EVEN UNTO DEATH
Mike Lee


THE WOLF SCOUTS flew like spectres down the dark, tangled paths of the forest, their heightened senses keen as a razor's edge. Red moonlight shone along the edges of their blades, and death followed in their wake.
Guttural howls and roaring bursts of gunfire rent the night air all around them, echoing off the boles of the huge trees. The orks were everywhere, boiling up from hidden tunnels like a swarm of ants and crashing through the undergrowth in search of the Space Wolves. With every passing moment the cacophony of noise seemed to draw more tightly around the small pack of Space Marines, like a shrinking noose. Skaflock Sightblinder tightened his grip on his power sword and led the Wolf Scouts onward, racing for the landing zone some fifteen kilometres to the east.
Ork raiders had been terrorizing the worlds of the Volturna sector since the end of the Second Battle of Armageddon, slaughtering tens of thousands of the Emperor's faithful and putting entire continents to the torch. Their leader, a warlord known as Skargutz the Render, was as cunning as he was cruel. He never lingered too long on any world, pulling back his forces and retreating into the void before help could arrive. The Imperial Navy was left to chase shadows, and with every successful raid the warlord's reputation - and his warband - grew in stature. When the orks struck three systems in as many years, the sector governor appealed to the Space Wolves for aid. A rapid strike team was assembled and slipped stealthily into the sector. Fast escorts patrolled likely targets, waiting for the call to action. Skaflock and his men had been on one such frigate, the Blood Eagle, when astropaths on the forge world of Cambion reported that they were under attack. They and nearly a dozen other small packs of scouts had been unleashed onto the world via drop pods, to pinpoint enemy positions for the lightning assault to come. The scouts had slipped close to scores of landing sites and ork firebases, leaving behind remote-activated designator beacons that would allow the fleet to unleash a devastating initial bombardment within moments of arrival.
The operation had gone according to plan, right up to the point the fleet reached orbit and the initial assault wave began its drop. Then everything went to hell.
The night air trembled beneath the roar of huge turbojets as a Thunderhawk gunship made a low-altitude pass over the forest, but the assault craft held its fire, unable to tell friend from foe in the darkness below. Skaflock bit back a savage curse and tried his vox-caster again, but every channel was blanketed in a searing screech of manufactured noise. He had little doubt that the fleet couldn't pick up the designator beacons through the intense vox jamming, it was even possible that their surveyors were blind as well. He couldn't reach the fleet, much less the assault force his team was supposed to link up with; everyone had been cut off. Instead of catching the ork raiders unawares, they had stepped into a trap.
How, Skaflock's thoughts raged? How could we have been so blind?
The game trail the Wolf Scouts were following angled downwards into a narrow, twisting gully split by a shallow stream. With the wind at their backs and the thunder of the gunship passing overhead, the Space Wolves had no warning as they leapt into the gully and found themselves in the midst of an ork hunting party.
For a moment the orks didn't realize who had fallen in amongst them in the darkness. The hesitation was fatal. Skaflock's nerves sang with bloodlust and adrenaline - to him and the rest of the Wolves it was as though the greenskin raiders were moving in slow motion. Without breaking his stride the Space Wolf decapitated two orks with a single sweep of his blade and buried his armoured shoulder into the chest of a third with bonecrushing force. The air was filled with startled cries and shrieks of pain as the rest of the pack joined the fray, and suddenly the panicked orks were shooting and chopping at anything that moved.
Two heavy ork rounds flattened against Skaflock's power armour. As a member of the great company's Wolf Guard he was better protected than the scouts under his command, and the impacts barely fazed him. Blood sizzled off the power sword's energy field as he leapt at a cluster of orks further down the gully. The first of the greenskins raised a crude axe, aiming a blow at Skaflock's head, but the Space Marine ducked beneath the swing and cut the raider in two. Before the body had hit the ground Skaflock was upon the second ork, smashing his bolt pistol across the raider's knobbly skull and stabbing it through the chest. The ork pitched forward with a moan - doubling up on the searing blade and trapping it with its death throes.
Skaflock leant against the ork, trying to push it off the blade and narrowly avoided the third greenskin's swing. The crude axe glanced off his right shoulder plate and opened a long, ragged cut on the back of his unprotected neck. A second blow bit into his side, driving the axe's chisel point through the breastplate and into the flesh beneath. Baring his teeth at the pain, Skaflock spun on his heel, tearing his sword free and bringing the blade around in a glowing arc that separated the ork's head from its shoulders. For a few heartbeats the body remained upright, steam rising from the cauterized stump of its neck, then the axe tumbled from nerveless fingers and the corpse pitched over onto the ground.
Within moments, the battle was over. The six Wolf Scouts under Skaflock's command were veterans of more than a dozen campaigns, as skilled with sword and axe as they were with stealth and guile. Nearly two dozen orks lay dead or dying in the gully, staining the stream with their blood. As Skaflock watched, Gunnar Dragonbane, a giant of a man even by Space Marine standards, sent the last of the orks sprawling with a mighty sweep of his axe.
The greenskin landed in a heap, then rolled over onto its back, a grenade clenched in each bloodstained hand. Without thinking, Gunnar brought up his bolt pistol and shot the ork through the head.
Skaflock snarled as the distinctive crack of the bolt pistol echoed through the trees. 'I said no shooting!' he cried. As if in answer, the forest erupted in eager cries as the orks sought out the source of the gunshot.
Gunnar let out a rumbling growl, spitting a pair of shiny black pits into the crimson-tinged stream. The huge scout had a habit of chewing lich-berries; how he kept himself supplied on the long missions off Fenris was a mystery to everyone in the pack. A single berry was poisonous enough to kill a normal human in ten agony-filled seconds. Gunnar claimed the taste improved his disposition. 'Let them come,' he snarled, hefting his axe. 'We've plenty of cover and darkness on our side. We should be hunting them, not the other way around.'
'We're not here to hunt orks, Gunnar!' Skaflock snapped. 'We've got to link up with the assault team and guide them off the landing zone to a more defensible position - provided we aren't overrun by ork patrols in the meantime. Now, move out.' Without waiting for an answer, the Wolf Guard leader broke into a run, leaving the scouts to fall in as he sped on.
The orks were right on their heels. Skaflock heard the greenskins stumble into the gully moments behind them, and then the chase was on. Bursts of wild gunfire tore through the forest around them, kicking up plumes of dirt or blowing branches apart in showers of splinters. The Wolf Guard increased his speed, pushing his augmented muscles to the limit. Only his enhanced eyesight and agility allowed him to dodge the treacherous roots and low-hanging branches that lay in his path. Slowly but surely, the Wolf Scouts began to pull away from their pursuers, melting into the darkness like shadows.

THE SOUNDS OF battle called to the Space Wolves like a siren song, growing in intensity. Every few moments Skaflock closed his eyes and focused all of his concentration on the maelstrom of noise, picking out the distinctive notes of different weapons with a practiced ear: storm bolters, boltguns, plasma weapons and the distinctive hammering of crude ork guns.
After fifteen minutes the sounds of the Imperial weapons began to falter; Skaflock bared his fangs in a soundless snarl and drove himself on. Two minutes later he could no longer hear any plasma weapons being fired. Four minutes after that all he could hear were bolters pounding in rapid-fire mode. Then slowly, minute by minute, the bolter fire dwindled away to nothing.
Not long afterwards the wind shifted, blowing from the north-east, and they could smell the blood on the air. The woods had grown silent. Skaflock abandoned all pretence of stealth for the last two kilometres, breaking into a sprint and praying to Russ that his senses had somehow deceived him.
The Wolf Scouts charged headlong into the broad meadow they'd designated as the assault team's drop zone. The gently sloping, grassy field was now a wasteland of mud, ravaged flesh and spilled blood. The black silhouettes of the drop pods reared like tilted gravestones in the crimson moonlight, wreathed in plumes of greasy smoke from the blazing hulls of ork battlewagons.
The dead lay everywhere. Skaflock's mind reeled at the slaughter. The orks had struck from three sides, charging right into the exhaust flames of the drop pods as they settled to the ground. The Space Wolf packs had been cut off from one another even before the drop ramps opened.
The rest of the pack gathered around their leader, staring bleakly at the scene of carnage. Hogun stepped forward, shaking his head mournfully. 'It's a disaster,' he whispered, his voice bleak.
'It's a defeat,' Skaflock said flatly. 'The orks have turned the tables on us for now, but that's the way of war. We've seen worse, Hogun. All of us have.'
'Skaflock's right,' Gunnar said. The expression on his face was bitter, but he nodded solemnly. 'We've been through harder scrapes than this one and won out in the end. We'll just fade back to the mountains and wait for the rest of the company—'
Before the Wolf Guard could finish, the night air trembled with a distant howl of rage and pain that echoed among the derelict drop pods.
As one, the veteran scouts looked to their leader. Skaflock flashed a rapid set of hand signals and the pack fanned out into skirmish order, sweeping silently towards the source of the noise.
The howl came from the far side of the drop zone. As the scouts crept closer, Skaflock caught sight of a dozen Space Wolves - Blood Claws, judging by their youthful features and the markings on their bloodstained armour. They stumbled and staggered through the piled corpses, flinging green-skinned bodies left and right as they searched frantically among the dead. Many of the young Marines had removed their helmets, and their faces were twisted with grief.
Skaflock waved the scouts to a halt and stepped forward. 'Well met, wolf brothers,' he called out. 'We feared there were no survivors.'
Heads darted in Skaflock's direction. Several growled, showing their teeth. One Blood Claw in particular, who had been crouched beside a pile of corpses, rose to his feet. He was tall, and pale with rage, a still-healing gash running from high on his right temple diagonally down into his blood-matted beard. His bolt pistol was holstered, but the deactivated power fist covering his right hand clenched threateningly as he glared at Skaflock and his pack.
The Blood Claw took a step towards the Wolf Scouts. 'All too few,' he snarled, 'thanks to the likes of you!' The words dissolved into a bestial roar as the Space Wolf lunged at Skaflock, his eyes burning with hate. The sudden attack caught the scout leader unawares. Before he could react the Blood Claw closed the distance between them and smote Skaflock on the breastplate of his armour with a sound like a hammer against a bell. The Wolf Scout went sprawling, stunned by the impact. Had the power fist's field been active his chest would have been crushed like an egg.
The red-haired Space Wolf pounced on Skaflock in an instant, knocking him back against the ground. 'Cowards!' he roared, nearly berserk with fury.
Pinned beneath the Blood Claw's bulk, Skaflock barely rolled aside as the Marine's huge fist smashed into the mud mere centimetres from his head. 'Did you slink out of the woods to view your handiwork, or to pick over the bodies of the dead like carrion crows?'
Skaflock felt the Blood Claw's left hand close around his throat. Surprise gave way to a killing rage, rising like a black tide in his chest. Unbidden, his hand tightened on the hilt of his power sword, thumb reaching for the activation switch.
'Remember your oaths, men of Fenris! Russ cannot abide a kinslayer, and the Emperor's eyes are upon you!'
The shout came from the shadow of one of the drop pods, ringed with the bodies of huge, armoured orks. Recognition struck Skaflock like a hammer blow, but it was the Blood Claw who spoke the name first.
'Rothgar!' The young Marine scrambled to his feet, heedless of the power sword pointed at his chest.
The great company's wolf priest stepped slowly into the moonlight. At once, Skaflock could see that the priest was very gravely injured. Rothgar's Terminator suit was rent in half a dozen places, and the jagged tip of a dead ork's power claw jutted from his chest. His face was deathly white, and drops of red glistened in his grey beard. It was a testament to the wolf priest's legendary prowess that he lived at all.
'Well met, Sightblinder,' Rothgar said, showing blood-slicked teeth. 'Late to the battlefield, thank the primarch. What is your report?'
'We've been lured into a trap,' he said simply. 'Once the assault teams began their descent the damned orks started jamming all the vox frequencies somehow.' The Wolf Scout bit back a curse. 'You and these Blood Claws look to be all that's left from the team that landed here.'
'Our pod suffered a malfunction on the way down and we landed some ten kilometres north of the drop zone,' the red-haired Blood Claw said. 'The woods were crawling with ork patrols. We had to fight every step of the way to make it here. Two of our brothers and our Wolf Guard leader were slain.'
'The orks had more time to scout the area than we did. If we could find the best drop zones in each sector, so could they,' Skaflock said. 'But I've never known a greenskin to show such patience and forethought. There's more at work here than meets the eye.'
Rothgar's eyes narrowed conspiratorially. 'This Skargutz has ambitions, I think. He's no Ghazghkull, but he's no mere warboss, either. I think he's got his sights set on uniting the ork warbands in this sector under his banner. If he can prove to them that he can strike anywhere he wants and get the best of any force the Imperium can throw at him, they'll join his mob without hesitation.'
'And now that he's bloodied us, he'll pull out of Cambion with whatever plunder he's gathered and start rousing the other warbands.' It was a clever move, as much as it galled Skaflock to admit it.
Skaflock forced his anger and guilt aside and tried to find a way to salvage the situation. 'All right,' he said, addressing the wolf priest. 'The orks have us cut off for now, but our fleet isn't going to sit idle. With every pass they make over the planet their surveyors will have a clearer picture of where the ork landing sites are hidden. The orks can't keep this jamming up forever - they need the vox channels to coordinate themselves almost as much as we do. Most likely they will wait until they think the power cells on our designator beacons have run dry, then they'll begin their pullout. In the meantime, Kjarl here can watch over you at one of our campsites while my pack and I locate the main ork camp. When the jamming lifts, we can contact Lord Haldane and coordinate a counter strike before Skargutz can escape.'
Kjarl shook his head in disgust. 'Have you no idea what's happened?'
'How could he?' Rothgar said darkly. When he turned to Skaflock, his expression was even more pained than before. 'Have you ever known Haldane Ironhammer to let another lead an assault in his place? He dropped with us in the first wave, lad. Your lord lies somewhere among the fallen.'

LORD HALDANE AND his Wolf Guard had made their stand on a low hillock just to the side of their drop pod. They'd fought like wolves at bay, like heroes of old, but one by one they had been overcome.
Haldane's Terminator armour hadn't been hacked apart, as Skaflock had expected. It had been hacked open. The body of the wolf lord was nowhere to be seen.
Tears of rage coursed freely down Kjarl's face. 'What have they done with our lord?'
The Space Wolves parted as Rothgar moved slowly and painfully among them. The pain in his eyes as he surveyed the scene had nothing to do with his injuries. 'They have taken him,' he said hoarsely.
'Why?' Kjarl said.
'The orks must mean to give him as a trophy to their leader,' Skaflock replied, biting back his rage. 'A wolf lord's head would be a tremendous prize for an ambitious warboss like Skargutz.'
'Then it's a blood feud, by Russ!' Kjarl raised his fist and howled a challenge to the sky. The rest of the Blood Claws followed suit, the intensity of their cries raising the hairs on the back of Skaflock's neck.
'The filthy greenskins have defiled our lord.' Kjarl roared. He turned to Rothgar. 'Hear me, priest, I swear that I and my pack will find Lord Haldane and reclaim the honour of our company, and woe to any ork that steps in our way.'
'Don't be a fool,' Skaflock said coldly. 'You won't get more than a kilometre before the orks kill you.'
The Blood Claws snarled in wordless anger. Kjarl turned on the scout leader, his power fist raised. 'Keep your gutless bleating to yourself,' he snarled. 'This is a matter of honour - something you clearly know little about.'
Skaflock advanced on the Blood Claw. 'I know that you've been on this planet less than an hour, and I've been here for three months. I know approximately how many orks there are in this sector. I know their tactics, their equipment, the location of their bases and the routes they're likely to take. I know exactly what your chances are, charging about on an ork-held world and lashing out at every foe that presents itself.'
The vehemence in Skaflock's voice took Kjarl aback for a moment. 'What would you have us do then? Cower in the bushes and let them get away with this? What about your duty to Haldane?'
'Don't lecture me about my duty, whelp,' Skaflock said darkly. Meeting Rothgar's eye, he knelt by Haldane's armour and solemnly took up the wolf lord's axe. 'If we hope to reclaim Haldane's body we will have to swallow our anger and put our lord's honour before our own.' He raised the axe before the wolf priest. 'I swear on this axe that I will find Haldane and do what must be done.'
The wolf priest held Skaflock's gaze for a long moment, and then Rothgar nodded slowly. 'I hear you, Skaflock Sightblinder,' he said, 'and I hold you to your oath.'
'And I swear,' Kjarl hissed, 'to tear your head from your shoulders if you fail.'
Skaflock grinned mirthlessly. 'If I fail, I doubt you'll have the chance, but so be it,' he said. 'For now, you and your men gather weapons and ammunition from the dead: flamers, grenades and spare bolt pistol rounds.'
Kjarl glared at the wolf scout, but beneath the forbidding gaze of the wolf priest he swallowed his pride. 'We will not be long,' he growled, and issued orders to his pack.
Skaflock turned to Rothgar, but the wolf priest raised a gauntleted hand. 'I will abide here, Sightblinder. Do not concern yourself about me. Russ knows I've survived worse than this.' With his other hand he drew the Fang of Morkai from his belt. 'Whatever else, I still have my duty to the dead.'
'As do we, Rothgar. As do we.'

HALDANE'S BLOOD MADE his scent easy to follow. Even where countless ork feet had trampled across the wolf lord's trail, Hogun's sharp eyes picked out dark spots of crimson to mark where their fallen leader had gone.
Skaflock had assigned a pair of Blood Claws to each scout, taking Kjarl and another young Blood Claw for himself. After several kilometres the trail led out of the woods and down into a narrow, twisting valley dominated by isolated stands of stunted, twisted trees. Here the ork trail was easy to follow, and Skaflock knew at once where they were headed.
'There's a firebase up ahead,' he said to Kjarl as they loped stealthily along the valley floor. 'A small one. We scouted it out a couple of weeks ago. It's probably where they're staging all of the patrols in this sector, so there will likely be a lot of traffic. I expect the orks carrying Haldane will commandeer a vehicle there to carry their trophy to Skargutz.'
Kjarl glared resentfully at Skaflock. 'We'll see,' he said darkly.
Half a kilometre from the firebase Skaflock waved the scouts off the trail, following a path that led to higher ground and offered a commanding view of the ork encampment. Hogun and Kjarl lay to either side of Skaflock as he scanned the firebase from a stony ledge using his magnoculars.
'No sign of Haldane. If he was still there the orks would be showing off the body,' Skaflock said, passing the magnoculars to Hogun. 'There is something interesting though, a convoy of large trucks unloading fresh troops. And I don't recognize their clan markings.'
'What does this have to do with Haldane?' Kjarl hissed impatiently.
'This sector has the largest number of major ork landing sites on the planet,' Skaflock explained, 'so we always suspected that Skargutz himself was somewhere nearby. We never could find him, though. At the time, we thought that was pretty strange, but now it's clear they must have set up a hidden base to conceal the vox jammers and shelter the bulk of their reserve troops from the initial bombardment.' The Wolf Guard studied the ork trucks thoughtfully. 'I'll bet he's still there, waiting for word that the ambush was successful, and those trucks will lead us right to him.'
Kjarl let out a snort. 'And how do you expect the trucks to get us anywhere once we've killed the drivers?'
Skaflock frowned. 'Killed the drivers?'
'You don't expect they'll survive once we've stormed the base, do you?'
'We aren't storming the base, Kjarl. We're sneaking onto those vehicles as they head back to their base.'
'Sneaking.' Kjarl's lip curled in distaste. 'Cowering like a craven is more like. This is not the way the sons of Russ are meant to behave.'
'I won't speak for you, Blood Claw, but I'll behave any way I must if it gets me one step closer to my goal. And so will you, so long as I'm in command.' Skaflock's stare was hard as adamantine. 'Tell your men we're going to sneak down to the firebase's northern gate. Pistols will be holstered and flamers doused. Combat will be avoided at all costs. Understood?'
'Understood,' Kjarl said contemptuously, and slid down the slope to where the rest of the group waited.
Hogun watched the young Space Wolf go. 'A good thumping would knock sense into that lad,' he muttered.
'No time for that now. I want you to round up our melta bombs and set up a diversion on the southern end of that base.'
'Good as done,' Hogun said, handing back the magnoculars and heading down the slope.
Skaflock gathered the Space Marines and made for the road north of the firebase in a single, widely spaced group. The Space Wolves reached the dirt road almost a kilometre north of the base, then began working south until they were within less than a hundred metres of the base's crude gate. There they separated into their three-man teams and settled into cover near the road's edge.
The firebase itself was simple and rugged. An irregular perimeter of packed earthen ramparts five metres high was topped with razor wire and littered with small mines. Rough, uneven watchtowers composed of scrap metal and cannibalized shipping containers rose behind the ramparts, sprouting a lethal assortment of heavy guns and wandering searchlights. The noise within the earthen walls was tremendous, a discordant roar of shouting voices, revving engines, machine tools and occasional bursts of gunfire.
Barely a few minutes after the Space Wolves had settled into place, Hogun seemed to materialize out of the darkness at Skaflock's elbow. 'Three minutes,' he reported, then went to take his place along the line.
Kjarl eyed the ork base expectantly. 'What now?'
'When the bombs go off, the orks will think they're under attack. I expect that whoever is running that mob in there is going to send the trucks back to Skargutz for more troops.'
Before Kjarl could reply a string of blue-white flashes ran along the base's southern perimeter, followed by the sharp crack of the melta charges. Streams of wild tracer fire fanned and corkscrewed into the air. 'Get ready,' Skaflock called to the Marines.
Within minutes, the scrap metal gate at the northern entrance was pulled back with a tortured shriek of twisted metal, and eight huge ork trucks lumbered onto the road in a billowing cloud of blue-black exhaust.
Skaflock turned to Kjarl. 'We'll wait for the last three trucks, then I'll give the signal—'
The Wolf Scout's instructions were cut short as a stream of heavy ork rounds whipsawed through the air over his head. Skaflock's heart clenched as he ducked his head and stole a look at the firebase to his left.
The watchtowers had somehow spotted the three Space Marines at the far end of the line. Searchlights transfixed the Space Wolves from three separate directions, and the orks in the towers opened fire with every weapon they had. Skaflock watched as one of the Wolf Scouts rose to a crouch and drew his bolt pistol in a single, fluid motion. He snapped off two quick shots, destroying two of the searchlights in a shower of sparks, but as he pivoted to fire at the third a burst from an ork gun blew his head apart in a shower of blood and bone. The two Blood Claws leapt to their feet as one, drawing their weapons and charging at the enemy encampment.
'No,' Kjarl roared, surging to his feet. Skaflock tackled him before he was fully upright.
'Stand your ground,' Skaflock cried, shouting into the maelstrom.
'My men—'
'Your men are already dead, Kjarl,' Skaflock said. At the firebase the Blood Claws had made it into cover beneath the reach of the guns, but a mob of orks was already charging from the gates, their crude axes held high. 'You can either die alongside them or remember your obligation to your lord. Which will it be?'
With a wordless snarl Kjarl shoved Skaflock away and readied himself to move.
The last three ork trucks were coming up fast. Skaflock gauged speed and distance, then shouted ''Now'' and bolted for the road.
The Space Wolves rose in a ragged line and rushed at the ork transports, leaping for struts and flanges on their armoured flanks. Kjarl landed easily to Skaflock's right, both men glaring balefully back at the firebase dwindling in the distance.

THE ORK TRUCKS roared along dirt roads and broken trails for nearly two hours, then abruptly turned onto an old, sharply sloping roadway littered with rocks and debris. The small convoy climbed steadily up the side of a mountain for several minutes, then turned suddenly into the mountainside itself. The trucks' huge engines thundered in the tight confines of the tunnel as the convoy descended deep into the bowels of the mountain. The vehicles finally came to a stop in a cavernous, dimly lit chamber reeking of exhaust fumes and echoing with the bedlam of an ork warband at work.
Skaflock slowly eased himself from the truck's undercarriage and lowered himself to the ground. Peering left and right, he could see that the ork trucks had been driven into an enormous staging area crowded with other vehicles, piles of crates and gangs of grease-stained gretchin mechanics. Illumination in the cavernous space was poor, creating dark alleys between stacked crates and pools of shadow cast by the looming vehicles. Skaflock rolled out from under the truck to the right and dashed into cover between two stacks of looted shipping containers. The Wolf Guard kept moving, trusting that his brothers would track his scent as he worked his way towards the edge of the broad cavern.
Dark shapes emerged from the shadows, weapons held ready. Kjarl was the first to reach Skaflock, his eyes searching the shadows. 'Where are we?'
'We're in an old mine, somewhere south of the landing zone,' Skaflock said. 'There's scores of them honeycombing the mountains in this region. The orks are probably tapping the mine's abandoned reactors to power their jamming system.' The Wolf Guard sought out Hogun. 'Do you have the scent?'
The scout nodded. 'His blood's like a beacon. Not much further to go, I think.'
'All right.' To the assembled Marines, Skaflock said, 'Stick to your teams. No shooting until I give the signal. Hogun, you're on point. Gunnar, cover the rear. Move out.'
Moving quickly and quietly the Space Wolves made their way around the perimeter of the cavern and down a rough-hewn passage running deeper into the side of the mountain. Few of the mine's lamps still functioned, and the darkness served them well in the wide tunnels. They passed numerous side passages, abandoned lifts and galleries; on several occasions the Space Marines had to find an alternative route to avoid mobs of orks along their path. Each time Hogun led them unerringly back on track.
This sector of the mine had been given over to offices and dormitories for the indentured miners who once laboured in the tunnels below. Up ahead, the Space Wolves began to hear the raucous sounds of a celebration, and Skaflock felt a cold, black rage welling up in his heart.
The passageway ahead ended in a broad double doorway, opening onto a huge rectangular space carved from the living rock. Once it had served as a dining hall for the miners, but now it was packed with orks feasting on the plunder of Cambion. Several hundred greenskins tore at haunches of bloody meat and drank from steel casks of ale, roaring drunken boasts of their fighting skill.
The far end of the chamber was given over to a raised dais, where priests of the Ecclesiarchy once exhorted the faithful as they took their meals. Now it supported a crude throne of black iron, where an enormous, armoured ork sat, surrounded by his bodyguard.
A man's bloody body lay at the foot of the throne, wearing only the black undergarment of a Space Marine. As the Space Wolves watched, Skargutz the Render laid an armoured boot on Haldane's dead chest, like a hunter posing with his prize.
The Marines made not a single sound, but Skaflock could feel the fury seething from them like heat from a forge. Kjarl's eyes were fixed on Skargutz, his fangs bared. 'Here it ends,' he said, his power fist crackling into life.
Skaflock nodded solemnly. 'The time for stealth is done at last,' he said, slipping into the tongue of their homeland. 'Now is the time for broken swords and splintered shields, for red ruin and the woeful song of steel. Haldane's eyes are upon us; his honour lies in our hands. Let no man falter until the deed is done.'
Raising Haldane's frost axe high, Skaflock charged through the doorway, and suddenly the hall was filled with the howl of Space Wolves.
The orks nearest the doorway stared in shock at the sudden appearance of the Space Marines. Skaflock leapt forward, swinging the frost axe in a wide arc and carving through the torsos of the three greenskins before him. Grenades flew overhead and bolt pistol shells tore through the packed ranks of orks. With an angry hiss, a half-dozen streams of liquid fire immolated scores of shrieking greenskins; their grenades and ammunition detonated in the heat, adding to the carnage.
An ork clambered over a table wielding an axe and Skaflock shot it in the face. The range was so close the mass-reactive shell had no time to arm, blowing the greenskin's head apart and bursting in the chest of the ork behind. Another of the foul creatures charged him from the right; the Wolf Scout ducked under the greenskin's wild swing and cut the ork's legs out from under it with a backhanded stroke of the axe.
Pandemonium swept the hall. The greenskin mob recoiled from the fire and slaughter around the doorway, many shooting wildly into the backs of those who tried to put up a fight. A heavy bullet smashed into Skaflock's shoulder, cannoning off his armour and half-spinning him around, but the impact barely halted his headlong charge. The orks gave way before him, those that did not move fast enough were shot point-blank or split like a melon by a stroke of the axe. Dimly, Skaflock was aware of Kjarl close by his side, protecting his flanks and firing bolt pistol shells into the retreating mob.
Suddenly the ork retreat stopped, surged backwards, then parted like a wave, and Skaflock found himself face-to-face with Skargutz's bodyguard.
With a roar, the armoured orks opened fire at the oncoming Space Wolves. Two more rounds smashed into Skaflock's chest, flattening against his breastplate, and men screamed behind him as more bullets found their mark. Skaflock raised his bolt pistol and fired at an approaching bodyguard, but the shells bounced harmlessly off the ork's armoured skull. Then the two sides crashed into one another and all semblance of order dissolved into a chaotic melee.
Skaflock leapt at the bodyguard before him, swinging the frost axe at the ork's claw-tipped arm. The keen blade sheared through the metal joint and the flesh beneath, severing the arm at the elbow in a fountain of blood. The ork bellowed in pain and the Wolf Scout put a bolt pistol shell into its gaping maw, blowing out the back of its skull. He ducked around the armoured form as it toppled to the ground, only to be struck in the chest by a blow that drove the air from his lungs and racked him with searing waves of agony. Skaflock fell to the ground, convulsing in pain as a lithe, black-armoured form stepped over him, levelling a long-barrelled pistol at his head. The alien's face was hidden behind a helmet shaped like a leering skull. Its black, chitinous armour was painted with runes of clotted gore, and squares of expertly flensed skin flapped like parchment from fine hooks hung about its waist. A detached part of Skaflock's mind recognized the scraps of flesh as the skinned faces of human children.
The Wolf Guard's mind reeled. A dark eldar? Here? He'd heard tales of exiles from the hidden world of Commorragh offering their skills to warlords in exchange for plunder - usually paid in living flesh for the sadistic xenos to sate their lusts upon. Skaflock realised now where Skargutz had got his powerful jamming devices from, and was horrified to think of how many innocent lives the foul xenos would claim in return.
'You offer me such poor sport,' the dark eldar said. The words came out as a liquid rasp, bubbling wetly from mutilated lungs. The xenos lashed the air with a long, barbed whip of darkly glimmering steel. 'But fear not. You shall have many opportunities to entertain me in the months to come.'
Suddenly the air around the dark eldar shimmered as a flurry of bolt pistol shells streaked at his head and chest - and vanished as if swallowed by the void. From out of the raging melee Hogun and six Blood Claws rushed at the xenos warrior, bloodied chainswords held high.
The alien slipped among the Space Wolves like quicksilver, lashing with his barbed whip. One viper-like blow was enough to paralyze a Space Marine with waves of pain, a second strike shredded the nerves and brought agonizing death. Three Blood Claws died without landing a single blow, the rest hurled themselves at the dark eldar, aiming a flurry of blows at the alien that would have ripped a mere human into tatters. Yet for all their speed and skill, the dark eldar dodged their blows with ease, or absorbed them with his powerful force field. Hogun emptied his bolt pistol at the alien's head, each shell swallowed up by the warrior's eldritch defences. The dark eldar casually pointed his pistol at the Wolf Scout's head and shot him through the eye. One of the Blood Claws leapt at the dark eldar with a roar and the alien spun effortlessly away from the attack. Faster than the eye could follow, the alien's whip struck once, twice, and the Space Wolf died in mid-swing.
With an effort of will, Skaflock forced his traumatized muscles to work, raising his own pistol and squeezing off shot after shot as the dark eldar's whip took another Blood Claw in the throat. Each round disappeared like all the rest - until suddenly an actinic flash obscured the alien and a sound like a thunderclap rang out as his force field finally overloaded. The dark eldar staggered, and the Wolf Scout saw a ragged hole in the breastplate of his armour.
The dark eldar let out a shriek of fury and a bubbling stream of curses - and then Kjarl seemed to materialize behind the alien, seizing its helmet in his power fist and tearing the alien's head from his armoured shoulders.
Skaflock rolled onto his side and tried to push himself to his feet. His muscles twitched and spasmed from the effects of the whip, and bursts of intense pain rippled through his chest. Then a huge fist closed on his arm and pulled him upright. 'No... faltering... yet,' Kjarl said breathlessly, flashing a wolfish grin. His armour was pierced in a dozen places and streaked with blood and gore, but his eyes were fierce and bright.
The Wolf Scout forced his eyes to focus and take in the scene around him. Over half the hall was ablaze, and the dead lay in heaps from the doorway to the dais. At the foot of his throne, Skargutz and a handful of orks fought the battered remnant of Skaflock's band. As he watched, Gunnar decapitated an ork with a stroke of his chainsword then darted in to strike at Skargutz's knee. Sparks flew as the sword's razor-edged teeth glanced off the armoured joint. The scout leapt back for another strike, but not quite fast enough. The warboss's power claw caught Gunnar in mid-leap, slicing the Space Marine in two.
Skaflock roared in rage and anguish, pushing away from Kjarl and staggering towards Skargutz, gaining speed with each painful step. His bolt pistol thundered and bucked in his hand; two orks fell with gaping holes in their chests and a third round punched a bloody hole through the warboss's leg before the ammunition ran out. He tossed the empty pistol aside and gripped the frost axe with both hands. 'Skargutz the Render, your end is upon you,' he cried. 'You have dared the righteous wrath of the Allfather, and now there will be a reckoning.'
The warboss spun with surprising speed, scattering two Marines with a sweep of his claw. Skaflock leapt forward, rolling between the ork's massive legs, then rose to a crouch and sliced across the back of the warboss's knees. Pistons and hydraulic lines burst; joints and muscles failed, and Skargutz toppled with a crash. The huge ork tried to twist onto his side and lash backwards with his claw, but Kjarl caught its bloodied blades in his power fist. For a moment both warriors struggled, neither gaining ground on the other until, with a shriek of tortured metal, the power claw gave way in a shower of sparks.
Skaflock leapt forward, raising the frost axe high in a two-handed grip. 'When Morkai's kin drag your soul past the Hall of Heroes, tell them it was Haldane Ironhammer's axe that slew you!' The ork's snarl was cut short as the frost axe fell and the warboss's head bounced across the dais to stop at the dead wolf lord's feet.
Kjarl looked down at the dead warboss, his shoulders heaving with exertion. 'It is done.'
'Not quite yet,' Skaflock said. He gestured to the surviving Space Wolves, a single scout and two Blood Claws. 'Go and stand watch at the door.' Then, to Kjarl: 'Let us clear a table to place our lord upon, and lay the bodies of his foes at his feet.'
They pulled a table onto the dais and laid Haldane upon it, and piled his dead foes around him. As Kjarl laid the body of the dark eldar on the pile, he suddenly frowned. 'What's this?'
Skaflock watched the Blood Claw pull a small, silvery object from the alien's belt. A pale cobalt light gleamed on its surface. 'Some kind of control box?' he suggested.
'Perhaps,' Kjarl said, and crushed it in his fist. Suddenly the Blood Claw tensed, his hand going to his ear. 'Static!' he said. 'I can hear static on my vox-bead! That box must have controlled the vox jammers.'
One of the Blood Claws called from the doorway. 'The greenskins are massing at the end of the corridor. They'll be on us in minutes.'
Thinking quickly, Skaflock started digging through his carry-bags. He still had three designator beacons that the scouts hadn't found time to deploy. 'A few minutes are all we need,' he said, laying out the beacons and pressing their activation runes. 'Soon this whole base will be a pyre for our lord, and the end of the ork invasion of Cambion.'
As he worked, a shadow fell over the Wolf Guard. Skaflock glanced up to see Kjarl watching him appraisingly. After a moment the Blood Claw steeled himself and said, 'It appears I misjudged you, Skaflock. You're a braver man than I gave you credit for, and a true son of Russ.'
Skaflock grinned and raised his hand in a weary salute. 'And you fought well, Kjarl Grimblood. I owe you my life. I expect the skalds will sing of your deeds for years to come.'
'So do I, by Russ.' Kjarl said with a smile. 'Speaking of which - I don't suppose you've got a plan for getting us out of here?' Nearly the entire chamber was ablaze, the rock walls running with streams of jellied fire. The heat and smoke was beginning to affect even the Space Wolves' enhanced endurance.
Skaflock grinned. 'Listen.' Beyond the high ceiling came distant, heavy beats, like the pounding of a massive drum. Each one was louder than the one before. 'Bombardment rounds,' the Wolf Guard said.
From the doorway, one of the Space Wolves let out a yell. 'The orks are retreating.'
'I doubt they want to get buried alive any more than we do,' Skaflock said. He glanced at Kjarl. 'Ready?'
Kjarl's eyes widened. 'You want to fight your way through a horde of panicked orks and out into the middle of an orbital bombardment?'
'Of course.' Skaflock raised the frost axe. 'I'd rather take my chances with the bombardment than risk Rothgar's fury if I failed to return this. He'd curse my soul until the end of time!'
Kjarl Grimblood threw back his head and roared with laughter. 'Lead on, brother,' he said, clapping Skaflock on the shoulder. And with a last salute to their fallen lord the Space Wolves charged after the fleeing orks, filling the air with their bone-chilling howls.