'Hail, Bregi,' Ragnar replied, stepping past the warriors. He found himself at a corridor junction, occupied by eight restless Blood Claws. Their armour was battered and rent, spattered with gore from head to toe. They raised their stained weapons in salute, and Ragnar saluted in return. 'What happened here?' he asked.
Bregi stepped forward, head held high. 'We were on our way to meet you, lord,' he said, 'and the cursed xenos were waiting for us. They were hiding in the debris and hanging in the shadows along the walls. Hogun tried to lead us out of the ambush, but there were just too many of them.' The Blood Claw glanced down the passageway, his expression grim. 'They forced us all the way back here, and then they hit us from the junction, too. They broke through our cordon, and then it was every warrior for himself.' The young warrior faced Ragnar. 'I lost count of all the monsters I slew, but for every one I struck down it seemed ten more were waiting to take its place. Then Hogun… he began to howl,' Bregi said, and a haunted look came over him. 'He hurled himself at his foes, slaying half-a-dozen monsters with every sweep of his axe. It was… terrible to behold.'
Ragnar nodded grimly. 'I know of what you speak. What happened then?'
'Hogun fought like a wild beast,' Bregi continued. 'The xenos filth couldn't stand against him. He killed everything he could reach, and then, when there weren't any monsters left to kill, he took to hacking up the corpses. We… we tried to stop him, tried to calm him down, but when Erdwulf and Halvdan laid hands on him he turned and split Erdwulf's skull.' The Blood Claw's gaze fell upon the bodies of his three packmates. 'Halvdan and Svipdaeg fought him, thinking Hogun possessed, and perhaps he was. Hogun lost his helmet in the fight, and I saw the look on his face.' Bregi looked up at Ragnar. 'He was wolf bitten, lord. I saw it in his eyes. He's been lost to the Wulfen.'
'Where is he now?' Ragnar asked.
'He killed Halvdan and Svipdaeg and then ran off down that junction, howling like one of the damned,' Bregli replied. 'He took the demolition charge with him. It was still strapped to his back.'
Ragnar bit back a curse. 'You're pack leader now, Bregi,' he said. 'The Old Wolf will hear of your pack's courage when we return to the Fang. Now see to your men.'
Bregi nodded gravely and turned to his waiting pack.
A terrible howl echoed from the junction corridor. It was a fearsome, hungry sound, fraught with madness and pain.
Memories rose unbidden in his mind, down the long span of years: of the fighting on Charys and the ill-fated journey of the Fist of Russ ; of Gabriella and his old companions, Torin and Haegr. He saw in his mind's eye the storm wracked plain, and heard the mournful howls of the Wulfen. They had all experienced the curse of the Wulfen-kind on that dark campaign, each in their own way. For a time, they had all known what it meant to be lost.
The Wolf Priest stepped close, his gaze penetrating and inscrutable. 'What now, Wolf Lord?' he asked quietly.
In truth, there was only one thing he could do. 'Tend to the fallen,' Ragnar said. 'I'm going after Hogun.'
ONE
Sealed in Blood
'Twelve seconds to insertion!' Mikal Sternmark shouted over the vox, his voice rising over the shrieking wind and the thunder of the guns. 'We're entering the flak barrier now.'
As if on cue, a heavy shell exploded close to Berek Thunderfist's drop-pod, peppering its armoured hide with shrapnel, and shaking the Wolf Lord in his restraints like a rat in a terrier's jaws. More shells exploded in rapid succession, like staccato drumbeats against the drop-pod's skin, as the assault force streaked at near-supersonic speed through the capital city's air defence zone.
The Imperial Guard commanders on the ground had assured him that most of the city's anti-aircraft guns had been knocked out of action in the last few weeks. Another blast rang like a hammer blow against the pod's flank, hard enough to rattle Berek's teeth. If this was their idea of light AA fire, by Russ he didn't want to know what a full barrage felt like.
'Hang on, lads,' he said with a fierce laugh, 'here's where the ride gets rough!'
The Chaos uprising was in its fourth month on the planet Charys, an agri-world ominously close to Fenris. Servants of the Ruinous Powers had arisen on dozens of worlds spread across the Space Wolf domains, overthrowing local governments, staging suicide attacks and disrupting vital military and industrial networks. Many of the uprisings had been brutally dealt with by the Space Wolves and local Imperial Guard units, but the speed and ferocity of the campaign had left the Chapter scattered and their resources stretched thin. Elements of the Space Wolves' twelve great companies were in action on more than two dozen worlds, and several important sectors were teetering on the brink of anarchy.
The attacks were anything but random. The Old Wolf Logan Grimnar, Master of the Chapter, had seen that at once. It had begun with a Chaos uprising among the primitive xenos tribes on Hyades, triggering near-simultaneous attacks across vast stretches of space. A complex and devious plan had been set in motion, one that had clearly been in the works for a great many years. The enemy's ultimate objective remained a mystery, but one thing was clear: if the Chaos forces were not stopped soon, the damage inflicted to many of the local sectors could take decades, if not centuries to repair.
Berek and the Old Wolf had studied the pattern of the uprisings for months, looking for the lynchpin of the Chaos campaign. Every indicator pointed to Charys, which was why he'd brought his entire great company to the agri-world and assumed command of the planetary defences. Within hours of his arrival he'd laid plans for a counter-offensive aimed at driving a spear into the uprising's heart. He and his Space Wolves were the tip of that spear, plunging on trails of fire from the company's battle-barge high overhead.
Battle reports from the planet's surface indicated that two local Guard regiments and the vast majority of the local Planetary Defence Force had forsaken their holy oaths and sworn fealty to the Ruinous Powers. Opposing them were seven loyal Guard regiments shipped in from neighbouring worlds, each of them locked in bitter urban combat to recapture the world's major population centres. Interrogations of captured officers and militiamen pointed to the former governor, Lord Volkus Bredwyr, and his family as the leaders of the revolt. Evidently, Lord Bredwyr and his household had nurtured an obscene cult within the bounds of the governor's palace, from where they continued to issue orders to their followers all over the world.
Berek swore that all that was going to change in the next few minutes.
The capital city of Charys was heavily defended, occupied by one of the rebels' traitor regiments and units of heavily armed planetary militia. Weeks of artillery and aerial bombardment had levelled the city walls and reduced entire districts to smoking rubble, but rebel forces had placed strongpoints at every intersection and turned the narrow streets into mined kill zones. Loyal Guard regiments operating from the nearby starport had only managed to seize a narrow foothold on the eastern fringe of the city, almost a dozen kilometres from the fortress of the governor's palace. The air over the massive, walled compound shimmered with the dark haze of an Imperator-class void shield, proof against the heaviest shells the Guard could throw at it.
As the drop-pods streaked down through clouds of anti-aircraft fire a holo-slate built into the drop-cradle above Berek's head projected a detailed display of the battle unfolding below. Mere minutes before the Holmgang launched her drop-pods, the Guard regiments at the edge of the city had begun a fierce offensive, driving hard for the city centre.
Heavy tanks and armoured personnel carriers were assaulting rebel strongpoints, advancing under a steady rain of heavy artillery shells. Dark masses of infantry advanced doggedly in their wake, dashing from one shell hole to the next in the face of intense enemy fire. Lascannon bolts and rocket trails leapt from the rebel positions, and streams of tracer fire raked through the struggling infantry formations. Casualties mounted as the Imperial forces charged across the killing ground. Tanks and armoured personnel carriers exploded in balls of fire, incinerating the hapless squads inside.
The traitors were throwing everything they had at the oncoming troops, and the augurs of the Space Marine vessels overhead took careful note of their positions.
An amber warning icon flashed along the margin of the holo-display as the Holmgang and her attendant strike cruisers opened fire. Salvoes of bombardment rounds, each one massing as much as a Leman Russ tank, impacted in a curtain of fire four seconds later, stretching in an arc five kilometres wide in front of the Imperial advance. Rebel strongpoints disintegrated. Entire city blocks vanished in boiling clouds of flame and pulverised ferrocrete. In a single instant of righteous fury, the traitors' defensive line was shattered. Even the Imperial advance faltered for a moment, stunned by the sheer ferocity of the attack. As the Guard units watched in awe, the bombardment shifted, marching inexorably towards the city centre, and the regiments surged forward once more, forcing their way past the shattered rebel positions.
The warning icon flashed an insistent red as the drop-pods neared the terminal phase of their approach, and the second phase of the Space Wolf bombardment began.
'Here it comes,' Berek said, settling deep into his restraints as the icons of five Nova-class escorts in high orbit flashed crimson and unleashed their lance batteries on the shields of the governor's palace. Ravening beams of energy stabbed downwards amid the plummeting drop-pods. One passed so close to Berek's pod that the ionisation caused the onboard lights to flicker, and sent waves of static coruscating across the holomap. The superheated air outside the pod howled like the Stormwolf of legend, and Berek Thunderfist howled along with it.
Five lance beams played across the palace's shields for almost a full second, setting off a ripple of concussive blasts that hammered at the falling drop-pods and rattled the Wolf Lord's bones. The blasts were so intense that Berek didn't even realise the pod's retro thrusters had kicked in until he saw the landing countdown flash on the holo-display. Three seconds later the drop-pod slammed to earth and explosive bolts fired, lowering Berek's assault ramp to the ground. The Wolf Lord hit his quick release and, with a roar, charged into the mouth of hell.
The company's dropsite was a kilometre square parade ground that stretched before the gates of the governor's palace. A hot wind roared across the scorched plain, buffeting the Wolf Lord's bare face and tangling his braided blond hair. Columns of smoke and fire coiled into the sky from the palace grounds and the buildings surrounding the square.
Corpses and parts of corpses littered the parade ground, many burned beyond recognition. Men staggered across the scorched ferrocrete, their eyes glassy with shock and their uniforms blackened by heat. Berek glanced quickly around and saw more than a dozen armoured vehicles arrayed around the square. Some were on fire or had been overturned by the bombardment, but most still appeared functional. The company had dropped right into the middle of a mechanised battalion that had been using the square as a staging area.
Fifty metres away, the rear assault ramp of a Chimera armoured transport dropped, and a squad of stunned rebel Guardsmen scrambled out. Berek turned and raked them with a long burst from his storm bolter. Explosive rounds stitched across the chests of the surprised traitors and flashed along the rear deck of the APC. Before the torn bodies had even hit the ground, the Wolf Lord activated his beacon and keyed the command channel on his vox-unit. 'Blood and thunder!' he roared, sounding the war cry of his company. 'Wolf Guard, to me! All packs, form up and clear the square!'
Even as he spoke, the staccato thump thump thump of storm bolters and the more measured fire of boltguns echoed across the square as the Space Wolves leapt into action. Off to Berek's right there was a draconian hiss as a cyclone missile launcher fired, sending an armour piercing rocket into the side of another Chimera. The APC exploded in a huge fireball, and the battle began in earnest.
The four Terminators accompanying Berek in his drop-pod took up positions around their lord, snapping off shots from their storm bolters. One of the Wolf Guard levelled his assault cannon at a charging squad of rebels and tore them to pieces with a two-second burst. Streaks of fire criss-crossed overhead as Deathwind launchers on several of the Space Marine drop-pods went into action. Explosions ripped across the square amid the growing crackle of lasgun fire.
A rocket hissed across the battlefield and struck one of the Wolf Guard standing beside Berek. The krak missile struck the Space Marine full in the chest, knocking him back a step, but the anti-tank round could not penetrate the adamantine breastplate of the ancient Terminator suit. The Wolf Lord caught sight of the rocket team, killed them with a quick burst, and then turned his attention to the disposition of his troops.
Anti-aircraft fire and cyclonic winds had scattered the company's six drop-pods all across the parade field. From where he stood, Berek could see the tops of four other pods, one to the north-west, one to the north and two to the east. 'Aldrek! Where are you?' he called. The Rune Priest had been in the drop-pod containing the rest of Berek's Wolf Guard.
Aldrek responded at once. 'I mark you 300 metres to my east,' he said over the vox. 'We are on our way.'
A loud boom echoed from the edge of the square, and the drop-pod to the east exploded. The voice of Thorvald, one of Berek's Grey Hunter pack leaders, rang out over the command net. 'Battle tank at the eastern edge of the square! I'm taking casualties.'
'We see him, brother,' a gruff voice answered. It was Gunnar, one of the Long Fang pack leaders. 'We're some way off to the west, but we're manoeuvring to line up a shot. Stand by.'
The Wolf Lord nodded in satisfaction. The volume of lasgun fire was increasing, stitching threads of blazing light across the square from every direction, but the company had sorted itself out and was responding decisively to the threat. Berek was just about to order his Wolf Guard forward when the air shook with a roar of dual petrochem engines and a Chimera APC came charging out of the smoke directly at the command squad. The forty-tonne armoured vehicle sideswiped the drop-pod behind the Wolves, toppling it onto its side, and bore down on the Space Marines like an enraged rhinodon. Multi-laser bolts spat from its squat turret, flashing among the Terminators as they scattered to either side of the onrushing war machine. One bolt detonated against the pauldron of Berek's Terminator armour, making his ears ring and leaving a scorch mark on the curved ceramite. The Wolf Lord bared his fangs as he turned to face the APC, his power fist crackling. 'Blood and thunder!' he cried, and met its charge head-on.
Berek gauged the vehicle's approach with an experienced eye. More laser bolts snapped harmlessly overhead as the Chimera drew too close for the gunner to target him. The Wolf Lord raised his storm bolter and rattled off a long burst at the driver's vision block. The explosive rounds smashed into the armourplas, and the driver panicked, slewing the vehicle slightly to Berek's right. At that moment, he stepped forward and smashed his power fist into the APC's right quarter. There was a thunderous detonation. Armour crumpled, partially converted to plasma by the power fist's energy field. The forward axle snapped, hurling a spinning tyre past Berek's head, and the APC flipped heavily onto its left side. Moments later, the rear assault hatch was shoved open, and the bloody survivors of the infantry squad staggered out of the smoking wreck into the Wolf Guard's merciless fire.
'Well struck!' Aldrek cried, raising his gory rune axe in salute as he and four more Terminators jogged heavily out of the swirling smoke. 'Gunnar knocked out the battle tank with his lascannons, and he reports that the traitors are falling back to the east. What now?'
Berek pointed north. 'Forward, to the palace gates,' he cried. 'We have to get inside before the rebels recover from our bombardment and launch a counterattack. If the traitors bring up more heavy armour we'll be overrun before our Guard allies can reach us.' Without waiting for a reply, the Wolf Lord set off at a ponderous run, heading north.
Lasgun fire flickered over Berek's head as he drew closer to the palace walls, growing in volume with each passing minute. Streams of tracer shells stitched their way through the smoke as rebel gunners opened fire with heavy stubbers mounted on the square towers of the palace gatehouse. Missiles hissed through the air and exploded above the battlefield, showering the Wolf Lord and his companions with clouds of red-hot shrapnel.
Berek reached the bulk of his company a minute later, just a few hundred metres short of the palace gates. Two of his three Grey Hunter packs had taken cover behind the burning wrecks of a pair of Chimeras, while his two Long Fang packs fired at the palace defences from the rims of a pair of shell craters nearby. As he watched, two lascannon gunners from Thorbjorn's Long Fang pack targeted the battlements of the leftmost gate tower. The red beams vaporised a corner of the structure in a cloud of pulverised ferrocrete, spilling burning bodies onto the square sixty metres below.
At the Wolf Lord's approach, one of the Grey Hunter pack leaders rose from cover and dashed over to Berek. 'Well met, lord,' the pack leader said. 'It appears we have a problem.'