. The snow-grey metal was softened in Lyses’s warm light. Even the blade marks, the scorches and the dents looked a little less jagged.

He didn’t need to read the names in order to remember them. They were carved on to his mind just as deeply as they were etched into the ceramite.

Mór, his thick-set face framed by black, dense sideburns. Dark hair, pale skin, like a vision of an underverse spectre with the sardonic humours to match.

Grimbjard Lek, the polar opposite. Sunny, blond, his mouth twitching up into a wicked smile at the first excuse. He’d killed with a smile on his face, that one, glorying the Allfather with every swing of his axe.

Vrakk, the one they’d all called Backhand, bulky and blunt with his powerfist thrumming, a dirty fighter but useful enough to make up for it.

Aerjak and Rann, brothers-in-arms, inseparable and possessed of that uncanny awareness of the other’s state. Kvara had always had Aerjak down for the Rune Priests. He’d had a strange way about him, something tied to the wyrd, for all the good it had done him on Deneth Teros.

Frorl, the blade-master, swinging his frostblade with that unconscious, mocking ease, disdaining ranged weapons for the thrill of disruptors and steel-edge.

Rijal Svensson, wiry and fast, quick to anger and equally quick to laugh, his nose broken so many times that it had almost been not worth bothering with. He’d never accepted augmetic replacements, preferring to keep the stub of gristle and bone-shards in place to remind him not to get carried away.

Finally, Beorth, the quiet one. Only happy when hoisting his heavy bolter into position or at the controls of something huge and slung with big guns. He’d have been a Long Fang before he made Grey Hunter, if they’d let him. He’d laughed rarely, never sharing the coarse jokes the rest of them let spill from their profane lips, but when he had done, that rolling, rich, mirthful rumble had made Kvara grin unconsciously along with him.

Beorth had been the hardest, out of all of them. He’d been the one they’d never noticed unless he wasn’t there.

Kvara let his armoured finger trace out the names, clicking softly as it passed over the runic grooves.

Perhaps you’re not ready to be out on your own.

A warning light blinked on the dashboard. Kvara snapped out of his memories and took in the data.

The hub was in visual range and racing towards him fast. It was a small installation, a few hundred metres in diameter on the surface and crowned with a couple of comms towers, a few landing stages and a squat ops centre. Lights still blinked at the summit, flashing piercingly in the heat of day. The algae stretched away from it, sparse in patches and thick in others. Four lines of oily smoke rose from the harvester processing nodes, indicating that it was still working.

Kvara’s face wrinkled in disapproval. He could smell the thick stench of promethium already, a low-grade variant, greasy and sour.

His armoured fingers ran over the console, keying in the landing codes from the databank Oen had uploaded to the flyer. A pict over to his left immediately updated with the response. The protective cover of one of the landing stages withdrew, unfurling like an iron rosebud, and he banked the flyer towards it.

Nothing obviously wrong.

He touched the flyer down on the platform and jumped down from the open cockpit. Smoke poured from one of the engines, and the others wound down slowly, as if their bearings had been ground away.

Kvara strode across the apron, unconsciously checking his weapons. The bolt pistol at his waist was fully loaded and primed with the appropriate blessing. Blood, his own blood, ceremonially stained the muzzle. Across his back was strapped Djalik, his blade. It was a short, stabbing sword, notched and serrated along one of the cutting edges and with inset runes lodged under the bronze-lined hilt. Over the years the metal had been dulled with burns from the weapon’s disruptor field, making it as dark as charcoal.

Kvara sniffed the air, going watchfully. Everything was quiet. The installation barely moved on the placid waters. The warm wind blew across the towers and manufactoria units, washing over the grey plasteel in an endless, placid sigh.

Ahead of him, two doors slid soundlessly open, opening the way into the hub’s interior. Orange lights blinked on, illuminating a bare, clean corridor. Everything smelled of the algae – a mulchy, briny tang that lingered at the back of the throat.

Kvara paused before entering, taking a final look across the hub. Aside from the low growl of automating processors, all was calm. The green waters lapped softly at the flanks of the harvester, a hundred metres down from the landing platforms.

Where are the men?

Reluctantly, having got used to the clean, unfiltered taste of the air, Kvara retrieved his battered helm from its mag-lock and screwed it in place. The balmy atmosphere of Lyses disappeared, replaced by the filtered, sterile environment of his armour-shell.

Kvara took up his bolt pistol, and breathed a prayer, the same prayer he’d uttered during every quest since Deneth Teros.

Allfather, deliver me from safety and bring me into peril.

Then he walked inside.

‘Where is he now?’

‘Alecto XI. He’s landed.’

‘That’s a long way from the last site. Have we got anything from the crew?’

‘Nothing. Not a thing.’

‘When was the last transmit?’

‘Uh, hang on.’

Eim steadied herself against the sway of the flyer. It was a big one, capable of spending several days out over the water and accommodating a full assault company. She didn’t like using craft that big – their judder and yaw, as well as the fuel-tinged air, made her nauseous, and the grunts got restive cooped up in the holds.

‘We don’t have anything from them for six days, ma’am.’

Eim turned to the comms officer and raised an eyebrow.

‘Why wasn’t that picked up? They’re meant to be checking in daily.’

The comms officer, a grey-faced man with deep-sunk eyes and an unfortunate overbite, shrugged apologetically.

‘There are a lot to monitor.’

Eim swore and rubbed her eyes with the balls of his fists. Throne of Earth, she felt tired. Oen would owe her for this when she got back.

‘Okay, run a scan. Check for anything.’

‘I can’t see… whoa. I really don’t know… what is that?’

Eim pushed him aside and leaned over the augur console. As she watched the shapes clarify, she felt a sudden, cold thrill shudder through her body.

‘How close are we to him?’

‘A long way. Procurator Oen insisted on a range of–’

‘Forget that. We’re going in. Signal Nyx, but don’t wait for a response.’

She turned away from the comms officer and looked out across the cramped bridge space. Other officers looked up from their stations. Their expressions had switched from mild boredom into nervous expectation.

‘Get the men armed and ready to deploy,’ she said, speaking to the company commander, a squat, low-browed man called Frehis Aerem. ‘All squads, assault order, ready to drop on my word.’

Eim looked back at the console before he’d had a chance to respond. As she watched the augur line sweep round for another pass, she felt her heart start to thump faster within her chest.

‘Damn you, Oen,’ she muttered, shaking her head as she watched the data stream in. ‘You let him go out there – this is on your conscience.’

The corridors were quiet and lit only by dim orange light. Every metre of them was pristine, scrubbed clean and glistening. Octagonal hatches appeared at regular intervals along the walls, all closed. Kvara tried one of the handles, and it clicked against the bolt lock. He punched through the mechanism, cracking the handle, and the hatch swung open.

The chamber on the far side was empty. There was a desk, two metal chairs, a scale model of the harvester station on a sideboard. More orange light flickered from a semi-functional lumen, catching the jewels in a cheap devotional image of some primarch or other. No one was inside and, from the sterile smell of it, no one had been inside for some time.

Kvara turned back, walking through the network of corridors. Despite his heavy boots, his footfalls were soft. The power armour hummed – a low, grinding noise at the edge of mortal hearing – the only thing that broke the dense fog of silence.

Kvara paused, inclining his head, listening carefully. For a second, there was a trace sound, right on the edge of his audible range. Nothing he could latch on to, and not enough data for the helm to augment.

He started walking again, keeping his pistol held high. The grey hair along the back of his neck stood erect, brushing against the collar of his armour. He could feel his thick blood pumping vigorously around his bulky frame. His awareness had sharpened up, causing his muscles to loosen and his pupils to dilate. He heard his own breathing resonate within the helm, close and hot.

I come for you. You know I am here.

At the end of the corridor was another intersection. He waited again, watching, listening, absorbing.

Show yourself.

The lights blew.

The corridor plunged into darkness. Something raced up out of the shadows, phenomenally fast, scrabbling on the metal floor as it came.

In the nanosecond before Kvara’s helm compensated, it swerved around the corner and out at him. A hellish face, obscenely long and crested, lashed up out of the dark.

Kvara loosed two bolts, aiming fast. They impacted with a crack and flash of light, shattering a brittle shell. High screams, alien screams, echoed from the walls.

More of them arrived, leaping over the fallen outrider. Jointed limbs clattered over metal, flashing ice-white as more bolt-flares lit them up. They came in a tangled rush, jostling each other, jaws wide and biting.

Kvara pulled back, firing all the time. His arm moved only by fractions, picking out target after target, cracking apart the growing swarm of xenos creatures. The intersection clogged quickly with smashed shells and oozing pulp, but he kept coolly firing.

Just as the ammo counter ran down, the onslaught ceased. The last of the chittering screams died away, leaving a pile of twisted, snapped and cracked shells in front of him.

Kvara ejected the old magazine, slammed a fresh one into the pistol housing and drew his blade with his left hand. Djalik’s disruptor field fizzed into life, throwing an electric blue aura out from the cutting edge.

He strode out into the intersection, wading through a swamp of broken, twitching carcasses, watching for more of the xenos to come at him.

He knew what they were. He’d fought such beasts on a dozen worlds.

Hormagaunts, the Imperium called them.

Kvara liked fighting tyranids. Unlike Traitors, for whom he could feel nothing but a blind, disgusted fury, or the greenskins, which were contemptible, tyranids were a force he could respect.

They were pure. They suffered from neither fear nor corruption nor fatigue. Like the native beasts of his own world, they lashed out with an unsullied primal aggression, driven to kill out of hammered-in instinct and never stopping until death took them or the task was completed.

They saw him as prey. He saw them as prey. That made things even.

Ahead of Kvara the corridor opened out into a wide, square room. Banks of equipment were arranged in long rows, all still clean and unsullied. Across them lay the bodies of the hub’s crew, very much not clean and unsullied.

They had been ripped open. Their bodies, what was left of them, hung in glistening loops of gristle and sinew all across the room. A few had tried to get out, running for the double doors on the far side of the space. The trails of blood, as thick and dark as engine oil, didn’t reach very far. The corpses still had looks of horrified surprise on their faces – those, at any rate, who still had faces.

Kvara swept the room with his pistol. The lights were still down, and his helm picked the outlines of the bodies in fuzzy grey light.

He sensed them coming before his armour’s equipment did. A skittering, scraping run, muffled by the closed doors to the corridor beyond, punctuated by the high-pitched rattle of xenos vocal cords. They were racing toward him – dozens of them, maybe more.

Kvara grinned.

The doors burst apart, thrown aside by a press of straining bodies. Blurred xenos outlines, skeletal and reptilian, swarmed through the gap and into the room, screaming at him with stretched-wide jaws, pouring over the surfaces in a rolling wave of needle-teeth and hooked claws.

‘Fenrys!’

Kvara charged straight back at them, leaping over a slumped pile of eviscerated bodies and bringing his blade round in a wide, blistering arc. He hurled himself into the tide, loosing volleys of bolt-fire that flashed out in the dark like storm lightning.

They came on, lashing out at him, and he shattered their talons. They leapt up to maul him, and he broke their snapping jaws. He spun round, shifting from one foot to another, punching out, slicing back with the blade, firing all the while. Scrawny xenos bodies smashed apart, bursting open and spraying fluid across his whirling, gyrating armour.

More of them poured in through the broken doors, streaming into the chamber and leaping up to make contact with him. They bounded over the bodies of their own dead, desperate to draw blood.

Kvara smashed his pistol-hand round, caving in a swollen xenos skull, before sending two more rounds spinning into two more targets, jabbing up with the blade and hauling it back through the entrails of another flailing monster.

They were all over him, tearing and screaming, but he was faster, bigger and stronger. As they howled with agonised frustration, he grunted with coarse satisfaction. His gauntlets were heavy and sticky with fluids, but he kept them moving. The liquid splattered over his breastplate, dousing the graven names under layers of filth.

He had been bred to do this. There was nothing left for him but this. Only in such work could his soul find a measure of peace even as his body pushed itself to the extremes of performance.

He was back where he belonged. Back in the fight.

‘Kvara!’

Mór’s voice was strained over the comm, broken up by the crackle of ordnance. Huge, thumping crashes distorted the feed.

‘Position, brother,’ snapped Kvara, running hard, feeling the sweat run down his temple.

‘Rann… all gone…’

And that was it. The comm spat a fog of static. Kvara kept running, keeping his head low, weaving through the rubble. Solid rounds fizzed over his head, impacting against the rockcrete and showering him with rubble.

Blood of Russ – where are they?

He sensed a detonation to his left, and leapt clear. The already ruined wall exploded, hurling out an orb of fire and rusty shrapnel. The blast wave threw him from his feet, slamming him into the nearside bulwark. His armour crunched through it, tearing up the stone and showering him in dust.

‘Position!’ he spat, righting himself and breaking into a run again.

Nothing but hissing came over the comm. The fractured sky of Deneth Teros rumbled with electric storms, and a fork of violet lightning licked the burning horizon.

‘Lek. Svensson. Position.’

He ducked down again and starting to run. Above him, huge artillery trails lanced between the shells of the spires, exploding in a cacophony of overlaid, shuddering booms.

The static mocked him, and he blinked the feed closed. Far ahead of him, the city core was tearing itself apart. A vast hab-spire, hundreds of metres tall and crested with jagged towers, toppled over with eerie, magisterial slowness. Already broken open by a hundred major impacts, the walls imploded as it crashed down amongst the ruins, throwing up a bow wave of burning dust. The screams of those inside were lost in the ripping, flickering wind, burned away by the igniting promethium in the air.

Kvara raced across a narrow transit corridor, dodging the smoking craters and leaping over the lines of barbed stranglewire. Explosive rounds followed him, puffing up as they hit the tarmac. Since he’d left Vrakk, coughing up his own blood in the gutter with his lower body on the other side of the street, Kvara’s tactical display had showed nothing but interference. The location runes of his pack all showed blank.

We’re being torn apart.

He spotted movement, right on the edge of his left visual field, and swerved after it. Something – something big – ducked under a huge, low-hanging metal beam.

Kvara fired. The bolts screamed off into the fire-flecked murk, exploding as they demolished the beam in a cloud of spinning metal shards.

Then he was running again, leaping past smoking mortar holes and sweeping around smouldering heaps of twisted slag. He hadn’t killed it. He’d have known if he had killed it.

Warned by some inner sense, he skidded to a halt, dropping down to a crouch.

A ball of plasma seared out of the gloom, missing by centimetres, slamming into the wall behind him. Kvara lurched forward, feeling the heat as another plasma bolt flew across his back.

He rolled to one side, bringing up his pistol and firing blind. The bolts connected with something, there was a shrill shriek, and the plasma torrent ceased.

Kvara sprang up, bounding after the source of the noise, ducking and swooping across the broken ground. As he went, his senses processed a thousand minor events in every direction – Guardsmen howling and weeping with fear and pain, juddering fire from dug-in positions over by the refineries, the grind and crack of armoured formations coming up from the transit hub along what remained of the Joslynssbahn. He processed those sounds, but did nothing about them. Everything was focussed on the elusive shadow, the shape that stayed one step ahead, the shape that had come among them and summoned blood.

Kvara tore round the shell of a burned-out Chimera, tasting the sweet taste of the hunt in his cloyed saliva.

Ahead, two hundred metres, he saw it again, dark between clouds of engine smoke. Huge, edged with spikes, loping like a maddened devil of the Helwinter. Corruption rolled from its carapace in a stink of oily shadow.

It turned, and eyes the colour of newborn flesh blazed at him.

Kvara fired as he ran, loosing a rolling column of explosive rounds and zigzagging through the broken remnants of the 576th Armoured Falchions.

The bolts connected, and the creature rocked back on huge, cloven feet. It cast aside a charred and broken plasma cannon and reached for a glittering blade. A scream sliced through the air, echoing in nightmarish polyphony.

Kvara didn’t slow down. The pistol clicked empty, and he cast it aside, drawing up his blade Rothgeril and activating the lashing disruptors.

The thing he faced had once been a man. After that, it had been a Space Marine. After that, it had become a living altar of sadism, a prophet of the darkest corner of insanity and depravity in a galaxy already drenched in it.

Its armour, a grotesque blasphemy of Tactical Dreadnought plate, had burst out and split from the pulsing flesh beneath. Translucent tumours swelled up in the cracks, glowing and leaking and trembling. A face – part helm-grille, part skeletal rictus – grinned out from under a cowl of whip-curl bronze snakes. Eldritch energy rippled across the warped ceramite like meltwater. Blood flecked and speckled the pale pink tracery, boiling and hissing as the raw ether touched it and recoiled.

Kvara swung the blade low, driving it with frightening speed and precision. He could sense the acuity of his own movements, and gloried in it. Every nanometre of his body was straining for the kill. His hearts thudded, his blood raged, his lungs burned with a cleansing pain.

The blades clashed, and a boom of power discharged, throwing Kvara back and blunting his charge. The monster reared over him, pulling its pulsing sword-edge round for another blow.

Kvara pulled away, opening up a narrow space and spinning round to build up fresh momentum. The creature sliced its own blade across at him, tearing the very air itself asunder and leaving a trail of agonised matter in its wake.

Kvara ducked under it, feeling the charged edge tear a chunk from his backpack. He thrust up, ignoring the sickly stench of filth that poured from the corrupted horror, grabbing the hilt of Rothgeril two-handed.

The sword bit deep, blazing like a field of stars as it crashed through the distorted ceramite and warp-addled flesh.

Then it was hauled away, dragged from his hands by a wrench so hard that Kvara lost his feet and was dragged, face-down, into the ash and dust of the ruined city. He recovered instantly, rolling away to evade the downward killing plunge before jumping back to his feet and backing away, disgusted at how easily his weapon had been taken from him.

Now the creature held two swords. One, its own, blazed with sick, overripe energy. The other, Kvara’s, held upside-down by the blade-tip. The beast’s long fingers squeezed through the furious disruptor field, bleeding dark purple blood where Rothgeril’s biting edge sunk deep into its twisted flesh.

It laughed, and the sound was like the screaming of children.

Weaponless, Kvara clenched his gauntlets and snarled, ready for the onslaught. The creature was nearly twice his height, mutated and imbued with the essence of the Ruinous Powers. The Grey Hunter gazed up at it through red helm lenses, fearless and desperate, judging whether any blow he landed could do any damage to such a monster, tensing to sell his life with as much blood and fire as could still be mustered.

But not yet. A hurricane of heavy bolter fire slammed into the towering monster, smashing up the twisted armour and churning deep into the rose-pink muscle. It reeled, flailing against the bludgeoning hail of exploding projectiles.

Beorth limped out of the roiling clouds, his underslung bolter thundering from his two-handed grip. The comm-link was still a hiss of nothing. In broken bursts, Kvara could only hear a strangled, desperate sound from Beorth’s feed.

The man, the big man, was roaring.

‘A blade, brother!’ shouted Kvara, stretching out a hand imploringly.

Beorth ignored him. He strode toward the staggering creature, firing all the while, ripping the armour-shell free of its sickening sigils and unholy signs. His own armour was as black as night, burned and rent open, and blood still poured from a dozen mortal wounds. He walked on regardless, massive and implacable, pouring a steady stream of withering, searing destruction from the red-hot muzzle of his huge weapon.

The monster waded through it, clawing at the bolts even as they punched into it, blowing shards from its armour and spraying plumes of purple. It staggered toward Beorth, screaming the whole time in a paroxysm of outrage and madness.

Then it leapt, streaming out in trails of blood and shell-discharge, arms outstretched and jaws open. It crashed into Beorth, knocking them both to the ground and rolling over. It savaged at his neck, tore at the cracks in his armour, stamped down with cloven hooves on to his prone limbs.

Kvara raced after them, pouncing on to the back of the creature. He grabbed the ornate lip of its armour and heaved, pulling it away from Beorth. The horror snarled and lashed round, trying to throw him off. Kvara clung on, digging his fingers deep into the exposed flesh under the ceramite, tearing it up and pulling it out in strips.

Beorth clambered back to his feet, drawing his blade. The heavy bolter thudded to the floor, spent and smoking.

The creature of Chaos threw Kvara off, hurling him to one side and swinging the twin swords down at his prone body. Kvara rolled away, evading them by centimetres, before Beorth charged back, slashing with his own combat blade, whirling and dancing with all the skill of Frorl.

Together, the two of them rocked back and forth, hacking and blocking. The Traitor was reeling now, weeping blood in rivulets down its shattered armour. Beorth’s left arm hung limply by his side, awkwardly twisted, his every move radiating agony.

Kvara lurched to his feet in time to witness his brother’s sword knocked away with a vicious swipe from the Traitor’s warp-tainted blade. It spun away, glittering in the firelight, clattering across the stone. Spurred on by desperation, Kvara scrambled after it, grabbing the hilt just as it came to rest.

He whirled back round, only to see the creature break Beorth’s neck with a final, horrifying lunge. The huge warrior was hoisted into the air and cast aside with a sickening crunch of bone.

Then it turned to Kvara, and grinned.

Kvara ignited the disruptor on Beorth’s blade, barely noticing the runes signifying ‘Djalik’ along the blade. It felt light in his hand, balanced the way a combat sword should be.

‘For the Allfather,’ Kvara breathed softly, staring at the murderer of his pack, sensing the death-spirit locked tight in the killing blade.

The creature charged at him, both swords flailing, but its movements were jerky and erratic. Massive wounds had opened out across its body from Beorth’s onslaught, all bleeding torrents.

Kvara darted forward, ducking under the first incoming swipe before jabbing up with the point of Djalik, twisting as the edge punched up through the outstretched chin of the Traitor.

The point cleaved cleanly, thrusting up through bone and brain. The monster, impaled on the lashing, spitting energy blade, jerked like a marionette, lashing out blindly with its twin weapons.

Huge fists battered Kvara, buffeting him from either side, but he remained firm. He fed power to Djalik’s disruptors, and the creature’s head bulged, cracked, and exploded.

A rain of pulp and bone shot outward, blinding Kvara and sending him reeling backwards again. Disorientated, he stumbled, landing heavily on his back. A sharp pain radiated from his side, and he caught sight of the Traitor’s blade lodged in his torso. Runes flashed red across his helm display, giving him a tediously thorough summary of just how badly hurt that made him.

The headless body of the Traitor toppled, thudding dully against the tortured earth of Deneth Teros. Tendrils of warp-matter flickered across its ruined corpse, dancing like grave-sprites.

Still on his back, Kvara grabbed hold of the corrupted blade, gritted his teeth, and pulled. It came free with a wet squelch, dragging strands of muscle and skin with it through the jagged gash in his armour. He could feel the poison in the wound already, hot and boiling away like a swarm of insects. He tried to rise, and failed. Blood was leaking out of him freely, defying the clotting agents in his body. His vision blurred, going black, and his head fell back against the hot soil.

Above him, the sky was scored with trails of fire. As if from far away, he heard the rush and clamour of warfare. The ground trembled underfoot as huge war engines trundled toward one another. High up in the dark skies, black silhouettes of drop-ships hung, shaky in the heatwash from their labouring engines.

Kvara watched it all mutely, feeling paralysis creep up to his lips. He could feel his consciousness slipping away, even as his ravaged body rallied against the poison frothing in his blood.

‘Position…’ he murmured, automatically, repeating the word he’d used so often over the last hour, feeling the bitter futility of it even as his mind lost its grip on the world of the senses.

Beorth was dead. Vrakk was dead. Rann and Aerjak had died together, just as they had surely been fated to do. The pack – all of them – were dead.

Kvara felt a solitary tear of rage run down his burned cheek. He wanted to take his helm off, to taste the air of the world that had done this, but his hands no longer obeyed his commands.

Night closed in on him, the night of oblivion. The last thing he saw was the helm display, functional and stark. The eight runes, eight identifier marks, were all blank, like empty holes into the void.

All dead.

The thought burned at his mind even as it retreated in nothingness. It stabbed at him, far sharper than the wound in his side, sharper than the many wounds across his battle-worn body, sharper than the knowledge, coming to him even as lost everything else, that he was equal to the poisons, and that this would not be the last fight he would live to see.

That didn’t matter. For the first time since coming off the ice and taking the Helix, that didn’t matter.

Nothing mattered.

All dead.

‘This is your choice.’

‘I have made it.’

‘Not yet. You need more time.’

‘My decision won’t change.’

‘It may. I’ve seen it before.’

The eyes in the dark were red and slanted. If he had died, he would have expected eyes like those.

But he hadn’t died, not physically. The eyes behind those lenses were like his. They were sunk deep into a black wolf skull mask with teeth set around the helm-grille.

Around him, the isolation chamber of the Vrafnki hummed with the grind of sub-warp travel. He didn’t know where it was going, or how long it would be in transit. Much still had to be explained to him, though he was in no hurry to ask for information.

‘It’s a privilege, not a right,’ said the Rune Priest, though less harshly than he might have done.

Kvara let his head sink back to the metal surface of the medicae cot. Every part of him still ached. His blood felt painfully hot, as if he’d been given a transfusion of molten lead.

‘With all respect, lord,’ he said, working his swollen lips painfully, ‘I don’t believe you. It’s never been refused.’

For a moment, the skull mask remained static. Then a low, grating chuckle broke out from behind the black armour.

‘Maybe.’

The mask drew closer, looming over him, coming to within a few centimetres of his face. Kvara looked up through the translucent mask of the medicae shroud with the one eye that still worked. He felt the soft pulse of the machinery around him, cycling his blood, working his hearts, filling his lungs, keeping him shackled to life.

‘What do you think taking the lone path will be like, Hunter?’ he asked. ‘How long do you think it will take to find a prize big enough to extinguish your grief? When we pulled you from the ice, as near to death as you are now, you’d killed a hvaluri. How much bigger would your beast have to be, Aj Kvara, before its death would be enough?’

Kvara smiled grimly.

‘When I was a child, I dreamed of killing a krakken. That’s what I thought it took to become a Sky Warrior.’

‘Then you are a fool. The krakken cannot be killed.’

‘But Jarl Engir–’

‘The krakken cannot be killed. It will tear at the roots of the world for eternity, weakening them, making them frail.’

The Rune Priest withdrew his skull mask. Kvara closed his eye. He felt the drugs in his system dragging him back to unconsciousness, and fought against it.

‘It can be killed,’ he said, feeling his words slur. ‘I know it, and you know it. Everything that lives can be killed.’

He kept moving, heading down, ever down, fighting through the hormagaunts as they swarmed up from the lower levels, relishing every wave of them as they crashed and broke against his armour. Djalik was slick with their fluid, as was the muzzle of his bolt pistol, now dangerously low on ammunition.

The creatures had come from below. They’d run up the sensor shafts from the underwater sections, fast and silent. The human crew would have had no warning – no time even to send off a panicked transmission before the living wall of teeth and claws ripped into them. Before Kvara had arrived they’d been dispersing again, falling back down in scattered packs, making way for the monster whose appearance they’d heralded. Only his intervention had stirred them again, rousing them back into the slavering, indignant fury they’d shown before.

Now, once again, their numbers had been thinned. Kvara wheeled around smoothly, knocking three of the creatures bodily into the chamber walls. Two thumped wetly against the plasteel, slumping to the floor. The other managed to get up, and he grabbed it, snapping its neck with a contemptuous twist.

The floor rocked as something collided with the outside wall. The collisions were getting more violent, and he braced himself against them. A hormagaunt, one of the last remaining, skittered into the chamber and threw itself at him. Kvara cracked his fist into its oncoming jaws, not bothering to use the blade.

The chamber lurched again, and a crack snaked across the wall. Kvara backed away from it, running a quick check over his armour’s integrity seals, knowing full well that he was several hundred metres below sea level.

The structure around him groaned and the walls began to bulge inwards. The cracks grew, as if something huge and prehensile had wrapped itself around the chamber and was pulling tight.

Kvara braced himself, gauging from the creaks and snaps of breaking struts how big the thing outside was.

The walls bulged further, breaking into a lattice of fractures, then broke. Seawater, opaque with bubbles, cascaded in, hitting him hard and knocking him off balance. Kvara thrust himself upward, kicking out against the sudden influx, rotating in the torrent and lashing out with his blade. Its edge connected with something viscous and mobile, snagging on it before cutting through.

He kept moving, pushing out from the rapidly disintegrating walls, powering through the rushing water. More tendrils snaked inside, thrashing after him. As he moved, he fought against a dizzying whirl of disorientation. Everything was in motion, frothing and racing. Water poured rapidly into what remained of the chamber’s outer casing, rushing up to waist-height, then shoulder-height, then over his head.

Through a blurred curtain of moving water Kvara saw a huge length of sucker-clad skin race past him, ripping away a length of armour-casing from the hub’s exterior. He kicked himself toward it. As he pushed off the crumbling floor gave way entirely, dissolving into a bubbling foam of broken mesh and cladding. More water bloomed up from under it, chasing out the last of the chamber’s air in a glistening bubble.

Kvara brought Djalik round in a curve, aiming at the tentacle snaking through the breach. The blade sliced into it cleanly, and a huge cry echoed throughout the water – a shuddering, booming bellow of pain.

Then the last remnants of the chamber caved in, bringing with them a fresh deluge of churning, bloody water from all directions. Kvara ducked down under a collapsing wall section, lurching away from it in slow motion even as he fell down deeper, supported now by nothing but collapsing struts and spars. He tumbled into the centre of the zone of destruction, dragged further into the abyss as the metal around him was crushed and whipped into nothing more than splinters.

The last of the air shot up in columns of glittering silver, leaving him plummeting through rapidly darkening seawater. His helm-visor partially compensated, rendering the scene around him into a riot of false-colour targets.

Kvara spun away from the forest of needle-thin sensor prongs jutting below the disintegrating harvester, still falling rapidly, still trying to get some kind of lock on the creature that was doing this. He had a vague impression of something vast moving just above him. He spun cumbersomely on to his back and fired upward. The bolts shot through the water leaving long trails of bubbles. A series of muffled thuds rang out and impact shocks rippled through the water.

Then Kvara hit the algae. He was dragged into a sticky, cloying morass of thick vegetation. It grasped at him, pulling on his limbs. He twisted around again, slicing out with his blade to clear it, still falling deeper. He reached out with his bolter-arm, ready to fire upward again, only to have a tentacle shoot down and lash round his wrist, wrenching it out of position.

With a violent jerk, he stopped falling. The algae rolled away from him and more tendrils snaked down, grabbing him and pulling him back up. He cut himself free, only for more suckers to grab on. Kvara felt his second heart thumping hard. His breath echoed, fast and regular, in the enclosed space of his helm.

He looked up, and saw the creature in full for the first time. A huge serrated crest of armour reared up in the gloom, ridged and pocked with barnacles. Jaws protruded from under the crest, lined with flashing lines of needle teeth. A massive torso, segmented and flexible, hung down from a spike-ringed neck. Tentacles flowed out from joints along the torso, writhing in the water as if they had sentience of their own. A long tail trailed back into the depths, terminated with a scorpion-like sting. The beast’s hide was glossy and streamlined, and it moved through the water with a ponderous, muscular grace.

As Kvara stared up at it, struggling against the tendrils that clutched at him, its huge jaws opened to reveal several flicking tongues, each one the length of his forearm. Six multi-jointed arms uncurled out from the forest of tentacles, stretching out to grab at him. As Kvara saw the claws extend toward him, he remembered the shattered pieces of plasteel floating on the water.

He wrenched his bolt pistol free of the tentacles and fired straight at the creature’s looming face. The rounds shot off through the water, leaving trails of bubbles in their wake.

With a mighty whiplash movement, the leviathan surged away from them, evading the projectiles with a sinuous ease. While it was moving, Kvara brought his blade to bear, severing the tendrils that still bound him and breaking free of their hold.

He dropped deeper, spinning around as his heavy armour dragged him down. The creature swam around and swept down after him, undulating through the blooms of algae like a colossal sea-serpent of Fenrisian myth.

Kvara tried to control his cartwheeling descent and failed. The thick liquid dragged at his limbs and the turbulence buffeted him. The wrecked hub was now far above him and out of his eyeline. Even with his helm lenses compensating, it was hard to make out much through the murk other than the vast serrated shadow pursuing him.

Then he reached the bottom. The sea floor rushed up at him, dark and jagged. Huge rocks, each as sharp as butcher’s knives and many metres high, cut up into the fog of algae. Kvara arched his back, missing the tip of the nearest stalagmite by a finger’s width. He spun away from it and collided with the flank of another one. As he rebounded clear, he managed to mag-lock his blade and stretch out with his free hand. His fingers clutched at the sharp edge of another rock column and he clamped his gauntlet tightly over the rock. His body swung after it, crashing into the unyielding stone and grinding to a standstill.

The stalagmite held him, and his boots lodged firm against a narrow ledge on the stone. Locking himself in place with his free hand, Kvara swung his pistol up again and loosed another volley of bolts.

The creature had been close on his tail the whole time – too close to evade the point-blank shots. The bolts span into its bony crest, detonating once they penetrated the hard casing and exploding with a series of blunt thuds. The beast screamed and jerked sharply back up, sending a backdraught of water washing over him.

He spotted the tail sweeping round at him almost too late. Kvara pressed himself back against the rock-edge and the bulbous sting swam past just in front of him, lashing furiously as it passed.

Then the creature was coming at him again, surging through the water, multiple arms outstretched. Kvara squeezed the trigger again, but the pistol jammed.

Spitting a curse, he let it drop and brought his blade up. His movements were as fast as he could make them in the thick soup of algae, but still too slow, too cumbersome. The first tentacles clamped on to his weapon-arm, pinning him back to the rock. Then more shot out, wrapping themselves around his midriff. They squeezed tight, and Kvara felt his breastplate flex under the pressure.

A clawed hand reached for him, aimed at his head. Kvara managed to pull himself out of its path, wrestling hard against the drag of the tendrils. The beast’s talons smashed into the rock behind him, shattering it and sending a cloud of dust floating out and up.

Kvara felt the first crack on his armour even before the warning runes started to flash. It ran transverse across the list of names on his right side, breaking up the inscriptions.

Then the creature went for him again, this time at his torso. Kvara kicked back against the rock, pushing himself upwards. He wrenched his blade-arm free and lashed out at the tendrils around him, briefly clearing a space to operate in. He struck deep, cutting into solid flesh and staining the water with the beast’s dark blood, before rolling away and down, sliding down the sheer rock in a flurry of kicked-up dust.

But the beast was far faster, and the abyss was its element. It shot after him, moving with unhurried undulations. The creature’s outstretched claws grasped at him, gouging new rents in the ceramite of his backpack where they made contact. More warning indicators flared red across his lens display.

Kvara rolled clumsily on to his back, swinging his blade round and slashing at the scrabbling talons. The beast clutched its claws back up away from the flashing blade before punching them back down after it had swept across. Talons punched down, through Kvara’s guard, cutting into his trailing leg like a stud being shot into leather.

Kvara grimaced, wrenching his leg away as the flesh punctured. The leg-plate cracked open, leaving clouds of blood in the water behind him. Valves shut closed at his knee socket and his armour’s greave filled with water as the rents in the ceramite spun apart.

The creature swooped in closer, black against the shadow of the deep waters. Off-balanced and unsighted, Kvara crashed and wheeled down the sheer face of the pinnacle. He hit a jutting outcrop in mid-spin that arched his spine and sent him reeling in the opposite direction. Then he collided with another wall of rock face-first, cracking his weakened breastplate further. For a second he could see nothing but flashes of red light. He swung out blindly as he fell further and the sword bit into pursuing claws, darkening the water with the beast’s oil-black blood.

Then his boots connected with something solid and his dizzying plummet thumped abruptly to a halt. His vision cleared, though he could feel blood running down the inside of his helm. The cracks in his plate were leaking water and it sloshed around, freezing and pressurised, in the cavities between his skin and the armour.

He was lodged in a narrow cleft between two sheer peaks of rock. Frustrated for a moment, the beast scratched frantically at the pinnacles above him, pulling them apart to get at him. One elongated talon stabbed down clean through the gap, carving through the protection of his upraised sword-arm and severing it nearly clean through.

Kvara roared with pain, watching helplessly as his blade floated free of his control. Blood ballooned out from the wound, pluming in jets through the water.

Another claw shot down through the narrow cleft, reaching for his head and shoulders. Dizzy with pain and incipient shock, Kvara only just managed to punch up with his good hand. His gauntlet closed over the incoming talons and he twisted, using his whole body to leverage the manoeuvre. The talons ripped free, and the creature roared in turn, sending pulsating shivers radiating through the water.

By then Kvara’s armour had sealed off the severed vambrace. His blood had already started clotting, and his vision had cleared. Above him, the huge creature withdrew its tentative strikes and broke into a frenzy of pain-filled destruction. Its tail crashed round, demolishing the fragile peaks of the two pinnacles. Another pass, and the last of his protection would be ripped away. His sword-arm was useless, his armour was compromised, and his weapons were gone.

Kvara pulled two krak grenades from his belt and primed them. He clutched them both in his good hand and crouched down, coiled to spring.

Something like elation coursed through his heavily damaged body – the elation felt by a master swordsman having at last met his match in battle.

The beast had the measure of him. It was worthy.

I have found it.

Its tail crashed back across, demolishing the pinnacles on either side of the cleft, exposing him again to the full wrath of the wounded creature. When the debris cleared, Kvara just had time to see an enraged, bleeding face hurtling straight at him. It was obscenely stretched, utterly alien, devoid of anything but animal hatred and a primal lust for the coming kill.

Kvara pounced, propelling himself upward into the oncoming jaws, holding the twin grenades tightly in his one working gauntlet and thrusting them forward. The beast snapped its jaws closed out of instinct, ripping Kvara’s arm off at the shoulder.

He bellowed with pain. Dark stars exploded before his eyes, quickly lost in a blur of shock and agony. He saw his own blood stream out in a long, viscous trail as he fell back, hanging in the water like a slick of promethium. He felt more water rushing into the breaches in his battle-plate, cracking open the ravaged protection and sending him tumbling back down into the shadow of the rock-cleft.

Above it all was the face of the beast, grinning with alien malice, triumphant and malevolent. It came in close, its teeth stained with his blood, ready to finish him.

Then the grenades went off.

Kvara was hurled down against the rock as the twin booms rocked the sea floor. The creature spasmed and bulged as the explosions tore through its innards. A shockwave swept out from the epicentre of the blast carrying scraps of flesh and carapace with it and carpeting the stark rock needles. The swirling mass of tentacles seemed to implode, shrinking back in toward the bony ridge of the creature’s spine before going suddenly limp. A long, echoing scream resonated through the water, hanging there until the beast, flailing for a moment longer in a desperate attempt to climb on to life, slumped immobile.

It still hung, buoyant and huge, drifting a little on the cold, dark currents, before beginning to tilt away, trailing lines of gore from its punctured torso.

With what little awareness that remained to him, Kvara gazed up at it. Though wracked by pain and feeling the frigid clutch of unconscious rush up to grasp him, he could still marvel at the beast’s size.

My kill.

Kvara’s head fell back on to the rock. Water had got into his helm, which was slowly filling up. Pain throbbed throughout his whole body, acute and blinding. He felt heady with stimms and adrenaline. Before they did their work, dragging him into the oblivion of the Red Dream, he only had one more thought – a correction –recognising the nature of the beast he had killed and the significance it possessed. The voices no longer echoed in his mind, and he could no longer see them as they had been. Death, next to that, seemed of little consequence.

Our kill.

The wound in his head never healed. He became sick, then dizzy, falling over the deck as the drekkar pitched with the winter sea. They laughed at him right until the time he couldn’t get up.

Kvara saw the world through a mist of confusion, nauseous and slurring. The sea went flat, and the wind came hurling down from the heavens in a blaze of fire and smoke.

He cried out for Thenge, looking for the big man through the rushing noise. Thenge wasn’t there. In his place stood a giant wearing a black metal skin and the mask of a wolf. His dried pelt cloak shook in the downdraught and he carried a skull-topped staff.

I am dead. This is the spectre of Morkai.

He felt hands reach out for him – human hands. He was pulled on to some kind of stretcher. He recognised the smell of those hands. Preja Eim, perhaps, the human female who had stood outside the interrogation chamber. Where was her superior, the man called Oen? There were others there, clad in environment suits and talking in low voices.

This is not real. I am not on Fenris.

The drekkar reeled, nearly sending him into the sea. He managed to lift his head, and saw the shaky outline of a huge metal casket in the sky. It was as grey as the clouds, and hung above the ship in defiance of all law. Gigantic rings of bronze thundered with flame, breaking through the storm and making the air shake with heat.

The giant with the black metal skin made a gesture, and more metal-clad warriors leapt down from the hovering casket. They wore snow-grey armour with runes hammered into it and none of their faces were visible. They lumbered up to Kvara, walking smoothly even as the ship plunged through the swell.

I have killed the krakken, and it has killed me. Now they come to take me to Halls of the Slain.

Kvara felt the water drain from his helm. In the distance, sounding as if still underwater, drills rang out, removing the surviving sections of battle-plate. Lights flashed painfully in his eyes, surgical and piercing. He heard voices with the accent of Lyses Gothic coming in and out of hearing. A man came to the forefront, his forehead creased with concern.

That is Oen. He fears me still. What is he doing here?

They took him up into the hovering casket of fire. The pain in his head grew worse. Kvara looked down from his impossible position for a final time, seeing his own blood on the decks below. Then, at last, he saw Thenge and the others, huddled at the far end of the ship, gazing up, open-mouthed.

They were afraid. He had never seen them afraid of anything before.

Huge doors closed with an echoing clang, sealing him in. The lights dimmed. He heard the sound of medicae equipment being dragged closer.

Someone leaned over him. It might have been the black wolf-mask. It might have been the man Oen.

It didn’t matter. They both said the same thing.

‘You will not die, warrior.’

‘Could you not have got here quicker?’

‘Throne, Preja, I do have other things to worry about.’

‘He’s scaring the hell out of everybody.’

‘I don’t doubt it. Is he up and walking?’

‘No, he can’t get up. But he’s still fething scary, procurator.’

Oen walked as fast as he could down the corridors of the medicae unit, ignoring the nervous glances from the apothecary’s staff as he went. Eim trotted along at his side, irritable and tense.

‘What has he said?’

‘He wants his armour. He wants to know what we’ve done with his ship.’

‘And you told him?’

‘That he can have it, and that we left it the hell alone.’

‘Good.’

The pair of them reached the secure ward. Two sentries in full assault armour stood guard outside. They saluted briskly before opening the metal-banded doors.

The ward was spacious enough, but its lone occupant made it seem cramped. He lay on his back, his huge limbs barely fitting onto the reinforced slab of plasteel that served as a bed. Wires ran from his chest, his face and his limbs. One arm had been severed just below the shoulder and the stump was crowned with a metal cap.

As they entered, Kvara lifted his head. Even after so long, his face was still swollen with bruises. He looked at Oen and Eim with those strange, luminous gold eyes.

‘I came as soon as I could, lord,’ said Oen, bowing.

Eim stood to one side, chewing her lip nervously.

The Space Wolf took a long time to speak. When he did, his thick, growling voice had gone. His throat shook, and the sound that emerged was little more than a pale whisper.

‘How long?’ he rasped.

‘Two standard months,’ said Oen. ‘I’m told you’ve been in some kind of deep coma. We’ve done what we can, so I’m glad to see you awake again.’

Kvara ran his eyes over the wires jutting from his body, and grunted.

Oen watched him carefully. Kvara looked even more ravaged than he had done on arrival. His long hair and beard hung in grey straggles over the edge of the cot. His massive barrel chest, covered in scars and tattoos, rose and fell under a thin coverlet. His skin was studded with metal devices, none of which the surgeons had made any attempt to investigate. They’d been terrified of doing anything invasive to him and had been half-appalled, half-fascinated by his outlandish physiology. As far as Oen could tell from their reports, the Space Marine had essentially cured himself.

‘You recovered the creature?’ Kvara asked. His eyes met Oen’s blearily. Even with Kvara in such a state, the procurator found it hard to meet that gaze.

‘What was left of it, lord. The remains are preserved.’

‘The head?’

‘I… er, the what?’

‘Did you retrieve the head?’

‘We did.’

Kvara let his head fall back. His breath was ragged and shallow.

Oen looked at Eim, who shrugged. He had no idea what to say.

‘My armour,’ said Kvara. His voice had slurred, as if he were fighting against sleep. ‘Where is it?’

‘Here, lord,’ said Eim, motioning over to the far corner of the room. ‘We brought it here, just as you asked, when you were sleeping.’

Kvara lifted his head again with difficulty, screwing his eyes up and peering out as if through a thick fog.

The armour had been hung on a reinforced metal scaffold. Even the broken pieces had been mounted on the rig, each one carefully hoisted into place by a team of engineers who’d been every bit as reverent and afraid as the surgeons.

The breastplate hung in the centre. Where once the surface had been covered in eight lines of runes, it was now almost bare. A series of huge impacts had scoured the surface clear, wearing away the grey paint and boring deep into whatever material it had been constructed out of. The curved surface glinted sharply in the light of the medicae chamber, as raw as newly-tempered steel.

‘The names,’ whispered Kvara, looking at it intently.

‘Your pardon?’

Then the Space Wolf issued a dry, cracking chuckle. It seemed to pain him, and he looked away from the armour and back at Oen.

‘Come here, mortal,’ he ordered.

His throat dry, Oen shuffled closer. Kvara winced as he turned his head, exposing a pair of fangs between chapped lips.

‘How did you locate me?’ he asked.

Oen swallowed.

‘I disobeyed your instruction, and your movements were tracked. By the time our flyers arrived, you’d destroyed the creature.’

Kvara nodded.

‘I should add,’ said Oen haltingly, remembering how he’d felt when Kvara’s body had been retrieved, ‘that we’re sorry. We came too late. But, you should know, we did what we could for you. You were never alone. We couldn’t keep up with you, but you were never alone.’

Kvara smiled at that. Unlike the weary, sardonic smile he’d worn on arrival at Lyses, the gesture was natural, almost human.

‘Never alone,’ he echoed thoughtfully.

Oen swallowed again, uncertain of what to say to that. An uneasy silence fell over the chamber.

‘I don’t expect you to understand the ways of my kind, human,’ said Kvara at last, his voice low. ‘I don’t expect you to understand why I came here, nor why I must take the head of that beast back to Fenris, nor what that will mean for the blood-debt of my pack.’

His bestial eyes shone wetly as he spoke.

‘Their names have been erased, and it eases the torment of my soul. But we’ll remember them in the sagas for as long as such songs are remembered. And among them, in the position of honour, will be yours, human. Take that as you will, but there are those in the galaxy who would see it as a compliment.’

Out of the corner of his eye, Oen saw Eim raise her eyebrows and give a little shrug. He tried to think of something suitably polite to respond with.

It was difficult. For all the reputation of the Adeptus Astartes, the reality of them was hard to come to terms with. Perhaps the Space Wolves were a minor Chapter, a fringe example of the species with more eccentricities than the others. Maybe the other ones he’d seen on the devotional holos with their gleaming cobalt armour and gold-lined pauldrons looked down on them as quaint or inferior.

By the time Oen had thought of something, though, Kvara seemed to have drifted back into an exhausted sleep, and to say anything further felt rather superfluous. For the sake of form, though, Oen bowed courteously and gave his reply.

‘That’s very kind, lord,’ he said. ‘What a nice tradition.’

He had learned to use his new body out in the wilds of Asaheim, and it gave him the strength and poise of a demigod. Even out of his armour he could withstand the biting air of the Fang with barely a flicker of discomfort. He had been changed, dragged beyond himself and into the realm of legend.

For all that, the first time he met them his tongue felt thick and useless. He’d never been much of a talker, and they already knew one another as well as mortal brothers. He envied the way they were with each other – easy, casual, close.

‘So they’ve sent us a whelp,’ said the one they called Mór, scowling at him as he entered the hearth chamber with his false-confident strut.

The one they called Lek laughed at that, grinding the edge of his axe with a whetstone. He stopped the wheel and pushed a loose strand of blond hair back behind his ear.

‘So they have.’

Vrakk, Aerjak and Rann looked up from their game of bones. Vrakk shook his head wearily and went back to it. Aerjak and Rann exchanged a knowing smile, but said nothing.

‘Can you use a blade, whelp?’ asked Frorl, walking up to him and whirling a practice-sword expertly in his left hand.

‘Of course he can’t,’ snorted Svensson, wrinkling his ruined nose sceptically. ‘He’s just been pulled off the ice.’

He felt his anger rising at that. Since the changes in his blood, he could be made angry so quickly. The Rune Priest had warned him of that, but still he struggled to control it. Perhaps he would never control it. Perhaps, having been shown the realm of the gods and his place within it, he would still stumble at the final hurdle.

‘He’ll learn,’ said the big one, the one they called Beorth.

Of all of them, he was first to clap his hand on his shoulder. His rough palm fell heavily, like a blow, and he staggered.

‘You’ll learn, won’t you, whelp?’

He looked into Beorth’s eyes, and saw the calm, effortless strength there.

‘Don’t call me whelp,’ he said, holding Beorth’s gaze.

‘Oh?’ Beorth looked amused. ‘What do you want to be called?’

‘Brother.’

Vrakk snorted, still engrossed in his game.

‘You have to earn that,’ he said.

Aj Kvara didn’t look at him. He looked at Beorth, whose hand still rested on his shoulder.

The big warrior seemed like he was going to say something, then paused. He looked down at Kvara, who was still bristling with youth and anger and uncertainty.

‘Perhaps you will,’ he said. ‘For now, though, you need to learn to fight.’

Beorth grinned, and pulled out his blade. It was a short, stabbing sword, notched and serrated along one of the cutting edges and with inset runes lodged under the bronze-lined hilt.

‘Let me show you,’ he said.

TWELVE WOLVES

Ben Counter

The sons of Fenris look not only to the future, but also to their noble past and so my task is a most arduous one. Think not that the saga I speak comes to this tongue easily, or that to bend the ear of a mead-soaked Blood Claw is a task any less worthy than bringing the bolter and chainsword to the Emperor’s foes! No, indeed, to tell these tales of the past, and to have them listened to by the Brothers of the Wolf, is a task whose difficulty is matched only by the weight of the duty I bear in telling them.

I hear you now, throaty and raucous, demanding to hear a saga of some great battle or feat of arms that will fill your hearts with fire. Lord Russ fighting the One-Eyed traitor, you cry! The many crimes of the Dark Angels, you demand, so that we might feast and drink and remember our grudges! But my purpose here is not to serve this feasting throng with whatever bloody tale they desire. No, I have gathered you by this roaring fire, in the grand hall of the Fang where generations of Space Wolves have celebrated their victories and toasted their dead, because there is a lesson I have to impart.

I do not need an Astartes’ augmented senses to hear your sighs. What use, you whisper to yourselves, is a saga not dripping with the blood of foes and thundering with the sound of chainblade on heretic flesh? Fear not! There will be blood. Could an old thrall like me, a broken, haggard thing kept in pity by the Chapter whose standards I failed to reach in my youth, hope to survive if he spoke of anything but battles and glory to a roomful of Astartes? It is from the Wolf Priests themselves, the guardians of your spirits, that I learned this tale, and they know better than to impart lessons that will not be heeded.

It is in a great battle of the past, then, that our tale takes place. Those attentive young wolves will know of the Age of Apostasy, one of the direst lessons that mankind has ever had to learn, during which the corrupt clergy of the Imperial Creed sought to seize power for themselves. It is a long and grim story in its own right that I will not tell here. Suffice it to say that it was a time of blindness, fear and chaos, when the Imperium of Man sought to crumble in a way not threatened since the dark times of Horus. Among the many tales of sorrow in this time, our story concerns that of the Plague of Unbelief, when a wicked man named Cardinal Bucharis carved out an empire of his own, throwing off Imperial authority to rule as a king!

Bucharis, while a cunning and fearless man, was a fool. For as his empire grew, conquered by renegades of the Imperial Guard and armies of mercenary cutthroats, he came to the threshold of Fenris. Arrogant in the extreme, Bucharis did not halt there and turn back, afeared of the Space Wolves who called it their home then as you do now. No, he sent his armies to Fenris, to conquer its savage peoples and force the Space Wolves to cede their world to him!

Ah, yes, you laugh. Who could have thought that an Apostate Cardinal and a host of mere men could defeat the Space Wolves on their home world? But it happened that at this time very few Space Wolves were at the Fang, with most of them having joined the Wolf Lord Kyrl Grimblood on a crusade elsewhere in the galaxy. The Space Wolves left there to face Bucharis’s villains numbered little more than a single Great Company, along with the newly-blooded novices and the thralls who dwell within the Fang. Bucharis, meanwhile, bled the garrisons of his empire white to flood Fenris with soldiers and lay siege to the Fang. Do not think that the Fang was impregnable to them! Any fortress, even this ancient and formidable mountain hold, can fall.

In the third month of this siege two Space Wolves were abroad in the valleys and foothills around the Fang. They were patrolling to disrupt and observe the enemy forces, as the sons of Fenris were wont to do at that time in the battle. One of them, and his name was Daegalan, was a Long Fang such as those battered, leather-coloured Astartes who watch us even now from the back of the hall. They have heard this tale many times, but take note, young Blood Claws and novices, that they still listen, for they understand its lesson well. The other was much like you. His name was Hrothgar, and he was a Blood Claw. Daegalan was wise and stern, and had taken Hrothgar as a student to teach him the ways of war that, with the Fang and the Chapter in great peril, he had to learn very quickly.

Imagine a mountain ridge at night, bare flint as sharp as knives clad in ice that glinted under the many stars and moons of mother Fenris. It overlooked a wide, rocky valley, cleared of snow by tanks and shored up by engineers, like a black serpent winding between the flinty blades of the Fang’s foothills. Now you are there, the story can begin.

Two Astartes made their way up to the lip of this ridge. One of them wore a wolf skin cloak about his shoulders, and across his back was slung a missile launcher. This was Daegalan. His face was like a mask of tanned leather, so deeply lined it might have been carved with a knife, his grey-streaked hair whipping around his head in the night’s chill wind. He wore on his shoulder pad the symbol of Wolf Lord Hef Icenheart, who at that time was directing the defence of the Fang from its granite halls. The other, with the red slash marks painted on his shoulder pad, was Hrothgar. The scars, where the organs of an Astartes were implanted, were still red on his shaven scalp. His chainsword was in his hand, for it rarely left, and his armour was unadorned with markings of past campaigns.

‘See, young cub,’ said Daegalan. ‘This is the place where our enemy creeps, like vermin, thinking he is hidden from our eyes. Look down, and tell me what you see.’

Hrothgar looked over the edge of the ridge into the valley. The night’s darkness was no hindrance to the eyes of an Astartes. He saw a track laid along the bottom of the valley, along which could be wheeled the huge siege guns and war machines which Bucharis’s armies hoped would shake the sides of the Fang and bring its defences down. Slave labour on the worlds the Cardinal had captured had created countless such machines and they filled the bellies of spacecraft supplying his war on Fenris. Indeed, it was the mission of the two Astartes to locate and disrupt the bringing of these war machines to a location where they could fire on the Fang.

Many Guardsmen, from the renegade Rigellian regiments who had thrown their lot in with Bucharis, guarded the tracks, knowing that soon the precious war machines would come trundling along it.

‘I count twenty of the enemy,’ said Hrothgar. ‘Imperial Guard all, they are reasonably trained – not the equal of a Space Wolf, of course, but dangerous if they can fire upon us in great numbers. See, Long Fang, they have assembled defences of flak-weave and ammunition crates, and they seem ready for an attack by such as us. They know the importance of their mission.’

‘Good,’ said Daegalan, ‘for a first glance. But our task here is to destroy these enemies. What can you see that will ensure they fall?’

‘This one, ‘said Hrothgar, ‘is the officer that leads them. See the medals and badges of rank on his uniform? That silver skull on his chest is granted by the heretic Cardinal to followers who show great ruthlessness in leading the troops. Upon one sleeve are the marks of his rank. In his hand is a map case, surely marking out the route of these tracks. This man must die first, for with their leader dead, the others will fall into disarray.’

Daegalan smiled at this, and showed the grand canine teeth that are the mark of a true Long Fang. May you who listen to this one day sport such fangs as these, sharp and white, to tell the tale of your years spent fighting with the Sons of Russ! ‘Young Blood Claw,’ said Daegalan, ‘can it be that even with the eyes of an Astartes you are so blind? You must learn the lessons of the Twelve Wolves of Fenris, those great beasts who even now hunt through the mountains and snowy plains of our world. Each wolf is taken as the totem of one of our Great Companies, and for good reason.’ Daegalan here tapped the symbol of his Great Company on his shoulder pad. ‘I wear the symbol of Wolf Lord Icenheart. He took as his totem Torvald the Far-Sighted, the wolf whose eyes miss nothing. This wolf of Fenris teaches us to observe our enemy, much as we would love to get our claws around his throat first, for it is in looking ahead that the victory can sometimes be won before a blow is struck.

‘Look again. The man you see is indeed an officer, and no doubt a ruthless one at that. But there is another. There, seated on an ammunition crate, his lasgun propped up by his side. See him? He is reading from a book. Even these old eyes can read its title. It is the Collected Visions, a book written by the Apostate Cardinal himself, serving as a collection of his madness and heresies. Only the most devout of his followers, when the night is this cold and the mission is this crucial, would read it so earnestly. This man may not be the officer who leads these soldiers on paper, but he leads them in reality. He is their spiritual heart, the one to whom they turn for true leadership. This man must die first, for when it is shown that the most devout of them is no more than meat and bone beneath our claws, then all their hope shall flee them.’

Hrothgar thought upon this, and he saw the truth in the Long Fang’s words.

‘Then let us fight,’ said the Blood Claw. ‘The reader of books shall die first, beneath these very hands!’

‘Alas, I have but two missiles left,’ said Daegalan, ‘otherwise I would sow fire and death among them from up here. I shall fight alongside you, then. When you tear the heart from them, I shall slay the rest, including that officer to whom you paid so much attention.’

With this Hrothgar vaulted down from the ridge and crashed with a snarl into the heart of the enemy. He charged for the spiritual leader, and was upon him before the other Guardsmen had even raised their lasguns! At that time the Space Wolves were sorely lacking of ammunition for their guns and power packs for their chainswords, and so it was with his hands that Hrothgar hauled the reader of books into the air and dashed his brains out against the rocks.

‘He is dead!’ came the cry from the Guardsmen. ‘He who assured us that the divine Cardinal would deliver us, he whose survival proved to us the sureness of our victory! He is dead!’ And they wailed in much terror.

Daegalan was among them now. He was not as fast as the Blood Claw, but he surpassed him in strength and cunning. He fought with his knife, and plunged it up to the hilt in the skull of the first Guardsman who faced him. Another died, head cracked open by the swinging of his fist, and then another, speared through the midriff. The officer, who was shouting and trying to steel the hearts of his men, fell next, knocked to the ground and crushed beneath Daegalan’s armour-shod feet.

It was, but the space of a few heartbeats, as a non-Astartes might reckon it, that the enemy were torn asunder and scattered. Those that were not dead cursed their fates and fled into the snowy wilderness, eager to face the teeth and claws of Mother Fenris rather than spend another moment in that blood-spattered valley.

The hot breath of the two Astartes was white in the cold as they panted like predators sated from the hunt. But this hunt was not finished. For from down the tracks came the sound of steel feet on the rocks, and the roaring voice of an engine. And before the Astartes could ready themselves, from the frozen darkness lumbered a Sentinel walker.

Many of you have seen such a thing, and perhaps even fought alongside them, for they are commonly used by the armies of the Imperial Guard. This, however, was different. Its two legs were reinforced with sturdy armour plates and its cab, in which its traitor driver cowered, was as heavily plated as a tank. It had been made with techniques forgotten to the masters of the forge worlds today, and it bore as its weapon a pair of autocannon. This was no mere spindly scouting machine! This was an engine of destruction.

‘Despair not!’ shouted the headstrong Hrothgar as this monster came into view. ‘You shall not have to face this machine, old man, wizened and decrepit as you are! I shall ensure this traitor’s eyes are on me alone. All you need do, venerable one, is fire that missile launcher of yours!’

Daegalan had it in mind to scold the Blood Claw for his insolence, but it was not the time for such things.

Hrothgar ran into view of the Sentinel. He fired off shots from his bolt pistol, and the Sentinel turned to hunt him through the valley’s shadows. But Hrothgar was fast and valiant, and even as the Sentinel’s mighty guns opened fire he sprinted from rock to rock, from flinty fissure to deep shadow, and every shell spat by the Sentinel’s guns was wasted against unyielding stone. At that time it happened a flurry of snow was blown up by Mother Fenris’s icy breath and Hrothgar ventured closer still, diving between the metal feet of the Sentinel, knowing that he was too fast and his movements too unpredictable for the machine’s pilot to fire upon him with accuracy.

So infuriated was the pilot of the Sentinel that he forgot, as lesser soldiers than Astartes are wont to do, the true threat he was facing. For Daegalan the Long Fang had indeed taken aim with his missile launcher, the only weapon the Astartes had between them that might pierce the machine’s armour. With a roar the missile fired, and with a vicious bark it exploded. The rear of the Sentinel was torn clear away, and the pilot mortally wounded. Exposed to the cold night, the blood from his many wounds froze. But he did not have long to suffer this fate, for Hrothgar the Blood Claw climbed up the legs of the Sentinel and tore out the traitor’s spine with his bare hands.

‘You may think,’ said Daegalan, ‘to have angered this old Long Fang with your insolence, but in truth you have expounded the lesson of another of Fenris’s wolves – or rather, two of them, for they are Freki and Geri, the Twin Wolves who were companions of Leman Russ himself. See how this enemy, a match for both of us, was destroyed by the fruits of our brotherhood! When wolves fight as a pack, as one, they slay foes that would confound them if they merely attacked as individuals. You have learned well, though you did not know it, the lesson of the Twin Wolves!’

With that, the two Astartes set about destroying the tracks, and for many days as a result the walls of the Fang were spared the bombardment of Bucharis’s war machines, and the lives of many Space Wolves were surely spared.

Now, it was about this time that the Apostate Cardinal, accursed Bucharis himself, was upon Fenris directing the siege of the Fang. You already know that he was a man possessed of great arrogance and blindness to the rage he inflamed in those who suffered under his conquest. He was also a wrathful man, much given to extravagant punishments and feats of cruelty when angered. Having heard from a subordinate that his war machines (which he expected to shatter the Fang and slay all those within) would be delayed by the actions of the Astartes, he flew into a rage. He supposed that a great host of Space Wolves had done this deed, and that with their destruction the defenders of the Fang would be greatly weakened in number. A foolish man, I hear you cry. Indeed he was, but he was also a very dangerous man, whose foolishness lay not in an inability to achieve his goals but in ignorance of the consequences his cruelty would have. You know, of course, that Bucharis was eventually to meet an end as befits a man like him, but that is a story for another time.

Many units of the Imperial Guard were sent to punish the host of Astartes that Bucharis believed to be abroad in the foothills of the Fang. They were men picked by Bucharis’s warmaster, the renegade Colonel Gasto, from the regiments of Rigellians he commanded. They had been well versed in the beliefs of Bucharis, which were heretical in the extreme and shall not be spoken of by this humble tongue. They believed Bucharis’s lies that the Imperium had fallen and that only by obeying Bucharis could they hope to survive its collapse. Gasto gave them tanks and heavy weapons, and the kind of murderous cutthroat mercenaries that Bucharis had swayed to his cause to lead them.

These men and machines left the great siege encampment of the Rigellian Guard and headed for the Fang, ordered on pain of death to destroy the Astartes.

Meanwhile, Daegalan the Long Fang and Hrothgar the Blood Claw were making their way back to the Fang, for their mission was completed. Though it was now daylight a storm had fallen over the area and Mother Fenris was breathing ice across the flinty hills. Terrible gales blew and showers of ice fell like daggers.

‘Remember,’ said Daegalan as he led Hrothgar up the slippery slope of a barren hill, ‘that it is cruel weather such as this that makes every blasted and inhospitable place the domain of Haegr, the Mountain Wolf. For he endures all, indeed, he thrives in such inhospitable climes. It is to him that we must look, for is it not so that the physical endurance of an Astartes is a weapon in itself, and that by taking this hazardous path we make better time towards the Fang and further confound our enemies?’

Hrothgar did not answer this, for while he was young and vigorous, the Long Fang was so much inured to hardships and gnarled by Fenris’s icy winds that the old Astartes did not feel the cold as much as the Blood Claw. But he did indeed recall the Mountain Wolf and, knowing that the sons of Fenris are made of stern stuff, he shrugged off his discomfort and the two made good speed over the hills.

It was at the pinnacle of the next hill that a break in the storm gave them a glimpse of the Fang. It was the first time they had seen it in many days. Daegalan bade his companion to stop, and look for a moment upon the Fang itself.

‘This tooth of ice and stone, this spear piercing the white sky, does this not fill your heart with gladness, young Blood Claw?’

‘Indeed,’ said Hrothgar, ‘I am now struck by the majesty of it. It gladdens me to think of the despair our foes must suffer when they see it, for those are the slopes they must climb! Those are the walls they must breach!’ And all of you have seen the Fang and, I do not doubt, imagined how any foe might hope to silence the guns that stud its sides or climb the sheer slopes that guard its doors more surely than any army.

‘Then you feel,’ said Daegalan, ‘the howl of Thengir in your veins! For he is the King Wolf, the monarch of Fenris, and everything under his domain is alight with glory and majesty. So you see, ignorant and insolent young cub, that another of Fenris’s wolves has a lesson to teach us today.’

Hrothgar did indeed hear Thengir, like a distant howl, speaking of the kingly aspect of the Fang as it rules over all the mountains of Fenris.

‘And mark also the Wolf Who Stalks Between Stars,’ continued Daegalan, ‘as you look above the Fang to the moons that hang in the sky. The Stalker Between Stars was the totem of Leman Russ himself, and even now his symbol adorns the Great Wolf’s own pack. Our pawprints may be found even on distant worlds and the farthest-flung corners of the Imperium. So long as we, like that wolf, hunt abroad among the stars, then Fenris is not merely the ground beneath our feet but also any place where the Sons of Fenris have trod, where the Space Wolves have brought fang and fire to their enemies!’

Hrothgar’s hearts swelled with pride as he thought of the mark the Space Wolves had left upon the galaxy beyond Fenris. But the Astartes could not tarry for long, and quickly made their way on.

Soon Daegalan saw the white tongues of engine exhausts nearby, and knew that the traitor Guard were close. He led Hrothgar into a winding valley, deep and dark even when the sun broke through the blizzards. Many such valleys lead through the foothills of the Fang, chill and black, and within their depths lurk many of the most deadly things with which Mother Fenris has populated her world.

‘I can tell,’ said Daegalan after some time, ‘your frustration, young Blood Claw. You wish to get to grips with the foe and cover your armour with their blood! But remember, if you will, that another wolf stalks beside us. Ranek, the Hidden Wolf, goes everywhere unseen, silent and cunning. In just such a way do we stalk unseen. Do not scorn the Hidden Wolf, young one! For his claws are as sharp as any other, and when he strikes from the shadows the wound is doubly deep!’

Hrothgar was a little consoled by this as he listened to the engines of the enemy’s tanks and the voices of the soldiers raised as they called to one another. They could not traverse the foothills of the Fang as surely as a Space Wolf, and many of them were lost as they stumbled into gorges or fell through thin ice. Driven by their fear of Bucharis they made good time but paid for it in lives, and with every step the force became more and more ragged. Hrothgar imagined slaying them as he emerged from hiding, and he smiled.

‘Now you think of killing them by the dozen,’ continued Daegalan, for he never passed by the opportunity to instruct a younger Astartes. ‘But ask yourself, in this butchery you imagine, is there any place for me, your battle-brother? You need not reply, for of course there is not. I do not admonish you this, Blood Claw. Quite the opposite, I commend you to the spirit of Lokyar, the Lone Wolf. While the Twin Wolves teach us of brotherhood, Lokyar reminds us that sometimes we must fight alone. He is the totem of our Wolf Scouts, those solitary killers, and now he may be your totem, too, for it is Lokyar whose path you tread as you imagine yourself diving into our enemy alone.’

Now our two Astartes came to the head of the valley, where it reached the surface. They espied before them fearsome barricades set up by the traitor Guard, the bayonets of the heretics glinting in the sun that now broke through the storm clouds. Dozens of them were waiting for the Astartes, and they were trembling for they believed that a host of Astartes would stream from the black valley.

‘Ah, may we give thanks to Mother Fenris,’ said Hrothgar the Blood Claw, ‘for she has guided our friends to meet us! What a grand reunion this shall be! I shall embrace our friends with these bloody hands and I shall give them all gifts of a happy death!’

‘Now I see the battle favours the youthful and the heedless of danger,’ said Daegalan in reply, ‘and is content to leave the old and cunning behind. Go, Brother Hrothgar! Bestow upon them the welcome your young wolf’s heart lusts for! And remember the Iron Wolf, too, for he watches over the artificers of our Chapter forge wherein your armour was smelted. Trust in him that your battlegear will turn aside their laser fire and their bullets, and run with him into battle!’

Hrothgar recalled, indeed, the Iron Wolf, whose pelt can turn aside even the teeth of the kraken who haunt the oceans of Fenris. And he ran from the darkness of the valley. The soldiers opened fire as one and bolts of red laser fell around the Blood Claw like a rain of burning blood. But his armour held firm, the Iron Wolf’s teachings having guided well the artificers of the Fang.

Ah, how I wish I had the words to describe Hrothgar in that bloody hour! His armour was red to the elbow and the screams of his enemies were like a blizzard gale howling through the mountains. He leapt the barriers the traitors had set up and even as he landed, men were dying around him. He drew his chainsword and its teeth chewed through muscle and bone. One heretic he spitted through the throat, throwing him off with a flick of a wrist, and a heartbeat later a skull was staved in by a strike from his gauntleted fist. He cut them apart and crushed them underfoot. He threw them aside and hurled them against the rocks. He took the lasgun from one and stabbed him through the stomach with his own bayonet. Some traitors even fell to their own laser fire as the men around them fired blindly, seeing in their terror Astartes charging from every shadow.

Daegalan followed Hrothgar into the fray. Some leader amongst the traitors called out for a counterattack and bullied a few men into charging at Hrothgar with their bayonets lowered. Daegalan fell amongst them, his combat knife reaping a terrible toll. He cut arms and heads from bodies, and when he was faced by the officer alone he grabbed the heretic fool with both arms. He crushed the life out of the man, holding him fast in a terrible embrace.

The Guardsmen fled, but Hrothgar was not done. Some he followed behind outcrops of rock where they sought to hide. He hauled them out, as a hunter’s hounds might drag an unwilling prey from a burrow, and killed them there on the ground. When they tried to snipe at him from some high vantage point he trusted in his armour to scorn their fire and clambered to meet them, holding them above his head and throwing them down to be dashed to pieces against the rocks below.

When the traitors bled, their blood froze around their wounds, for Mother Fenris had granted the Astartes a day bright yet as cold as any that had ever passed around the Fang. Blood fell like a harvest of frozen rubies. Now Daegalan and Hrothgar rested in the centre of this field of bloody jewels, as bright and plentiful as if Mother Fenris herself was bleeding. They were exhausted by their killing and they panted like wolves after the kill, their breath white in the cold. They were covered in blood, their faces spattered with it, their pack emblems and Great Company totems almost hidden. Silently, each gave thanks to Fenris herself for the hunt, and even to Cardinal Bucharis for his foolishness and arrogance, for it was he who had sent them such prey.

Above them loomed the Fang, wherein their battle-brothers waited to receive the news of their success. Prey lay dead all around them, and the majesty of Fenris was all about. What more could a Space Wolf ask for? It was indeed a good day, and may you young pups have many such hunts ahead of you.

‘Well fought, my brother,’ said Daegalan. ‘It is well that the Apostate Cardinal stumbled upon Fenris, for without his ill fortune we would not have such hunts upon our very doorstep!’

‘He should have a statue in the Hall of Echoes,’ agreed Hrothgar. ‘Was there ever a man who did more for the glory of the Space Wolves? I think I shall toast him with a barrel of mead when we celebrate this hunt.’

They laughed at that, and it was to this sound that the rumble of engines grew closer and a shadow fell over them. For the mercenaries who led the Guardsmen were hard-bitten and foul-minded men, well versed in the low cunning of war, and they had prepared a trap for the Astartes.

The force the Space Wolves had slaughtered were just the vanguard of the army sent to punish them. Bucharis had sent in his fear ten times that number, sorely stretching the forces that besieged the Fang elsewhere. They had with them tanks: Reaper-class war machines such as can no longer be made by the forge worlds of the Mechanicus. Six of these machines had survived the journey, and they all rumbled into view now, their guns aiming at the place where the two Astartes stood.

The Guardsmen, though sorely pressed by the harsh journey through the foothills, numbered hundreds, and they had brought many heavy weapons with which to destroy the Astartes from afar – for they feared to face the claws and teeth of the Space Wolves up close, and rightly so. Their leaders, Bucharis’s chosen mercenaries, were strong and brutal men who wore pieces of uniform and armour from a dozen places they had plundered, and all wore the scars of war like banners proclaiming their savagery. They, too, were afraid of the Astartes, but they turned their fear into brutality and so the men under them obeyed them out of terror.

One such man addressed the Astartes through the vox-caster of his tank. By the standards of such men, it was a bold thing to do indeed!

‘Astartes!’ he called to them. ‘Noble sons of Fenris! The honoured Lord Bucharis, monarch of his galactic empire, has no quarrel with the Space Wolves. He seeks only to grant protection to those within the fold of his generosity. For the Imperium has fallen, and Terra lies aflame and ruined. Lord Bucharis promises safety and sanity for those who kneel to him!

‘But we do not ask you to kneel. How could we, mere men, demand such of Astartes? No, we ask only that Lord Bucharis count Fenris among the worlds of his empire. What do you care for this grim and frozen place, its savage peoples and its bitter oceans? To the Space Wolves, of course, we shall leave the Fang, and the right to rule yourselves, excepting a few minor and quite necessary obeisances to Lord Bucharis’s undoubted majesty. So you see, there is no need for you to fight any more. There is nothing left for you to prove. Stand down and place yourselves within our custody, and we shall deliver you safely unto the Fang where you can pass on word of Lord Bucharis’s matchless generosity.’

The Astartes, of course, saw through these lies. They knew the Imperium was eternal, and had not fallen, and moreover they believed no more than you do that Bucharis meant to destroy the Space Wolves and take the Fang for himself. No doubt he wished to install himself in our great fortress, and to use as his throne room the hall wherein Leman Russ himself once held court! The only answer to such a speech lies at the tip of a wolf’s claws, or in the gnashing of his fangs!

‘Now, young wolf,’ said Daegalan, ‘we face our death. How blessed are we that we can look it in the face as it comes for us. And moreover, we die on Fenris, on the ground upon which we were born, and first ran with our packs in the snow. This is the world that forged us into the Astartes we are, that gave us the strength and ferocity to be accepted into the ranks of the Space Wolves. Now we shall repay that honour by choosing this very ground for our deaths! How blessed are we, Blood Claw, and how blessed am I that it is beside my brother that I die.

‘And do not think that we shall die alone. For I hear the snarling of Lakkan, the Runed Wolf, upon the wind. Once Lakkan walked across Fenris, and wise men read the symbols he left in his footprints. These men were the first Rune Priests and those who still follow the path of Lakkan even now watch us from the Fang. They scry out our deeds, and they shall record them, and give thanks as we do that we die a death so fine.’

Daegalan now drew his bolt pistol. He had but a single magazine of bolt shells, for at that time the Astartes were sorely pressed for ammunition with their fortress besieged. Hrothgar, in turn, drew once more his chainsword. Its teeth were clotted with the frozen blood of traitors, but soon, he knew, he would plunge it into a warm body and thaw out that blood so its teeth could gnash again.

‘I do not seek death,’ said the Blood Claw, ‘as easily as you do, old man.’

‘Your saga shall be a fine one,’ replied Daegalan, ‘though it is short.’

‘Perhaps you are right,’ said Hrothgar, and in that moment the guns of the tanks were levelled at the place where they stood in the field of blood rubies. ‘You are a Long Fang, after all, and wise. But I fear that in all you have taught me you have made a single error.’

‘And what might that be, Blood Claw?’ said Daegalan. ‘What omission have I made that is so grave I must hear of it now, in the moment of my death?’

Now a strange countenance came upon Hrothgar the Blood Claw. His teeth flashed like fangs and his eyes turned into the flinty black orbs of the hunting wolf. ‘You have spoken of the wolves of Fenris that follow us and impart to us their lessons. Twelve of them you have described to me, each one mirroring an aspect of Fenris or of the teachings the Wolf Priests have passed down to us. These lessons were well earned, and I thank you for them, Brother Daegalan. But I am wiser than you in but one aspect.’

‘Speak of it, you cur!’ demanded Daegalan with much impatience, for the guns of the traitor tanks were now aimed at them, awaiting the order to fire, as were the heavy weapons of the Guardsmen.

‘I have counted twelve Fenrisian wolves in your teachings, each one taken as the totem of a Great Company of the Space Wolves. But here you are mistaken. For I know that in truth, there are not twelve wolves. There are thirteen.’

It is time, I fear, for this old tongue to lie still and for a draught of mead to warm this thrall’s bones. You wish the story to continue? I have no doubt you foresee great bloodshed of the kind you love to hear. And there was bloodshed after that moment, it is true. Terrible it was, perhaps worse than any that fell upon the face of Mother Fenris during the besieging of the Fang. But it is not for me to speak of it. I hear you groan, and a few even flash your fangs in anger! But look to the Long Fangs who sit at the back of the hall. Do they growl their displeasure? No, for they know the truth. A thrall such as I has no place speaking of such things. Even the most ancient among the children of Russ, the mighty Dreadnoughts who have marched to war for a thousand years or more, would not speak of it.

There is, however, a legend told among the people of Gathalamor, the world where the Apostate Bucharis first came to prominence. They are a fearful and religious people, for upon them has fallen the burden of redeeming their world from the stain the Apostate left upon it. But sometimes they speak of legends forbidden by the cardinals of their world, and among them is this one, brought back, it is said, by the few survivors of the armies who fought on Fenris.

Once an army was sent by Bucharis to destroy the Astartes who had been sowing much death and confusion among the besieging forces. The army cornered the Astartes but found, much to their delight, that they faced not a Battle Company or even a single pack, but a single Space Wolf.

In some versions of the tale there was not one Space Wolf, but two. The difference matters not.

Now the soldiers drove their tanks into range and took aim at the Astartes. And they awaited only the order to open fire, which would surely have been given but a moment later. But then they were struck by a great and monstrous fear, such as rarely enters the hearts even of the most cowardly of men.

The Space Wolf was an Astartes no more. In fact, he appeared as nothing that could once have been a man. A bestial countenance overcame him, and the winds howled as if Fenris herself was recoiling in disgust. Talons grew from his fingers. His armour warped and split as his body deformed, shoulders broadening and spine hunching over in the aspect of a beast. The soldiers cried that a daemon had come into their midst, and men fled the sight of it. Even the gunners in their tanks did not think themselves safe from the horror unfolding in front of them.

And then there came the slaughter. The beast charged and butchered men with every stroke of its gory claws. It tore open the hulls of their tanks and ripped out the men inside. In its frenzy it feasted on them, and strips of bloody skin and meat hung from its inhuman fangs. Men went mad with the force of its onslaught. The leaders of that army fired on their own men to keep them from fleeing but the beast fell on them next and the last moments of their life were filled with terror and the agony of claws through their flesh.

The soldiers were thrown to the winds of Fenris and scattered. Some say that none survived, either torn down by the beast or frozen to death as they cowered from it. Others insist that a single man survived to tell the tale, but that he was driven hopelessly mad and the legend of the Beast of Fenris was all that ever escaped his quivering lips.

But this is a tale told by other men, far from the Fang and the proud sons of Fenris who dwell therein, and I shall dwell upon it no more.

Now it came that many days later, when the battle had waxed and waned as battles do, a pack of Grey Hunters ventured forth from the Fang to drive off the traitor Guardsmen who were thought to be encamped in the foothills. There they came across a place like a field of rubies, where frozen blood lay scattered across the snowy rocks with such great abandon that it seemed a great battle had been fought there, though the pack-mates knew of no such battle.

‘Look!’ cried one Space Wolf. ‘Someone yet lives! He is clad in the armour of a Space Wolf and yet he is not one, for see, his bearing is that of an animal and his face bears no trace of the human we all were before becoming Astartes.’

The pack leader bade his battle-brothers to cover him with their boltguns as he went to see what they had found. As he approached he saw countless bodies torn asunder, many with the marks of teeth in their frozen flesh, and still others dead in the ruins of their tanks.

The figure in the centre of the battlefield indeed wore the power armour of an Astartes, but split apart and ruined as if rent from within. He crouched panting in the cold, as if fresh from a hunt. His form was not that of a human, but of a beast.

‘He is touched by the Wulfen,’ said the pack leader. ‘The Thirteenth Wolf of Fenris has walked here, and its inhumanity has found a place to dwell inside this Blood Claw. Some flaw in his gene-seed went unnoticed during his novicehood, and now it has come to the fore in this place of bloodshed.’

Another Space Wolf cried out. ‘There lies another of our battle-brothers, dead beside him! What appalling wounds he has suffered! What monstrous force must have torn his armour so, and what claws must have ripped at his flesh!’

‘Indeed,’ said the pack leader, ‘this noble brother was a Long Fang, one of that wise and hardy breed, and he shall be borne by us to a proper place of resting within the Fang. Alas, I knew him – he is Brother Daegalan, I recognise him by his pack markings. But see, the claws of the survivor made these wounds! His teeth have gnashed at the fallen Astartes’s armour, and even upon his bones.’

The pack was much dismayed at this. ‘What Space Wolf could turn on his brother?’ they asked.

‘Mark well the path of the Wulfen,’ said the pack leader sternly. ‘His is the way of deviant and frenzied bloodshed. He cares not from whom the blood flows as long as the hunting is good. This ill-fated Long Fang is testament to that – when this Blood Claw ran out of foes to slay, under the Wulfen’s influence he turned upon his brother.’

The pack spoke prayers to mighty Russ and to the ancestors of the Chapter, and all those interred in the Fang, to watch over them and protect them from such a fate as suffered by the two Astartes.

You might think that a beast such as they found should have been put down, but imagine for a moment you were confronted by such a sight. It would surely be impossible for you to kill one such as Hrothgar, for though a warped and pitiable thing he was still a Son of Fenris and to slay him was still to slay a brother. So the pack brought Daegalan’s body and Hrothgar, still living, to the Fang. I have heard it said they led him by a chain like an animal, or that they called upon a Wolf Priest to administer a powerful concoction that sedated him long enough to be carried to the Fang.

And so it came to be that Daegalan the Long Fang was given his rightful place among the packmates who had fallen over the decades, and there he lies still. As for Hrothgar, well, he was interred in a similar way, this time in a cell hollowed out from the rock of the Fang’s very heart where from the lightless cold none can hope to escape.

Hush! Cease the sound of clinking tankards. Ignore the crackling of the fire. Can you hear it? That scratching at the walls? That is Brother Hrothgar, scrabbling at the boundaries of his cell, for he is now but an animal and yearns to run in the snows of Fenris, hunting beast and brother alike. But sometimes he remembers who he once was, and the Long Fang who fought alongside him, and then he lets out a terrible mournful howl. You can hear it in the longest of Fenris’s nights, echoing around the heart of the Fang.

Now, my tale has come to an end. Perhaps now you understand why it was to a lowly thrall that this saga has been given to tell, and not one of the venerable Wolf Priests or well-scarred Long Fangs who uttered its grim words. What true Space Wolf could bear to have such things pass his lips?

And perhaps a few of you have even understood the lesson that lies at its heart. The rest will have to listen for Hrothgar’s claws, for Hrothgar’s howl, and perhaps the truth will come to you.

Remember always, whether you hunt in the wilds that Mother Fenris tends, or you stalk between the stars, the thirteen wolves hunt beside you.

DEATHWOLF

Andy Smillie

Mon-keigh were such easy prey. Gomor’s mouth twisted into a grin as he watched one of the pathetic creatures pace around the power hub. He observed it stumbling around, finding its way only by the grace of the torch clasped in one of its weakling hands.

It seemed these mon-keigh were born afraid of darkness. Even the boldest among them were unwilling to bear it for any length. Yet their simple minds could not comprehend the true terror that awaited them within the black folds of the universe.

Gomor detached himself from the mon-keigh’s shadow, writhing into realspace with a wet hiss. The human turned, abhorrence etched on his face as he met his killer. Gomor thrust ice-cold talons up into the mon-keigh’s abdomen, drawing substance from his terror, feeling the warm touch of his heart before it stopped beating. The runes covering Gomor’s inky skin shivered, invigorated by the kill. He emitted a warped clicking noise and two more of his kind slithered into the corporeal realm. The pair regarded Gomor, their mouths stretching in a low growl as he touched the orb they carried. The silver-skinned device shimmered, ancient eldar rune script flaring into life under his touch. Gomor issued another tortured noise from his throat as black flame seeped from unseen pores to wreathe the orb in obsidian fire. The other mandrakes nodded in acquiescence, and let go of the device. Free of their grip, the smouldering orb rose up into the air. Settling several metres above Luetin Hive’s primary power hub, the device continued to burn. Within moments its ensorcelled innards bled into the atmosphere, its metallic shell flaying away until nothing remained.

A fulgurant web of coal-dark energy erupted in the air, its arcing tendrils cutting minute tears in the fabric of realspace. Gomor smiled, a wicked, humourless expression, as he watched the bonds of the linear universe fray away like torn silk. The event was invisible to mortal sight, but the mandrake was born of the otherworld. A child of darkness and implausible reality, Gomor’s eyes were accustomed to seeing the unseen. It pleased him that the populace of Leutin would remain unaware of their impending doom. The humans would die as they had lived, ignorant and afraid.

The frayed edges of the vortex crackled and receded as a pall of darkness spilled from the webway, forcing apart the rift until a swirling portal the size of the power hub it shadowed hung in the air.

Gomor growled, low and soft in satisfaction. His task complete, the mandrake seeped back into the shadows.

Strike before the prey is roused. Take his heart before the twins of anger and desperation can lend him strength.

The Shattered Hand were consummate hunters, their every waking moment dedicated to perfecting their murderous art. They had carried out Archon Vranak’s orders with brutal efficiency. Luetin’s defence force hadn’t stood a chance. The Imperial Guard of the 109th Luetin Rifles and the levied regiments of conscripted workers, who had hastily put down their rock-drills and picked up lasguns, had been overwhelmed without pause. Vranak’s Cabal had emerged through the webway portal in a vengeful tide, bursting into realspace in a flash of eldritch flame. Dozens of arrow-swift skimmers and barbed sky-craft had soared unmolested across the slabbed expanse of Luetin’s defence perimeter to deliver a punishing attack on the hive. Lithe warriors in battle armour and leering female gladiators had dismounted into the streets, stalking and killing with unrelenting malice and vigour.

The hive was burning.

Archon Vranak sat immobile on her flesh-throne as her personal transport glided towards the main spire. Beneath the ghoulish curves of her polished helm, she smiled with both of her mouths. Gomor had done well. The mandrake had disabled the gun towers and energy fields meant to serve as a first line of defence, and murdered several high ranking officers, using their dismembered corpses to spread terror among the Luetin forces. In such a fragile state, the heaving necropolis was a tender target, the hive’s innards exposed to the scything attentions of the Shattered Hand.

Luetin’s subterranean shafts were rich in dense mineral deposits and precious ores, every iota of which would be mined from the earth and put to use in her weapon shops and forges. But most precious of all the hive’s assets, the thing that had drawn Vranak to it like a dying man to faith, were the teeming millions of indentured miners and their Adeptus Administratum overseers. She would take them as slaves and transport them to Commorragh, where the humans would learn the true meaning of despair. The lucky ones would be rendered down in flesh-troughs to provide sustenance and genetic material for the vile experiments of the haemonculi. Others would be tortured in one of the Dark City’s many pleasure palaces, their agonising deaths drawn out to provide soul-fuel for its denizens. Those that could not be captured would be put to the blade. One way or another, Vranak would ensure that the Shattered Hand hunted the populace of Luetin to extinction.

Vranak opened the cabal-wide channel, cautioning her warriors as they boosted into Luetin city proper. ‘Mind your surroundings, the distinction between prey and bait is a small one. Through such carelessness have many hunters become hunted.’

‘All-Father, forgive us.’ The age-line scoring Erik Morkai’s brow deepened at the sound of glass crunching under his boots. The fragments of coloured glass were all that remained of the thousand arched panes that retold the story of the Emperor’s arrival on Luetin. But the windows were made to look at, not through, and Erik had needed a better view.

Erik stared down at Luetin’s narrow streets. Strong winds buffeted the Wolf Lord’s gnarled face, pinning the plaits of his beard to his chest plate. Without the burden of his helm, he could smell the tang of ozone and hear the tortured cries of the populace below. He was a hunter, born of hunters, but gifted with the Canis Helix the Wolf Lord could embrace the elements in a way his forefathers never had. Standing on the precipice of Luetin Hive’s parliament building, the grey-blue ceramite of his battle-plate striking against the building’s dull pallor, Erik watched his prey. The sleek eldar vehicles sped below him, darting between the jutting columns and protruding spires of the cathedral-like buildings that made up the hive. Erik’s enhanced eyes followed every change in their trajectory as they twisted at incredible speeds to avoid the sporadic fire coming from the lower concourses.

‘Mark me well brother, they shall sing glorious sagas of this day.’ Erik turned to Agmund as he spoke. The Wolf Guard was crouched low, peering over the edge with a critical eye at the eldar transports and slave ships that sped past underneath them.

Agmund grunted in affirmation, the long scar that ran from his temple to his neck stretching as he grinned.

‘Prepare yourselves.’ Erik voxed the command to his Great Company. He took a step back from the edge, unsheathed his plasma pistol and flicked the activation stud on his chainaxe. Beside him, Agmund and Ivar readied their weapons. The Wolf Lord rolled his shoulders; they felt light without the hulking bear-pelt. The ancient trophy wasn’t fit for what he was about to do.

‘Vlka Fenryka!’

The comm-feed in Erik’s ear crackled with a chorus of responses as his entire Great Company echoed his call to battle. From the windows and balconies of Luetin’s towering edifices, the Space Wolves leapt towards the dark eldar craft, free-falling in a hail of grey armour.

Erik landed hard in the middle of an eldar craft, the enhanced musculature of his legs absorbing the bone-breaking impact. He moved with the vehicle as it rocked under his weight, killing the prow gunner with a back-handed swipe of his axe. A dozen dark eldar stared at the Wolf Lord in frozen confusion as the gunner’s head fell amongst them. Erik growled in amusement, opening fire on the tightly pressed xenos. His plasma pistol shone white-hot as he fired, vaporising the eldar cadre.

At the corner of his peripheral vision, Erik saw Agmund and Ivar. The pair were on an adjacent craft, their armour splattered with xenos blood.

A torrent of rounds stung the Wolf Lord’s armour, forcing a curse from his lips. ‘Alien anzviti.’

He turned, tracking the eldar gunship that was bearing down on him. Crouching low, Erik took cover behind a guard rail as another burst of fire stitched towards him. Pulling a melta-charge from his equipment, he mag-locked it to the skimmer’s hull and primed its core for a four-second detonation. One, two, three. Erik waited as long as he dared, and leapt off.

The melta-charge detonated, engulfing the eldar transport in a halo of expanding fire. The shockwave threw Erik towards the oncoming gunship. He swung out with his chainaxe, its teeth biting into the ship’s hull. An instant later the Wolf Lord was on the deck, his axe feasting on soft eldar innards. He slipped left as the last of the crew lunged at him, smashing his forehead into the alien’s helm. The helmet buckled under the blow, folding back into the eldar’s skull.

‘Weaklings,’ Erik spat.

He flicked the xenos blood from his axe and used the moment’s respite to assess the situation. Neural implants fed him a slew of tactical data that scrolled over his enhanced eyes in Fenrisian rune-script. A dozen of his brothers had died in the descent, their ident-tags disappearing from his tactical display. Two dozen more had been injured. He growled, banishing the overlay with a thought, and turning his attention to the swarm of single-man craft headed towards them.

‘Thorolf, kill them.’

Nestled among the forest of sensorium that grew up from Luetin Hive’s highest echelons, Thorolf Icewalker received his Wolf Lord’s order.

‘For Russ. For the All-Father!’

Without igniting his jump pack, Thorolf leapt from the sensorium stack and plunged downwards. His thirty-strong Sky Claw pack followed, diving with him down through the kilometre-thick layer of smog that had masked their presence. A line of warnings flashed across Thorolf’s helmet display as the hive’s architecture rushed up to meet him.

He fired his jump pack, gunning it in short bursts to alter his flight path. Gargoyle-encrusted balconies and protruding ventilation ducts flashed by centimetres from his face. A red rune shone over the Space Wolf’s eye. He was falling at such speed that any impact would kill him. Thorolf ignored the warning, blinking it away. A slew of targeting reticules and situational data sprang up in its place, filling his display as he cleared the smog. With a practised ease born of decades of warfare, the Space Wolf sifted through the icons, zeroing in on Erik and the squadron of eldar skimmers.

Thorolf ignited both boosters, keeping one eye fixed on the altitude counter as his jetpack accelerated him downwards. The eldar were almost in firing range. His arms straining against the crushing force of the descent, Thorolf detached his bolt pistol and boltgun from their mag-locks. Thrusting his arms out towards the approaching skimmers, he looked every bit like the valkyries he’d seen daubed in ancient caves on Fenris. Warriors of myth and legend, the valkyries were often depicted in full battle-armour, descending from the heavens with sword and spear. The comparison drew a smile across Thorolf’s face.

Range. The word flashed on Thorolf’s display. He opened fire, his muscled forearms unmoving as the bolt weapons barked into life. Behind him, the Sky Claws opened up with their own weapons, sending a hail of explosive rounds into the eldar craft. The skimmers were fast and incredibly nimble but the Space Wolves had taken them by surprise, and the volume of fire pumping towards them was too vast to dodge. The sleek craft were shredded, breaking apart as bolt rounds punished them.

Flames licked Thorolf’s armour as he fell through the wreckage of the eldar vehicles, blinding him for a moment as his helmet’s optics reset.

‘The skies are clear, lord,’ Thorolf voxed to his Wolf Lord, firing his boosters intermittently to hold his altitude. ‘What would–’

A target swam onto Thorolf’s display. It was moving too fast for his helmet’s auto-senses to process, appearing as a solid line across his vision. ‘Disperse!’

The Sky Claws burst into motion at Thorolf’s order. But it was too late. The speeding eldar craft cut through them, leaving a cluster of aerial mines in its wake. The floating charges detonated, spewing flame and shrapnel in all directions.

Thorolf’s world went dark.

Thorolf came to with a jolt. Pain flared up his spine, forcing a grimace. He hit the release clasp on his jump pack and rolled onto his front, dislodging a layer of rubble and glass. The pack had saved his life, diffusing the force of the impact as its boosters crumpled inwards. Thorolf’s display stuttered, spitting distorted images and tactical data. He snarled, ripped off his damaged helmet and tossed it aside in frustration. His head was ringing from the explosion and his ribs ached. The Space Wolf sat up and examined his surroundings. He’d fallen into some sort of chapel. A cobbled floor lay cracked under his armoured bulk while stone saints stared down at him from plinths. He looked around for his weapons, cursing when he couldn’t find them. Pushing himself up, he staggered to his feet and gazed up at the shattered sky-lights and domed spire that had broken his fall. He cracked his neck, twitching as his enhanced physiology pumped adrenaline around his system.

‘Glory find you, Jorik,’ Thorolf muttered his thanks to the Iron Priest for maintaining his armour’s pain suppressors. Pain focused the mind, made it easier to kill than think. Gritting his teeth, Thorolf stepped out of the chapel and let the sounds of battle guide him towards a ruined street. He paused for a moment, while his eyes adjusted to the relative gloom. Daylight didn’t reach the lower galleries of the necropolis, the sun’s light blocked by the towering hive and its myriad solar collectors. He sniffed the air, growling at the scent of xenos. They were close, perhaps on the same level. He followed is nose, stepping over the corpses of preachers who’d been gutted by the eldar war-party and left to rot like diseased cattle.

Thorolf crouched low as heavy bolter fire resounded from up ahead. He listened for a moment, pinpointing the weapon’s location. It was to his left, midway along the next avenue. The Space Wolf advanced, picking up the crack of lasguns and the smooth snap of eldar rifles as he moved to the Administratum building marking the intersection. He pushed his back against the wall and risked a glance around the corner. Three Imperial Guardsmen were holding a sandbagged emplacement against five eldar approaching from the north-west. The rest of the squad lay dead in the road, their bodies torn to ribbons by the aliens’ barbed rounds.

Thorolf heard the bolt round slip as it left the magazine; there was no mistaking the crunch of a jammed round. He dashed from cover and ran flat out towards the Guardsmen as the heavy bolter fell silent.

‘Keep firing! Keep firing!’ one of them shouted.

‘I can’t, I’m trying.’

‘They’re coming, fire!’ The voice grew desperate.

‘Emperor damn it! The slide’s stuck.’

‘C’mon, c’mon, let me see that.’

‘They’re coming! They’re coming!’ another screamed.

Thorolf backhanded the screaming Guardsman across the face, breaking his jaw and knocking him unconscious. The other two Guardsmen stared up at the Space Wolf, their eyes wide with fear. Thorolf doubted they’d ever set eyes on a Space Marine before. Right now he was more terrifying than the eldar pirates that were coming towards them.

‘Give… Give me the weapon,’ Thorolf grunted, his voice thick with pain.

The older looking of the two Guardsmen opened his mouth to speak but said nothing.

‘Russ’s teeth,’ Thorolf growled in irritation. He pushed past the trooper, reaching down and snapping the heavy bolter from its mount.

The foul scent of xenos flesh choked the Space Wolf’s nostrils. The eldar were almost upon them. Grunting with superhuman effort, Thorolf racked back the heavy bolter’s slide and opened fire. ‘Back to the abyss!’

The advancing xenos died in seconds, their frail forms exploding in clouds of red mist. The remainder broke for cover, but Thorolf gave them no respite, blasting apart rubble and wrecked vehicles they sought to cower behind. Formerly a Long Fang, the Space Wolf was as familiar with the subtleties of a heavy bolter as he was with the age lines of own face. It took him less than twenty seconds to track and kill the eldar cadre. Thorolf sniffed the air, checking for survivors. There were none. A pungent aroma drew a scowl from the Space Wolf. He looked down at the cowering Guardsmen, noticing the expanding wet patches on their trousers, and grinned.

Erik roared as the teeth of his axe chewed apart another of the eldar. He stood atop a mound of its dead kin, his battle-plate swathed in their blood, examining the tactical overlay on his display. The initial ambush had gone well, with over half the eldar force killed or routed. But the attack was at a critical juncture; one mistake and the Space Wolves could lose the momentum. The eldar still outnumbered them dozens to one and his forces were spread the length and breadth of the hive. He could ill afford to let the xenos seize the initiative.

A series of concussive blasts drew Erik’s attention to the south-west. A huge eldar craft, larger than any they’d yet encountered, had entered the local air space. Its arrowed-prow scythed through the burning remains of lesser skimmers as it forged towards Ragnavalld and his scouts.

A battery of elongated energy weapons flashed from the craft’s flanks. The Wolf Lord gritted his teeth in rage as Ragnavalld’s ident-tag blinked dark.

‘Russ devour them. We must take down that craft.’ Erik cursed as six more ident-tags faded from his display.

‘It’s wreathed in some sort of energy shield. We cannot board it directly, and we cannot get close enough to plant charges,’ said Agmund.

‘We must find a way. We–’

As if in answer to the Wolf Lord’s demand, a hail of heavy bolter rounds roared up from the lower hive to hammer the shield. The translucent energy bubble flared and spat as the high-calibre shells found their mark.

‘Now! For Russ! Now!’ Erik motioned towards the exposed skimmer with his axe, ordering the attack as the shield overloaded in a storm of disjointed noise.

Erik leapt onto the Archon’s transport. Agmund and Ivar landed beside him. The Archon’s bodyguard attacked without pause, striking at the Space Wolves with crackling halberds. Erik blocked a strike meant to sever his head and shot one of the eldar point blank in the face. The plasma discharge vaporised the xenos’s skull and killed another that was moving in behind him.

The eldar were skilled combatants but they fought as individuals, their selfish desire to kill leaving them open to counter. The Space Wolves fought as a pack, each thrust and cut of their blades working in unison with their brothers’ attacks to plug gaps in their defences and overwhelm the foe.

Ivar gestured with his blade. ‘Your left!’

Agmund turned and raised his weapon, parrying the eldar’s blow before slashing down into its shoulder. He growled as his chainsword rang off the xenos’s armour. The segmented battle-plate worn by the Archon’s bodyguard was heavier and more robust than that worn by the other eldar. Coupled with their martial skill and preternatural grace, it was hard to land a killing blow.

‘Enough of this dance.’ Agmund ducked his opponent’s riposte, mag-locked his chainsword to his armour and shouldered the eldar backwards. He stepped in as the eldar tried to recover, pinning its arms and locking a gauntleted hand around its frail neck. ‘Russ bring you luck dodging the ground.’ With a grunt of effort, Agmund tossed the struggling eldar from the skycraft.

Ivar grinned, following the Wolf Guard’s example and using his bulk to knock the remaining two xenos to their doom.

‘I think Ivar wants your place at the feasting table.’ Erik joked with Agmund and turned his gaze on the archon. The sinister figure was still immobile on her throne. Her polished, charcoal armour was in stark relief to the bleeding corpses that made up her nightmarish seat.

‘I am Vranak. Remember that name, mon-keigh. Tell it to your corpse-god when you stand at his side.’

The eldar shot from her throne in a stream of darkness to strike Erik in the chest with an outstretched fist. The blow flipped the Wolf Lord, spinning him backwards.

Erik dropped his plasma pistol and caught hold of the aft guard rail. Dangling from the edge of the skimmer, the Wolf Lord fought to remain conscious, feeling as though a war mammoth had stepped on his chest. A fissure ran the length of his breastplate, blood running from it.

The Archon moved to finish him, but Agmund and Ivar blocked her path with their burring chainblades. Vranak ghosted between them, parrying their blows with deft turns of her sword. Agmund cried out as the Archon whipped her weapon round to slice the Wolf Guard’s legs off at the knee, the crackling blade passing effortlessly through armour and bone. Ivar died a heartbeat later, Vranak pivoting to thrust her blade through the Space Wolf’s primary heart, cleaving his secondary heart with the return stroke.

‘Clumsy apes,’ Vranak spat as she kicked Agmund’s twitching body from the transport.

Erik growled and pulled himself back onto the platform. ‘Your death will bring them glory.’

The Wolf Lord gripped the haft of his axe with both hands, separating the twin-weapons that made the whole. Twirling both blades once to gauge their weight, he charged. Erik struck out with all his fury, with all of his skill, but the teeth of his weapons carved only air. In return, the Archon flowed around him, slashing at the Wolf Lord’s thighs and cutting open his midriff. Erik roared. Vranak was toying with him.

As his mind raced for a way to triumph, warning runes flared across the Wolf Lord’s retinal display. He ignored them. His body would cope. There was no way to counter the eldar’s attacks. She moved too fast, even for Erik to see. But the Wolf Lord could smell her. He could hear the beat of her devil heart.

Vranak sprang forwards, her blade aimed at the Wolf Lord’s throat.

Erik heard the excited rush of the Archon’s breath as she prepared for the kill. He slipped left, swinging an axe low towards the eldar’s abdomen. The Archon darted backwards. Erik tracked her scent, throwing his other axe where his nose told him. The spinning weapon clipped the Archon, unbalancing her for the briefest of instants. Erik seized the chance. He dived forwards, wrapping his vice-like arms around the eldar and dragging her over the edge.

The two armoured figures fell to their doom.

‘You kill us both.’ Vranak rasped as her lungs struggled against the Wolf Lord’s embrace.

Erik smelled the Archon’s fear. He listened with grim satisfaction as the eldar’s heart-rate continued to speed. His own heart remained slow and steady as his chronometer counted down the seconds to impact. At the edge of his hearing, the Wolf Lord picked up the skimmer he had sensed was coming. He listened to the roar of its engines as it joined the battle, felt the displaced air on his skin as it cut a path towards them. When he had first glimpsed the skimmer it was a tiny dot, a speck on the horizon. Now, metres below him, the sleek craft all but filled his vision. Moments before her death, the Archon realised the error of her assumption.

The Wolf and the eldar slammed into the transport.

Vranak let out a wheezing grunt as every bone in her body cracked under Erik’s weight. The Wolf Lord got to his feet and glared at the cadre of eldar warriors surrounding him. ‘Who’s next?’

A shrapnel-rain doused the lower reaches of Luetin Hive as the eldar raiders burned, their skimmers falling from the sky in droplets of twisted metal.

‘Cowards!’ Thorolf swung round, bringing his heavy bolter to bear on a cluster of single-pilot skimmers as they sped past, fleeing the hive and the Space Wolves’ wrath. He opened fire, stitching a line of destruction through the towering hab blocks as the eldar craft jinked left and right.

Thorolf growled a curse and adjusted his aim, pumping a stream of explosive rounds into the buildings above and ahead of the skimmers. The eldar pilots held their course, blindsided by the debris that tumbled onto them. The lead craft slammed straight into a chunk of falling rockcrete, exploding in a ball of fire. The other two slowed sharply, diving in an attempt to avoid the worst of the rubble – just as Thorolf had expected.

The Space Wolf grinned and gunned the trigger, shredding the pair in a barrage of sustained fire that tore through the skimmer’s armour and ignited their fuel cells. He kept firing, holding the trigger down until the weapon stuttered and the ammo counter flashed zero.

The Space Wolf dropped the weapon and fell to one knee. His wounds were catching up with him. He felt his muscles weaken as his body diverted blood and nutrients to repair the damage to his internal organs. Thorolf took a long, agonised breath and stopped. Something was wrong. He sniffed the air, analysing every particle for the source of his discontent. He smelled nothing save his own scent, not the smoking shell casings scattered around him or the vapour trail left in the air by the eldar skimmers. Thorolf’s muscles bunched in anticipation as he realised that the world had fallen silent.

He could no longer hear the battle raging in the distance, neither the staccato of bolter fire nor the thrum of the eldar skimmers. Thorolf willed himself to stand and cast his gaze around around the street. Darkness spread towards him as one after another, the luminators blinked out. The air turned cold, his feeling of unease intensifying as a thin layer of frost began to rime the edges of his armour.

‘Show yourselves, devils!’ Thorolf snarled, his murderous gaze fixed on the darkness.

Gomor bled from the darkness, a trio of his kin following him into the corporeal realm in a series of wet, sucking noises.

Thorolf drew his knife and smiled, his long canines glistening under the light of a single flickering luminator as the Mandrakes came for him. Not for the last time, the Space Wolf’s world went dark.

DEATHWOLF: SCRIPT VERSION

Andy Smillie

Scene One - Ext. Outskirts of Luetin Necropolis.

ATMOS: A man’s footsteps can be heard as he patrols. The sounds of industry billow from the distance.

Gomor detached himself from the human’s shadow, writhing into realspace with a wet hiss.

FX: A wet, sucking noise.

HUMAN: What the–

Gomor thrust his ice-cold talons up into the mon-keigh’s abdomen.

FX: Human gurgling noises

Gomor drew substance from the human’s terror, feeling the warm touch of his heart before it stopped beating. The runes covering the mandrake’s inky skin shivered, invigorated by the kill. He emitted a warped clicking noise and two more of his kind slithered into the corporeal realm. The pair regarded Gomor, their mouths stretching in a low growl as he touched the orb they carried. The silver-skinned device shimmered, ancient eldar rune script flaring into life under his touch. Gomor issued another tortured noise from his throat as black flame seeped from unseen pores to wreathe the orb in obsidian fire. The other mandrakes nodded in acquiescence, and let go of the device. Free of their grip, the smouldering orb rose up into the air. Settling several metres above Luetin Hive’s primary power hub, the device continued to burn. Within moments its ensorcelled innards bled into the atmosphere, its metallic shell flaying away until nothing remained.

FX: Total silence. Then sparking, crackling energy that slowly builds in intensity.

A fulgurant web of coal-dark energy erupted in the air, its arcing tendrils cutting minute tears in the fabric of realspace. Gomor smiled, a wicked, humourless expression, as he watched the bonds of the linear universe fray away like torn silk. The event was invisible to mortal sight, but the mandrake was born of the otherworld. A child of darkness and implausible reality, Gomor’s eyes were accustomed to seeing the unseen. It pleased him that the populace of Leutin would remain unaware of their impending doom. The humans would die as they had lived, ignorant and afraid.

The frayed edges of the vortex crackled and receded as a pall of darkness spilled from the webway, forcing apart the rift until a swirling portal, the size of the power hub it shadowed, hung in the air.

FX: Swirling, crackling noise (think very high winds and electrical storm).

Gomor growled, low and soft in satisfaction. His task complete, the Mandrake seeped back into the shadows.

Scene Two - Ext. Luetin Necropolis.

ATMOS: The shriek of propulsion engines then the cacophony of battle. Multiple heavy laser weapons fire. People scream, things explode. In return, less powerful laser weaponry and autocannons fire back, falling silent as they are destroyed by the heavy laser weapons.

VRANAK: Strike before the prey is roused. Take his heart before the twins of anger and desperation can lend him strength.

Luetin’s defence force hadn’t stood a chance. The hive was burning. The warriors of the Shattered Hand had emerged through the webway portal in a vengeful tide, bursting into realspace in a flash of eldritch flame. Dozens of arrow-swift skimmers and barbed sky-craft had soared unmolested across the slabbed expanse of Luetin’s defence perimeter, to deliver a punishing attack on the hive proper. Lithe warriors in battle armour and leering female gladiators had dismounted into the streets, stalking and killing with unrelenting malice and vigour. The Shattered Hand were consummate hunters, their every waking moment dedicated to perfecting their murderous art. The Imperial Guard of the 109th Luetin Rifles and the levied regiments of conscripted workers, who had hastily put down their rock-drills and picked up lasguns, were overwhelmed without pause.

FX: the thrum of engines and an energy field.

Archon Vranak sat immobile on her flesh-throne as her personal transport glided towards the hive. Beneath the ghoulish curves of her polished helm, she smiled with both of her mouths. Gomor had done well. The mandrake had disabled the laser towers and energy fields meant to serve as a first line of defence, and murdered several high ranking officers, using their dismembered corpses to spread terror among the Luetin forces. In such a fragile state, the heaving necropolis was a tender target, the hive’s innards exposed to the scything attentions of the Shattered Hand. Luetin’s subterranean shafts were rich in dense mineral deposits and precious ores, every ounce of which would be mined from the earth and put to use in the dark eldar’s hellish weapon shops. But most precious of all the hive’s assets, the thing that had drawn the Hand to it like a dying man to faith, were the teeming millions of indentured miners and their Adeptus Administratum overseers. The Shattered Hand would take them as slaves and transport them to Commorragh, where the humans would learn the true meaning of despair. The lucky ones would be rendered down in flesh-troughs to provide sustenance and genetic material for the vile experiments of the dark eldar haemonculi. Others would be tortured in one of the Dark City’s many pleasure palaces, their agonising deaths drawn out to provide soul-fuel for its denizens. Those that could not be captured would be put to the blade. One way or another, the Shattered Hand would hunt the populace of Luetin to extinction.

FX: A repeat of the sounds at the start of the scene, except the engine noise is louder to represent the skimmers boosting into the city proper.

VRANAK: Mind your surroundings, the distinction between prey and bait is a small one. Through such carelessness have many hunters become hunted.

Scene Three - Ext. Atop a Luetin necropolis.

ATMOS: High winds whip past. There’s a crunch of glass underfoot where the arching gothic windows have shattered. The battle still rages far below – distant laser fire and explosions.

Erik Morkai stared down at Luetin’s narrow streets. Strong winds buffeted the Wolf Lord’s gnarled face, pinning the plaits of his beard to his chest plate. Without the burden of his helm, Erik could smell the tang of ozone and hear the tortured cries of the populace below. He was a hunter, born of hunters, but gifted with the Canis Helix, the Wolf Lord could embrace the elements in a way his forefathers never had. Standing on the precipice of Luetin Hive’s parliament building, the grey-blue ceramite of his battle-plate striking against the building’s dull pallor, Erik watched his prey. The sleek eldar vehicles sped below him, darting between the jutting columns and protruding spires of the cathedral-like buildings that made up the hive. Erik’s enhanced eyes followed every change in their trajectory as they twisted at incredible speeds to avoid the sporadic fire coming from the lower concourses.

ERIK: ‘Mark me well brother, they shall sing glorious sagas of this day.’

Erik turned to Agmund. The Wolf Guard was crouched low, peering over the edge with a critical eye at the eldar transports and slave ships that sped past underneath them. Agmund grunted in affirmation, the long scar that ran from his temple to his neck stretching as he grinned.

ERIK: ‘Prepare yourselves.’

Erik subvocalised the command to the rest of his Great Company. He took a step back from the edge, unsheathed his plasma pistol and flicked the activation stud on his chainaxe. Beside him, Agmund and Ivar readied their weapons. The Wolf Lord rolled his shoulders; they felt light without the hulking bear-pelt. The ancient trophy wasn’t fit for what he was about to do.

ERIK: ‘Vlka Fenryka!’

The comm-feed in Erik’s ear crackled with a chorus of responses as his entire Great Company echoed his call to battle. From the windows and balconies of Luetin’s towering edifices, the Space Wolves leapt towards the dark eldar craft, freefalling in a hail of grey armour.

FX: A ‘whoosh’ of air as the warriors fall. A thud as booted feet land on a metal platform from a great height.

Erik landed hard in the middle of an eldar craft, the enhanced musculature of his legs absorbing the bone-breaking impact. He moved with the vehicle as it rocked under his weight, killing the prow gunner with a back-handed swipe of his axe. A dozen dark eldar stared at the Wolf Lord in frozen confusion as the gunner’s head fell amongst them. Erik growled in amusement, opening fire on the tightly pressed xenos. His plasma pistol shone white-hot as he fired, vaporising the eldar cadre.

FX: Plasma pistol firing and the roar of a chainaxe. Sounds of battle and the thrum of the craft’s engines.

At the corner of his peripheral vision, Erik saw Agmund and Ivar. The pair were on an adjacent craft, their armour splattered with blood.

FX: Splinter cannon fire

A torrent of rounds stung the Wolf Lord’s armour, forcing a curse from his lips.

ERIK: ‘Alien anzviti.’

An eldar gunship was bearing down on him. He crouched low, taking cover behind a guard rail and slapped a melta-charge onto the skimmer’s hull.

FX: Metal on metal clang.

ERIK: ‘One… two… three!’

Erik leapt from the skimmer.

FX: Loud explosion.

The melta-charge detonated, engulfing the eldar transport in a halo of expanding fire. The shockwave threw Erik towards the oncoming gunship. He swung out with his chainaxe, its teeth biting into the ship’s hull. An instant later the Wolf Lord was on the deck, his axe feasting on soft eldar innards. He slipped left as the last of the crew lunged at him, smashing his forehead into the alien’s helm. The helmet buckled under the blow, folding back into the eldar’s skull.

ERIK: ‘Weaklings.’

Erik’s neural implants fed him a slew of tactical data that scrolled over his enhanced eyes. A dozen of his brothers had died in the descent, their ident-tags disappearing from his tactical display. Two dozen more had been injured. He growled, banishing the overlay with a thought, turning his attention to the swarm of single-man craft that were headed towards him.

ERIK: ‘Thorolf, kill them.’

Scene Four - Ext. Luetin Necropolis.

ATMOS: Very high winds. The sound of battle coming from a long way off.

Nestled among the forest of sensoria that grew up from Luetin Hive’s highest echelons, Thorolf Icewalker received his Wolf Lord’s order.

THOROLF: ‘For Russ. For the All-Father!’

Without igniting his jump pack, Thorolf leapt from the sensorium stack and plunged downwards. His thirty-strong Sky Claw pack followed suit, diving with him down through the kilometre-thick layer of smog that had masked their presence. A line of warnings flashed across Thorolf’s helmet display as the hive’s architecture rushed up to meet him.

FX: Jump-pack firing in intermittent bursts.

He fired his jump pack, gunning it in short bursts to alter his flight path. Gargoyle-encrusted balconies and protruding ventilation ducts flashed by centimetres from his face. A red rune shone over the Space Wolf’s eye. He was falling at such speed that any impact would kill him. Thorolf ignored the warning, blinking it away. A slew of targeting reticules and situational data sprang up, filling his display as he cleared the smog. With a practiced ease born of decades of warfare, the Space Wolf sifted through the icons, zeroing in on Erik and the squadron of eldar skimmers headed towards him.

FX: Jump-pack firing on full burn.

Thorolf ignited both boosters, keeping one eye fixed on the altitude counter as his jetpack accelerated him downwards. The eldar were almost in firing range. His arms straining against the crushing force of the descent, Thorolf detached his bolt pistol and boltgun from their mag-locks. Thrusting his arms out towards the approaching skimmers, he looked every bit like the valkyries he’d seen daubed in ancient caves on Fenris. Warriors of myth and legend, the valkyries were often depicted in full battle-armour, descending from the heavens with sword and spear. The comparison drew a smile across Thorolf’s face.

FX: Bolter fire, explosions.

Range. The word flashed on Thorolf’s display. He opened fire, his muscled forearms unmoving as the bolt weapons barked into life. Behind him, the Sky Claws opened up with their own weapons, sending a hail of explosive rounds into the eldar craft. The skimmers were fast and incredibly nimble but the Space Wolves had taken them by surprise, and the volume of fire pumping towards them was too vast to dodge. The sleek craft were shredded, breaking apart as bolt rounds punished them.

Flames licked Thorolf’s armour as he fell through the wreckage of the eldar vehicles, blinding him for a moment as his helmet’s optics reset.

FX: Jump-pack firing intermittently.

THOROLF: The skies are clear, lord.

Thorolf voxed his report to Erik, firing his boosters intermittently to hold his altitude.

THOROLF: What would–

A target swam onto Thorolf’s display. It was moving too fast for his helmet to process, appearing as a solid line across his vision.

THOROLF: Disperse!

FX: Explosion.

The Sky Claws burst into motion at Thorolf’s order. But it was too late. The speeding eldar craft cut through them, leaving a cluster of aerial mines in its wake. The floating charges detonated, spewing flame and shrapnel in all directions. Thorolf’s world went dark.

Scene Five - Ext. Luetin Necropolis.

ATMOS: As Scene Two, but quieter. People scream, things explode.

Thorolf came to with a jolt. Pain flared up his spine, forcing a grimace. He hit the release clasp on his jump pack and rolled onto his front, dislodging a layer of rubble and glass. The pack had saved his life, diffusing the force of the impact as its boosters crumpled inwards. Thorolf’s display stuttered, spitting distorted images and tactical data. He snarled, ripped off his damaged helmet and tossed it aside in frustration. His head was ringing from the explosion and his ribs ached. The Space Wolf sat up and examined his surroundings. He’d fallen into some sort of chapel. A cobbled floor lay cracked under his armoured bulk while stone saints stared down at him from plinths. He looked around for his weapons, cursing when he couldn’t find them. Pushing himself up, he staggered to his feet and gazed up at the shattered sky-lights and domed spire that had broken his fall. He cracked his neck, twitching as his enhanced physiology pumped adrenaline around his system.

THOROLF: ‘Glory find you, Jorik.’

Thorolf muttered thanks to the Iron Priest for retarding his armour’s pain suppressors. Pain focused the mind, made it easier to kill than think. Gritting his teeth, he stepped out of the chapel and let the sounds of battle guide him from the towards a ruined street. Thorolf paused for a moment, while his enhanced eyes adjusted to the relative gloom. Daylight didn’t reach the lower galleries of the necropolis, the sun’s light blocked by the towering hive and its myriad of solar collectors. He sniffed the air, growling at the scent of xenos. They were close, perhaps on the same level. He moved towards the eldar, stepping over the corpses of the preachers who’d been gutted by the war-party and left to rot like diseased cattle.

FX: Muffled heavy bolter fire.

Thorolf crouched low as heavy bolter fire resounded from up ahead. He listened for moment, pinpointing the weapon’s location. It was to his left, midway along the next avenue. The Space Wolf advanced, picking up the crack of lasguns and the smooth snap of eldar rifles as he moved to the Administratum building marking the intersection. He pushed his back against the wall and risked a glance around the corner. Three Imperial Guardsmen were holding a sandbagged emplacement against five eldar approaching from the north-west. The rest of the squad lay dead in the road, their bodies torn to ribbons by the aliens’ barbed rounds.

FX: Heavy bolter & lasgun fire.

Thorolf heard the bolt round slip as it left the magazine; there was no mistaking the crunch of a jammed round. He dashed from cover and ran flat out towards the guardsmen as the heavy bolter fell silent.

FX: The intermittent snap of a lasgun.

GUARDSMAN 1: ‘Keep firing! Keep firing!’

GUARDSMAN 2: ‘I can’t, I’m trying’

GUARDSMAN 1: ‘They’re coming, fire!’

GUARDSMAN 2: ‘Emperor damn it! The slide’s stuck.’

GUARDSMAN 3: ‘C’mon, c’mon, let me see that.’

GUARDSMAN 1: ‘They’re coming! They’re coming!’

Thorolf backhanded the screaming Guardsman across the face, breaking his jaw and knocking him unconscious. The other two Guardsmen stared up at him, their eyes wide with fear. Thorolf doubted they’d ever set eyes on a Space Marine before. Right now he was more terrifying than the eldar pirates that were striding towards them.

THOROLF (scowling, pained): ‘Give… Give me the weapon.’

The older looking of the two guardsmen opened his mouth to speak but said nothing.

THOROLF (exasperated): ‘Russ’s teeth.’

Thorolf growled in irritation. He pushed past the trooper, reaching down and snapping the heavy bolter from its mount.

FX: Metal clunking.

The foul scent of xenos flesh choked the Space Wolf’s nostrils. The eldar were almost upon them. Grunting with superhuman effort, Thorolf racked back the heavy bolter’s slide and opened fire.

FX: Metal slide being pulled back and clicking into place. Heavy bolter fire.

THOROLF: ‘Back to the abyss.’

The advancing xenos died in seconds, their frail forms exploding in clouds of red mist. The remainder broke for cover, but Thorolf gave them no respite, blasting apart the piles of rubble and service vehicles they sought to cower behind. Once a Long Fang, the Space Wolf was as familiar with the subtleties of a heavy bolter as he was with the age lines of own face. It took him less than twenty seconds to track and kill the eldar cadre. Thorolf sniffed the air, checking for survivors. There were none. A pungent aroma drew a scowl from the Space Wolf. He looked down at the cowering guardsmen, noticing the expanding wet patches on their trousers, and grinned.

Scene Six - Ext. Luetin Necropolis.

ATMOS: Battle rages.

A shrapnel-rain doused the lower reaches of Luetin Hive as skimmers burned, falling from the sky in droplets of twisted metal. The initial ambush had gone well, with over half the eldar force killed or routed.

FX: Crunchy flesh noise.

The eldar’s corpse came apart as Erik pulled his axe from its chest. The Wolf Lord examined the tactical overlay on his display. The attack was at a critical juncture; one mistake and the Space Wolves could lose the momentum. The eldar still outnumbered them by dozens to one and his forces were spread the length and breadth of the hive. He could ill afford to let the xenos seize the initiative.

FX: Laser blasts and splinter fire.

A series of concussive blasts drew Erik’s attention to the south-west. A huge eldar craft, larger than any they’d yet encountered, had entered the local air space. Its arrowed-prow scythed through the burning remains of lesser skimmers as it forged towards Ragnavalld and his scouts.

FX: Laser blasts and splinter fire.

A battery of elongated energy weapons flashed from its sides. The Wolf Lord gritted his teeth in rage as Ragnavalld’s ident-tag blinked dark.

FX: More laser blasts and splinter fire.

ERIK: ‘Russ devour them. We must take down that craft.’

Erik cursed as six more ident-tags faded from his display.

AGMUND: ‘It’s wreathed in some sort of energy shield. We cannot board it directly, and we cannot get close enough to plant charges.’

ERIK: ‘We must find a way. We–’

FX: Heavy bolter fire.

As if in answer to the Wolf Lord’s demand, a hail of heavy bolter rounds roared up from the lower hive to hammer the shield. The translucent energy bubble flared and spat as the high-calibre shells found their mark.

ERIK: Now! For Russ! Now!

Erik motioned towards the exposed skimmer with his axe, ordering the attack as the shield overloaded, shattering in a storm of disjointed noise.

Scene Seven - Ext. Luetin Necropolis. On the archon’s raider.

FX: Booted feet on metal as the Space Wolves land on the Archon’s transport.

Erik leapt onto the Archon’s transport. Agmund and Ivar landed beside him. The Archon’s bodyguard attacked without pause, striking at the Space Wolves with crackling halberds. Erik blocked a strike meant to sever his head and shot one of the eldar point blank in the face. The plasma discharge vaporised the xenos’s skull and killed another that was moving in behind him.

The eldar were skilled combatants, but they fought as individuals, their selfish desire to kill leaving them open to counter. The Space Wolves fought as a pack, each thrust and cut of their blades working in unison with their brothers’ attacks to plug gaps in their defences and overwhelm the foe.

Ivar gestured with his blade.

IVAR: ‘Your left!’

Agmund turned and raised his blade, parrying the eldar’s blow before slashing down towards the shoulder. He growled as his chainsword rang off the incubi’s armour. The segmented battle-plate worn by the Archon’s bodyguard was heavier and more robust than that worn by the other eldar. Coupled with the incubi’s skill and grace, it was hard to land a killing blow.

AGMUND: ‘Enough of this dance.’

Agmund ducked the incubi’s riposte, mag-locked his chainsword to his armour, and shouldered the eldar backwards. He stepped in as the incubi tried to recover, pinning the eldar’s arms and locking a gauntleted hand around its frail neck.

AGMUND: ‘Russ bring you luck dodging the ground.’

With a grunt of effort, Agmund tossed the struggling eldar from the skycraft. Ivar grinned, following the Wolf Guard’s example and using his bulk to knock the last two of the incubi to their doom.

ERIK: ‘I think Ivar wants your place at the feasting table.’

Erik joked with Agmund and turned his gaze on the archon. The sinister figure was still immobile on her throne. Her polished, charcoal armour was in stark relief to the bleeding corpses that made up her nightmarish seat.

VRANAK: ‘I am Vranak. Remember that name, mon-keigh. Tell it to your corpse-god when you stand at his side.’

The eldar shot from her throne in a stream of darkness to strike Erik in the chest with an outstretched fist. The blow flipped the Wolf Lord, spinning him backwards. Erik dropped his plasma pistol and caught hold of the aft guard rail. Dangling from the edge of the skimmer, the Wolf Lord fought to remain conscious, feeling as though a war mammoth had stepped on his chest. A fissure ran the length of his breastplate, blood running from it.

The archon moved to finish him, but Agmund and Ivar blocked her path with their burring chainblades. Vranak ghosted between them, parrying their blows with deft turns of her sword. Agmund cried out as the Archon whipped her weapon round to slice the Wolf Guard’s legs off at the knee, the crackling blade passing effortlessly through armour and bone. Ivar died a heartbeat later, Vranak pivoting to thrust her blade through the Space Wolf’s primary heart, cleaving his secondary heart with the return stroke.

VRANAK: ‘Clumsy apes.’

Vranak spat the taunt as she kicked Agmund’s twitching torso from the transport.

Erik growled and pulled himself back onto the platform.

ERIK: ‘Your death will bring them glory.’

The Wolf Lord gripped the haft of his axe with both hands, separating the twin-weapons that made the whole. Twirling both axes once to remember their weight, he charged towards Vranak. Erik struck out with all his fury, with all of his skill, but the teeth of his weapons carved only air. In return, the archon flowed around him, slashing at the Wolf Lord’s thighs and cutting open his midriff. Erik roared with rage; Vranak was toying with him.

As his mind raced for a way to triumph, warning runes flared across the Wolf Lord’s retinal display. He ignored them. His body would cope. There was no way to counter the eldar’s attacks. She moved too fast, even for Erik’s enhanced eyes to see. But the Wolf Lord could smell her, could hear the beat of her devil heart.

Vranak sailed forwards, her blade aimed at the Wolf Lord’s throat. Erik heard the excited rush of the Archon’s breath as she prepared for the kill. He slipped left, swinging an axe low towards the eldar’s abdomen. The Archon darted backwards. Erik tracked her scent, throwing his other axe where his nose told him. The spinning weapon clipped the Archon, unbalancing her for the briefest of instants. Erik seized the chance, diving forwards, wrapping his vice-like arms around the eldar and dragging her over the edge.

The two armoured figures fell to their doom.

VRANAK: ‘You kill us both.’

Vranak rasped as her lungs struggled against the Wolf Lord’s embrace. Erik smelled the Archon’s fear. He listened with grim satisfaction as the eldar’s heart-rate continued to speed. His own heart remained slow and steady as his chronometer counted down the seconds to impact. At the edge of his hearing, the Wolf Lord picked up the skimmer he had sensed was coming. He listened to the roar of its engines as it joined the battle, felt the displaced air on his skin as it cut a path towards them. When he had first glimpsed it, it was a tiny dot, a speck on the horizon. Now, metres below him, the sleek craft all but filled his vision. Moments before his death, the Archon realised the error of her assumption.

The wolf and the eldar slammed into the eldar transport.

Vranak let out a wheezing grunt as every bone in her body cracked under Erik’s weight. The Wolf Lord got to his feet and glared at the cadre of eldar warriors surrounding him.

ERIK: ‘Who’s next?’

Scene Eight - Ext. Luetin Necropolis.

ATMOS: The shriek of propulsion engines jetting overhead and the cacophony of battle from the middle-distance, including explosions.

Small, single-pilot skimmers sped past Thorolf as they fled the hive and the Space Wolves’ wrath.

THOROLF: ‘Cowards.’

Thorolf swung round, bringing the heavy bolter to bear on the retreating jetbikes. He opened fire, stitching a line of destruction through the towering hab blocks as the eldar craft jinked left and right.

FX: Heavy bolter fire, shell casings clattering to the ground.

Thorolf growled a curse and adjusted his aim, pumping a stream of explosive rounds into the buildings above and ahead of the skimmers. The eldar pilots held their course, blindsided by the debris that tumbled onto them. The lead craft slammed straight into a chunk of falling rockcrete, exploding in a ball of fire. The other two slowed sharply, diving in an attempt to avoid the worst of the rubble – just as Thorolf had expected.

The Space Wolf grinned and gunned the trigger, shredding the pair in a barrage of sustained fire that tore through the skimmer’s armour and ignited their fuel cells. He kept firing, holding the trigger down until the weapon stuttered and the ammo counter flashed zero.

FX: Sound of heavy bolter racking empty.

The Space Wolf dropped the weapon and fell to one knee. His wounds were catching up with him. He felt his muscles weaken as his body diverted blood and nutrients to repair the damage to his internal organs. Thorolf took a long, agonised breath and stopped. Something was wrong. He sniffed the air, analysing every particle for the source of his discontent. He smelled nothing save his own scent, not the smoking shell casings scattered around him or the vapour trail left in the air by the eldar skimmers. Thorolf’s muscles bunched in anticipation as he realised that the world had turned silent.

He could no longer hear the battle raging in the distance, neither the staccato of bolter fire nor the thrum of the eldar skimmers. Thorolf willed himself to stand and cast his gaze around around the street. Darkness spread towards him as one after another, the street’s luminators blinked out. The air turned cold, a feeling of unease intensifying as a thin layer of frost rimed the edges of his armour.

THOROLF (snarling): ‘Show yourselves, devils!’

FX: A cluster of wet, sucking sounds as the mandrakes emerge.

Thorolf drew his knife and smiled, his long canines glistening under the light of a single flickering luminator as the Mandrakes came for him. Not for the last time, the Space Wolf’s world went dark.

THUNDER FROM FENRIS

Nick Kyme

‘No son of Russ should die like this.’

Afger Ironmane was crouched in the snow. He regarded the mangled corpse lying next to him forlornly.

It was Barek Thunderborn, a fellow Space Wolf, his brother.

Steam was rising from the carcass of Barek’s beloved wolf-mount, Gerik. The monstrous beast had been torn apart.

The drifts had lessened in the last hour, and rolled slowly across the tundra. Even so, they had begun to settle over Barek’s corpse. The Space Wolf’s blood, still warm from his recent slaying, created dark-red blossoms in the veiling snow. It did little to hide the lacerations in his battle-plate. Nor did it smother his grievous wounds. Cooling intestines were heaped just below Barek’s groin and trailed a half metre from the murder site.

‘Slain by one of his own.’ Afger bit back his anger, but his gauntleted fist was clenched. Snow dappled his armour, turning blue-grey into dirty white. It piled on his pauldrons, only to loosen and cascade off as he got up. Clods of snow clung to his beard too, the black and iron-grey streaks powdered white.

‘We don’t know that for sure, brother.’

Skeln Icehowl was standing farther away. His voice was deep, like the rumble of slow-moving icebergs. He patted his giant wolf-mount Fenrir as it bristled at the stench of blood.

Like his battle-brother, Skeln wore the blue-grey power armour of the Space Wolves. And also like his brother, it was festooned with fetishes and totems honouring their liege-lord Leman Russ and the fierce, warrior-pride of the Wolf Guard of Fenris. A fanged necklace hung around Skeln’s gorget, and a pelt of thick fur draped down his armoured back. Runic talismans dangled off leather thongs attached to his breastplate, which carried the gilt sigil of a winged, lupine skull.

Skeln’s blond beard was less wild than Afger’s and wreathed by snow. He carried a scar across his forehead and above his left eye – a relic of an earlier battle. Both warrior’s had a feral cast to their features, the echo of their namesake, and went unhooded, preferring to feel the icy caress of the weather.

‘It was Hagni,’ disputed Afger. ‘What else could tear Barek Thunderborn apart like this?’ He gestured to the butchered remains. With Barek’s power amour split like paper, his flesh torn and organs ripped from his body, Skeln found an argument difficult to come by. Instead he snarled, showing long canines. His massive wolf-mount bared its own fangs in empathy.

Afger and Skeln hailed from a rarefied, some said mythical, brotherhood within the Space Wolves. They rode thunderwolves, the greatest of all the Fenrisian wolves, as a man would ride a horse. Such creatures were massive, more monster than wolf, easily twice as large as a Terran bear and many times more ferocious. Thick fur was as strong as steel wire. Long fangs were sharp and broad like swords. Few could master such beasts as those that stalked the Mountains of the Maelstrom, and even then they were not wholly tamed.

‘The Scions of Pestilence are dead. Our mission is ended,’ muttered Skeln. ‘Hagni must be found and captured.’

‘He is wulfen!’ Afger was vehement. ‘He must be killed.’

‘No, Afger,’ Skeln’s voice was firm. ‘The Wolf Priests will judge him. It is not for us to decide.’

‘Barek Thunderborn lies dead and it is not for us to decide? Hagni is our brother no longer. He slew a thunderwolf, Skeln.’

‘I won’t condemn him, Afger. What if it was you we hunted?’

Afger thumped his breastplate. Nearby, his wolf-mount, Skoll, growled and pawed the ground.

‘Then I would welcome death as release from dishonour.’

Fenrir snarled, hackles rising on its muscled neck. A sharp word from Skeln quelled his mount’s ire to a low growl. Any retort would have to wait, as the sound of an approaching vehicle interrupted them.

Both Space Wolves turned and saw a Chimera armoured troop carrier rumbling towards them across a snow-choked road. Several kilometres behind it, south of the Space Wolves’ position, loomed a dark bastion. It was the Imperial command post of the Cadian 154th, the ‘Fusiliers’, and the slab-sided Chimera tank that ground to a halt before the Wolves belonged to the regiment’s commanding officer, Colonel Vorin Ekhart.

The rear hatch squealed opened on half-frozen hinges, landing with a dull thunk, and a jowly man in the olive drab of the Cadians stepped out.

Colonel Ekhart rubbed his gloved hands together, his breath ghosting the air, as he tried to ward off the cold. Neither the storm coat he wore, nor the thick moustaches framing his upper lip, could keep him from shivering.

‘Your men are as grey as the weather, colonel,’ remarked Skeln, appraising the bedraggled state of the Kasrkin storm troopers accompanying him.

Ekhart looked skyward to a blanket of oppressive platinum, and shrugged. Skeln’s shadow eclipsed the officer, the Space Wolf half again as tall and almost twice as wide. To his credit, Ekhart didn’t look intimidated.

‘A long campaign and this damnable cold,’ he uttered by way of explanation. ‘A few weeks for you, my lord, has been the best part of a year on Skorbad for my men and I.’

The colonel stole a furtive glance at Fenrir, who lathed the air with its long, pink tongue, and tried not to show his disquiet. He was dwarfed by the monstrous wolf. Ekhart would barely be a morsel to a beast like that. Even faced with it now, the colonel couldn’t quite believe his eyes. He hadn’t known such creatures even existed, until he’d seen one. Thunderwolf – the name was mythic, almost otherworldly. Yet here two of them stood, like monsters from some elder age, their masters no less impressive and god-like.

Skeln bared his fangs, grinning, though the gesture failed to reach his eyes.

‘Fenrir…’ he warned in a low growl, before the beast backed down and stopped trying to taste the human meat. ‘The Scions of Pestilence are all dead, colonel,’ Skeln continued. ‘You’ll be leaving this rock soon enough, bound for fresh fields and greater glories in the name of the All Father.’

Skorbad had been in the clutch of a deadly Chaos plague when the Space Wolves had arrived. A cult of Nurgle, one of the Ruinous Powers and the entity that revelled in disease and despoliation, had arisen in one of Skorbad’s monolithic cities. Infection spread quickly, the plague’s victims sickening and dying, before stirring into horrific un-life as mindless flesh-eaters. The Cadians had done their best to staunch its spread but had been unable to locate and destroy the plague’s propagators, a war band of Chaos renegades called the Scions of Pestilence – in truth, bloated monstrosities swelled by Father Nurgle’s corruption.

In three short weeks, the Wolf Guard had trawled the cities of Skorbad, found the renegades and despatched them one by one. Hordes of zombies still haunted the deepest ruins but were waning, and aimless without their Chaos pack masters. The Space Wolves’ role in the conflict was over, until Hagni had turned. So far, only the Space Wolves knew of it.

As for the Cadians, they were to consolidate their position and then hand over control to Skorbad’s Defence Forces, who would mop up what was left of the zombie hordes. The less enviable task of putting back together the shattered world’s infrastructure was the job of its governor and his bureaucratic staff.

Ekhart made the sign of the aquila at the Space Wolf’s utterance of the name the sons of Russ used for the Immortal Emperor of Mankind.

‘Indeed, and I’ll not be sorry to leave this place either,’ he then replied. ‘We caught your coded vox echo over our instruments, and I wanted to come out personally to express my gratitude for–’ the colonel stopped abruptly for a sharp intake of breath. ‘Throne of Earth!’ he swore, ‘Is that…?’ Colonel Ekhart had noticed the visceral remains of Barek, just visible beneath the falling snow.

‘Aye, it is,’ Skeln uttered solemnly, not turning to follow the colonel’s gaze.

Ekhart was shaking his head. Somewhere behind him, a Kasrkin threw up. ‘How could…?’ There was a tremble in the colonel’s voice.

To witness one of the Emperor’s Adeptus Astartes, a fearsome Space Wolf at that, killed in such a way was disturbing. Something that could do that, something that could kill one of the mythical wolves must be…

‘A beast,’ answered Afger, having stayed silent until then. He locked eyes with Skeln, ‘One that must be hunted and slain in turn.’

Ekhart averted his gaze to focus on Skeln. His tone was incredulous.

‘I thought you said the Scions of Pestilence were dead.’

‘They are,’ replied Skeln, turning away, not deigning to elaborate.

‘I have heard tales…’ Ekhart began.

Skeln glared back at him.

The colonel licked his lips nervously.

‘Of Space Wolves becoming beasts.’

The curse of the wulfen was the secret burden of the Space Wolves, a genetic flaw handed down by their progenitor that could manifest at any time. Rumours abound, as they always did, but this was one ugly truth to be kept by the Chapter, and the Chapter alone.

‘Go back to your bastion and lock the gates,’ snarled Afger, losing patience. Mounting up, he reined Skoll towards the open tundra. Kilometres distant the black silhouette of Helspire, one of the largest of Skorbad’s cities, blighted the horizon. Hagni would be seeking refuge after his kill. ‘We have lingered here long enough, brother,’ Afger said to Skeln, who nodded.

‘Will you…?’ Ekhart ventured, taking an involuntary step back. His storm troopers levelled their lasguns, as they imagined monsters in the warriors before them.

‘You’d be dead before you’d pull the trigger,’ said a rasping voice.

A Kasrkin put up his hands as he felt the sharp caress of metal at his neck.

A third Space Wolf emerged out of the drifts that had grown more belligerent as they’d been talking, having crept up on Colonel Ekhart’s party.

Skeln scowled, but was inwardly impressed at his brother’s stealth.

‘Thorgard,’ he said.

The Space Wolf lowered his wolf claw and laughed. He hadn’t ignited the blades; at such close proximity, the electrical charge alone would have sheared the Kasrkin’s head off.

Thorgard had a closely-cropped beard with a long mane of ruddy hair, plaited with rune stones and bound by bronze rings. His humour was booming, and showed his perfect white fangs.

‘Your men were sleeping, colonel. Perhaps you should find some better bodyguards,’ he said good-naturedly, tramping past them with a feral glint in his eyes. ‘Brother,’ he added, the grin just for Skeln as he walked on.

Thorgard’s face saddened as he regarded Barek, but was quickly impassive.

‘The All Father will judge him, now. It’s out of our hands.’

Afger growled something under his breath, unimpressed at his brother’s antics.

Skeln ignored their bickering, his attention on Ekhart who had yet to lower his guard.

‘Our will is strong, colonel,’ he assured him. ‘You need have no fear of us.’

‘Can you be certain of that?’ asked Ekhart, craning his neck as Skeln mounted Fenrir.

Skeln noticed Thorgard’s beast pad over to him from where he’d left it hiding amongst the snow so he could play his trick. Its name was Magnin, and it bowed its head to allow Thorgard to straddle it.

Facing the colonel, Skeln’s eyes were dark hollows. ‘Do as Afger said: Go back to your bastion. Lock the gates.’

He urged Fenrir with a firm command and went to join his brothers, leaving Ekhart no less uneasy.

They had tarried long enough. Barek’s slayer must be found and stopped, one way or another. Skeln only hoped there was some of Hagni left to bring back.

Colonel Ekhart shuddered as he watched the thunderwolves lope away. It wasn’t from the cold, either.

A terrible, wracking cough gripped him. It felt like burning acid in his lungs. When Ekhart took his hand away from his mouth, there were traces of blood on his glove.

‘Sir?’ said the sergeant of the Kasrkin, about to go to his colonel’s aid before being waved away.

‘It’s nothing,’ Ekhart lied. ‘Into the Chimera,’ he added, before about facing. ‘We’ll wait for the landers at the bastion and lock our gates.’

‘They’re surrounded,’ hissed Afger, sliding up his bolter to sight down its barrel. ‘I count sixteen left. Estimate thirty dead.’

‘Enemies?’ Skeln’s voice inquired from below.

‘At least sixty… maybe more.’

Following Hagni’s trail, the Wolf Guard had entered Helspire without incident. On the way, Thorgard had told them of his discovery of Warg, Hagni’s thunderwolf, ripped apart like Barek and half-buried by a forlorn roadside. Skeln hoped shame had compelled Hagni to try and conceal the carcass, that some of the warrior yet remained within the flesh of the beast. Shreds of armour had littered the trail, too, discarded by Hagni as he outgrew it, shed like old skin as he metamorphosed beneath.

As it had eclipsed the Space Wolves, the long shadow of Helspire had been a blanket over Skeln’s thoughts. Entering the darkness of the city, he became alert and set his troubles aside.

The sprawling cityscape was ghostlike and silent. Shadowed avenues held potential threats at every turn, huge towers loomed forbiddingly, watching, waiting. Ruins filled the broken streets and plazas, stark evidence of the brutal fight that had unfolded here. It proved little impediment to the monstrous beasts rode by the Wolf Guard. None challenged them. Most of Helspire’s populous was either dead, in hiding or had already fled elsewhere. It made hearing the crack of las-fire and the frantic shouts of Cadians easy to discern. The battle din echoed loudly in the empty city. Tracking it to its source had been even easier.

What might once have been a public auditorium stretched out below Afger. One of its columns, no longer supporting the vaulted ceiling, had half-collapsed. Crashed into the wall and held fast, it offered a high vantage point. Skoll had crawled stealthily up the column and lay on its belly as Afger leaned over to survey the scene beneath him.

There was only room for one thunderwolf at the column’s broken summit, so Skeln waited some fifteen metres or so below with Thorgard and their mounts, hidden by the ruins.

Afger saw a ring of battered-looking Cadian Guardsmen, pulling ever tighter; snapping off sporadic bursts with whatever was left in their weapons’ power packs. Converging on them, a shambling horde of flesh-eaters, their bodies rank with decomposition. The whiff of decay made the Space Wolf’s olfactory senses rankle. The wretched plague victims shuffled on broken limbs, old wounds ragged and dark in their dirty uniforms. Some clutched lasguns like clubs, in parody of their former lives and compelled by degrading muscle memory. Others merely reached with taloned fingers, their sharpened nails piercing their gloves; dried blood masking their grotesque and hungering faces.

‘To be killed by your former comrades in arms…’ Afger whispered, shaking his head, then realised what he was saying. He held his tongue as another Cadian was dragged screaming into the mob and slowly devoured. The rest were fighting hard. They wanted to live.

‘Skeln,’ uttered Afger, ‘High and low.’

Turning to Thorgard, Skeln found his brother was already gone.

‘On my way,’ Thorgard’s voice came through the comm-bead in Skeln’s ear. Always a step ahead was Thorgard.

Skeln mentally traced a route for Fenrir through the ruins that would bring

them to the auditorium floor.

‘We are ready, Afger.’

A second’s pause went by.

‘Now,’ snarled Afger.

Skoll got to its haunches and leapt off the column, a howling battle-cry on the lips of man and monster.

They fell amongst the zombie horde and laid about them with fury. Skoll crushed three of the plague creatures as it landed, dashing out their putrid brains with sweeps of its claws. It seized another in iron-hard jaws, biting it in two and casting aside the remains like unwanted meat. The legs stayed inert, but the zombie’s torso began to crawl along the ground, driven by keening hunger.

Afger paid it no heed. Unleashing his bolter, he gunned down a slavering zombie pack, their bodies exploding as the mass-reactive shells blasted them apart. Gore spattered his armour and Skoll’s brawny, half-cybernetic flanks. Man and beast revelled in it, this baptism of blood, howling for more carnage.

As the creatures moved on Afger, this new prey taking the pressure off the still firing Cadians, Skeln roared into view. He drove Fenrir headlong into the diseased masses, the thunderwolf using its bulk and power to batter through them. Rotting corpses were tossed aside, smashed like kindling against pounding surf, before Fenrir slowed and the real slaughter began.

A zombie leapt at Skeln, having launched itself from a high pile of rubble, only for the Space Wolf to arrest its flight with a blazing retort of fire from his bolt pistol. The creature was held in mid-air, caught in the explosive web from Skeln’s weapon. The muzzle flare lit its gruesome features in monochrome before it disintegrated against the bolt pistol’s power.

A half-second and Skeln swung his weapon around to dispatch another zombie trying to rake Fenrir’s exposed flanks. Decaying talons met adamantium skin and shattered, before Skeln killed it. The monstrous wolf had just torn the head off another plague creature and was spitting out the saliva-drenched skull when Thorgard appeared on the far side of the auditorium, wolf claws crackling.

He sheared through a half-dozen zombies as Magnin carried him low across the floor. Heads, limbs and torsos fell like macabre rain in his wake.

The Space Wolves were three points of a triangle, herding the diminishing zombie horde together, what was left of the Cadians standing at the edge of the corral’s bloody perimeter.

Each time the thunderwolves drove in to the zombie horde they tore out again, wreaking carnage, slaying any stragglers and tightening the noose before charging back in. It was savage and furious, but not an iota of rage was wasted. Every shot was a kill, every blade stroke left a dismembered corpse behind it.

Sixty soon became thirty, then twenty as the Space Wolves butchered with controlled ferocity.

‘For the All Father!’ roared Afger, his snarling face framed by the flare of his bolter’s thunder.

Thorgard echoed him then leapt up onto his beast’s back, balancing on its broad shoulders for a moment like an acrobat at a carnival before catapulting into the zombies. Lightning arcs tore strips in the half-darkness, describing the deadly passage of Thorgard’s wolf claws. Magnin peeled off, loping around the edge of the plague-ridden masses, biting off heads and shredding bodies with its claws.

Skeln had drawn his rune-etched power axe and stormed in, straddling Fenrir’s back. He howled savagely, hacking down to bifurcate a zombie’s skull before decapitating another with the upswing. Cutting the last of the creatures down, he reined Fenrir in. Even then, the thunderwolf worried at the ruined corpses of the twice dead.

It had lasted only minutes, yet the desolation of dismembered bodies swathed the auditorium floor.

Afger was breathing hard, not from exertion but from the feral-rage still fuelling him. He eyed the eight Cadian survivors and motioned to Skeln.

‘What should we do about them?’

The humans were cowering, awestruck and fearful at the same time, faced with the monstrous thunderwolves and their riders. Several were injured, already showing signs of infection. A Space Wolf’s biology was engineered to withstand such contagions. A Cadian’s was not.

Skeln’s body language was resigned as he dropped down off Fenrir and stalked over to the Guardsmen.

‘We can take no chances.’

To succumb to such a flesh plague was horrendous. Skeln could scarcely imagine the dishonour in it should his brothers be susceptible to it; should they ever turn. At least the wulfen curse was pure; at least it embraced the unfettered feral rage that lurked at every Space Wolf’s core. But this… it was ignoble, debased. Grace of Russ that they should be spared such a fate.

Some of the Cadians pleaded for death. Some got to their knees.

The Space Wolf levelled his bolt pistol. A few of the men closed their eyes, their lips moving silently.

‘Receive the Emperor’s Peace,’ Skeln muttered sadly.

A bark of fire silenced any screams and eclipsed the Guardsmen’s lives forever.

‘It had to be done, brother,’ Thorgard said to Skeln as he was tramping back again.

Skeln mounted up.

‘Aye.’

Afger turned his back on the carnage of the dead Cadians. It was a pity they could not save them, but many more would die if they did not find Hagni soon.

‘The plague worsens,’ Afger stated flatly. A burst from his bolter slew the zombie torso labouring to claw across the floor towards them. Eerie silence followed for a moment after.

‘Ekhart’s soldiers,’ he sneered, evidently unimpressed. ‘I wonder how many more have fallen?’

‘It is a small matter,’ replied Skeln. ‘Infected or fully turned, we have to despatch any we come across until Hagni is found. Though the Scions are slain, the plague must not be allowed to spread.’ He fixed Afger with an icy glare. ‘Mercy guides our hand in this, not revenge. You’d do well to remember that, brother.’

Afger snarled and turned away.

‘Lead on Thorgard,’ he growled a moment later.

Skeln regarded the dead Cadians again, the ones he had been forced to kill.

How many did you butcher¸ Hagni?

Thorgard had the wulfen’s trail again. The hunt was back on.

Thorgard sat alone, in the lee of a ruined meat-farm outhouse. It was towards the heart of Helspire and had been badly damaged in the fighting, little more than a broken corner of prefabricated rockcrete with the skeletons of other structures and the shells of destroyed Chimeras half-buried in the snow nearby. A Cadian platoon had come this way, but had got no farther.

The drifts had worsened in the last few hours. An almost total white-out smothered the horizon. Visibility was abysmally poor, even for the Space Wolves’ acute senses.

Thorgard’s head was bowed, as if in contemplation, oblivious to the snow flurries dancing around his head and clinging to his beard like arctic limpets. He’d built a fire, using his body and the ruin to shield it from the ice winds rolling across the urban tundra, and flensed the meat from some shaggy-haired bovine, indigenous to Skorbad and somehow missed in the evacuation. It was messy work; blood painted the ground around him and gave off a coppery stink.

A hundred metres away, two Wolves were watching.

‘Hagni may be a beast, but he hasn’t lost his instincts,’ hissed Afger. ‘The wulfen won’t take the bait. Why do you insist on trying to snare him, Skeln?’

The other Space Wolf crouched alongside him in a ruined warehouse structure. Skeln was staring intently at the perimeter Thorgard had made, at the traps and foils he had set, hidden well in the snow and rubble. They kept low and to the shadows, Fenrir and Skoll lurking just behind their masters.

Of Magnin, there was no sign. Like its rider, the thunderwolf was adept at stealth – an uncanny feat for a monstrous beast that was nearly two and half metres from claw to shoulder.

‘His fate is not ours to decide,’ Sklen replied at length. He glared at Afger. ‘I’ve told you this already, brother. I won’t give up on Hagni. Not yet.’

Due to the escalating drifts, the trail had grown cold in more ways than one. Hagni’s wulfen scent was no longer redolent on the breeze. His tracks had disappeared, as well as any other signs of his passing.

‘You must be prepared to kill him, Skeln. If Thorgard or I fail, you must do it!’

Skeln grunted and went back to surveying Thorgard’s concealed deterrents.

‘Only if there’s no other choice,’ he muttered.

Something niggled at the back of Skeln’s mind. Hagni was leading them further into disputed territory, where the punitive influence of the Imperial Guard had not reached fully. On the way they’d seen entire platoons frozen solid, grimaces etched permanently on the troopers’ faces under the ice. Convoys of vehicles, Chimeras and even battle tanks, were left by the roadside – empty and abandoned. Was Hagni even fleeing from them? Or was it the wulfen that, even now, laid the trap and not the Wolf Guard?

Skeln had no more time to ponder.

Shadows smeared the snowy fog, grey against the drifts. They were heading for Thorgard.

Afger bared his fangs and scowled. Even in the snow storm, he was close enough to detect the stench of putrefaction. The wind rose abruptly, intensifying to a shrieking gale. Thorgard huddled the fire, but made no move, as the shadows approached. A spurt of crimson laced the ground as he sheared away another scrap of raw meat. The shadows jerked and quickened.

They were just a few metres away now… drawn by the blood.

A form emerged, its crooked fingers reaching, shuffling close to Thorgard on bent, misshapen limbs. It was not alone; not nearly alone.

A hundred metres away, Afger reached for his bolter.

Skeln laid a hand on his shoulder.

‘What if he cannot hear them?’ the twitchy Wolf Guard rasped.

The wind had built to a scream. It buffeted Thorgard’s plaits, tossing them around like vipers. Still he flensed, occasionally devouring a strip of the raw meat.

‘He’ll move.’ Skeln’s tone was reassuring, but he reached for his bolt pistol anyway.

Just a metre away – still, Thorgard seemed oblivious.

Could he not scent the creatures?

‘He’ll move…’ The confidence in Skeln’s voice was waning rapidly. The zombie was almost within touching distance… ‘Arse of Russ!’ he swore, powering to his feet and wrenching his bolt pistol free–

–just as Thorgard leapt up, a backhand slash with his wolf claw cutting first through the reaching zombie’s wrist, then driving on into its upper torso and scything through its neck. Its head bounced onto the ground and Thorgard kicked it into the face of another assailant, before launching forward, claws wide, to cleave the plague creature in two.

Thorgard decapitated four more in as many seconds, grinning wildly at the shredded corpses at his feet, and it was over before it had begun. The zombies’ lighter body mass had evidently failed to set off the snares meant for Hagni, but had not been so silent as to fool Thorgard.

Now only fifty metres away and slowing to a walk, Skeln sighed with relief. He and Afger were about to relax when the grey shadows returned. As the zombies appeared in their droves, it became clear by their uniforms what had happened to the crews of the vehicle convoy.

‘Now we go!’ roared Skeln.

Together they plunged into the drifts, weapons booming.

Thorgard rushed forward and bisected a creature from groin to sternum, using his momentum to push through it and leaving the two ragged body hunks flapping impotently, a metre of gore-slicked snow between them.

To his left a zombie stuttered, its advance halted by the staccato fire of Afger’s bolter. A second burst spun it on its broken ankle and pitched the creature back.

An exploding cranium painted Thorgard’s power armour in thick, dead blood and brain matter. The zombie collapsed to its knees like a puppet without its strings and slumped headless in the slushed snow.

The muzzle flash had barely died from Skeln’s bolt pistol as he drew his power axe and went hand-to-hand. Still a few metres from Thorgard, the other Space Wolf found it hard to maintain his brother’s frenetic pace.

Afger sensibly kept his distance, using his bolter’s range to protect his battle-brothers’ flanks. Fenrir and Skoll barrelled past him on either side as he took up a ready stance and switched to rapid fire. As the pair of snarling thunderwolves hit, Magnin rose out of a snow mound, shawled white and growling for blood. The creatures tore into the undead tank crews, ripping off limbs and raking bodies. Any normal enemy would have fled before such carnage, but the plague zombies had long since forgotten fear. They knew nothing now but the urge to feed, the maddening hunger for flesh that was never slaked.

Skeln hacked through a zombie’s spinal column, just as three more of the creatures rammed into him. He was rocked on his heels but kept his footing, splitting the skull of one with his elbow and shredding the other two with a close-range burst of his bolt pistol.

‘Ha!’ Thorgard bellowed, surrounded by plague creatures. ‘Now this is sport!’ He drove a wolf claw into the torso of one, tearing the blades upward and shattering its clavicle. With the other hand, he swiped off a zombie’s head before crushing it to the ground with a heavy boot. One leapt onto his back, scratching at his neck and gorget. Thorgard reached around to seize it and throw it off when another zombie fired a shot into his torso, an old memory triggering the lasgun in its grasp.

Grimacing, the Space Wolf was about to slash it when he found his arm pinned by another creature. A fourth had mounted his right pauldron and was gnawing at the ceramite.

‘Not like this!’ Thorgard raged. ‘Teeth of Russ, my end will be worthy of a saga!’

Heat singed his face as Afger’s bolter shells tore into the zombies clambering over him. The one clinging to his pauldron was torn off, claws still embedded in the ceramite, whilst the creature pinning Thorgard’s arm was struck in the back. The ammo storm rolled up its spine to burst open its head like a rotten fruit. As Thorgard yanked the zombie off his back and then punched his fist through the lasgunner, Magnin leapt to its master’s defence crushing another two.

‘We cannot slay them all.’ Afger’s voice was tinny and cracked with static as it came through on the comm-bead in Skeln’s ear.

‘Agreed,’ he replied. ‘Mount up and break through.’ Afger cut the link when Skeln had finally caught up to Thorgard. ‘It seems your lure was too effective, brother.’

Some of the other Space Wolf’s eagerness had diminished.

‘I had hoped for larger prey,’ he confessed.

Skeln howled and Fenrir bounded to his side, after finishing a zombie with a savage twist of its jaws.

‘We’re done here,’ he told Thorgard as he climbed atop the monstrous thunderwolf’s back. They’d cleared a bloody gap in the horde but had only seconds until the next wave of plague creatures were upon them.

Thorgard nodded reluctantly. He was summoning Magnin when Afger’s voice crashed in on the comm-bead.

‘There!’ he cried, ‘There, I see the beast! Hagni is abroad and in my sight!’

Afger was pointing, even as he slung himself across Skoll’s shoulders and urged the thunderwolf to charge.

Skeln and Thorgard followed his outstretched finger to a dark silhouette crouched on the horizon line. Though distant, the Wolf Guard made out hulking shoulders and a broad back, hirsute with fur. Skeln thought he caught a shimmer from a pauldron hanging loosely off the beast’s shoulder.

There could be no doubt. It was Hagni; now more beast than man.

Howling a battle-cry, Afger hammered past the other two Space Wolves, intent on his prey. Skoll used its muscled bulk to heave zombies out of its way, crushing bodies beneath it as drove inexorably forwards.

By the time Skeln and Thorgard had spurred their mounts, Afger was well ahead of them. They too battered their way through the plague mob, cutting a bloody path to the open ground ahead. Soon, the horde was floundering behind them and an arctic waste beckoned where the chase was on for Hagni.

‘Damn you, Afger,’ hissed Skeln, eyes locked onto his brother, now even farther in front of them.

Hagni’s silhouette had not yet moved. It merely watched its brothers’ approach. At this rate, Afger would reach it well before Skeln and Thorgard. He seemed hell-bent on facing the wulfen alone. And despite the fact he rode Skoll, Skeln recalled all too well the butchered remains of Barek and his thunderwolf. Alone, Afger faced a very uncertain victory.

A sudden cracking arrested Skeln’s thoughts, and a chill entered his spine.

‘Skeln!’ said Thorgard. He was looking downward, already slowing, ‘the ice!’

The snowy tundra they traversed was not solid ground at all. It was a lake, frozen stiff by the cold weather, but now breaking up with the heavy footfalls of the thunderwolves. Skeln saw the ground webbing beneath Fenrir’s massive paws. An ominous cracking sound followed it.

‘Hold!’ he roared, reining the monstrous beast in and stalling the pursuit. Opening up a channel, he shouted into the comm-bead.

‘Afger! Slow down, the ice is cracking.’

‘I have him. The beast won’t escape again.’

‘Afger–’

–wasn’t listening. He severed the link and rode on harder.

‘I’m sorry Skeln,’ he muttered, ‘Barek must be avenged.’ He peered down the end of his bolter, bringing Hagni into his sights–

‘You are mine, wulfen…’

–when the beast slipped away and was gone.

‘No!’

That was when the ground fell away and icy water rose up around them. Weighed down by armour and augmetics, man and beast were dragged into stygian gloom.

Darkness surrounded him, together with a sense of lightness that Afger had not felt for some time. The rage, the grief at Barek’s death, the burning desire for vengeance, all of it seemed muted by the cold. And for a moment, just the briefest of moments, Afger almost gave in.

Something strong and vice-like seized his wrist. He was travelling upwards again. He saw the vague suggestion of light. Air rushed his lungs and raucous noise clamoured into being as Afger breached the freezing surface of the water.

‘Hold on,’ snarled the voice of Skeln, beard dripping icy wet from when he’d plunged in to grab him.

‘Thorgard, I have him,’ he growled, and the other Wolf Guard came into view. He’d removed his wolf claw gauntlets – they lay on the ice nearby – and leaned over to grasp Afger’s power generator.

‘No,’ Afger roared, thrashing. ‘Leave me! Follow Hagni! Avenge Barek!’

Skeln wasn’t listening. Together, he and Thorgard hauled Afger up and onto the fragile ice bank.

Skoll had not been so fortunate. The thunderwolf’s sheer bulk, its cybernetic body fashioned by the Iron Priests, had sunk it like an anchor. With nothing to cling to, the great beast had drowned in the black depths of the lake. It was a poor end for such a noble creature.

Afger’s expression told Skeln that Skoll’s former master thought so too.

For a short while, they sat on the ice, not daring to move should it crack again and swallow them all this time. The zombie hordes were far enough away not to trouble them.

Skeln glared at Afger, his gaze murderous. Thorgard tentatively retrieved his gauntlets. Afger merely lay on his back and stared into the sky. Cold and pitiless, it echoed the feeling in his hollow heart.

Afger had not spoken for over an hour after the incident on the lake. He felt the loss of Skoll keenly, so strong was their bond. A separation of a limb would have been easier to take. When he did finally give voice, now running alongside Skeln on Fenrir’s back, it was clear his mood had not improved.

‘You should have let me sink and gone after the wulfen,’ he growled.

Skeln’s retort was biting.

‘You’ve lost your mount, and we are two brothers down already, Afger. I will not lose another in a vain and foolish sacrifice.’

‘I would not have drowned,’ Afger snapped.

Skeln looked down at him.

‘No, brother, but you would have given up.’

Afger’s shadowed expression betrayed his shame.

Thorgard had found Hagni’s trail again soon after leaving the ice lake, now far behind them, and was leading the Wolf Guard down into the catacombs of Helspire, the urbanisation of the city growing around them suddenly like a virus.

Here, the city was at its darkest. These were its sinks, its bowels, the very bones of its construction. Streets and avenues became tunnels, towers morphed into the sweating columns of foundation stones and the platinum sky was replaced by the rockcrete underbelly of the roads above. A sewer stink pervaded, sullying the icy crispness of the air. Stagnant heat lingered, emanating from the buried fusion generators that ran the benighted city’s power grid.

Thorgard sniffed the air, finding the wulfen’s scent. There was something else, too, something he couldn’t place.

‘It’s strange…’ he muttered, oblivious to his brothers’ arguing.

‘What is?’ asked Skeln.

‘Since killing Barek, Hagni has had many days to get ahead of us. I expected to track him to a lair, not to see him out in the open, especially so blatantly. It’s as if he wants to be caught.’

Afger bristled.

‘He begs for death.’

Skeln’s eyes became cold, hard bergs. His anger made him rasp.

‘No Space Wolf would ever desire that. No Space Wolf would ever die without a fight.’

Chastened, Afger realised he had spoken out of turn.

‘Sorry, brother,’ he admitted. ‘I am not myself.’

Skoll’s death had hit him hard.

‘But what other explanation is there?’

‘No, it doesn’t feel like that,’ offered Thorgard, challenging Afger’s earlier remark. ‘There is no sport in this. I’ve seen whelpling aspirants harder to track. Hagni allows us to catch up, only to then flee.’

‘He’s getting careless then, that’s all,’ said Afger, ‘and hungry. There is only dead flesh here, no fresh meat to sate the beast.’

Skeln was silent and stern. That was when he noticed the sigils daubed on the walls and the rank, pervading stench growing stronger. They were deep into the heart of Helspire now and reaching the end of a long, broad sewer conduit. A chamber loomed ahead, a sickly oval of light announcing it.

‘There’s something else here,’ hissed Thorgard suddenly, reining Magnin to a stop and speaking Skeln’s thoughts aloud. ‘Very large, very strong. Its scent mingles with the wulfen’s…’

Thorgard turned to face his brothers.

‘Hagni wasn’t trying to flee or merely running wild–’

‘He was leading us,’ said Skeln.

‘There may be some of Hagni left after all…’ hissed Afger.

Skeln ignored him.

‘But leading us to what?’

Thorgard ignited his wolf claws. Their electrical glow framed his face in an eerie light.

‘Brothers…’

Misshapen forms were shuffling into the dirty oval of light. In the chamber beyond, Skeln knew in his core they would find Hagni, and whatever it was he had been leading them to.

Skeln had drawn his weapons, Afger too.

‘Thunderwolves!’ he roared, glaring at the approaching zombies, ‘For Fenris and Leman Russ!’

Howling, the Space Wolves charged down the tunnel, making for the opening and whatever waited for them beyond it.

Skeln’s uppercut smashed a plague creature aside, tearing open its torso and spilling diseased innards. He hung down along Fenrir’s flank like a trick-rider from the old clan gatherings of his former life, when he was still human. Another was flung into the tunnel wall, its bones shattered by the force of Fenrir’s swipe. Afger raked three more with controlled bursts from his bolter. The explosive rounds turned the creatures into little more than a visceral mist. Thorgard cut down the rest; by the end of it, his scything wolf claws with slick and red.

‘A vanguard, nothing more,’ he breathed. The actinic glare from his blades pooled deep shadows around his wild eyes. He was ready for more.

Skeln snarled at the miasma of pestilence coming from the chamber entrance.

Howling, and the deep bellowing of something large and unnatural, emanated from it. It was a wolf fighting a monster.

‘Steel yourselves, brothers,’ Skeln growled, and passed through the dirty oval of light riding Fenrir.

The chamber was a confluence of sewer pipes. Rusted openings in the walls disgorged filth. It pooled in a deep basin in the middle of the room. Wallowing in the dark morass was a pustulant giant.

Sloth-like and disgusting, burgeoning rolls of putrescent-yellow flab ruptured the creature’s armour. The fragments of ceramite that still clung to its grotesque bulk were adhered by rivulets of puss, bursting from the boils and sores infesting its blubbery flesh. Horrid and distended, the beast’s mouth was a gaping maw. Several tongues lolled from one encrusted corner. They licked and probed at the sores lasciviously, tendril-like and sentient. Filled with ranks of needle-like teeth, its mouth was like that of a bloated shark.

Skeln saw the potential in those fangs to inflict the wounds that had killed Barek Thunderborn and hope flared that Hagni could still be saved. He wrinkled his nose at the noisome stench emanating from the thing’s corpulent body. Fat flies buzzed around it in a swarm.

Facing it across a river of pestilence was Hagni.

He was not as Skeln remembered him. Hagni’s armour hung off his body in scraps. His lupine form, now covered in thick fur, had simply outgrown it. Fangs were like daggers in his long mouth, stitched around a slightly protruding snout. Sinew throbbed like cords of steel across a brawny body stretched and made more muscular by the changes wrought by the wulfen curse. Horrific as it was, it was as nothing compared to the other monster in the room.

It was one of the Scions of Pestilence, now swelled by plague and decay, favoured by its dark lord and mutated into a hideous plague-spawn, unrecognisable from the traitors the Space Wolves had hunted previously. Even now, before their eyes, it seemed to be growing, absorbing the filth from the tainted sewer pipes. It had not always been this size, and explained how the creature had managed to kill Barek Thunderborn and slip away undetected… almost undetected. The Space Wolves had somehow missed it, but Hagni, turned to wulfen and his preternatural senses enhanced, had not. He could not defeat it alone; there was enough of the Space Wolf remaining to realise this, or perhaps it was merely instinct that had compelled Hagni to seek out allies and draw them to this fight. Skeln hoped for the former.

Skeln processed this in a half-second, before baring his fangs and howling–

‘Slay it!’

A ripple of explosive fire stitched the plague-spawn’s bloated body and a burble of what might have been pain bubbled from its swollen lips. A stream of corruption belched from the creature’s maw by way of riposte, but Fenrir was already moving. An acid-hiss erupted behind Skeln, head down, as his thunderwolf bounded away from the deadly spray. Afger stormed forwards at the same time, working his way through the mire to the plague-spawn’s left.

Zombies stirred in the wretched muck, corpses surfacing like gruesome buoys, animated by the plague-spawn’s presence. Afger shot them down as he moved, shredding them to pieces as he kept an eye on Hagni.

The wulfen ignored him and launched itself upon the creature, raking its rancid flanks. Flesh tore away, wretched and thin with decomposition. Black, sap-like blood started to mat Hagni’s fur as he clawed at it. Like a geyser exploding from the earth, the wulfen was struck in the face by a plume of bile. The force of it pitched Hagni off the plague-spawn’s body and sent him careening into the chamber wall.

Thorgard rode Magnin down the creature’s right flank. Its tongues lashed out like serpents, jabbing at the thunderwolf. The fleshy muscle was laced with barbs and tiny mouths, fang-filled and drooling pus.

Despite its bulk, Magnin turned and weaved to evade the probing tongues. One nicked Thorgard’s pauldron, leaving an acidic scar, as his thunderwolf jinked to the side. He followed its course as it seized a zombie shambling behind them, ripping the creature of its feet and hauling it forwards with a predatory jerk. Swept up in an eye blink into the plague-spawn’s maw, the zombie’s rotten bones crunched as it was devoured.

Head down, Thorgard urged Magnin on.

Skeln ducked another putrid stream from the plague-spawn’s mouth. He had torn out his bolt pistol and the muzzle burned white-hot with the flare of his weapon’s fire. The mass-reactive shells bit deep, sinking, as if in rubber, below the creature’s flesh. Explosions rippled beneath the sickly skin, bulging like tumours but the plague-spawn’s epidermis just stretched to compensate, any damage that had been inflicted regenerated instantly.

Frenzied bolter fire from Afger’s position suggested Skeln’s battle-brother was similarly frustrated.

He unsheathed his power axe and fed a ripple of energy across the rune-etched blade. It was time to get in close.

For Hagni, getting in close was the only way he knew how to fight. Dazed but unbowed, he shook away the wretched bile gumming his fur and drove at the creature again. As wulfen, Hagni was even larger than his Wolf Guard brethren. At over three metres tall, he was a monster. Yet even Hagni was small compared to the plague-spawn, so grotesquely swollen as it was by Nurgle’s taint.

Leaping onto the creature’s back, Hagni slashed and gored, searching for vital organs amidst the blubbery mass. The wulfen was elbow-deep in putrid blood and viscera, but the folds of flab, like fleshy armour, were too thick for him to inflict any serious harm.

Below, Thorgard raced along the plague-spawn’s flank, wolf claws spitting lightning. The stink of burning flesh was redolent in the air, but the long grooves he carved in the creature’s side merely oozed and closed up again, a roll of flab melting down over them.

Skeln was getting dizzy. The vile stench emanating off the creature made the air thick with its contagion. Fat flies buzzed around his face, trying to infest his mouth, ears and nostrils as he sought to get in close. He hacked away a tendril-like tongue and heard a deep yelp of agony from across the chamber. Though his view was occluded by the spawn’s bulk, Skeln recognised the cry of Thorgard’s thunderwolf. Magnin was wounded, possibly even dead.

‘Thorgard!’ he bellowed down the comm-feed.

Crackling static and a half-heard roar of anguish returned to him.

‘Brother, answer me!’

Skeln was pinned by the lashing tongues, oozing fronds attached to the pair that assailed him like the stingers of some rancid cnidaria. He couldn’t get to Thorgard. He couldn’t help his brother.

Another channel opened up in his ear.

‘This isn’t working–’ snarled Afger.

Bolter fire interrupted him.

‘We need to burn it!’

‘With what? We have no flamer, no incendiaries, we–’ Skeln had detected something, a distinctive tang in the mire of sewerage. He fended off a probing tongue, the plague-spawn burbling with laughter. A moment’s respite allowed him to cast about the chamber.

Pipes, everywhere pipes…

Skeln allowed himself a grim smile as he found what he was looking for.

A shadow eclipsed him as the plague-spawn leaned down, the shifting of its mass releasing noxious gases trapped within the rolls of flab. Skeln fought not to gag and reined Fenrir back. The tongue tendrils recoiled and Skeln urged his mount away. Fenrir turned and leapt, narrowly avoiding the burst of corruption vomited from the spawn’s distended mouth. It was still drooling acid as its burbled laughter came again.

But now Skeln was no longer penned in. He used this freedom of movement to ride Fenrir around the plague-spawn’s side, searching for Thorgard, following a pipe kept at the periphery of his vision.

Magnin was dead. The noble beast lay on its side, a brackish liquid trickling from its maw and pooling around its snout. Three, deep puncture wounds were visible in its flank, having entered flesh. They were dark and infected from where the plague-spawn’s tongues had raked it.

Whatever poison was harboured by the plague-spawn, it was more deadly and virulent than that carried by the zombies. If it could kill a mythical thunderwolf, it could kill Skeln and his brothers too.

A desperate roar seized Skeln’s attention and his gaze was drawn upward to where Thorgard and Hagni had mounted the plague-spawn’s back and were tearing at it with their claws.

Lost to grief and vengeance, Thorgard was no further use right now.

A loud crack, followed a shallow crump and the tang of explosive, came from the opposite end of the chamber.

‘Afger?’ Skeln hoped at least one of his battle-brothers still had something left.

‘Bolter’s dry… switching to grenades…’ came the fragmented response.

‘Is it working?’

Fenrir had slowed so Skeln could reload his bolt pistol. Last clip.

Thorgard and Hagni were keeping the creature occupied, eliciting bellows of pain as they tore into its blubbery hide.

Several seconds elapsed before Afger answered. Another explosive rocked the chamber. He sounded annoyed.

‘What do you think?’

Skeln reined Fenrir around, tracing the pipe he had seen earlier to the source of its rupture. He let rip a desultory burst, downing a pair of zombies creeping towards him, before fixing his attention back on the broken pipe.

‘Hang on to whatever grenades you’ve got left. We’re going to need a spark for our accelerant.’

‘What are you talking about, Skeln?’ Afger spoke between thrusts. He’d drawn his combat blade.

‘Can’t you smell it, brother? The tainted water, just below the reek of decay…’

‘Promethium,’ replied Afger a moment later.

Skeln reached the ruptured pipe. It was one of Skorbad’s main fuel lines, fed from its major pumping station. Volatile liquid exuded from it in a slow but steady trickle. They’d need more. Much more.

Skeln jumped down off Fenrir’s back. The thunderwolf turned, guarding its master’s blindside as Skeln sheathed his weapons. He’d have to tear a wider opening in the broken pipe – he couldn’t risk a spark before the tainted water was saturated.

Digging his gauntleted fingers around the ragged hole, he heaved and pulled. The metal screeched but gave instantly. Corruption had ravaged it, degrading the tough housing of the pipe. Promethium was gushing freely now, it lapped onto the floor and spilled eagerly into the morass where the plague-spawn was languishing.

Skeln turned, leaping onto Fenrir’s back again. He unclipped a grenade from his belt. The thunderwolf was barrelling towards a sewer-slicked column at the edge of the room.

‘Find cover,’ he growled to Afger.

Reaching the column, Skeln swivelled his torso and pressed the detonator stud on the grenade. Its parabola took it across the chamber where – a second before it splashed down – it exploded, igniting the promethium drowning the tainted pool.

A burst of incendiary lit up the room, fire sweeping through the water in a purging wave. Through the inferno’s glare, Skeln thought he saw two figures leap free, obscured by smoke and rising flame.

The plague-spawn bucked and thrashed, powerless to heave its monstrous girth away from the burning pool, its efforts only splashing fiery promethium over its waxy skin. It burned, and as it burned, seemed to shrink. Like a diseased candle against the attentions of a blowtorch, the Scion of Pestilence melted away, shrieking rage and denial.

A curtain of fire was left flickering across the surface of the pool; the roaring promethium flames had died quickly. A dark green sludge, polluting the already tainted water, was all that remained of the plague-spawn. Cleansing fire had destroyed it.

Relieved to see Afger alive and well, across the other side of the chamber, Skeln then looked for Thorgard. Another tunnel lay across from them, opposite where the Space Wolves had entered. Diminishing boot steps echoed from the shadows there.

Thorgard was alive, but he had gone after Hagni.

Skeln met Afger’s gaze and the two of them raced towards the tunnel mouth.

Fenrir slowed, keeping pace with the other Wolf Guard, then charged into the gloom of the tunnel.

‘He is a fool!’ snarled Afger. ‘Alone, he is no match for it.’

‘He is blinded by grief. Magnin is dead, Thorgard wants to finish the mission to honour his mount’s sacrifice,’ Skeln countered, adding, ‘Besides, I remember you were determined on facing the beast alone, too.’

Afger sniffed his contempt.

‘So you now acknowledge it is a beast?’

Skeln’s reply was prevented by a scream up ahead.

It was Thorgard.

Fenrir rode on faster–

But was too late.

Thorgard’s half-eviscerated body was lying in the centre of the tunnel, wet and bloody. His torn throat hung open like a second mouth, fixed in a dark red scream.

Afger snarled, walking over to take up one of his fallen brother’s wolf claw gauntlets. He winced as he stooped down, gingerly touching his chest.

‘It’s nothing,’ he growled, before Skeln could say a word. Swiftly, Afger changed the subject back to the wulfen. ‘It’s of the killing mind, now. Hagni is lost to us,’ he said, removing his old gauntlet and pulling the weapon onto his fist.

Skeln was silent, but didn’t linger with Fenrir. There was no time for remorse. The wulfen must be stopped.

The trail was easy to follow. Fenrir tracked the wulfen by the scent of Thorgard’s blood still on the beast. The tunnel took them back up into the snow drifts and arctic tundra of Skorbad. Crimson droplets dotted the landscape at long, loping intervals.

Skeln knew this road, and realised where the wulfen was headed.

‘It returns to its old hunting ground,’ muttered Afger, running alongside them.

Skeln urged Fenrir on and allowed the howling ice-winds to smother his thoughts.

In less than an hour, the bastion loomed on the horizon.

‘Something is wrong,’ said Skeln.

The Imperial command post was dark, as if it had lost all power. Smoke trailed from unseen fires behind the walls and there were no visible sentries. As the Space Wolves drew nearer, they saw the gate was wide open and streaked with bloodstains. A Chimera had slewed to a stop a few metres away, the vehicle’s exit ramps yawning. There was more blood here too.

Two hundred metres of open ground lay between the Space Wolves and the bastion.

Afger was incredulous.

‘Not even the wulfen could’ve got so far ahead and done all of this…’

Skeln eyed the silent battlements. His gaze narrowed.

‘It didn’t.’

Shambling into view where they had laid crumpled and inert, figures wearing the olive drab of the Cadian 154th and cradling lasguns in crooked fingers appeared. Old memories compelled them. The plague had come here, and now the bastion had an undead garrison. In his last act, before the feral aspect of the wulfen had claimed his mind, Hagni had led them here.

Afger grimaced, gripping his chest again, but kept his pain hidden. In the sewer chamber, there hadn’t been enough time to reach cover…

A spark of melancholy flickered suddenly within him. The end of the road was near.

‘I wish Barek and Thorgard were with us.’

‘So do I,’ the solemnity in Skeln’s voice turned to anger, ‘We finish this.’ He outstretched his hand, beckoning to his brother.

Afger seemed reluctant.

‘You’ll never reach the bastion alive on foot, and I need your bolter and blade with me, brother.’

Skeln gestured again.

After a moment, Afger took his hand, seizing Skeln by the wrist and swinging up and onto Fenrir’s broad back.

Skeln spurred Fenrir on just as the zombie-Cadians were levelling their guns.

‘The last charge of the thunderwolves, brother.’

‘Let it be a worthy end, then.’

‘I’ll see you in the halls of Russ, Afger.’

For the first time in weeks, Afger smiled.

‘Aye, that you may.’

Skeln kicked Fenrir’s flanks and the beast began to charge.

If there had been anyone alive to see it, the deed would have been worthy of a saga or two.

Skeln and Afger howled together as las-bolts filled the air around them.

Fenrir died just before they reached the wall. An autocannon burst had opened up its torso in a red mist and the great beast collapsed in the snow, leaving a crimson smear behind it. Their armour punctured and torn by las-blasts, the Wolf Guard burst into the bastion and commenced slaying everything inside.

A ragged firing line, a crippled mockery of disorder, opposed them as they barrelled through the gates. Bolters flaring, the Space Wolves swept the zombies aside and then split up, intent on destruction.

Skeln took the stairway to the battlements. Zombies fell like suicides, heaved from his path as he rose up the steps. He savaged with his fangs, tearing open throats, and split torsos with his power axe to reach the summit. The battlements became a field of slaughter, a reaping of cleaved limbs and staved-in skulls. Russ’s name bellowed loud above the carnage, piercing the blood-red night.

Fires began below. Promethium storage sheds were set ablaze by Afger’s bolter. Explosions cracked, billowing black smoke. Bodies were heaped onto the conflagrations, like heretics onto a pyre. He went to his fists, snapping spines across his knee, wrenching bones from decaying sockets. Afger carved a red ruin with Thorgard’s wolf claw, anointing it in old blood to honour its fallen keeper.

Skeln’s bolt pistol had long been empty when he noticed the wulfen amongst the horde, clawing and shredding with abandon, reunited with its former brothers for one last fight. He’d lost sight of Hagni after that, the need for killing preventing any pursuit.

The Space Wolves were gored and burned, but in less than twenty bloody minutes, the entire Cadian garrison was destroyed. Skeln had not seen Ekhart in the mob, but then could have missed him easily. A haze had fallen upon the Space Wolf, blood-red and frenzied. There was no way to identify any individual amongst the heaped body parts.

Heaving air into his lungs, Skeln was standing at the bastion’s perimeter as it burned. After they’d vanquished the undead Cadians, he and Afger had spread the fires. The roaring flames cast a sombre light on the mound where Skeln had buried Fenrir. He’d wept as he’d done it, Afger looking on, honouring them with stoic silence.

In the aftermath, there was no sign of Hagni. Skeln assumed the beast had loped away once the killing was done. But it was not ended. There was no monster to lead them to, no fight save the one that was left between former brothers. Hagni knew it as well as Skeln did. A reckoning was near.

‘Time to move, brother,’ Skeln said to Afger.

The wulfen was still loose. It was all they had left now to stop it.

‘Brother,’ Skeln repeated when there was no answer. He turned…

Afger was slumped against the hull of the abandoned Chimera. His arms hung down by his sides and his cold eyes were glassy.

For the first time, Skeln noticed the wound in his torso. It was deep and mortal. Afger had held on long enough to finish the fight and see his foes burn. He was with the All Father now, feasting in the halls of Russ.

‘Be at peace, brother,’ Skeln whispered, closing Afger’s eyes.

All dead now, except for him – a lone wolf with but one duty left to it.

Skeln took off his left pauldron, stripped away the arm greave and vambrace of his power armour to leave his skin bare. With a tooth from his fang necklace, Skeln carved the runes of Barek, Thorgard and Afger in his flesh. At the end, he added Hagni.

The bolt pistol was empty, so he dumped it along with his gun belt. Hefting his power axe, he ignited the blade and trudged into the ice wastes.

Somewhere in the drifts, Hagni was waiting.

‘Wulfen!’ His challenge echoed across the tundra.

A few moments later, a feral howl answered.

THUNDER FROM FENRIS: SCRIPT VERSION

Nick Kyme

SCENE ONE

(FX – icy, howling wind)

AFGER: ‘No son of Russ should die like this.’

NARRATION: Afger Ironmane was crouched in the snow. He regarded the mangled corpse lying next to him forlornly.

It was Barek Thunderborn, a fellow Space Wolf, his brother.

Steam was rising from the carcass of Barek’s beloved wolf-mount, Gerik. The monstrous beast had been torn apart.

The drifts had lessened in the last hour, and rolled slowly across the tundra. Even so, they had begun to settle over Barek’s corpse. The Space Wolf’s blood, still warm from his recent slaying, created dark-red blossoms in the veiling snow. It did little to hide the lacerations in his battle-plate. Nor did it smother his grievous wounds. Cooling intestines were heaped just below Barek’s groin and trailed a half metre from the murder site.

AFGER: ‘Slain by one of his own.’

NARRATION: Afger bit back his anger, but his gauntleted fist was clenched. Snow dappled his armour, turning blue-grey into dirty white. It piled on his pauldrons, only to loosen and cascade off as he got up. Clods of snow clung to his beard too, the black and iron-grey streaks powdered white.

SKELN: ‘We don’t know that for sure, brother.’

NARRATION: Skeln Icefang was standing farther away. His voice was deep, like the rumble of slow-moving icebergs. He patted his giant wolf-mount Fenrir as it bristled at the stench of blood.

Like his battle-brother, Skeln wore the blue-grey power armour of the Space Wolves. And also like his brother, it was adorned with fetishes and totems honouring their liege-lord Leman Russ and the fierce, warrior-pride of the Wolf Guard of Fenris. A fanged necklace hung around Skeln’s gorget, and a pelt of thick fur draped down his armoured back. Runic talismans dangled off leather thongs attached to his breastplate, which carried the gilt sigil of a winged, lupine skull.

Skeln’s blond beard was less wild than Afger’s and wreathed by snow. He carried a scar across his forehead and above his left eye – a relic of an earlier battle. Both warrior’s had a feral cast to their features, the echo of their namesake, and went unhooded, preferring to feel the icy caress of the weather.

AFGER: ‘It was Hagni. What else could tear Barek Thunderborn apart like this?’

NARRATION: Afger gestured to the butchered remains. With Barek’s power amour split like paper, his flesh torn and organs ripped from his body, Skeln found an argument difficult to come by. Instead he snarled, showing long canines. His massive wolf-mount bared its own fangs in empathy.

Afger and Skeln hailed from a rarefied, some said mythical, brotherhood within the Space Wolves. They rode thunderwolves, the greatest of all the Fenrisian wolves, as a man would ride a horse. Such creatures were massive, more monster than wolf, easily twice as large as a Terran bear and many times more ferocious. Their thick fur was as strong as steel wire and their long fangs were sharp and broad like swords. Thanks to the ministrations of the Space Wolves’ Iron Priests, cybernetic enhancements augmented the beasts’ already formidable strength and combat abilities. Few could master such beasts as those that stalked the Mountains of the Maelstrom, and even then they were not wholly tamed.

SKELN: ‘The Scions of Pestilence are dead. Our mission is ended. Hagni must be found and captured.’

NARRATION: Muttered Skeln.

AFGER: ‘He is wulfen! He must be killed.’

SKELN: ‘No, Afger, The Wolf Priests will judge him. It is not for us to decide.’

AFGER: ‘Barek Thunderborn lies dead and it is not for us to decide? Hagni is our brother no longer. He slew a thunderwolf, Skeln.’

SKELN: ‘I won’t condemn him, Afger. What if it was you we hunted?’

NARRATION: Afger thumped his breastplate. Nearby, his wolf-mount, Skoll, growled and pawed the ground.

(FX – wolf growl)

AFGER: ‘Then I would welcome death as release from dishonour.’

NARRATION: Fenrir snarled, hackles rising on its muscled neck. A sharp word from Skeln quelled his mount’s ire to a low growl. Any retort would have to wait, as the sound of an approaching vehicle interrupted them.

(FX – Tank engine noise)

NARRATION: Both Space Wolves turned and saw a Chimera armoured troop carrier rumbling towards them across a snow-choked road. Several kilometres behind it, south of the Space Wolves’ position, loomed a dark bastion. It was the Imperial command post of the Cadian 154th, the ‘Fusiliers’, and the slab-sided Chimera tank that ground to a halt before the Wolves belonged to the regiment’s commanding officer, Colonel Vorin Ekhart.

The rear hatch squealed opened on half-frozen hinges, and a jowly man in the olive drab of the Cadians stepped out.

(FX – hatch opening)

NARRATION: Colonel Ekhart rubbed his gloved hands together, his breath ghosting the air, as he tried to ward off the cold. Neither the storm coat he wore, nor the thick moustache framing his upper lip, could keep him from shivering.

SKELN: ‘Your men are as grey as the weather, colonel.’

NARRATION: Remarked Skeln, appraising the bedraggled state of the Kasrkin stormtroopers accompanying him.

Ekhart looked skyward to a blanket of oppressive platinum and shrugged. Skeln’s shadow eclipsed the officer, the Space Wolf half again as tall and almost twice as wide. To his credit, Ekhart didn’t look intimidated.

EKHART: ‘A long campaign and this damnable cold,’

NARRATION: He uttered by way of explanation.

EKHART: ‘A few weeks for you, my lord, has been the best part of a year on Skorbad for my men and I.’

NARRATION: The colonel stole a furtive glance at Fenrir, who lathed the air with its long, pink tongue, and tried not to show his disquiet. He was dwarfed by the monstrous wolf. Ekhart would barely be a morsel to a beast like that. Even faced with it now, the colonel couldn’t quite believe his eyes. He hadn’t known such creatures even existed, until he’d seen one. Thunderwolf – the name was mythic, almost otherworldly. Yet here two of them stood, like monsters from some elder age, their masters no less impressive and god-like.

Skeln bared his fangs, grinning, though the gesture failed to reach his eyes.

SKELN: ‘Fenrir…’

NARRATION: He warned in a low growl, before the beast backed down and stopped trying to taste the human meat.

SKELN: ‘The Scions of Pestilence are all dead, colonel. You’ll be leaving this rock soon enough, bound for fresh fields and greater glories in the name of the All Father.’

NARRATION: Skorbad had been in the clutch of a deadly Chaos plague when the Space Wolves had arrived. A cult of Nurgle, one of the Ruinous Powers and the entity that revelled in disease and despoliation, had arisen in one of Skorbad’s monolithic cities. Infection spread quickly, the plague’s victims sickening and dying, before stirring into horrific un-life as mindless flesh-eaters. The Cadians had done their best to staunch its spread but had been unable to locate and destroy the plague’s propagators, a warband of Death Guard Chaos renegades called the Scions of Pestilence – in truth, bloated monstrosities swelled by Father Nurgle’s corruption.

In three short weeks, the Wolf Guard had trawled the cities of Skorbad, found the renegades and despatched them one-by-one. Hordes of zombies still haunted the deepest ruins but were waning, and aimless without their Chaos pack masters. The Space Wolves’ role in the conflict was over, until Hagni had turned. So far, only the Space Wolves knew of it.

As for the Cadians, they were to consolidate their position and then hand over control to Skorbad’s Defence Forces, who would mop up what was left of the zombie hordes. The less enviable task of putting back together the shattered world’s infrastructure was the job of its governor and his bureaucratic staff.

Ekhart made the sign of the aquila at the Space Wolf’s utterance of the name the sons of Russ used for the Immortal Emperor of Mankind.

EKHART: ‘Indeed, and I’ll not be sorry to leave this place either. We caught your coded vox echo over our instruments, and I wanted to come out personally to express my gratitude for–’

NARRATION: The colonel stopped abruptly for a sharp intake of breath.

EKHART: ‘Throne of Earth!’ Is that…?’

NARRATION: Ekhart had noticed the visceral remains of Barek, just visible beneath the falling snow.

SKELN: ‘Aye, it is.’

NARRATION: Skeln uttered solemnly, not turning to follow the colonel’s gaze.

Ekhart was shaking his head. Somewhere behind him, a Kasrkin threw up.

EKHART: ‘How could…?’

NARRATION: There was a tremble in the colonel’s voice.

To witness one of the Emperor’s Astartes, a fearsome Space Wolf at that, killed in such a way was disturbing. Something that could do that, something that could kill one of the mythical wolves must be…

AFGER: ‘A beast.’

NARRATION: Afger locked eyes with Skeln,

AFGER: ‘One that must be hunted and slain in turn.’

NARRATION: Ekhart averted his gaze to focus on Skeln. His tone was incredulous.

EKHART: ‘I thought you said the Scions of Pestilence were dead.’

SKELN: ‘They are.’

NARRATION: Skeln turned away, not deigning to elaborate.

EKHART: ‘I have heard tales…’

NARRATION: Skeln glared back at Ekhart.

The colonel licked his lips nervously.

EKHART: ‘Of Space Wolves becoming beasts.’

NARRATION: The curse of the wulfen was the secret burden of the Space Wolves, a genetic flaw handed down by their progenitor that could manifest at any time. Rumours abound, as they always did, but this was one ugly truth to be kept by the Chapter, and the Chapter alone.

AFGER: ‘Go back to your bastion and lock the gates.’

NARRATION: Snarled Afger, losing patience. Mounting up, he reined Skoll towards the open tundra. In the distance the black silhouette of Helspire, one of the largest of Skorbad’s cities, blighted the horizon. Hagni would be seeking refuge after his kill.

AFGER: ‘We have lingered here long enough, brother.’

NARRATION: Skeln nodded.

EKHART: ‘Will you…?’

NARRATION: Ekhart took an involuntary step back. His stormtroopers levelled their lasguns, as they imagined monsters in the warriors before them.

THORGARD: ‘You’d be dead before you could pull the trigger.’

NARRATION: A Kasrkin put up his hands as he felt the sharp caress of metal at his neck.

A third Space Wolf emerged out of the drifts that had grown more belligerent as they’d been talking, having crept up on Colonel Ekhart’s party.

Skeln scowled, but was inwardly impressed at his brother’s stealth.

SKELN: ‘Thorgard.’

The Space Wolf lowered his wolf claw and laughed. He hadn’t ignited the blades; at such close proximity, the electrical charge alone would have sheared the Kasrkin’s head off.

Thorgard had a closely-cropped beard with a long mane of ruddy hair, plaited with rune stones and bound by bronze rings. His humour was booming, and showed his perfect white fangs.

THORGARD: ‘Your men were sleeping, colonel. Perhaps you should find some better bodyguards.’

NARRATION: He said, tramping past them with a feral glint in his eyes.

THORGARD: ‘Brother.’

NARRATION: Thorgard grinned at Skeln as he walked on.

His face saddened though as he regarded Barek, but was quickly impassive.

THORGARD: ‘The All Father will judge him, now. It’s out of our hands.’

NARRATION: Afger growled something under his breath, unimpressed at his brother’s antics.

Skeln ignored their bickering, his attention on Ekhart who had yet to lower his guard.

SKELN: ‘Our will is strong, colonel. You need have no fear of us.’

EKHART: ‘Can you be certain of that?’

NARRATION: Ekhart craned his neck as Skeln mounted Fenrir.

Skeln noticed Thorgard’s beast pad over to him from where he’d left it hiding amongst the snow so he could play his trick. Its name was Magnin, and it bowed its head to allow Thorgard to straddle it.

Facing the colonel, Skeln’s eyes were dark hollows.

SKELN: ‘Do as Afger said: Go back to your bastion. Lock the gates.’

NARRATION: He urged Fenrir with a firm command and went to join his brothers, leaving Ekhart no less uneasy.

They had tarried long enough. Barek’s slayer must be found and stopped, one way or another. Skeln only hoped there was some of Hagni left to bring back.

Colonel Ekhart shuddered as he watched the thunderwolves lope away. It wasn’t from the cold, either.

A terrible, wracking cough gripped him. It felt like burning acid in his lungs. When Ekhart took his hand away from his mouth, there were traces of blood on his glove.

NARRATION: ‘Sir?’ said the sergeant of the Kasrkin, about to go to his colonel’s aid before being waved away.

EKHART: ‘It’s nothing.’

NARRATION: Ekhart lied, before about facing.

EKHART: ‘Into the Chimera. We’ll wait for the landers at the bastion and lock our gates.’

SCENE TWO

(The chill wind is not quite so wild in the confines of the dead city. The Space Wolves keep their tones hushed lest an echo alert the zombies to their presence. In the distance we can hear the low moan and shuffle of the undead mob.)

(FX – Howling wind, quieter than in the previous scene)

AFGER: ‘They’re surrounded.’

NARRATION: Afger slid up his bolter to sight down its barrel.

AFGER: ‘I count sixteen left. Estimate thirty dead.’

SKELN: ‘Enemies?’

NARRATION: Skeln inquired from below.

AFGER: ‘At least sixty… maybe more.’

NARRATION: Following Hagni’s trail, the Wolf Guard had entered Helspire without incident. On the way, Thorgard had told them of his discovery of Warg, Hagni’s thunderwolf, ripped apart like Barek and half-buried by a forlorn roadside. Skeln hoped shame had compelled Hagni to try and conceal the carcass, that some of the warrior yet remained within the flesh of the beast. Shreds of armour had littered the trail, too, discarded by Hagni as he outgrew it, shed like old skin as he metamorphosed beneath.

As it had eclipsed the Space Wolves, the long shadow of Helspire had been a blanket over Skeln’s thoughts. Entering the darkness of the city, he became alert and set his troubles aside.

The sprawling cityscape was ghostlike and silent. Shadowed avenues held potential threats at every turn, huge towers loomed forbiddingly, watching, waiting. Ruins filled the broken streets and plazas, stark evidence of the brutal fight that had unfolded here. It proved little impediment to the monstrous beasts rode by the Wolf Guard. None challenged them. Most of Helspire’s populous was either dead, in hiding or had already fled elsewhere. It made hearing the crack of las-fire and the frantic shouts of Cadians easy to discern. The battle din echoed loudly in the empty city. Tracking it to its source had been even easier.

What might once have been a public auditorium stretched out below Afger. One of its columns, no longer supporting the vaulted ceiling, had half-collapsed. Crashed into the wall and held fast, it offered a high vantage point. Skoll had crawled stealthily up the column and lay on its belly as Afger leaned over to survey the scene beneath him.

There was only room for one thunderwolf at the column’s broken summit, so Skeln waited some fifteen metres or so below with Thorgard and their mounts, hidden by the ruins.

Afger saw a ring of battered-looking Cadian Guardsmen, pulling ever tighter; snapping off sporadic bursts with whatever was left in their weapons’ power packs. Converging on them, a shambling horde of flesh-eaters, their bodies rank with decomposition. The whiff of decay made the Space Wolf’s olfactory senses rankle. The wretched plague victims shuffled on broken limbs, old wounds ragged and dark in their dirty uniforms. Some clutched lasguns like clubs, in parody of their former lives and compelled by degrading muscle memory. Others merely reached with taloned fingers, their sharpened nails piercing their gloves; dried blood masking their grotesque and hungering faces.

AFGER: ‘To be killed by your former comrades in arms…’

(FX – distant screams)

NARRATION: Afger shook his head, then realised what he was saying. He held his tongue as another Cadian was dragged screaming into the mob and slowly devoured. The rest were fighting hard. They wanted to live.

AFGER: ‘Skeln, High and low.’

NARRATION: Turning to Thorgard, Skeln found his brother was already gone.

THORGARD: <<‘On my way.’>>

NARRATION: Thorgard’s voice came through the comm-bead in Skeln’s ear. Always a step ahead was Thorgard.

Skeln mentally traced a route for Fenrir through the ruins that would bring them to the auditorium floor.

SKELN: ‘We are ready, Afger.’

<BEAT>

AFGER: ‘Now,’

NARRATION: Skoll got to its haunches and leapt off the column, a howling battle cry on the lips of man and monster.

(FX – battle noise)

NARRATION: They fell amongst the zombie horde and laid about them with fury. Skoll crushed three of the plague creatures as it landed, dashing out their putrid brains with sweeps of its claws. It seized another in iron-hard jaws, biting it in two and casting aside the remains like unwanted meat. The legs stayed inert, but the zombie’s torso began to crawl along the ground, driven by keening hunger.

Afger paid it no heed. Unleashing his bolter, he gunned down a slavering zombie pack, their bodies exploding as the mass-reactive shells blasted them apart. Gore spattered his armour and Skoll’s brawny, half-cybernetic flanks. Man and beast revelled in it, this baptism of blood, howling for more carnage.

As the creatures moved on Afger, this new prey taking the pressure off the still firing Cadians, Skeln roared into view. He drove Fenrir headlong into the diseased masses, the thunderwolf using its bulk and power to batter through them. Rotting corpses were tossed aside, smashed like kindling against pounding surf, before Fenrir slowed and the real slaughter began.

A zombie leapt at Skeln, having launched itself from a high pile of rubble, only for the Space Wolf to arrest its flight with a blazing retort of fire from his bolt pistol. The creature was held in mid-air, caught in the explosive web from Skeln’s weapon. The muzzle flare lit its gruesome features in monochrome before it disintegrated against the bolt pistol’s power.

A half-second and Skeln swung his pistol around to dispatch another zombie trying to rake Fenrir’s exposed flanks. Decaying talons met adamantium skin and shattered, before Skeln killed it. The monstrous wolf had just torn the head off another plague creature and was spitting out the saliva-drenched skull when Thorgard appeared on the far side of the auditorium, wolf claws crackling.

He sheared through a half dozen zombies as Magnin carried him low across the floor. Heads, limbs and torsos fell like macabre rain in his wake.

The Space Wolves were three points of a triangle, herding the diminishing zombie horde together, what was left of the Cadians standing at the edge of the corral’s bloody perimeter.

Each time the thunderwolves drove in to the zombie horde they tore out again, wreaking carnage, slaying any stragglers and tightening the noose before charging back in. It was savage and furious, but not an iota of rage was wasted. Every shot was a kill, every blade stroke left a dismembered corpse behind it.

Sixty soon became thirty, then twenty as the Space Wolves butchered with controlled ferocity.

AFGER: ‘For the All Father!’

NARRATION: Afger’s snarling face was framed by the flare of his bolter’s thunder.

(FX – wolf claw)

NARRATION: Thorgard echoed him then leapt up onto his beast’s back, balancing on its broad shoulders for a moment like an acrobat before catapulting into the zombies. Lightning arcs tore strips in the half-darkness, describing the deadly passage of Thorgard’s wolf claws. Magnin peeled off, loping around the edge of the plague-ridden masses, biting off heads and shredding bodies with its claws.

Skeln had drawn his rune-etched power axe and stormed in, straddling Fenrir’s back. He howled savagely, hacking down to bifurcate a zombie’s skull before decapitating another with the upswing. Cutting the last of the creatures down, he reined Fenrir in. Even then, the thunderwolf worried at the ruined corpses of the twice dead.

It had lasted only minutes, yet the desolation of dismembered bodies swathed the auditorium floor.

Afger was breathing hard, not from exertion but from the feral-rage still fuelling him. He eyed the eight Cadian survivors and motioned to Skeln.

AFGER: ‘What should we do about them?’

NARRATION: The humans were cowering, awestruck and fearful at the same time, faced with the monstrous thunderwolves and their riders. Several were injured, already showing signs of infection. A Space Wolf’s biology was engineered to withstand such contagions. A Cadian’s was not.

Skeln’s body language was resigned as he dropped down of Fenrir and stalked over to the Guardsmen.

SKELN: ‘We can take no chances.’

NARRATION: To succumb to such a flesh plague was horrendous. Skeln could scarcely imagine the dishonour should his brothers be susceptible to it; should they ever turn. At least the wulfen curse was pure; at least it embraced the unfettered feral rage that lurked at every Space Wolf’s core. But this… it was ignoble, debased. Grace of Russ that they should be spared such a fate.

Some of the Cadians pleaded for death. Some got to their knees.

The Space Wolf levelled his bolt pistol. A few of the men closed their eyes, their lips moving silently.

SKELN: ‘Receive the Emperor’s Peace.’ (sadly)

(FX – bolter fire)

NARRATION: The bark of fire silenced any screams and eclipsed the Guardsmen’s lives forever.

THORGARD: ‘It had to be done, brother.’

NARRATION: Thorgard said to Skeln as he was tramping back again.

NARRATION: Skeln mounted up.

SKELN: ‘Aye.’

NARRATION: Afger turned his back on the carnage of the dead Cadians. It was a pity they could not save them, but many more would die if they did not find Hagni soon.

AFGER: ‘The plague worsens.’

(FX – bolter fire)

NARRATION: A burst from Afger’s bolter tore apart the zombie torso labouring to claw across the floor towards them. Eerie silence followed for a moment after.

AFGER: ‘Ekhart’s soldiers. I wonder how many more have fallen?’

NARRATION: Afger sneered, evidently unimpressed.

SKELN: ‘It is a small matter. Infected or fully turned, we have to despatch any we come across until Hagni is found. Though the Scions are slain, the plague must not be allowed to spread.’

NARRATION: Skeln fixed Afger with an icy glare.

SKELN: ‘Mercy guides our hand in this, not revenge. You’d do well to remember that, brother.’

NARRATION: Afger snarled and turned away.

AFGER: ‘Lead on Thorgard.’

Skeln regarded the dead Cadians again, the ones he had been forced to kill.

SKELN: How many did you butcher¸ Hagni?

NARRATION: Thorgard had the wulfen’s trail again. The hunt was back on.

SCENE THREE

(FX – the howling wind is back, building throughout the scene.)

NARRATION: Thorgard sat alone, in the lee of a ruined outhouse. It was towards the heart of Helspire and had been badly damaged in the fighting, little more than a broken corner of prefabricated rockcrete with the skeletons of other structures and the shells of destroyed Chimeras half-buried in the snow nearby. A Cadian platoon had come this way, but had got no farther.

The drifts had worsened in the last few hours. An almost total white-out smothered the horizon. Visibility was abysmally poor, even for the Space Wolves’ acute senses.

Thorgard’s head was bowed, as if in contemplation, oblivious to the snow flurries dancing around his head and clinging to his beard like arctic limpets. He’d built a fire, using his body and the ruin to shield it from the ice winds rolling across the urban tundra, and flensed the meat from some shaggy-haired bovine, indigenous to Skorbad and somehow missed in the evacuation. It was messy work; blood painted the ground around him and gave off a coppery stink.

A hundred metres away his fellow marines were watching.

AFGER: ‘Hagni may be a beast, but he hasn’t lost his instincts. The wulfen won’t take the bait. Why do you insist on trying to snare him, Skeln?’

NARRATION: The other Space Wolf crouched alongside him in a ruined warehouse. Skeln was staring intently at the perimeter Thorgard had made, at the traps and foils he had set, hidden well in the snow and rubble. They kept low and to the shadows, Fenrir and Skoll lurking just behind their masters.

Of Magnin, there was no sign. Like its rider, the thunderwolf was adept at stealth – an uncanny feat for a monstrous beast that was nearly two and half metres from claw to shoulder.

SKELN: ‘His fate is not ours to decide. I’ve told you this already, brother. I won’t give up on Hagni. Not yet.’

NARRATION: Sklen glared at Afger.

Due to the escalating drifts, the trail had grown cold in more ways than one. Hagni’s wulfen scent was no longer redolent on the breeze. His tracks had disappeared, as well as any other signs of his passing.

AFGER: ‘You must be prepared to kill him, Skeln. If Thorgard or I fail, you must do it!’

NARRATION: Skeln grunted and went back to surveying Thorgard’s concealed deterrents.

SKELN: ‘Only if there’s no other choice.’

NARRATION: Something niggled at the back of Skeln’s mind. Hagni was leading them further into disputed territory, where the punitive influence of the Imperial Guard had not yet reached. On the way they’d seen entire platoons frozen solid, grimaces etched permanently on the troopers’ faces under the ice. Convoys of vehicles, Chimeras and even battle tanks, were left by the roadside – empty and abandoned. Was Hagni even fleeing from them? Or was it the wulfen that, even now, laid the trap and not the Wolf Guard?

Skeln had no more time to ponder.

Shadows smeared the snowy fog, grey against the drifts. They were heading for Thorgard.

Afger bared his fangs and scowled. Even in the snow storm, he was close enough to detect the stench of putrefaction. The wind rose abruptly, intensifying to a shrieking gale. Thorgard huddled over the fire, but made no move, as the shadows approached. A spurt of crimson laced the ground as he sheared away another scrap of raw meat. The shadows jerked and quickened.

They were just a few metres away now… drawn by the blood.

A form emerged, its crooked fingers reaching, shuffling close to Thorgard on bent, misshapen limbs. It was not alone; not nearly alone.

A hundred metres away, Afger reached for his bolter.

Skeln laid a hand on his shoulder.

AFGER: ‘What if he cannot hear them?’

NARRATION: The twitchy Wolf Guard rasped.

The wind had built to a scream. It buffeted Thorgard’s plaits, tossing them around like vipers. Still he flensed, occasionally devouring a strip of the raw meat.

SKELN: ‘He’ll move.’

NARRATION: Skeln’s tone was reassuring, but he reached for his bolt pistol anyway.

Just a metre away – still, Thorgard seemed oblivious.

Could he not scent the creatures?

SKELN: ‘He’ll move…’

NARRATION: The confidence in Skeln’s voice was waning rapidly. The zombie was almost within touching distance…

SKELN: ‘Arse of Russ!’

NARRATION: He swore, powering to his feet and wrenching his bolt pistol free–

(FX – wolf claw)

NARRATION: –Just as Thorgard leapt up, a backhand slash with his wolf claw cutting first through the reaching zombie’s wrist, then driving on into its upper torso and scything through its neck. Its head bounced onto the ground and Thorgard kicked it into the face of another assailant, before launching forward, claws wide, to cleave the plague creature in two.

Thorgard decapitated four more in as many seconds, grinning wildly at the shredded corpses at his feet, and it was over before it had begun. The zombies’ lighter body mass had evidently failed to set off the snares meant for Hagni, but had not been so silent as to fool Thorgard.

Now only fifty metres away and slowing to a walk, Skeln sighed with relief. He and Afger were about to relax when the grey shadows returned. As the zombies appeared in their droves, it became clear by their uniforms what had happened to the crews of the vehicle convoy. Skeln roared.

SKELN: ‘Now we go!’

(FX – battle noise)

NARRATION: Together they plunged into the drifts, weapons booming.

Thorgard rushed forward and bisected a creature from groin to sternum, using his momentum to push through it and leaving the two ragged body hunks flapping impotently, a metre of gore-slicked snow between them.

To his left a zombie stuttered, its advance halted by the staccato fire of Afger’s bolter. A second burst spun it on its broken ankle and pitched the creature back.

An exploding cranium painted Thorgard’s power armour in thick, dead blood and brain matter. The zombie collapsed to its knees like a puppet without its strings and slumped headless in the slushed snow.

The muzzle flash had barely died from Skeln’s bolt pistol as he drew his power axe and went hand-to-hand. Still a few metres from Thorgard, the other Space Wolf found it hard to maintain his brother’s frenetic pace.

Afger sensibly kept his distance, using his bolter’s range to protect his battle-brothers’ flanks. Fenrir and Skoll barrelled past him on either side as he took up a ready stance and switched to rapid fire. As the pair of snarling thunderwolves hit, Magnin rose out of a snow mound, shawled white and growling for blood. The creatures tore into the undead tank crews, ripping off limbs and raking bodies. Any normal enemy would have fled before such carnage, but the plague zombies had long since forgotten fear. They knew nothing now but the urge to feed, the maddening hunger for flesh that was never slaked.

Skeln hacked through a zombie’s spinal column, just as three more of the creatures rammed into him. He was rocked on his heels but kept his footing, splitting the skull of one with his elbow and shredding the other two with a close-range burst of his bolt pistol.

THORGARD: ‘Ha! Now this is sport!’

NARRATION: Thorgard bellowed, surrounded by plague creatures.

(FX – wolf claw)

NARRATION: He drove a wolf claw into the torso of one, tearing the blades upward and shattering its clavicle. With the other hand, he swiped off a zombie’s head before crushing it to the ground with a heavy boot. One leapt onto his back, scratching at his neck and gorget. Thorgard reached around to seize it and throw it off when another zombie fired a shot into his torso, an old memory triggering the lasgun in its grasp.

Grimacing, the Space Wolf was about to slash it when he found his arm pinned by another creature. A fourth had mounted his right pauldron and was gnawing at the ceramite.

THORGARD: ‘Not like this!’

NARRATION: Thorgard raged.

THORGARD: ‘Teeth of Russ, my end will be worthy of a saga!’

NARRATION: Heat singed his face as Afger’s bolter shells tore into the zombies clambering over him. The one clinging to his pauldron was torn off, claws still embedded in the ceramite, whilst the creature pinning Thorgard’s arm was struck in the back. The ammo storm rolled up its spine to burst open its head like a rotten fruit. As Thorgard yanked the zombie off his back and then punched his fist through the lasgunner, Magnin leapt to its master’s defence crushing another two.

AFGER: <<‘We cannot slay them all.’>>

NARRATION: Afger’s voice was tinny and cracked with static as it came through on the comm-bead in Skeln’s ear.

SKELN: <<‘Agreed. Mount up and break through.’>>

NARRATION: Afger cut the link when Skeln had finally caught up to Thorgard.

SKELN: ‘It seems your lure was too effective, brother.’

NARRATION: Some of the other Space Wolf’s eagerness had diminished.

THORGARD: ‘I had hoped for larger prey.’

Skeln howled and Fenrir bounded to his side, after finishing a zombie with a savage twist of its jaws.

SKELN: ‘We’re done here.’

NARRATION: He climbed atop the monstrous thunderwolf’s back. They’d cleared a bloody gap in the horde but had only seconds until the next wave of plague creatures were upon them.

Thorgard nodded reluctantly. He was summoning Magnin when Afger’s voice crashed in on the comm-bead.

AFGER: <<‘There, I see the beast! Hagni is abroad and in my sight!’>>

NARRATION: Afger was pointing, even as he slung himself across Skoll’s shoulders and urged the thunderwolf to charge.

Skeln and Thorgard followed his outstretched finger to a dark silhouette crouched on the horizon. Though distant, the Wolf Guard made out hulking shoulders and a broad back, hirsute with fur. Skeln thought he caught a shimmer from a pauldron hanging loosely off the beast’s shoulder.

There could be no doubt. It was Hagni; now more beast than man.

Howling a battle cry, Afger hammered past the other two Space Wolves, intent on his prey. Skoll used its muscled bulk to heave zombies out of its way, crushing bodies beneath it as it drove inexorably forwards.

By the time Skeln and Thorgard had spurred their mounts, Afger was well ahead of them. They too battered their way through the plague mob, cutting a bloody path to the open ground ahead. Soon, the horde was floundering behind them and an arctic waste beckoned where the chase was on for Hagni.

SKELN: ‘Damn you, Afger,’

NARRATION: Skeln’s eyes locked onto his brother, now even farther in front of them.

Hagni’s silhouette had not yet moved. The Wulfen watched its brothers’ approach. At this rate, Afger would reach it well before Skeln and Thorgard. He seemed hell-bent on facing it alone. And despite the fact he rode Skoll, Skeln recalled all too well the butchered remains of Barek and his thunderwolf. Alone, Afger faced a very uncertain victory.

A sudden cracking arrested Skeln’s thoughts, and a chill entered his spine.

THORGARD: ‘Skeln! The ice!’

NARRATION: Thorgard was looking downward, already slowing.

The snowy tundra they traversed was not solid ground at all. It was a lake, frozen stiff by the cold weather, but now breaking up with the heavy footfalls of the thunderwolves. Skeln saw the ground webbing beneath Fenrir’s massive paws.

(FX – Ice breaking)

SKELN: ‘Hold!’

NARRATION: Skeln reined in the monstrous beast, stalling the pursuit. Opening up a channel, he shouted into the comm-bead.

SKELN: <<‘Afger! Slow down, the ice is cracking.’>>

AFGER: <<‘I have him. The beast won’t escape again.’>>

SKELN: <<‘Afger–’>>

NARRATION: –Wasn’t listening. He severed the link and rode on harder.

AFGER: ‘I’m sorry Skeln, Barek must be avenged.’

NARRATION: He peered down the end of his bolter, bringing Hagni into his sights–

AFGER: ‘You are mine, wulfen…’

NARRATION: –When the beast slipped away and was gone.

AFGER: ‘No!’

NARRATION: That was when the ground fell away and icy water rose up around them. Weighed down by armour and augmetics, man and beast were dragged down into stygian gloom.

SCENE FOUR

(FX – for the first para and a half, the sound of being underwater. Then more howling wind for the remainder.)

NARRATION: Darkness surrounded him, together with a sense of lightness that Afger had not felt for some time. The rage, the grief at Barek’s death, the burning desire for vengeance, all of it seemed muted by the cold. And for a moment, just the briefest of moments, Afger almost gave in.

Something strong and vice-like seized his wrist. He was travelling upwards again. He saw the vague suggestion of light. Air rushed his lungs and raucous noise clamoured into being as Afger breached the freezing surface of the water.

SKELN: ‘Hold on.’

NARRATION: Snarled Skeln, beard dripping icy wet from when he’d plunged in to grab him.

SKELN: ‘Thorgard, I have him.’

NARRATION: The other Wolf Guard came into view. He’d removed his wolf claw gauntlets – they lay on the ice nearby – and leaned over to grasp Afger’s power generator.

AFGER: ‘No,’

NARRATION: Afger roared, thrashing.

AFGER: ‘Leave me! Follow Hagni! Avenge Barek!’

NARRATION: Skeln wasn’t listening. Together, he and Thorgard hauled Afger up and onto the fragile ice bank.

Skoll had not been so fortunate. The thunderwolf’s sheer bulk, its cybernetic body fashioned by the Iron Priests, had sunk it like an anchor. With nothing to cling to, the great beast had drowned in the black depths of the lake. It was a poor end for such a noble creature.

Afger’s expression told Skeln that Skoll’s former master thought so too.

For a short while, they sat on the ice, not daring to move should it crack again and swallow them all this time. The zombie hordes were far enough away not to trouble them.

Skeln glared at Afger, his gaze murderous. Thorgard tentatively retrieved his gauntlets. Afger merely lay on his back and stared into the sky. Cold and pitiless, it echoed the feeling in his hollow heart.

SCENE FIVE

(FX – wind, quieting down once they re-enter the city)

NARRATION: Afger had not spoken for over an hour after the incident on the lake. He felt the loss of Skoll keenly, so strong was their bond. A separation of a limb would have been easier to take. When he did finally give voice, now running alongside Skeln on Fenrir’s back, it was clear his mood had not improved.

AFGER: ‘You should have let me sink and gone after the wulfen yourself.’

SKELN: ‘You’ve lost your mount, and we are two brothers down already, Afger. I will not lose another in a vain and foolish sacrifice.’

NARRATION: Skeln’s retort was biting.

AFGER: ‘I would not have drowned,’

NARRATION: Skeln looked down at him.

SKELN: ‘No, brother, but you would have given up.’

NARRATION: Afger’s shadowed expression betrayed his shame.

Thorgard had found Hagni’s trail again soon after leaving the ice lake, now far behind them, and was leading the Wolf Guard down into the catacombs of Helspire, the urbanisation of the city growing around them suddenly like a virus.

Here, the city was at its darkest. These were its sinks, its bowels, the very bones of its construction. Streets and avenues became tunnels, towers morphed into the sweating columns of foundation stones. The platinum sky was replaced by the rockcrete underbelly of the roads above. A sewer stink pervaded, sullying the icy crispness of the air. Stagnant heat lingered, emanating from the buried fusion generators that ran the benighted city’s power grid.

Thorgard sniffed the air, finding the wulfen’s scent. There was something else, too, something he couldn’t place.

THORGARD: ‘It’s strange…’

NARRATION: He muttered, oblivious to his brothers’ arguing.

SKELN: ‘What is?’

THORGARD: ‘Since killing Barek, Hagni has had many days to get ahead of us. I expected to track him to a lair, not to see him out in the open, especially so blatantly. It’s as if he wants to be caught.’

NARRATION: Afger bristled.

AFGER: ‘He begs for death.’

NARRATION: Skeln’s eyes became cold, hard bergs. His anger made him rasp.

SKELN: ‘No Wolf would ever desire that. No Wolf would ever die without a fight.’

NARRATION: Chastened, Afger realised he had spoken out of turn.

AFGER: ‘Sorry, brother. I am not myself.’

NARRATION: Skoll’s death had hit him hard.

AFGER: ‘But what other explanation is there?’

THORGARD: ‘It doesn’t feel like he’s begging for death.’

NARRATION: Offered Thorgard, challenging Afger’s earlier remark.

THORGARD: ‘There is no sport in this. I’ve seen whelpling aspirants harder to track. Hagni allows us to catch up, only to then flee.’

AFGER: ‘He’s getting careless then, that’s all. And hungry. There is only dead flesh here, no fresh meat to sate the beast.’

NARRATION: Skeln was silent and stern. He had noticed the sigils daubed on the walls and the rank, pervading stench growing stronger. They were deep into the heart of Helspire now and reaching the end of a long, broad sewer conduit. A chamber loomed ahead, a sickly oval of light announcing it.

THORGARD: ‘There’s something else here. Very large, very strong. Its scent mingles with the wulfen’s…’

NARRATION: Thorgard bought Magnin to a halt and turned to face his brothers.

THORGARD: ‘Hagni wasn’t trying to flee or merely running wild–’

SKELN: ‘He was leading us.’

AFGER: ‘There may be some of Hagni left after all…’

NARRATION: Skeln ignored Afger.

SKELN: ‘But leading us to what?’

NARRATION: Thorgard ignited his wolf claws. Their electrical glow framed his face in an eerie light.

THORGARD: ‘Brothers…’

NARRATION: Misshapen forms were shuffling into the light. In the chamber beyond, Skeln knew in his core they would find Hagni, and whatever it was he had been leading them to.

He had drawn his weapons, Afger too.

SKELN: ‘Thunderwolves!’

NARRATION: He roared, glaring at the approaching zombies.

SKELN: ‘For Fenris and Leman Russ!’

(FX – battle noise)

NARRATION: Howling, the Space Wolves charged down the tunnel, making for the opening and whatever waited for them beyond it.

Skeln’s uppercut smashed a plague creature aside, tearing open its torso and spilling diseased innards. He hung down along Fenrir’s flank like a trick-rider from the old clan gatherings of his former life, before he became a Space Wolf. Another was flung into the tunnel wall, its bones shattered by the force of Fenrir’s swipe. Afger raked three more with controlled bursts from his bolter. The explosive rounds turned the creatures into little more than a visceral mist. Thorgard cut down the rest; by the end of it, his scything wolf claws were slick and red.

THORGARD: ‘A vanguard, nothing more,’

NARRATION: The actinic glare from his blades pooled deep shadows around his wild eyes. He was ready for more.

Skeln snarled at the miasma of pestilence coming from the chamber entrance.

Howling, and the deep bellowing of something large and unnatural, emanated from it. It was a wolf fighting a monster.

SKELN: ‘Steel yourselves, brothers,’

NARRATION: Skeln growled, and, astride Fenrir, moved to face whatever lay beyond.

SCENE SIX

(FX – dripping pipes, splashes as the Space Wolves and their mounts make their way through the sewer puddles. Bolter fire echoes after discharge.)

NARRATION: The chamber was a confluence of sewer pipes. Rusted openings in the walls disgorged filth. It pooled in a deep basin in the middle of the room. Wallowing in the dark morass was a pustulant giant.

Sloth-like and disgusting, burgeoning rolls of putrescent-yellow flab ruptured the creature’s armour. The fragments of ceramite that still clung to its grotesque bulk were adhered by rivulets of puss, bursting from the boils and sores infesting its blubbery flesh. Horrid and distended, the beast’s mouth was a gaping maw. Several tongues lolled from one encrusted corner. They licked and probed at the sores lasciviously, tendril-like and sentient. Filled with ranks of needle-like teeth, its mouth was like that of a bloated shark.

Skeln saw the potential in those fangs to inflict the wounds that had killed Barek Thunderborn. Perhaps Hagni had not slain his battle brother after all and hope flared that he could still be saved. He wrinkled his nose at the noisome stench emanating from the thing’s corpulent body. Fat flies buzzed around it in a swarm.

Facing it across a river of pestilence was Hagni.

He was not as Skeln remembered him. Hagni’s armour hung off his body in scraps. His lupine form, now covered in thick fur, had simply outgrown it. Fangs were like daggers in his long mouth, stitched around a slightly protruding snout. Sinew throbbed like cords of steel across a brawny body stretched and made more muscular by the changes wrought by the wulfen curse. Horrific as it was, it was as nothing compared to the other monster in the room.

It was one of the Scions of Pestilence, now swelled by plague and decay, favoured by its dark lord and mutated into a hideous plague-spawn, unrecognisable from the traitors the Space Wolves had hunted previously. Even now, before their eyes, it seemed to be growing, absorbing the filth from the tainted sewer pipes. It had not always been this size, and explained how the creature had managed to kill Barek Thunderborn and slip away undetected… almost undetected. The Space Wolves had somehow missed it, but Hagni, turned to wulfen and his preternatural senses enhanced, had not. He could not defeat it alone; there was enough of the Space Wolf remaining to realise this, or perhaps it was merely instinct that had compelled Hagni to seek out allies and draw them to this fight. Skeln hoped for the former.

Skeln processed this in a half-second, before baring his fangs and howling–

SKELN: ‘Slay it!’

(FX – battle noise)

NARRATION: A ripple of explosive fire stitched the plague-spawn’s bloated body and a burble of what might have been pain bubbled from its swollen lips. A stream of corruption belched from the creature’s jaws by way of riposte, but Fenrir was already moving. An acid-hiss erupted behind Skeln, head down, as his thunderwolf bounded away from the deadly spray. Afger stormed forwards at the same time, working his way through the mire to the left of the plague-spawn.

Zombies stirred in the wretched muck, corpses surfacing like gruesome buoys, animated by the plague-spawn’s presence. Afger shot them down as he moved, shredding them to pieces as he kept an eye on Hagni.

The wulfen ignored him and launched itself upon the creature, raking its rancid flanks. Flesh tore away, wretched and thin with decomposition. Black, sap-like blood started to mat Hagni’s fur as he clawed at it. Like a geyser exploding from the earth, the wulfen was struck in the face by a plume of bile. The force of it pitched Hagni off the plague-spawn’s body and sent him careening into the chamber wall.

Thorgard rode Magnin down the creature’s right flank. Its tongues lashed out like serpents, jabbing at the thunderwolf. The fleshy muscle was laced with barbs and tiny mouths, fang-filled and drooling pus.

Despite its bulk, Magnin turned and weaved to evade the probing tongues. One nicked Thorgard’s pauldron, leaving an acidic scar, as his thunderwolf jinked to the side. He followed its course as it seized a zombie shambling behind them, ripping the creature off its feet and hauling it forwards with a predatory jerk. Swept up in an eye blink into the plague-spawn’s mouth, the zombie’s rotten bones crunched as it was devoured.

Head down, Thorgard urged Magnin on.

Skeln ducked another putrid stream from the plague-spawn’s mouth. He had torn out his bolt pistol and the muzzle burned white-hot with the flare of his weapon’s fire. The mass-reactive shells bit deep, sinking, as if in rubber, below the creature’s flesh. Explosions rippled beneath the sickly skin, bulging like tumours, but the plague-spawn’s epidermis just stretched to compensate, any damage that had been inflicted regenerated instantly.

Frenzied bolter fire from Afger’s position suggested Skeln’s battle-brother was similarly frustrated.

He unsheathed his power axe and fed a ripple of energy across the rune-etched blade. It was time to get in close.

For Hagni, getting in close was now the only way he knew how to fight. Dazed but unbowed, he shook away the wretched bile gumming his fur and drove at the creature again. As wulfen, Hagni was even larger than his Wolf Guard brethren. At over three metres tall, he was a monster. Yet even Hagni was small compared to the Chaos Marine, so grotesquely swollen as it was by Nurgle’s taint.

Leaping onto the creature’s back, Hagni slashed and gored, searching for vital organs amidst the blubbery mass. The wulfen was elbow-deep in putrid blood and viscera, but the folds of flab, like fleshy armour, were too thick for him to inflict any serious harm.

Below, Thorgard raced along the plague-spawn’s flank, wolf claws spitting lightning. The stink of burning flesh was redolent in the air, but the long grooves he carved in the creature’s side merely oozed and closed up again, a roll of fat melting down over them.

Skeln was getting dizzy. The vile stench emanating off the creature made the air thick with its contagion. Fat flies buzzed around his face, trying to infest his mouth, ears and nostrils as he sought to get in close. He hacked away a tendril-like tongue and heard a deep yelp of agony from across the chamber. Though his view was occluded by the spawn’s bulk, Skeln recognised the cry of Thorgard’s thunderwolf. Magnin was wounded, possibly even dead.

SKELN: <<‘Thorgard!’>>

NARRATION: He bellowed down the comm-feed.

Crackling static and a half-heard roar of anguish returned to him.

SKELN: <<‘Brother, answer me!’>>

NARRATION: Skeln was pinned by the lashing tongues, oozing fronds attached to the pair that assailed him like the stingers of some rancid cnidaria. He couldn’t get to Thorgard. He couldn’t help his brother.

Another channel opened up in his ear.

AFGER: <<‘This isn’t working–’>>

(FX – Bolter fire)

AFGER: <<‘We need to burn it!’>>

SKELN: <<‘With what? We have no flamer, no incendiaries, we…’>>

NARRATION: Skeln had detected something, a distinctive tang in the mire of sewage. He fended off a probing tongue, the plague-spawn burbling with laughter. A moment’s respite allowed him to cast about the chamber.

Pipes, everywhere pipes…

Skeln allowed himself a grim smile as he found what he was looking for.

A shadow eclipsed him as the plague-spawn leaned down, the shifting of its mass releasing noxious gases trapped within the flabby rolls of flesh. Skeln fought not to gag and hauled Fenrir back. The tongue tendrils recoiled and Skeln urged his mount away. Fenrir turned and leapt, narrowly avoiding the burst of corruption vomited from the spawn’s distended mouth. It was still drooling acid as its burbled laughter came again.

But now Skeln was no longer penned in. He used this freedom of movement to ride Fenrir around the plague-spawn’s side, searching for Thorgard, following a pipe kept at the periphery of his vision.

Magnin was dead. The noble beast lay on its side, a brackish liquid trickling from its lips and pooling around its snout. Three, deep puncture wounds were visible in its flank, having entered flesh. They were dark and infected from where the plague-spawn’s tongues had raked it.

Whatever poison was harboured by the plague-spawn, it was more deadly and virulent than that carried by the zombies. If it could kill a thunderwolf, it could kill Skeln and his brothers too.

A desperate roar seized Skeln’s attention and his gaze was drawn upward to where Thorgard and Hagni had mounted the plague-spawn’s back and were tearing at it with their claws.

Lost to grief and vengeance, Thorgard was no further use right now.

A loud crack, followed a shallow crump and the tang of explosive, came from the opposite end of the chamber.

SKELN: <<‘Afger?’>>

NARRATION: Skeln hoped at least one of his battle-brothers still had something left.

AFGER: <<‘Bolter’s dry… switching to grenades…’>>

NARRATION: Came the fragmented response.

(FX – explosion)

SKELN: <<‘Is it working?’>>

NARRATION: Fenrir had slowed so Skeln could reload his bolt pistol. Last clip.

Thorgard and Hagni were keeping the creature occupied, eliciting bellows of pain as they tore into its blubbery hide.

Several seconds lapsed before Afger answered. Another explosion rocked the chamber. He sounded annoyed.

(FX – explosion)

AFGER: <<‘What do you think?’>>

NARRATION: Skeln turned Fenrir around, tracing the pipe he had seen earlier to the source of its rupture. He let rip a desultory burst, downing a pair of zombies shambling towards him, before fixing his attention back on the broken pipe.

(FX – bolter fire)

SKELN: <<‘Hang on to whatever grenades you’ve got left. We’re going to need a spark for our accelerant.’>>

AFGER: <<‘What are you talking about, Skeln?’>>

NARRATION: Afger spoke between thrusts. He’d drawn his combat blade.

SKELN: <<‘Can’t you smell it, brother? The tainted water, just below the reek of decay…’>>

AFGER: <<‘Promethium.’>>

NARRATION: Skeln reached the ruptured pipe. It was one of Skorbad’s main fuel lines, fed from its major pumping station. Volatile liquid exuded from it in a slow but steady trickle. They’d need more. Much more.

Skeln jumped down off Fenrir’s back. The thunderwolf turned, guarding its master’s blindside as Skeln sheathed his weapons. He’d have to tear a wider opening in the broken pipe – he couldn’t risk a spark before the tainted water was saturated.

Digging his gauntleted fingers around the ragged hole, he heaved and pulled. The metal screeched but gave instantly. Corruption had ravaged it, degrading the tough housing of the pipe. Promethium was gushing freely now, it lapped onto the floor and spilled eagerly into the morass where the plague-spawn was languishing.

Skeln turned, leaping onto Fenrir’s back again. He unclipped a grenade from his belt. The thunderwolf was barrelling towards a sewer-slicked column at the edge of the room.

SKELN: <<‘Find cover.’>>

Reaching the column, Skeln swivelled his torso and pressed the detonator stud on the grenade. Its parabola took it across the chamber where – a second before it splashed down – it exploded, igniting the promethium that had spilled into the tainted pool.

(FX – big explosion)

A burst of incendiary lit up the room, fire sweeping through the water in a purging wave. Through the inferno’s glare, Skeln thought he saw two figures leap free, obscured by smoke and rising flame.

The plague-spawn bucked and thrashed, powerless to heave its monstrous girth away from the burning pool, its efforts only splashing fiery promethium over its waxy skin. It burned, and as it burned, seemed to shrink. Like a diseased candle against the attentions of a blowtorch, the Death Guard melted away, shrieking rage and denial.

A curtain of fire was left flickering across the surface of the pool; the roaring promethium flames had died quickly. A dark green sludge, polluting the already tainted water, was all that remained of the plague-spawn. Cleansing fire had destroyed it.

Relieved to see Afger alive and well, across the other side of the chamber, Skeln then looked for Thorgard. Another tunnel lay across from them, opposite where the Space Wolves had entered. Diminishing bootsteps echoed from the shadows there.

Thorgard was alive, but he had gone after Hagni.

Skeln met Afger’s gaze and the two of them raced towards the tunnel mouth.

Fenrir slowed, keeping pace with the other Wolf Guard, then charged into the gloom of the tunnel.

AFGER: ‘He is a fool! Alone, he is no match for it.’

SKELN: ‘He is blinded by grief. Magnin is dead, Thorgard wants to finish the mission to honour his mount’s sacrifice. Besides, I remember you were determined on facing the beast alone, too.’

Afger sniffed his contempt.

SKELN: ‘So you now acknowledge it is a beast?’

(FX – scream)

NARRATION: Afger’s reply was prevented by a scream up ahead.

It was Thorgard.

Fenrir rode on faster–

But was too late.

Thorgard’s half-eviscerated body was lying in the centre of the tunnel, wet and bloody. His torn throat hung open like a second mouth, fixed in a dark red scream.

Afger snarled, walking over to take up one of his fallen brother’s wolf claw gauntlets. He winced as he stooped down, gingerly touching his chest.

AFGER: ‘It’s nothing,’

NARRATION: Before Skeln could say a word, Afger swiftly changed the subject back to the wulfen.

AFGER: ‘It’s of the killing mind, now. Hagni is lost to us,’

NARRATION: He removed his old gauntlet and pulled the weapon onto his fist.

Skeln was silent, but didn’t linger with Fenrir. There was no time for remorse. The wulfen must be stopped.

SCENE SEVEN

(FX – wind, zombie noise)

NARRATION: The trail was easy to follow. Fenrir tracked the wulfen by the scent of Thorgard’s blood still on the beast. The tunnel took them back up into the snow drifts and arctic tundra of Skorbad. Crimson droplets dotted the landscape at long, loping intervals.

Skeln knew this road, and realised where the wulfen was headed.

AFGER: ‘It returns to its old hunting ground.’

NARRATION: Skeln urged Fenrir on and allowed the howling ice-winds to smother his thoughts.

In less than an hour, the bastion loomed on the horizon.

SKELN: ‘Something is wrong.’

NARRATION: The Imperial command post was dark, as if it had lost all power. Smoke trailed from unseen fires behind the walls and there were no visible sentries. As the Space Wolves drew nearer, they saw the gate was wide open and streaked with bloodstains. A Chimera had slewed to a stop a few metres away, the vehicle’s exit ramps yawning. There was more blood here too.

Two hundred metres of open ground lay between the Space Wolves and the bastion.

Afger was incredulous.

AFGER: ‘Not even the wulfen could’ve got so far ahead and done all of this…’

NARRATION: Skeln eyed the silent battlements. His gaze narrowed.

SKELN: ‘It didn’t.’

NARRATION: Shambling into view from where they had laid crumpled and inert, figures wearing the olive drab of the Cadian 154th and cradling lasguns in crooked fingers appeared. Old memories compelled them. The plague had come here, and now the bastion had an undead garrison. In his last act, before the feral aspect of the wulfen had claimed his mind, Hagni had led them here.

Afger grimaced, gripping his chest again. In the sewer chamber, there hadn’t been enough time to reach cover…

A spark of melancholy flickered suddenly within him. The end of the road was near.

AFGER: ‘I wish Barek and Thorgard were with us.’

SKELN: ‘So do I.’

NARRATION: The solemnity in Skeln’s voice turned to anger.

SKELN: ‘ We finish this.’

NARRATION: He stretched out his hand, beckoning to his brother.

Afger seemed reluctant. He’d lost Skoll through blind fury. Honour would not allow him to ride with Skeln.

SKELN: ‘The bastion’s too far, you’d be gunned down before you even reached the walls, and I need your bolter and blade with me, brother.’

NARRATION: Skeln gestured again.

After a moment, Afger relented. Duty outweighed honour. He took Skeln by the wrist and swung up onto Fenrir’s broad back.

Skeln spurred his mount on just as the zombie-Cadians were levelling their guns.

SKELN: ‘The last charge of the thunderwolves, brother.’

AFGER: ‘Let it be a worthy end, then.’

SKELN: ‘I’ll see you in the halls of Russ, Afger.’

NARRATION: For the first time in weeks, Afger smiled.

AFGER: ‘Aye, that you may.’

NARRATION: Skeln kicked Fenrir’s flanks and the beast began to charge.

If there had been anyone alive to see it, the deed would have been worthy of a saga or two.

(FX – battle nosie)

NARRATION: Skeln and Afger howled together as las-bolts filled the air around them.

Fenrir died just before they reached the wall. An autocannon burst had opened up its torso in a red mist and the great beast collapsed in the snow, leaving a crimson smear behind it. Their armour punctured and torn by las-blasts, the Wolf Guard burst into the bastion and commenced slaying everything inside.

A ragged firing line, a crippled mockery of disorder, opposed them as they barrelled through the gates. The Space Wolves swept the zombies aside and then split up, intent on destruction.

Skeln took the stairway to the battlements. Zombies fell like suicides, heaved from his path as he rose up the steps. He savaged with his fangs, tearing open throats, and split torsos with his power axe to reach the summit. The battlements became a field of slaughter, a reaping of cleaved limbs and staved-in skulls. Russ’s name bellowed loud above the carnage, piercing the blood-red night.

Fires began below. Promethium storage sheds were set ablaze by Afger’s last grenades. Explosions cracked, billowing black smoke. Bodies were heaped onto the conflagrations, like heretics onto a pyre. He went to his fists, snapping spines across his knee, wrenching bones from decaying sockets. Afger carved a red ruin with Thorgard’s wolf claw, anointing it in old blood to honour its fallen keeper.

Skeln’s power axe was already dark with blood when he noticed the wulfen amongst the horde, clawing and shredding with abandon, reunited with its former brothers for one last fight. He’d lost sight of Hagni after that, the need for killing preventing any pursuit.

The Space Wolves were gored and burned, but in less than twenty bloody minutes, the entire Cadian garrison was destroyed. Skeln had not seen Ekhart in the mob, but then could have missed him easily. A haze had fallen upon the Wolf, blood-red and frenzied. There was no way to identify any individual amongst the heaped body parts.

Heaving air into his lungs, Skeln was standing at the bastion’s perimeter as it burned. After they’d vanquished the undead Cadians, he and Afger had spread the fires. The roaring flames cast a sombre light on the mound where Skeln had buried Fenrir. He’d wept as he’d done it, Afger looking on, honouring them with stoic silence.

In the aftermath, there was no sign of Hagni. Skeln assumed the beast had loped away once the killing was done. But it was not ended. There was no monster to lead them to, no fight save the one that was left between former brothers. Hagni knew it as well as Skeln did. A reckoning was near.

SKELN: ‘Time to move, brother,’

NARRATION: The wulfen was still loose. It was all they had left now to stop it.

SKELN: ‘Brother,’

NARRATION: Skeln repeated when there was no answer. He turned…

Afger was slumped against the hull of the abandoned Chimera. His arms hung limp by his sides and his cold eyes were glassy.

Skeln noticed the severity of the wound in his battle brother’s torso. It was deep and mortal. Afger had held on long enough to finish the fight and see his foes burn. He was with the All Father now, feasting in the halls of Russ.

SKELN: ‘Be at peace, brother.’

NARRATION: Skeln whispered, closing Afger’s eyes.

All dead now, except for him – a lone wolf with but one duty left.

Skeln took off his left pauldron, stripped away the arm greave and vambrace of his power armour to leave his skin bare. With a tooth from his fang necklace, Skeln carved the runes of Barek, Thorgard and Afger in his flesh. At the end, he added Hagni.

He dumped his empty bolt pistol along with his gun belt. Hefting his power axe, he ignited the blade and trudged into the ice wastes.

Somewhere in the drifts, Hagni was waiting.

SKELN: ‘Wulfen!’

NARRATION: His challenge echoed across the tundra.

A few moments later, a feral howl answered.

(FX – howl)

RUNES

Chris Wraight

Baldr Svelok slammed hard into the acid-laced rock. His plate crunched against the stone, sending warning runes flashing across his helm-feed. Instinct told him another blow was coming in fast, and the Wolf Guard ducked. A massive tight-balled fist tore into the rock where his head had been, showering him with shards where the impact had obliterated the cliff.

Svelok dodged the next crashing fist, his augmented limbs moving with preternatural speed. He almost made it, but the monster’s talons raked down across his right shoulder-guard, sending him sprawling to the ground and skidding across pools of acid. He landed with a heavy crack, and something snapped across his barrel chest boneplate. He felt blood in his mouth, and his head jerked back from the impact.

Throne, he was being taken apart. That did not happen.

He spun onto his back, ignoring the heavy crunch as the creature’s clawed foot stamped down just millimetres from his arm. It towered into the storm-wracked sky, a living wall of obsidian, five metres high and crowned with dark, curving spikes. Lightning reflected from the facets of its organic armour, glinting off the slick ebony. Somewhere in the whirl of jagged, serrated limbs was a monotasking mind, a basic alien intelligence filled with an urge to protect its territory and drive the infiltrating humans back into space.

Svelok had never seen a xenos like it. The closest he could get was a creature of demi-myth on Fenris, the Grendel, but these bastards were encased in plates of rock and had talons like lightning claws.

‘You all die the same way,’ he growled. His voice was a jagged-edged rasp, scraped into savagery by old throat wounds. He sounded as terrifying as he looked.

The storm bolter screamed out a juddering stream of mass-reactive bolts, sending ice-white impact flares across the creature’s armoured hide. It staggered, rocking back on its heels, clutching at the hail of rounds as if trying to pluck them from the air. The torrent was relentless, perfectly aimed and deadly.

The magazine clicked empty. Boosted by his armour-servos, Svelok leapt to his feet, mag-locked the bolter and grabbed a krak grenade.

Amazingly, the leviathan still stood. It was reeling now, its hide cracked and driven in by the barrage of bolter fire, but some spark of defiance within it hadn’t died. A jagged maw, black as Morkai’s pelt, cracked open, revealing teeth like a row of stalactites. It lurched back into the attack, talons outstretched.

Whip-fast, Svelok hurled the grenade through the open mouth. The massive jaws snapped shut in reflex and the Space Wolf crouched down against the oncoming blast. There was a muffled boom and the xenos was blown apart, its iron-hard shell smashed open and spread out like a splayed ribcage. The behemoth crumbled in a storm of shards, toppled, and was gone.

‘Feel the wrath of Russ, filth!’ roared Svelok, leaping back to his feet, fangs bared inside his helmet. He seized a fresh magazine, spun round and slammed the rounds into the storm bolter’s chamber. There’d been three of them, massive stalking beasts carved from the stone around them, horrors of black, tortured rock bigger than a Dreadnought.

Now there were none. Rune Priest Ravenblade loomed over the smoking remains of the largest, his runestaff thrumming with angry, spitting witchfire. Lokjr and Varek had taken out the third, though the Grey Hunters’ armour was scarred and dented from the assault. The xenos monsters were tough as leviathan-hide.

‘What in Hel are these things?’ Lokjr spat over the comm, releasing the angry churn of his frostblade power axe.

‘Scions of this world, brother,’ replied Ravenblade coolly.

‘Just find me more to kill,’ growled Varek, reloading his bolter and sweeping the muzzle over the barren landscape.

Svelok snarled. His blood was up, pumping round his massive frame and filling his bunched muscles with the need for movement. The wolf-spirit was roused, and he could feel its feral power coiled round his hearts. He suppressed the kill-urge with difficulty. His irritation with Ravenblade was finding other outlets, and that was dangerous.

‘How far, and how long?’ he spat, flexing his gauntlet impatiently.

‘Three kilometres south,’ said Ravenblade, consulting the auspex. ‘One hour left.’

‘Then we go now,’ ordered Svelok, combat-readiness flooding his body again. ‘There’ll be more xenos, and I still haven’t seen one bleed.’

Kolja Ravenblade loped alongside the others, feeling his armoured boots thud against the unyielding rock. Gath Rimmon, the planetoid they’d been on for less than an hour, was a hellish maelstrom of acid-flecked storms. The sky was near-black, lit only by boiling electrical torment that scored the heavens with a tracery of silver fire. In every direction the landscape was dark and glossy, cut from unyielding rock and glinting dully in the flickering light. Acid pooled across the jagged edges, hissing and spitting as it splashed against the Astartes’ armour. The four Space Wolves ran south through narrow defiles of jet, each worn down by millennia of erosion, each as pitiless and terrible as the ice-fields of Fenris in the heart of the Long Winter.

This world was angry. Angry with them, angry with itself. Somewhere, close by, Ravenblade could feel it. It was like the beat of a heart, sullen and deep. That was the sound that had drawn him here, echoing across the void, lodged in the psychic flesh of the universe. Something was hidden on Gath Rimmon, something that screamed of perversion.

And it was being guarded.

‘Incoming!’ bellowed Varek, halting suddenly and sending a volley of bolter fire into the air.

Ravenblade pulled out of his run and swept his staff from its mag-lock. His helm-display ran red with signals – they were coming from the sky. He spoke a single word and the shaft blazed with fluorescent power, flooding the land around.

Above them, dozens of creatures were flinging themselves from the high rock, talons of stone outstretched. They were carved from the same material as the planet, each of them crudely animated creatures of inorganic, immutable armour. Eight spindly legs curved down from angular abdomens, crowned with extended rigid plates for controlled gliding. At the end of the metre-long body, wide jaws gaped, lined with teeth of rending daggers. They plummeted towards the Space Marines soundlessly, like ghosts carved out of solid adamantium.

‘Fell them!’ ordered Svelok, his storm bolter spitting controlled bursts at the swooping xenos. The rounds all hit, sparking and exploding in showers of shattered rock. The Wolf Guard made killing look simple. A shame, thought Ravenblade, that he had no time for anything else.

Varek’s bolter joined in the chorus of destruction, but some xenos still got through, wheeling down and twisting through the corridors of fire.

For those that made it, Lokjr waited. The massive warrior, his armour draped in the pelt of a white bear and hung with the skulls of a dozen kills, spun arcs of death with the whirring blade of his frost axe.

‘For the honour of Fenris!’ he roared, slamming the monomolecular edge in wide loops, slicing through the glistening rock-hide and tearing the flyers apart as they reached him.

Watching the carnage unfold, Ravenblade grasped his staff in both hands, feeling the power of his calling well up within him. The wind spun faster around his body, coursing over the rune-wound armour. Acid flecks spat against his ancient vambraces, fizzing into vapour as raw aether rippled across steel-grey ceramite.

‘In the name of the Allfather,’ he whispered, feeling the dark wolf within him snarl into life. The runes on his plate blazed with witchlight, blood-red like the heart of a dying star. He raised the staff above his head, and the wind accelerated into a frenzied whine. A vortex opened, swirling and cascading above the four Space Marines, billowing into the tortured air above them.

‘Unleash!’

A column of lightning blazed down from the skies. As it reached Ravenblade’s outstretched staff it exploded into a corona of writhing, white-hot fire, lashing out from the Rune Priest in whip-fronds of dazzling brilliance.

The surviving flyers were blasted open, ripped into slivers by the leaping blades of lightning, crushed and flayed by the atomising power of the storm. The Rune Priest had spoken, and the creatures of Gath Rimmon had no answer to his elemental wrath.

As the last of them crunched to the ground, Ravenblade released the power from the staff. The skirling corona rippled out of existence and a shudder seemed to bloom through the air.

By contrast with the fury of the storm, the Rune Priest stood as still and calm as ever. Unlike his brothers, his pack-manner was stealthy. If he hadn’t been picked out by Stormcaller, perhaps the path of the Lone Wolf would have called for him.

Kilometres above them, the natural storm growled unabated. The planet had been cowed, but remained angry.

‘Russ damn you, priest,’ rasped Svelok, crushing a fallen flyer beneath his boot and crunching the stone to rubble. His helm was carved in the shape of a black wolf’s head, locked in a perpetual curling grimace. In the flickering light its fangs glistened like tears. ‘You’ll bring more to us.’

‘Let them come!’ shouted Varek, laughing harshly over the comm.

Svelok turned on him. The Wolf Guard was a hand’s breadth taller and broader than the Grey Hunter, though the aura of his ever-present battle-lust made him twice as terrifying. His armour was pitted and studded with old scars, and they laced the surface like badges of honour. Rage was forever present with him, frothing under the surface. Ravenblade could sense it through the layers of battle-plate, pulsing like an exposed vein.

‘Don’t be a fool!’ Svelok growled. ‘There’s no time for this.’

Ravenblade regarded the Wolf Guard coldly. Svelok was as angry as the planet, his hackles raised by a mission he saw no use or glory in, but he was right. Time was running out. They all knew the acid tide was racing towards them. In less than an hour the ravines would be filling up, and ceramite was no protection against those torrents.

‘I’ll be the judge of that, brother,’ warned the Rune Priest. ‘We’re close.’

Svelok turned to face him, his bolter still poised for assault. For a moment, the two Space Wolves faced one another, saying nothing. Svelok had no patience with the scrying arts, and no faith in anything but his bolter. He had almost a century more experience on the battle-front than Ravenblade, and took orders from no one but his Wolf Lord and Grimnar. Handling him would be a test.

‘We’d better be,’ he snarled at last, his voice thick with disdain. ‘Move out.’

Six kilometres to the north, Gath Rimmon’s dark plains were deserted. The tearing wind scoured the stone, whipping up the acid that remained on it and sending curls of vapour twisting into the air.

In the centre of a vast, tumbled plateau of rock was a circular platform. Exposed to the atmosphere, it looked raw and out of place. Lightning flashed across the heavens, picking out the smooth edge of the aberration.

Suddenly, without any signal or warning, a crystalline pinprick began to spiral over the platform. It span rapidly, picking up speed and flashing with increasing intensity. It moulded itself, forming into a tall oval twice the height of a man. At its edge, psychic energy coursed and crackled. The rain whipped through it, vaporising and bouncing from the perimeter.

Then there was a rip. The surface of the ellipse sheered away. One by one, figures emerged from the portal. Eight of them. As the last stepped lightly from the oval, the perimeter collapsed into nothingness, howling back into a single point of nullity.

The arrivals were man-shaped, though far slighter than humans, let alone Space Marines. Six were clad in dark green segmented armour. They carried a chainsword in one hand and a shuriken pistol in the other. Their closed-faced helmets were sleek and tapered, and all had twin blasters set into the jowls. They fell into position around the platform, their movements silent and efficient.

Their leader remained in the centre. He was arrayed in the same armour, though his right hand was enclosed in a powerclaw and the mark of his shrine had been emblazoned across his chest. He moved with a smooth, palpable menace.

Beside him stood a figure in a white mask carrying a two-handed force sword. The blade swam with pale fire, sending tendrils of glistening energy snaking towards the ground. He wore black armour lined with bone-coloured sigils and warding runes. Ruby spirit-stones studded the surface, glowing angrily from the passage through the webway. He wore no robes of rank over his interlocking armour plates, but his calling was unmistakable. He was a psyker and a warrior. Humans, in their ignorance, called such figures warlocks, knowing little of what they spoke.

‘You sense it, Valiel?’ asked the claw-fisted warrior.

‘South,’ nodded the warlock. ‘Be quick, exarch; the tides already approach.’

The exarch made a quick gesture with his chainsword, and the bodyguard clustered around him.

‘Go fast,’ he hissed. ‘Go silent.’

As one, the eldar broke into a run, negotiating the treacherous terrain with cool agility. Like a train of ghosts, they slipped across the broken rocks, heading south.

Svelok felt battle-fury burning in his blood, filling his muscles and flooding his senses. He was a Space Wolf, a warrior of Fenris, and his one purpose was to kill. This chase, this running, was horrifying to him. Only the sanctity of his mission orders restrained him from turning and taking the wrath of Russ to every Grendel-clone on the planet. He knew the acid ocean was coming. He knew that the entire globe would soon be engulfed in boiling death. Even so, turning aside from the path of the hunt for the sake of a Rune Priest’s dreams sickened him.

They were coming to the end of a long, narrow defile. The stone walls, serrated and near-vertical, blocked any route but south. A few metres ahead, hidden by a jutting buttress of rock, the route turned sharply right.

Svelok’s helm-display flickered, and he blink-clicked to augment the feed. There were proximity signals on the far side of the buttress. Plenty of them.

Varek whooped with pleasure. ‘Prey!’ he bellowed, picking up the pace. By his side, the bear-like Lokjr kicked his frost axe into shimmering life and returned a throaty cry of aggression. ‘Fodder for my blade, brother!’

Only Ravenblade remained silent, and his wolf-spirit remained dark. Svelok ignored him. Energy coursed through his own superhuman limbs, energy that needed to be dissipated. He was a Wolf Guard, a demigod of combat, the mightiest and purest of the Allfather’s instruments of death, and this is what he’d been bred for.

‘Kill them all!’ he roared, his hearts pounding as he tore round the final corner and into the ravine beyond. His muscles tensed for impact, suffused with the expectation of righteous murder. A kind of elation bled into the fanged smile under his helm.

Past the buttress, tall cliffs of stone soared away on either side, cradling a narrow stretch of open ground. The massive Grendel-creatures were there, stalking like Titans across the stone, silent and dark. Flyers swooped among them. There were smaller creatures too, all encased in the acid-washed rock-hide of their kind, multi-faceted and covered in diamond-hard spikes and growths. Their vast mouths opened, each ringed with armour-shredding incisors.

Something was in their midst, hunted and cowering. The xenos had come to slay.

‘Humans!’ called out Lokjr, barrelling into the nearest walker. His frost axe slammed against its trailing leg, throwing up shards and sparks.

‘Preserve them,’ ordered Ravenblade, dropping to one knee and spraying bolter fire up at the circling flyers.

Svelok charged into the nearest spiked xenos, ducking under a clumsy swipe and punching up with his power fist. The stone chest shattered as the crackling disruption field tore through it. He threw an upper-cut at the monster’s head, ripping away spikes, before cracking it apart with a savage back-handed lunge. What was left of the xenos fell away and he ploughed on, heading to the heart of the melee.

A dozen weapon-servitors, grey-skinned and fizzing from the acid in the air, were being torn apart by two of the Grendels. Even as Svelok raced to intercept, a big one was ripped limb from limb by a talon-thrust, its pallid flesh impaled on the tips of massive claws, implanted machinery snapping and crunching. Las-blasts spat out in all directions, bouncing harmlessly from the rock-hide of the xenos.

‘What are they doing here?’ growled Varek, taking down his target with a volley of superbly positioned bolter rounds and whirling to confront the first of the slower-moving walkers.

Svelok sent a column of bolter shells into another spiked creature and charged into assault range. Above him, a Grendel was turning, its massive fists clenching with intent.

‘Russ only knows,’ he snapped. ‘Just finish them!’

There was a crack of thunder above them and forks of lightning plunged from the sky. As coolly as ever, Ravenblade had got to work. Bolts of searing witchfire slammed down, punching through rock-hide and breaking limbs apart. The rain of whining destruction was withering, and the smaller flyers were cut down from the air.

Svelok engaged the nearest Grendel, glorying in the crackling aura of his power fist. The wolf-spirit howled within him, and he crunched his fist into the creature’s leading knee-joint. The stone shell shattered, bringing the massive xenos down. It plunged its own fist at Svelok’s head, but the Space Wolf was already moving, darting to the left and releasing a barrage of rounds at the Grendel’s open mouth. The bolts exploded, dousing the monster in a cataclysm of sparks.

‘Death to the alien!’ roared Svelok, his ragged voice ringing out of his helm’s vox-unit and echoing across the ravine. His fist clenched around the trigger, and the twin barrels spat more streams of rock-tearing bolts.

Thrown back by the fury of the assault, the Grendel toppled, broken limbs grasping for purchase. Svelok leapt after it. His armour powered him into the air and on top of the creature’s chest. He plunged down, pinning the monster, his power fist thrumming. Twice, three, four times he punched, his arm moving like a piston, his disruptor-shrouded gauntlet tearing up stone and delving into the heart of the xenos. It cracked, stove, crunched, shattered.

Then he leapt free, whirling to face his next target, clenching the power fist for another assault.

The Space Marines had sliced through the xenos as they’d been made to do. Only one of the big walkers remained. Ravenblade had it enclosed in an aura of blazing light, raised from the ground, coils of lightning crackling between it and the Rune Priest’s staff. Helpless, it writhed within the nimbus of psychic power, trapped inside like an insect in amber. Ravenblade uttered a single word. The cracks in the creature’s armour blazed white-hot, frozen for a second in a lattice of blazing tracery, then it blew itself apart in an orgy of bursting aether-fuelled immolation. Massive chunks of broken hide tore through the air, smoking and fizzing from the Rune Priest’s warp-born energies.

Varek and Lokjr let their heads fall back and howled their victory, swinging their weapons around them like the barbarous warriors of Fenris they’d once been.

‘For the Allfather!’ Svelok bellowed, giving vent to his battle-fury. As Lokjr raised his massive arms in a gesture of defiance and triumph, the skulls at his belt clattered and swirled around him.

Only the Rune Priest remained unmoved. He let the vast power at his command bleed away and strode silently forwards. The bodies of servitors lay before him, ripped to shreds by the acid, or the xenos, or both. In the middle of them all hunched a human shape, clad in some kind of suit and unsteadily regaining its feet.

Svelok cursed under his breath. What was wrong with the priest? Were his fangs so blunted by meddling in runes that he couldn’t revel in the joy of victory like a Son of Russ should? He reined in his own exuberance grudgingly, and made his way to the cowering form on the ground. Varek and Lokjr took up guard around them, no doubt eager for more combat.

The survivor was clad in bulky armour of an ancient template, blood-red in colour and fully covering his body. It looked obsolete, scored with the patina of years and covered in esoteric devices Svelok didn’t recognise. Brass-coloured implants studded the surface, humming sclerotically and issuing hisses of steam. As the human rose, servos whined in protest and a thicket of mechadendrites scuttled out from hidden panels at his shoulders to begin repairing surface damage. Across his chest was the skull of the Adeptus Mechanicus, pitted and worn from age.

The man’s face was hidden beneath a translucent dome of plexiglass filled with a thin blue mist. His head was little more than a dark shadow within that clouded interior, though the spidery shapes of augmetic rebreathers and sensor couplings could be made out.

‘Speak, mortal,’ ordered Svelok in Low Gothic, determined to interrogate him before Ravenblade could.

A series of clicks emerged from the dome. Eventually, hidden behind a wall of distortion, speech emerged from a vox-unit mounted on his sternum. There was no emotion in it, barely any humanity. It had been filtered through some proxy mechanism, cleansed of its imperfections and rendered blank and sterile. Svelok felt nothing but disgust.

‘Adeptus Astartes,’ came the voice. Then a train of jumbled clicks. ‘Low Gothic, dialect Fenris Vulgaris. Recalling.’

Ravenblade stayed silent. Even through the barrier of the runic armour, Svelok could feel his keen interest in the pheromones his pack-brother emitted. Something had got the prophet worked up. Another vision? Or something else? He suppressed a low throat-rattle of irritation. There was no time for this.

‘Identify as Logis Alsmo 3/66 Charis. Departmento Archeotech IV Gamma.’

Another pause.

‘I should add,’ he said. ‘Thank you.’

They came to a standstill. As they’d headed south, the plains had given way to twisting, steep-sided gorges. Pools of fluid could be seen glistening at the base of the defiles, harbingers of the deluge to come. They were closing on their quarry, but time was running out. The acid was coming.

‘What do you sense?’ asked the exarch.

The warlock remained silent, his head inclined to one side. Above him, the sides of the gorge soared upwards.

‘Mon-keigh,’ he said at last. ‘And something else.’

Even as Valiel finished speaking, there was a crack in the rock face closest to him. The warriors snapped into a defensive cordon around the warlock.

A pillar of rock seemed to detach from the cliff nearest them. As it did so, jagged arms broke free from the torso, showering corrosive fluid. Silent as death, an eyeless creature, obsidian-clad and uncurling talons of stone, began to move towards them. Further down the gully, spiked variants detached, unfurling glossy limbs and exposing gem-like teeth.

‘This world dislikes intruders,’ said Valiel.

The exarch hissed an order, and the troops fanned out into a line in front of the warlock. The creatures lumbered nearer.

‘Was this in your visions?’ asked the exarch over his shoulder.

Valiel let the psychic surface of his witchblade fill with energy. These creatures hadn’t been, but then glimpses of the future were always imperfect. That was what made the universe so interesting.

‘You don’t need to know. Just kill them.’

Ravenblade glanced at his auspex. Thirty-nine minutes.

‘Your purpose here, tech-priest,’ he said, towering over the logis. ‘Speak quickly – I can kill you as well as those xenos.’

He could still feel the dark wolf within him panting, circling impatiently, thirsting for more release. It would have to wait. There was also a shard of fear from the logis, generated by the vestigial part of whatever humanity he’d once had. The Space Wolves towered over him, their massive war-plate draped in gruesome trophies and adorned with runes of destruction.

‘Rune Priest,’ said the logis. ‘Artificer armour, Fenris-pattern.’

Svelok growled his displeasure. ‘Stop babbling, mortal, or I’ll rip your arms off. Answer him.’

The logis shrank back, cogitators whirring. Communication in anything other than binaric seemed difficult.

‘Gath Rimmon,’ Charis said. ‘Third world Iopheas Secundus system. Acid surface, total coverage, impenetrable, sensor-resistant, hyper-corrosive. No settlement possible, no surveys archived.’

Svelok took a half-step forwards, his gauntlet curling into a fist. ‘We know this!’ he rasped over the mission channel to Ravenblade. ‘He’s wasting our time.’

‘Let him speak,’ replied Ravenblade. His voice was calm, but firm.

‘Single satellite, class Tertius, designation Riapax. Orbit highly irregular. Period 5,467 solar years. Proximity induces tidal withdrawal across polar massif for three local days, total exposure thirty-four standard hours. Opportunity for exploration. Sensors detect artefact. Mission dispatched. Xenos infiltration unanticipated.’

‘What kind of artefact?’

‘Unknown. Benefit analysis determined by age. Assessed Majoris Beta in priority rank system Philexus. Resources deployed accordingly.’

‘You have a location?’

‘Signal intermittent, 2.34 kilometres, bearing 5/66/774.’

‘Then we need him,’ said Ravenblade to Svelok on the closed channel.

‘Forget it,’ said Svelok. ‘Too weak.’

‘He has a lock. We don’t have time to waste looking.’

‘Morkai take you, prophet!’ cried Svelok, spitting with vehemence. ‘What is this thing? We diverted a strike cruiser for your visions.’

Ravenblade remained impassive. Svelok was the deadliest killer he’d ever seen, a single-minded inferno of perfectly controlled rage and zeal. Despite all of that, the Wolf Guard had no idea of the power of the Wyrd and the knowledge it gave Ravenblade. How could he? How could anyone but a Rune Priest understand?

‘He comes with us. We have less than an hour to find it and return to the pick-up coordinates. The acid is returning, brother. When it comes, the chance will have gone for another five millennia.’

‘Then let it lie. This worm can scurry after it.’

Ravenblade felt the dark wolf issue a low psychic growl, hidden to all but his aether-attuned instinct. Svelok was a stubborn bastard, as stubborn as the Great Wolf himself, but there were other ways of deciding this.

‘Enough.’

He twisted open a casket hanging from his neck to reveal a dozen pieces of bone, each inscribed with a single rune on both sides. He spilled the pieces into his gauntlet’s palm, marking how each fell. As he worked, he saw Svelok turn away in exasperation. The Wolf Guard had no time for the runes. That was his problem.

Ravenblade studied the sigils. Rune patterns were complex and subtle things. He opened his mind to the patterns in the abstract shapes. Across time and space, the angular outlines locked into their sacred formation. The sequence fell into place. He had his sign.

‘The runes never lie, brother,’ he said. ‘We are meant to be here, and we are on the right course. The strands of fate demand it. And there’s something else.’

He looked at Svelok, and this time spoke over the standard vox. Another element had emerged, one he’d not foreseen.

‘I sense xenos,’ he announced. ‘They are here.’

The exarch called his warriors back. None of the creatures remained alive. Two had died in the assault, their fragile armour rent by the talons of the world’s guardians. Once the shell was broken, the acid rain did the rest.

‘Safeguard the spirit stones,’ ordered Valiel, sheathing his witchblade and bringing his breathing under control. The survivors did his bidding silently.

‘Are we near?’ The exarch’s voice, muffled by a damaged speech matrix, was tainted with accusation. Valiel regarded him carefully. The exarch was the deadliest killer he’d ever seen, a relentless master of close-ranged combat. Despite all of that, the warrior had little idea of the full power of the warp and the knowledge it gave Valiel. How could he? How could anyone but a warlock understand?

‘See for yourself.’

Before them, the series of winding gullies opened out into a wide valley which ran towards the southern horizon. At the far end of the valley was a cliff of cloud, flecked with pale lightning at its base. A distant roar came from it, just like the sea coming in.

‘The tides approach,’ said the exarch, resentment still in his voice. He feared nothing but that which he couldn’t fight. So it was with all those lost on the warrior path.

‘What we seek lies on the precipice of danger,’ said Valiel. ‘Remember your vows, killer.’

The warriors returned and waited. Valiel could sense their doubt, just like their master’s.

‘Follow me,’ said the warlock. He didn’t wait for the exarch’s assent. Now, above all else, he trusted in the vindication of his vision. The artefact was at hand. Ignoring the acid rain as it streaked across his armour, the warlock strode down the floor of the gorge and into the valley beyond.

Svelok’s pack broke from the cover of the gorges and into a wide, bowl-shaped valley. At its far end, a few kilometres distant, the storm raged unabated. A low roar echoed from the mountain walls on either side. The tide-line was almost visible. Even now the rocks underfoot were sodden with puddles of gently hissing fluid. The planet’s inhabitants had been driven off for now, but the pack was still being shadowed by flyers, circling out of bolter range like vultures.

They kept running, kept the pace tight. Twenty-five minutes. Ravenblade could taste the acrid stench of the distant acid ocean. Readings scrolled down his helm-display detailing atmospheric toxicity. Nothing his armour couldn’t handle. For now.

‘Bearing,’ he ordered over the mission channel.

‘Imminent, Space Marine,’ responded the logis, struggling to match the pace in his archaic armour. ‘Recommend halt.’

The Space Wolves came to a standstill and waited for Charis to catch up. The rain streaked and steamed from their battle-plate. Lokjr’s bear pelt was being eaten away, and the runes of Ravenblade’s pauldrons were still glowing an angry red, like wounds washed in iodine.

‘Located,’ said Charis. A laser-sight extended from his right shoulder and pointed out a piece of flat rock a few metres distant.

‘Russ, that’s nothing!’ mocked Varek.

‘Silence!’ ordered Svelok, his mood clearly still dark. ‘We’ll examine it.’

As Ravenblade approached the site he had a sudden lurch of remembrance. He’d seen it before. Like a déjà vu, the blank gap in the stone loomed up towards him. He had no doubts. This was where he’d been drawn to.

No more than five metres square, a shaft had been bored directly down into the valley floor. It plunged vertically, sides smooth and open to the elements. It was perfectly black, as if it went all the way down to Hel. There were no steps, and few hand-holds. Far above them, the thunder growled, echoing from the valley sides.

‘That’s it?’ demanded Svelok.

Ravenblade nodded, mag-locking his staff. ‘Where we’re meant to be, brother.’

‘You sense it?’

The psychic signal filled Ravenblade’s mind, drowning out the pheromone-signatures of his battle-brothers. All that he could sense was the thing that had drawn him, and the stench of the xenos. Both were close.

‘Trust me.’

Svelok turned away. ‘Lokjr, you’ll hold. Drop anything that gets close. Varek, take point. We’re going down.’

Panels on Charis’s gauntlets and vambraces opened up, revealing clawed extensions capable of gripping the rock face. The Space Marines, with their occulobe-enhanced vision and superhuman poise, needed no such aids.

Varek swung himself over the edge, his boots finding instant purchases against the rock, and started to descend.

Ravenblade turned away, reaching for the runes again. Surreptitiously, keeping them shielded from Svelok, he spilled the bone fragments into his palm once more.

‘What do you see?’ The rumbling voice was Lokjr’s. Unlike his superior, the Grey Hunter had a pious respect for the readings.

Ravenblade stared at the figures resting on his gauntlet. The fragments glistened pale in the darkness. Shapes swam before his eyes, resisting interpretation. Elk, Fire, Axe, Death, Ice. None of them stood in their proper relations. There was no pattern. Ravenblade felt a rare pang of unease. For the first time in his life, over a hundred years of service, the runes were blank. There was nothing.

‘All is at it should be,’ he said, snatching up the bones and putting them away. ‘Time to go.’

Svelok went carefully but quickly, testing each hold before placing his weight on it. He knew as well as the others that when the tide came up the valley floor it would cascade down the shaft on top of them. Whatever happened, they had to be back up on the surface before then. Damn that priest. This mission was pointlessly dangerous. They didn’t even know what they were hunting down. His pack-brothers respected the Wyrd, but he’d never trusted it. There was a thin line between augmentation and corruption, and Rune Priests walked it perilously.

He blink-clicked a feed from Ravenblade’s auspex to his helm display. Twenty minutes.

‘Report,’ he snapped.

There was a low thud from below him as Varek leapt to the bottom of the shaft.

‘At the base,’ he responded. ‘No targets.’

Svelok checked his proximity readings.

‘Teeth of Russ,’ he spat. ‘Where are those xenos?’

He crunched to the ground beside Varek. On three sides, the stone walls continued to the level of the floor. The fourth opened out into a small underground chamber carved roughly from the rock. As Ravenblade and Charis completed the descent, the lumen-beams of the Space Marines’ helms ran across the enclosed space.

A circular access hatch had been carved into the floor of the chamber. Svelok’s helm detected the force field across it – one strong enough to
withstand five thousand years of acid erosion.

‘The mechanism may prove–’ started Charis.

A blast rang out across the chamber, and the embedded control panel exploded with a gout of oily smoke. The field shimmered and gave out.

‘Varek, with me,’ barked Svelok, his bolter barrel glowing from the discharge. ‘Priest, keep an eye on the mortal.’

Then he leapt through the hatch, landing heavily several metres down and throwing up a cloud of fragile debris. He sprang away, whirling his bolter round.

Still no targets. His lumen-beam ran over banks of equipment. Cogitators, they looked like, ancient and dark. He heard a crash behind him as Varek joined him. Together they swept the space with their weapon muzzles.

Nothing. The room was empty. It had been empty for millennia. A chamber no more than ten metres square, packed with defunct machinery, heavy with decay. Coils of translucent piping lay breached and desiccated in the dust. Bundles of machine-spirit conduits led from cogitator banks to an elaborate brass altar, black with age, studded with skulls and obscure control runes. There was a faint hum from somewhere, as if the force field had a counterpart hidden in the chamber. Cracked crystal viewports were as dark and lifeless as the shaft above them, and the floor was thick with ancient dust.

Ravenblade and Charis clambered down from the hatch via footholds in the wall. Svelok lowered his bolter and widened his lumen-beam.

The altar was the centrepiece. Though tarnished and old, the pipes and embellishments were massively complex. The hum came from its base, and a faint power reading registered on his helm display. Sitting on the altar was a box. A small, black box. Fascinated, Charis edged towards it.

Svelok turned to Ravenblade.

‘You sensed xenos,’ he said. ‘Where are they?’

The Rune Priest didn’t reply. He was looking at the space where Svelok had landed. There was a shattered ribcage on the floor, brittle with age. Other bones littered the floor. Ravenblade snapped his gaze towards the altar.

‘They’re here, Space Wolf.’

Charis’s voice had taken on a fresh clarity, and he suddenly seemed to have no trouble with rendering Gothic. Svelok and Varek spun round to face him. The logis withdrew his gauntlet and exposed a grey-fleshed claw of a hand, riddled with mechanical components. He took the box.

‘They’ve always been here.’

Valiel dropped through the hatch, landing lightly on the pristine metal floor. He sprang clear, making room for the warriors to follow. The dark green figures leapt into the room, rolling away and uncoiling into attack poses, the exarch close behind.

The chamber was harshly lit and lined with gleaming machinery. Coils of translucent pipes pumped coolant from cogitator banks to an elaborate brass altar, studded with skull-and-cog devices and surmounted by a humming containment field. Runes flickered across crystal viewports as the arcane clusters of machinery clicked through their protocols. A low humming gave away the power stored in the room, enough to supply a protective field of prodigious strength.

The chamber’s lone occupant whirled round to face them. A human, wearing bright red armour. The close-fitting plates were covered in gleaming mechadendrites, all clicking animatedly, sparkling under the bright strip lighting. His domed helmet had been retracted, revealing a thin, young face. Only a few augmetics marred the taut skin, though there already fresh incisions on his cheeks where more would be added.

He looked terrified.

Valiel let a ripple of sapphire pass down his blade.

Kill, he ordered psychically.

The warriors sprang towards the human. Two kept low, sending a stream of metal from their mandiblasters. Two more leapt into the air, chainswords whirling. The exarch took the direct route, firing from his shuriken pistol as he swung his claw into position.

It all happened in a single heartbeat, and yet the human reacted. That should have been impossible.

Mandiblaster darts homed in and folded out of existence. Shuriken bolts disappeared, winking into nothingness. The man raised his hand and the warriors crumpled into agony. Valiel felt their psychic screams as their souls were ripped from their bodies and sucked, howling, into the box. Dark tongues of matter like strings of ink shot out from the box. They clamped on to the exarch, tearing his spirit from his body. His broken husk fell to the floor, his faceplate distorted into a many-dimensioned mess.

So quick. Valiel remained calm, feeding his blade energy. Tendrils of aether-born plasma curled round his armour like the tails of cats.

‘So you’ve learned some of its tricks,’ he said in heavily-accented Gothic. ‘That won’t help you. If you keep using it, they’ll find you.’

Logis Alsmo Charis walked forwards. As he did so the box folded up and switched aspect in his hand. At times it resembled a cube, at others a pyramid, others a rhomboid. Every heartbeat, a new shape. Valiel knew, as the human could not, that it was folding across many dimensions as well. It was an abomination, the product of a mind beyond the imagination of a mon-keigh, and its power had been proscribed on the craftworlds for millennia. Despite his long training, Valiel felt his gaze drawn to it.

So terrible. So beautiful.

‘You think I came here to use it?’ the logis said, his voice growing in confidence. His fear was fading. ‘I came here to hide it. The trail will die.’

‘Then so will you.’

Charis flexed his fingers, already laced with steel slivers of augmetic technology.

‘I’ll find a way.’

He launched a lashing column of black fire from the box.

Valiel sprang clear, kindling the witchblade as he rose. He somersaulted clear of the box’s blast, landing lightly on a cogitator bank. His blade shot out, spitting a flurry of brilliant silver stars towards the human. The man evaded the strikes and leapt back towards the warlock.

His outline shimmered like a Warp Spider’s. The box was shifting him.

Charis twisted the box. A black mirror flew into being, rotating across the chamber, reflecting thousands of possible states on its shimmering surface. Valiel knew what it was instantly. He twisted away, but the glass enveloped him. As it passed through him, bulging like water across his body, he felt his soul dragged from his body, folded into miniscule shards of pain-filled insignificance. He was pulled from the bank and crashed to the floor.

The surface of the warped glass shattered. Valiel came to a halt, prone, locked down. His sword clattered away. He felt his essence dissipated. There was no physical pain, but the psychic agony was unbearable. He stifled his screams as the human loomed over him. The box was still in his hand, and was changing shape quickly now.

‘Unwise, to try and prevent me.’

Valiel let his eyes flicker to the roof.

Too powerful. Why was I led here?

He opened his tormented mind, bent all his fading power towards the multiple paths stretching away from this moment. The structure of the universe always gave you options.

I am only a part of this.

Valiel felt the humming malevolence of the box grow. With all the strength that remained in him, he locked away everything he knew about the device, its origins, his mission. History, time itself, condensed into a single form. A glyph. A key. One with the right power would know how to use it.

With a cry of agonised effort, a final blast of witchfire streaked from his clenched fingers, tugging at those strands of his soul still gathered together, tearing the psychic sinews of his inner self.

Charis moved quickly, trying to deflect it with the box, but the bolt flew clear, striking the metal rim of the hatch above, cracking it and careering across the roof. As the flame burned out it left a trail behind it on the stone. An intricate trail.

Charis ignored it. The last traces of terror had left his eyes, and flickers of a confident hatred distorted his features.

‘A waste,’ he spat, spinning the box-forms on his palm idly. ‘You’re no different from the rest. Think carefully on that, alien filth. Your people started this. I will finish it.’

Valiel tried to speak, but his mouth no longer obeyed him. The mon-keigh was mistaken about that, like so much else. He knew nothing of the varied allegiances of Valiel’s ancient kind. The mon-keigh were so crude, so simple.

The box opened. Defenceless, Valiel felt his soul dragged into isolation, his remaining essence torn from his material form and sucked within the shifting walls of the device. For an instant, while his eyes still worked, he caught a glimpse of what was inside. Part of him understood what was in there, knew it from myths and scraps of legend. He could see movement, layers, shifting upon shifting, the dark heart revolving before a...

He tried to scream, but his vocal chords were no longer his own.

The box clicked shut.

Charis looked down at the burnt-out corpse of the warlock. Not as powerful as he’d been led to fear. The dark ones had been worse.

He hurried over to the altar and placed the box in the receptacle he’d made for it. Leaving it was hard, but he had to master the secrets of it, and they were coming. He withdrew his hand and his armoured gauntlet extended over the exposed flesh, sealing him in against the acid. He depressed a rune on the nearby panel and the cogitators clicked into life, feeding the containment field, keeping it safe. A whiff of ozone burst across the chamber, and the air began to crackle with bounded energies.

The tides were returning. The xenos had delayed but not defeated him. With a final glance across the chamber, Charsis let the dome close over his head. He had to leave – they’d be tearing space apart to find him. Once he was safely away, there was work to be done. Lore to be studied. Secrets to be uncovered. And then the long years of stasis while he waited for Riapax to uncover the shaft again.

So much to do before he’d be back. But then there was so much to learn.

Ravenblade’s staff burst into flame, kindling on the angular incisions inscribed along the shaft, and the dark wolf’s hackles raised. The box held by Charis was shedding psychic energy. Incredible amounts. It was opening and closing in on itself with dizzying speed.

Svelok and Varek moved instantly.

‘Lokjr!’ Svelok barked into the comm-link. ‘Down here. Now!’

The sergeant barrelled across the chamber, power fist crackling. Varek let fly a stream of rounds, each aimed with exact precision: head, neck, armour joints. As they hit, they folded out of existence. Nothing left as much as a mark.

Then Svelok was in range. He hurled a heavy blow with the power fist, aiming for the gap between shoulder and helmet. Charis fell back astonishingly quickly, but the fist still caught him, sinking into the armour. It disappeared. The ceramite crumpled and distorted, and the disruption field flew wildly out of frequency.

Svelok fell back with a snarl and snapped up his storm bolter. Before he could get a round away Charis’s gauntlet punched him heavily in the face. As the fist impacted, black flames exploded from the blow, spiralling out like seeker flares. Svelok was hurled backwards, feet flung from the ground before crashing into a bank of cogitators. The muzzle of his wolf-helm had been folded in on itself.

‘Death, traitor!’ roared Varek, tearing straight at Charis, discarding his bolter for his fists. He smashed into the logis, closing his gauntlet over the box, aiming to tear it away.

‘No!’ cried Ravenblade, swinging his staff into position.

Varek bellowed in agony as his arm was sucked from real space, dragging him after it. The limb was ripped into a vortex of distortion, blood flying in concentric spirals, armour cracking and flesh tearing.

Ravenblade let fly with a searing ball of lightning, engulfing Charis’s breastplate and ramming him against the altar. What was left of Varek slumped against the floor, gurgling in a froth of blood, half of his body ripped away. Ravenblade swung round for a second strike, and his staff crackled with storm-pulled fury.

He didn’t even see the blast from the box. All he felt was the pain as it hit him. The rending, mind-unlocking pain. That was what the device was for, its only purpose. It had been made by a master of technology so advanced that it looked like sorcery. In that moment, exposed to its searching mind, Ravenblade knew its name. In the ancient xenos language now only spoken in one city in the galaxy, it was the Ayex Commorragh. The Heart of Agony.

Black fire shattered his defences, tore through his psychic wards. He felt himself being lifted backwards, armour aflame. He hit the wall with a crack, crashing into the rock. The fire kept coming. Blood trickled down the inside of his helmet. He felt his breastplate rip away, exposing the flesh beneath. The black carapace bubbled and split, shredding the skin, tearing up the muscle.

‘For the Allfather!’

Ravenblade half-heard Lokjr’s charge into the chamber, his frost axe pulsating with energy. Charis whirled to deal with him, but Svelok was back on his feet too, his bolter spitting. Ravenblade felt consciousness slipping away, and fought to hold on to it. He was collapsing into shock. He needed to fix on something. Anything.

He let his head fall back. His eyes flicked to the roof. That was when he saw it. Blasted into the ceiling of the chamber, scored in witchfire, was the thing that had drawn him. The rune. It had been in his dreams for months, deep in the void, out on the strike cruiser. It was the key.

It was enough. His mind unlocked.

Deep within him, crippled and bloody, the dark wolf opened its yellow eyes. A succession of images raced through his consciousness, overlapping with each other as they crowded into his mind. He sensed the souls thronging around him, impossibly old, long-dead. There was a warlock in a white mask and black armour. He’d been here, five thousand years ago.

More images rushed into his mind. Another planet, covered in Adeptus Mechanicus complexes, hells of industry. Dark shapes streaked across the burning skies, jagged-winged flyers, crewed by nightmares. There were men and women running, faces contorted with terror. Among them strode thin-limbed corsairs. Eldar they were too, but of a different kind. In the midst was the architect of the Heart, the haemonculus, hunched over his machinery of terror, watching the slaves being herded through the webway portal. His skin was grey, riddled with black veins. The eyes were pitiless wells of ennui, windows on to a heart driven cold by centuries of horror. There was a terrible intelligence there, a mastery of forbidden arts. He’d used the box to create pain from outside the bounds of the universe. That, and that alone, was why it had been made.

The vision shifted. There was fighting, ranks of human troops moving through the shattered cityscape. The corsairs were driven back. The haemonculus had lingered too long, and soldiers in carapace armour, skitarii, ordinatus, all piled into the vision. There were crippling explosions, massed volleys of las-fire, a retreat. The webway portal closed. The nightmares were gone.

It shifted again. In the midst of the ruination, surrounded by weeping survivors and smouldering rubble, a young logis came. He looked handsome, his flesh as yet unmarked by the touch of the Machine-God. He bent down, drawn by a strange black box. It had a certain pleasing construction. He took it, covering it in his robes. He’d keep it secret, learn how to use it.

But the nightmares knew how to find the box. They came back, pursuing him across the stars. While he had it, they could find him. He could never rest long enough to master it. It had to be hidden. Somewhere far away. Safe while he learned what it was. Safe until the trail died and he could come back to collect it.

Ravenblade snapped back into consciousness. The visions shuddered into nothing. He hadn’t been summoned here by the box. He’d been summoned here by the witchfire rune, left by the xenos whose presence he still sensed. The real world rushed into focus around him. All that remained of the mind-transfer were five words.

I have weakened the portal.

Ravenblade tried to pull himself up. Even his superhuman constitution was near collapse. Blood, half-coagulated, pumped from his exposed chest. Lokjr and Svelok fought on. They were being ripped apart. None of their weapons bit. They ducked around the vicious blasts of black fire with all their skill, but the end was only a matter of time. Even as he watched, Ravenblade saw Lokjr’s frost axe suddenly pulled across dimensions and smashed into scraps of metal by the Heart.

He dragged himself into a half-seated position, lungs burning. Charis had closed the hatch above them, sealing them in. He had control over every device in the room and had ensured that none of them would escape.

But Ravenblade was a son of Fenris, and escape was the last thing on his mind. Just like Svelok, he was a dealer in death, a predator, a hunting beast of the endless war. Only the manner of the kill differed.

Ravenblade closed his charred eyes and opened his mind to the immaterium. The dark wolf growled with pleasure. The runes on his armour went black as Ravenblade pulled all his remaining power to himself. He went back to the essence of his Rune Priest training, the primal tools of his art.

The elements. And this was a world of storms.

‘Unleash.’

Ravenblade screamed as the pain coursed through his body and mind. Far above, he could sense the torrent answer his call. Clouds boiled and raced, hurtling to the source of the summons. Acid oceans, already close, surged across the blasted land, swollen unnaturally by the power at Ravenblade’s command.

The rain increased. It became a deluge, hammering against the rocks. Even shielded by twenty metres of stone, Ravenblade could feel the breaking fury. Corrosive fluid rushed across the valley floor and down the shaft above the chamber, bubbling and churning. He piled on more energy, ignoring the warnings of terminal stress from his body. He felt his primary heart give out, but still the maelstrom responded to the call. He could sense the weight of the acid as it pressed against the hatch. The metal began to steam.

He opened his eyes. Lokjr had been cast aside, his face half-dissolved by the Heart. Even as he watched, Svelok was thrown backwards, a two-metre tall giant in full power armour hurled like a doll across the chamber, shattering machines as he skidded along the floor. Then Charis came for him.

‘Russ guide me,’ whispered Ravenblade, seizing his bolt pistol from its holster, swinging it upwards and firing at the hatch.

The metal exploded instantly, blowing shards across the chamber, unleashing the torrent. Acid sheeted down. The cogitators fizzed and exploded, sending blooms of sparks skittering across the floor. Ravenblade went into spasms of fresh agony as the searing liquid ran across his open wounds. His back arched as he cried out, doused in gouts of boiling liquid pain.

Too slow, Charis’s naked hand was snatched back into its gauntlet. The acid tore through the exposed flesh, eating through skin, bone and metal. The logis shrieked in his turn, his fear unfiltered by the vox-distorter. He tried to clutch the box, but his fingers were gone, washed into the slew of ankle-deep acid bubbling at his feet. It tumbled from his grip, dropping into the seething, corroding mass.

As it hit the liquid, it flipped into a dizzying array of shapes. For a moment it span desperately, its walls folding impossibly fast. Then, feeling even its infinite malignance threatened, the spinning stopped. There was a shudder, and the air around it burned away in a sudden blaze of ozone. The acid bath surged into a boiling sphere, furious and infused with black fire. The box emitted a deafening scream, as if a million tortured voices had been sucked back into the mortal plane for an instant.

Then the acid ball exploded in a blinding, whirling inferno. At its core, the box folded itself out of existence and the psychic backwash from its departure tore out from the epicentre.

Ravenblade cried aloud as the warp echo scored his exposed soul. Eyes bleeding, lungs burning, he hauled himself to his knees, trying to shelter his open chest cavity from the tumbling rain. Every move was a symphony of agony, physical and psychic.

‘You... killed it!’

Charis stumbled towards him, his remaining gauntlet clutching impotently. Freed from the protection of the box, his armour was corroding fast. Mechadendrites extended, blades whirring. The Rune Priest, chest ripped open, psychic senses seared away, had no defences left. He snatched the bolt pistol into position, but it slipped through his broken fingers.

‘For Russ!’

His voice ringing with rage, Svelok burst from the acid like a leviathan rising from the ocean, armour streaming with fluid. He staggered into range and smashed his fist straight through Charis’s visor. The glass shattered, cracking the logis back against the altar and snapping his spine. For a moment, Ravenblade caught a glimpse of a hideously ruined face within, riddled with augmetics. Then it was gone, consumed by the foaming deluge.

Ravenblade’s vision wavered. He was close to passing out. The acid burned against his chest, eating its way into his core. The liquid was now knee-deep around him.

‘We have to go, priest,’ Svelok rasped, his battle-plate pitted and steaming. The combat-fury was gone from his voice, replaced by grim resolve. He dragged Ravenblade to his feet, sending fresh needles of pain shooting through his body.

‘The staff,’ gasped the Rune Priest.

‘No time.’

Svelok hauled Ravenblade to the footholds, shouldering the Rune Priest’s massive armoured weight. Fluid showered down from the portal, sluicing over Ravenblade’s breastplate, snaking under the ruined carapace, worming into his wounds. His organs were failing.

He gritted his teeth. Not yet.

Svelok went first up the ladder, pulling Ravenblade after him. His strength was incredible. It was all Ravenblade could do to hang on, keep his feet on the holds, stay conscious.

The ascent up the rock was a nightmare. Falling acid burned through the armour plate with horrifying speed. Every agonising step saw their protection thinned a little more. Ravenblade watched the runes on his vambrace blaze red as the liquid sank into the impressions. The runes he’d carved himself, now smoking into oblivion.

They reached the top of the shaft. Shouldering his bulk against the torrent, Svelok pulled himself back onto the valley floor. With an almighty heave, he dragged Ravenblade up behind him.

The fury of the heavens had been unleashed. Lightning streaked across the angry sky. Rain fell in swathes. Acid swilled across the full width of the valley floor, bubbling and foaming. To the south, there were white-topped waves. Riapax was heading back into the void, and the ocean was reclaiming its own. They were out of time.

Ravenblade’s helm lenses flickered and went dark. Acid must have got into the mechanism.

‘Nearly as... bad as... Fenris,’ he gasped, feeling the tightness in his throat grow.

Svelok dragged Ravenblade to his feet, pulling the Rune Priest’s arm over his shoulder. Despite his wounds, he was still a furnace of energy and determination. For the first time, Ravenblade began to see his true value to the pack. He was everything a Son of Russ should be.

‘Nearly as,’ Svelok agreed grimly, dragging them both to higher ground. They reached a flat-topped outcrop, jutting from the rising acid around them. It wouldn’t last long. Even now the liquid at its foot was knee-deep. It would soon be waist-deep.

The two of them clambered onto the rock shelf. Ravenblade collapsed against the stone, his breath ragged. Far above them, thunder rolled across the valley. The torrent surged by, washing against the edges of their little island.

Svelok bent over Ravenblade, trying to shield the stricken Rune Priest from the downpour.

‘Hold on, prophet,’ he said, then corrected himself. ‘Brother. We’re not dead yet.’

The Wolf Guard hid his emotions poorly. Ravenblade could sense the full range of frustration and regret. They were far from the pick-up location. Better to prepare for the end, to meet the Allfather with honour. Battle-rage had its place, but not now.

As for himself, he could no longer feel anything in his limbs. His torso was lost in a dull ache, the nerve-endings burned away. A task had been achieved on Gath Rimmon, even if it wasn’t the one he’d expected.

‘They were blank,’ coughed Ravenblade, tasting the blood in his mouth.

‘What were?’ Svelok’s voice was no longer coloured with suspicion. Two battle-brothers had gone. Two pack-members. The bond between them was severed. Now a third strand would be cut.

The roar above them got louder. It wasn’t just thunder. There were lights in the clouds, and the whine of engines.

‘The runes,’ said Ravenblade. He saw the huge shadow of a Thunderhawk descend from above, searchlights whirling. That was good. Svelok would live to tell the saga.

‘Don’t speak, brother.’

The pain went. The Allfather had granted him that, at least.

‘I will speak,’ Ravenblade croaked, letting the last of the air in his lungs bleed away. ‘You must learn from this, Wolf Guard. We were part of a greater pattern here. There is always a pattern.’

His vision faded to black.

‘Your fury gives you strength, but it is fate that guides you. Remember it.’

The dark wolf gave him a final, mournful look, then loped into the shadows. Ravenblade was truly alone then, just as he had been before taking the Canis Helix.

‘Even across so much time and space,’ he rasped, feeling Morkai steal upon him. ‘The runes never lie.’

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

CHRIS WRAIGHT

Chris Wraight is a writer of fantasy and science fiction, whose first novel was published in 2008. Since then, he’s published books set in the Warhammer Fantasy, Warhammer 40,000 and Stargate: Atlantis universes. He doesn’t own a cat, dog, or augmented hamster (which technically disqualifies him from writing for Black Library), but would quite like to own a tortoise one day. He’s based in a leafy bit of south-west England, and when not struggling to meet deadlines enjoys running through scenic parts of it.

BEN COUNTER

Ben Counter is the author of the Soul Drinkers and Grey Knights series and one of Black Library’s most popular Warhammer 40,000 authors. He has written RPG supplements and comic books as well as novels. 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, where he can sometimes be seen indulging his enthusiasm for amateur dramatics on the local stage.

ANDY SMILLIE

Forged from beef and brawn, Andy Smillie emerged from the blacksmith’s fire like a slab of Scottish iron. Hailing from the northern reaches of Glasgow, he crossed the border into England intent on conquest, but instead found gainful employment at Games Workshop. Leaving a trail of carnage in his wake, he eventually settled in the Black Library where he works in marketing by day and as a literary superhero by night. His writing credits include a swathe of articles for various sci-fi, fantasy and hobby magazines. His debut work of fiction, ‘Mountain Eater’, was released in 2011 in the digital publication Hammer and Bolter.

NICK KYME

Nick Kyme is an author and editor from Nottingham. After working for several years as a staff writer and journalist on the magazine White Dwarf, he moved to the Black Library as an editor. He has written several novels in the worlds of Warhammer and Warhammer 40,000 including the Tome of Fire trilogy featuring the Salamanders, the Space Marine Battles novel Fall of Damnos and the Time of Legends novel The Great Betrayal. He has also written a host of short stories and several novellas, including ‘Feat of Iron’ which was a New York Times Bestseller in the Horus Heresy collection The Primarchs.

A BLACK LIBRARY PUBLICATION

‘Kraken’ originally published in 2012

‘Twelve Wolves’ originally published in Legends of the Space Marines, 2011

‘Deathwolf’ originally released as an audio mp3, 2012

‘Thunder from Fenris’ originally released as an audio, 2010

‘Runes’ originally published in Victories of the Space Marines, 2011

Published in 2012 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd., Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK

© Games Workshop Limited 2012. All rights reserved.

Black Library, the Black Library logo, Games Workshop, the Games Workshop logo and all associated marks, names, characters, illustrations and images from the Warhammer universe are either ®, TM and/or © Games Workshop Ltd 2011, variably registered in the UK and other countries around the world. All rights reserved.

A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 978-0-85787-756-7

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This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

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* 2. For the avoidance of doubt, you are ONLY licensed to use the e-book as described in paragraph 1 above. You may NOT use or store the e-book in any other way. If you do, Black Library shall be entitled to terminate this license.

* 3. Further to the general restriction at paragraph 2, Black Library shall be entitled to terminate this license in the event that you use or store the e-book (or any part of it) in any way not expressly licensed. This includes (but is by no means limited to) the following circumstances:

o 3.1 you provide the e-book to any company, individual or other legal person who does not possess a license to use or store it;

o 3.2 you make the e-book available on bit-torrent sites, or are otherwise complicit in ‘seeding’ or sharing the e-book with any company, individual or other legal person who does not possess a license to use or store it;

o 3.3 you print and distribute hard copies of the e-book to any company, individual or other legal person who does not possess a license to use or store it;

o 3.4 You attempt to reverse engineer, bypass, alter, amend, remove or otherwise make any change to any copy protection technology which may be applied to the e-book.

* 4. By purchasing an e-book, you agree for the purposes of the Consumer Protection (Distance Selling) Regulations 2000 that Black Library may commence the service (of provision of the e-book to you) prior to your ordinary cancellation period coming to an end, and that by purchasing an e-book, your cancellation rights shall end immediately upon receipt of the e-book.

* 5. You acknowledge that all copyright, trademark and other intellectual property rights in the e-book are, shall remain, the sole property of Black Library.

* 6. On termination of this license, howsoever effected, you shall immediately and permanently delete all copies of the e-book from your computers and storage media, and shall destroy all hard copies of the e-book which you have derived from the e-book.

* 7. Black Library shall be entitled to amend these terms and conditions from time to time by written notice to you.

* 8. These terms and conditions shall be governed by English law, and shall be subject only to the jurisdiction of the Courts in England and Wales.

* 9. If any part of this license is illegal, or becomes illegal as a result of any change in the law, then that part shall be deleted, and replaced with wording that is as close to the original meaning as possible without being illegal.

* 10. Any failure by Black Library to exercise its rights under this license for whatever reason shall not be in any way deemed to be a waiver of its rights, and in particular, Black Library reserves the right at all times to terminate this license in the event that you breach clause 2 or clause 3.