Wolf's Honour Part 1

WOLF'S HONOUR.

Lee Lightner.

Special thanks to Mike Lee.

It is the 41st millennium. For more thin 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 G.o.ds, and master of a million worlds by the might of his inexhaustible armies. He is a rotting carca.s.s writhing invisibly with power from the Dark Age of Technology. He is the Carrion Lord of the Imperium for whom a thousand souls arc 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 s.p.a.ce 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 mult.i.tudes, they arc 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 b.l.o.o.d.y 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 G.o.ds.

PROLOGUE.

Heart of the Wolf.

The four Thunderhawks swept in at full power with the sun of Hydra Hydalis at their backs, plunging like a sheaf of iron tipped spears at the dark leviathan drifting before them. If someone - or something - on the s.p.a.ce hulk was watching for signs of attack, Ragnar Blackmane wanted to mask their approach until the last possible moment, concealing their emissions amid the raging solar winds given off by the system's three suns.

It hung in the void like the pitted shard of a broken world. Ridges of stone, plains of ice and towers of trapped metal stretched for more than ten kilometres, dwarfing all but the largest of Imperial battleships. And not the biggest of its kind by any stretch, Ragnar thought grimly, studying its ominous bulk through the viewports of the lead Thunderhawk's command deck.

s.p.a.ce hulks were the flotsam and jetsam of the warp, or so the theory went, drifting in and out of the Immaterium as though carried on an invisible tide. Many were nothing more than hunks of lifeless rock, perhaps torn from worlds by the teeth of warp storms in ages past. Others, however, were studded with the hulls of entombed starships, some of them tens of thousands of years old and not all of them human in design. Such discoveries were legendary; often they contained treasure troves of lost technology and xenos lore.

Sometimes they also carried horrors hidden deep within their decks: foul alien raiders, hordes of twisted mutants, or worse.

When the s.p.a.ce hulk first arrived at the edge of the system almost eight standard months ago the handful of decrepit ships that comprised the Hydalis system defence squadron drew close enough to perform a series of long-range auguries. Not long afterwards, the alarm had gone out via astropath, and three months later Fenris sent its answer.

Now all that stood between the oncoming hulk and the forty-five billion Imperial citizens of Hydra Cordalis was Ragnar Blackmane and his small company of Wolves.

The harsh light of Hydalis's primary gave the notional prow of the hulk a bleached out, blue-grey cast. Tendrils of steam wreathed the rocky surface as pockets of trapped ice boiled away beneath the suns' harsh glare. Here and there, the light flared painfully bright along a spar of metal or a shard of jagged hull plating. Abyssal shadows pooled in the depths of ancient impact craters. They seemed to shift with the changing position of the Thunderhawk, like the multiple eyes of some vast predator. The thought left a cold feeling in the Wolf Lord's gut. Ragnar was first and foremost a son of Fenris, and his people had a healthy dread for the horrors of the deep.

Baring his fangs in a silent snarl, Ragnar surveyed the red-lit interior of the command deck. It was a cramped s.p.a.ce at the best of times, the pilot and co-pilot side-by-side at the forward end of the compartment. A master tech-priest and the senior augur operator situated directly behind them. The two bondsmen were fitted in bulky, armoured flight suits that made them look slope-shouldered and apelike, but Ragnar's power armoured bulk loomed head and shoulders above them all. With the Wolf Lord standing at the back of the compartment the atmosphere was nearly claustrophobic, but the crew did their level best to go about their work as though Ragnar wasn't there.

The Wolf Lord turned his gaze to the augur operator at his right. 'Any change?' he asked.

'None, lord,' the crewman replied, never taking his eyes from the wavering lines on the augur screens before him. The operator reached up with a gloved hand and made a minute adjustment to a set of bra.s.s fronted dials. 'No engine heat or augur signals. It's drifting at a constant rate, heading for the centre of the system.'

'Any power emissions at all?' Ragnar inquired.

The crewman shook his head. 'None so far,' he said. 'We'll know more as we get closer.'

Ragnar nodded thoughtfully, and then addressed the pilot. 'Where is the hull that the defence ships spotted on their augurs?'

The pilot glanced over his shoulder at the Wolf Lord; like Ragnar, the s.p.a.ce Wolf wasn't wearing a helmet. Bright blue eyes glittered beneath a pair of s.h.a.ggy red eyebrows, and a web of fine scars indented the pale skin of his right cheek. 'We'll find it on the dorsal side of the hulk, lord,' the pilot said in a rumbling voice, 'roughly amidships, so they said. We'll be there in another few minutes.' Then he turned back and keyed the vox-bead behind his ear. 'Jotun flight: approach pattern Epsilon,' the pilot growled, 'and Snorri, keep your fat a.r.s.e tucked into formation this time. If you get shot down again you're walking back to Fenris!'

Ragnar couldn't hear Snorri's reply, but the flight leader let out a booming laugh and pushed the throttles forward. The three other Thunderhawks in the flight shook out into a rough arrowhead formation, and their thrusters flared blue-white as they began the final phase of their approach.

The Wolf Lord shifted his weight and reached for a nearby stanchion as the a.s.sault craft pulled into a climb that carried them over the hulk's bulbous prow at a distance of less than a hundred metres. Jumbled plains of rock and twisted metal flashed by underneath the Thunderhawk's nose. Ragnar caught fleeting glimpses of broken hulls jutting from the surface: here the curved bow of an Imperial merchant ship, there the saw-toothed profile of an ork raider. Once he thought he caught the dull sheen of yellowed bone encased in a steaming sheet of ice.

Then he saw it, like a dark cathedral rising from a broken field of stone. 'There, off to starboard,' Ragnar said, pointing just to the right of their current course.

'That's it!'

'Where?' the pilot said, peering into the darkness. Then he straightened in his seat. 'Ah, yes. I see it now.'

The ancient warship rose from the centre of the hulk as though it had taken shape around her. Plains of broken stone stretched away on all sides, rising almost to the level of her dorsal turret deck. Her b.u.t.tressed command bridge stood straight and tall, still remarkably intact after more than four thousand years. The prow of the Imperial battleship was almost completely buried, but Ragnar saw that instead of the customary eagle's head at its crown there rose the figure of an armoured warrior, sword and shield held ready.

The tech priest shifted in his seat and pulled a thick, leather-covered tome from a satchel tucked underneath his console. The priest flipped through the yellowed pages, comparing the winged statue on the warship with the images pictured in the book. Suddenly he sat upright. 'Here it is,' he said, his voice tinged with awe. 'She's the Dominus Bellum. One of Vandire's ships, according to the text. Disappeared right after the battle of Ophelia VII.'

Ragnar studied the derelict carefully. The condition of the ancient battleship was crucial to his plans. As soon as he'd received the report from the Hydalis defence squadron he knew that his lone strike cruiser, the Stormwolf, had no chance of destroying the hulk on its own. If the Dominus Bellum's reactors were still intact, however, it was possible they could destroy the drifting hulk from within.

'Any power readings?' the Wolf Lord asked.

The augur operator studied his screens and shook his head. 'No lord. It's... wait!' He began tuning a set of dials, and the lines on one of the screens suddenly spiked. 'I'm picking up energy spikes along the dorsal hull and z-band augur signals!'

'Morkai's teeth!' the pilot cursed, grabbing for his mic. 'Jotun flight! Evasive action!'

Just as he spoke, Ragnar saw pinp.r.i.c.ks of fire flash and stutter along the length of the battleship's upper deck, and suddenly the Thunderhawk was engulfed in nets of tracer fire and blasts of explosive sh.e.l.ls. Hammer blows rang against the Thunderhawk's armoured hull, and the Wolf Lord was thrown forward as the a.s.sault ship dived even closer to the hulk's treacherous hull. The other Thunderhawks of Jotun flight followed suit, smoke streaming from minor hits along their fuselages and wings.

Ragnar tightened his grip on the stanchion as the Thunderhawk plunged through the chaotic storm of fire. The battleship's defensive turrets blazed away at the oncoming a.s.sault ships, filling the void with a wall of energy bolts, sh.e.l.ls and streams of high-velocity slugs. Shrapnel from near misses raked at the Thunderhawk's flanks, and a blow like a t.i.tan's fist smote the craft on the starboard side. Lurid red icons flashed urgently on the tech-priest's console, and the young crewman began flipping switches hurriedly as he whispered a prayer of salvation to the Omnissiah.

The Wolf Lord growled under his breath. The plan had been to try and find an intact hangar deck to land on, but that was out of the question now. Ragnar realised that any hope of a rapid and orderly sweep of the derelict had just been thrown out of the airlock. He reached forward with his free hand and gripped the pilot's shoulder. 'Full a.s.sault profile!' he yelled. 'Get us on board any way you can.'

Nodding his head, the pilot keyed his vox-bead to relay orders to the flight. Another blow shook the a.s.sault ship, and Ragnar's keen nose caught the smell of burning circuitry. Quick as he could, the Wolf Lord turned and stepped through the rear hatchway, heading down the ladder beyond to the a.s.sault bay where his Wolf Guard and the company's priests waited.

Ragnar dropped down to the metal clad deck with a clang. The cavernous a.s.sault bay, large enough for thirty fully-armed s.p.a.ce Marines, was crowded with ten warriors in ma.s.sive Tactical Dreadnought armour. Though slow and ponderous, the ancient suits of Terminator armour were ideal for the close confines of a s.p.a.ce hulk's pa.s.sageways, and Ragnar had brought every one of the ancient suits he could muster. Power fists flexed and armoured heads swivelled to regard the Wolf Lord, and a chorus of rough howls greeted Ragnar from the Wolf Guard's vox-units. Jurgen, the company's Iron Priest, waited at the far end of the bay, flanked by four powerful thrall servitors. Jurgen was locked into his a.s.sault cradle like the other Wolves, his helmeted head bowed as he read a litany of protection from a small, metal clad book in his gauntleted hands.

Next to Ragnar, an adamantine helmet worked in the shape of a ma.s.sive wolf skull turned slightly to regard him. Pale golden lenses the colour of lupine eyes studied him from the depths of the helm's black oculars. The vox-unit on the Wolf Priest's Terminator suit crackled. 'I take it the hulk is hostile,' he said laconically.

Ragnar chuckled, stepping to his a.s.sault cradle and reaching for his waiting helmet. Normally he hated wearing the thing, preferring to feel the thunder of battle and the hot touch of blood on his skin. That sort of thing required air, however, and there was no way to know if they'd find any inside the battleship's hull. 'Frankly, it never occurred to me that it might be otherwise,' he replied. 'I didn't expect this hot a reception, though.'

He pulled the helmet on and locked it into the adamantine gorget. There was a moment of darkness, and then, immediately, the helm's optical systems flickered into life. Icons and readouts shone in dull colours at the corners of his vision, showing the status of his suit and those of his pack. With a murmured command, he tapped into the Thunderhawk's command channel and received status icons from the rest of the company as he locked himself into the a.s.sault cradle. The Wolf Lord noted grimly that three icons in Hogun's Blood Claw pack were flashing amber. Jotun Four's been hit hard, Ragnar thought grimly. Three men out of action and we haven't even reached the target yet. An ill omen.

A ma.s.sive impact struck the rear quarter of the a.s.sault ship, hard enough to throw Ragnar against the cradle's restraints. His stomach lurched for half an instant as the whole ship seemed to slew sideways. The battle lanterns flickered. In the darkness, one of the Wolf Guard threw back his head and howled like a fiend. Fist and sword clashed against armour, and rough voices barked out battle chants as old as Fenris itself. Ragnar bared his teeth in the close confines of his helmet and felt his blood burn.

Then there was a thunderous roar, and the Thunderhawk shook from stem to stern. A bright red icon flashed a warning but Ragnar already knew what was coming. 'Here we go!' he bellowed, and the a.s.sault craft touched down on the battleship's hull with a bone-crushing impact and a scream of tortured metal.

Ragnar rebounded from the cradle restraints and smashed a fist against the quick release. With a murmured benediction, he queried the Thunderhawk's machine-spirit and gauged the position of his forces. Jotun flight had broken formation at the flight leader's order and their high-speed approaches had scattered them in a wide arc across the battleship's dorsal hull. Jotun Four was closest to Ragnar's Thunderhawk, landing parallel to the Wolf Lord's a.s.sault ship almost 750 metres away. Jotun Two had landed in the shadow of one of the battleship's ma.s.sive dorsal lance turrets, well over a thousand metres distant. There was no way to tell by the readout if the a.s.sault ship would be able to take off once more. Jotun Three was nowhere to be seen, the Thunderhawk's icon conspicuously absent from the readout.

Ragnar bit back a sulphurous curse. He gestured to Jurgen. 'Ventral breach,' he ordered, and the Iron Priest leapt into action. Slipping out of his a.s.sault cradle, Jurgen moved nimbly among the hulking Terminators and knelt before a hatch on the deck in the centre of the bay. The Iron Priest's voice rolled sonorously from the vox-unit of his ornately worked power armour, asking forgiveness from the ancient spirits of the Dominus Bellum, and then p.r.o.nouncing the Benediction of the Fiery Breach as he flipped open an access panel beside the hatch. Jurgen lifted a heavy lever, and the shaped melta charges attached to the ventral breaching unit detonated with a leaden thump. There was a shrieking of incandescent gases as the focused plasma charge drove like a molten spear tip through more than half a dozen metres of heavy armour and pierced the battleship's hull.

Moving with the speed and ease of veteran warriors, the Wolf Guard quickly formed up around the ventral hatch, ready to jump off. Ragnar keyed open the command channel on his vox-unit. For the moment, he could tap into the vox-network of Jotun Flight's transports and communicate with his scattered forces. He knew from experience that would change once he was inside the hull of the huge warship. 'Strike Team Surtur, status report,' he called.

The company's Wolf Scouts and Leif's Grey Hunter pack aboard Jotun Two checked in first. 'We're going in now,' the Wolf Guard pack leader reported. 'I mark your position at twelve hundred metres. Hogun's pack is closer. Do you want me and Petur to link up with the Blood Claws first?'

'You look to your own pack, Leif,' Hogun cut in. The Blood Claw pack leader's voice was rough-edged with fury. 'The Blood Claws hunt alone!'

The vehemence in Hogun's voice surprised Ragnar. The Wolf Guard had proven to be a cold, clear-eyed warrior, which was why he'd been given command of the hot-headed Blood Claws in the first place. 'What's the status of your pack, Hogun?' Ragnar snapped.

'Three brothers are badly wounded. They have slipped into the Red Dream,' Hogun snarled. s.p.a.ce Marines, with their enhanced physiology and redundant vital organs, were extraordinarily difficult to kill.

s.p.a.ce Marines in the field who had been incapacitated by their wounds often went into a life-sustaining form of suspended animation until they could receive proper treatment. 'A burst of sh.e.l.ls tore through the a.s.sault bay,' the pack leader continued. 'The rest of us got away with minor wounds.'

'Does anyone know what happened to Jotun Three?' Ragnar asked.

'They were hit hard, just short of the target,' Leif reported. 'I can't be certain, but I think they overshot and landed on the starboard side of the ship.'

'Have they contacted you?'

'No, lord. It's possible their vox system was knocked out. As I said, they were hit hard.'

That left a pack of Grey Hunters and the company's Long Fangs unaccounted for and possibly dead. Ragnar drew his bolt pistol and considered his options. 'All right,' he said. 'I and my pack will activate our beacons now. Leif, you and Hogun home in on our signal. Petur, take your scouts and see if you can locate Jotun Three. We'll hold here until everyone has linked up. Then we'll head aft to the reactor vault. Now go, and Russ be with you.'

'For Russ and the Allfather!' Leif answered, and the channel went silent.

Satisfied, Ragnar activated his power armour's recovery beacon and instructed his Wolf Guard to do the same. Then he gave Jurgen a curt nod, and the Iron Priest turned a heavy dial on the control panel beside the hatch. With a sharp hiss and a column of scalding steam, the breaching hatch slid open. Ragnar stepped to the edge and peered down into a circular shaft of semi-molten metal that dropped away into darkness.

Baring his fangs in the close confines of his helmet, the Wolf Lord leapt into the shaft.

The drop was longer than he expected. Ragnar fell through the breaching shaft and into a cavernous s.p.a.ce beneath, hitting the canted deck twenty metres below with an echoing boom. He landed in a crouch, servos whining, and then leapt to his feet and dashed forward, pistol at the ready. His sword flashed from its scabbard, its diamond-hard teeth whirring to deadly life with a faint, ominous moan.

He found himself in a long, high-ceilinged pa.s.sageway crowded with debris. Armoured viewports let in the faint gleam of starlight, giving the silent corridor a ghostly cast. Fallen support beams and smashed masonry from toppled statues and broken containers were strewn everywhere. The dust of ages swirled in faint eddies around Ragnafs feet. His armour registered heat and atmosphere, heavy with nitrogen and laced with an acrid stink that set the Wolf Lord's teeth on edge.

The Wolf Priest landed next, power crackling menacingly from his crozius arcanum, and then came the Wolf Guard Terminators in rapid succession. The Terminators faced outwards in a circular perimeter to allow Jurgen and his thralls to lower down their cargo: an armoured case containing a plasma breaching charge. The Iron Priest reckoned that they would need a minimum of three charges to pierce the battleship's reactor cores and destroy the hulk. Ragnar had brought four, just to be safe. Leifs pack had one, Hogun's pack another, and Einar, the Grey Hunter pack leader on Jotun Three, had the spare. With Einar missing, however, they'd lost their safety margin, which Ragnar didn't like at all.

Powerful searchlights cut through the darkness as the Wolf Guard activated their suit lights. 'Ho, lord!' one of the warriors called out. 'Have a look at this.'

Ragnar followed the beam of the warrior's searchlight and saw a curious pile of weapons lying in the dust. Frowning, the Wolf Lord walked over and inspected them. They were crude swords and axes shaped from bulkhead plating, the hide grips tattered and grey. A ma.s.sive, ungainly firearm, clearly built for something much larger than a man lay nearby. A long, twisted belt of corroded sh.e.l.ls lay pooled beneath the weapon.

'Greenskins,' Ragnar growled. 'There were orks on this ship at some point, but what happened to them?'

'The previous owners must have seen them off,' the Wolf Priest replied. 'Someone turned those turrets on us.'

'Not so,' Jurgen said, lowering the breaching charge carefully to the deck. With a hiss of pneumatics, the Iron Priest's powerful servo-arm retracted against his backpack. 'It could have been an automated response triggered by the ship's machine-spirit,' he said, and shrugged. 'At least now we know the battleship's reactors are still active.'

Ragnar nudged the pile of crude weapons with the toe of his boot. 'Then what happened to the green-skins?' he mused, 'and why were their bodies removed, but their weapons left behind?'

A sense of foreboding crept upon the Wolf Lord, p.r.i.c.kling the hairs on the back of his neck. Something was very wrong. He turned and peered warily down the rubble strewn pa.s.sageway leading aft. Ragnar could feel a chill creeping over him, like a rime of frost spreading inexorably across the surface of his brain. He suddenly regretted not having the services of a Rune Priest at his disposal.

Ragnar keyed his vox-unit. 'All packs report in,' he ordered.

A hissing screech of static answered. Words came and went in the torrent of noise. It might have been Hogun, but Ragnar couldn't be sure. 'd.a.m.ned armoured bulkheads,' he muttered.

'Hist!' The Wolf Priest said. 'Did you hear that?'

Ragnar c.o.c.ked his head and listened, straining his enhanced senses to the utmost. There! He heard it, a whispery sound, like wind over broken stones or the hiss of a distant tide.

Or like the dry clatter of claws, hundreds and hundreds of them, scrabbling along the deck of an ancient battleship.

They swept up the pa.s.sageway in a seething wave of chitin, their armoured sh.e.l.ls shining dully in the searchlights. The xenos swarm flowed over obstacles and along the pitted walls like a swarm of spiders, their four arms and powerful legs scrabbling for purchase on the slick metal bulkheads. They were almost as large as s.p.a.ce Marines, with broad, taloned hands that looked capable of rending adamantium plate, and armoured carapaces that shone a mottled green beneath the Wolf Guard's suit lights. Their heads were bulbous and vaguely humanoid, each with a leering fanged mouth and black eyes as cold as the Abyss itself.

The people of Hydra Hydalis were in far greater danger than anyone imagined.

'Genestealers!' Ragnar snarled, raising his bolt pistol and firing into the oncoming ma.s.s. Carapaces burst, and torn limbs spun through the air as the ma.s.s-reactive sh.e.l.ls found their marks. Keening inhuman shrieks echoed along the pa.s.sageway, and were lost in the rattling thunder of storm bolters as the Wolves of Fenris answered their foes.

The front ranks of the xenos horde writhed and rippled as streams of explosive sh.e.l.ls tore through them, blasting frenzied monsters apart. One of the Wolf Guard stepped forward with a roar and levelled a heavy flamer at the oncoming horde. Scores of shrieking creatures vanished in a seething blast of promethium, but the rest came on, trampling their burning kin beneath the weight of hundreds of clawed feet.

Shouts and gunfire echoed from the forward end of the pa.s.sageway as well. The xenos monsters had them surrounded. Ragnar caught a glimpse of the Wolf Priest on the other side of the perimeter, directing fire from half the Wolf Guard into the new wave of attackers. A second Terminator opened fire with his heavy flamer, sweeping the forward pa.s.sage in an arc of all-consuming flame.

A genestealer leapt at Ragnar from high on the starboard wall of the pa.s.sageway, reaching for the Wolf Lord with its taloned hands. Ragnar pivoted on his left foot and shot the creature point-blank, hurling its shattered body into the oncoming mob. More alien monsters were leaping at him, dropping from the walls or bounding ahead of the oncoming horde. Ragnar's frost blade howled as he decapitated one attacker in mid-leap, and then spun and severed the limbs of another. A fourth monster reared before him like a cobra. Howling his battle l.u.s.t, Ragnar shot the creature in the face. Then the air filled with mindless, screeching cries as the tide of horrors swept over the s.p.a.ce Wolves.

Claws slashed and rang against Ragnar's armour. Rending talons jabbed like knives, striking hip, shoulder, neck and face. The Wolf Lord's heart hammered in his chest, and his blood seethed with righteous rage. He swept his ancient sword in devastating arcs, splitting torsos, severing limbs and slicing throats. The stink of xenos fluids filled the air, and every blow the monsters landed on Ragnar only enflamed him further. The battle madness was upon him, and he embraced it gladly.

Ragnar's vision narrowed. A howling filled his ears, rising and falling in volume like a spirit of the d.a.m.ned. The sounds of battle blurred, as though echoing from far away. Even the blurring speed of the aliens seemed to slow. A talon found a c.h.i.n.k in his armour and bit deep. The Wolf Lord decapitated the monster with a backhanded slash, and then coolly shot three more monsters point-blank. A warning icon at the corner of his eye told Ragnar his pistol was empty. He smashed the b.u.t.t of the pistol into the skull of another leaping xenos and dashed its body to the deck.

All around him, the Wolf Guard lashed out at the frenzied creatures with fist and blade, their Terminator suits splashed with alien blood. Ragnar glimpsed Jurgen the Iron Priest hurling knots of broken creatures through the air with sweeps of his powerful servo-arm. The Wolf Priest stood at the other side of the circle, laying about with his fiery crozius arcanum and bellowing a fell battle chant in the tongue of Fenris.

A monster leapt at Ragnar from the left. Without thinking, the Wolf Lord stunned the creature with a blow from his pistol and then split it from shoulder to hip with his blood-stained blade. Another, seeing its opportunity, dashed in from the opposite side, talons slashing for Ragnar's throat. Yet before it could reach the Wolf Lord, the monster was torn apart in a stream of storm bolter sh.e.l.ls from a nearby Wolf Guard.

Ragnar spun around, seeking more foes to slay, but everywhere he looked he found only the heaped bodies of the fallen. Terminators moved among the enemy dead, smoke rising from the barrels of their storm bolters as they finished off the wounded. Three of the Iron Priest's thralls were dead, their flesh-and-metal bodies ripped apart by alien claws. Jurgen knelt beside the fourth, attempting to repair a damaged leg joint. The Wolf Priest stood off to one side, b.l.o.o.d.y and indomitable, his Terminator armour limned in lurid red light from still burning pools of promethium.

The Wolf Lord breathed deeply, trying to master the fire burning in his blood. His hands worked of their own accord, dropping the bolt pistol's empty magazine and slapping in another. The howling continued to echo in his ears, a savage, b.e.s.t.i.a.l sound, devoid of reason or sanity.

With a chill, Ragnar realised that it was coming over the command channel. It sounded like Hogun's voice.

'Hogun?' Ragnar called over the vox. 'Hogun, answer me!' Abruptly, the howling ceased, but Hogun made no reply. Cursing silently, the Wolf Lord switched channels. 'Leif? Do you read?' Immediately Ragnar heard a response, but it was too garbled by static to make out.

Suddenly the Wolf Priest whirled, raising his storm bolter. 'More scrabbling sounds,' he warned, 'coming from further aft.'

Now that they had been discovered, the genestealers were swarming from their hiding places and seeking out the intruders. It was likely that all of the packs were under attack, and the Blood Claws sounded like they were in dire trouble. If Ragnar didn't act quickly the whole company might be overran, and the fate of the system would be sealed. 'Follow me!' he ordered, heading down the forward end of the pa.s.sage in the direction of Hogun's pack. 'Heavy flamers cover the rear. I don't want any of those xenos beasts overtaking us.'

The Wolf Guard fell into formation without a word, surrounding Jurgen and his demolition charge as they moved down the pa.s.sageway at a rambling trot. The Wolf Priest loped silently beside Ragnar, peering warily into the gloom. No doubt he'd heard the howls over the vox-net as well, and could guess what they portended.

It had been a long time since Ragnar had heard such a cry from a brother Wolf. Every s.p.a.ce Wolf had to contend with the beast within. The gifts Russ gave to his sons were double-edged, like everything else about Fenris. The strength and ferocity of the wolf could not be tamed, but constantly tugged at its chains, testing the will of its master, and made no distinction between friend or foe. To the wolf, there was only the hunt and the joy of the kill.

Ragnar had travelled almost seven hundred metres down the pa.s.sageway when he came upon the first xenos bodies. The dead monsters had been burst by bolt pistol sh.e.l.ls or split by axe and sword, and the further he went the more numerous they became.

The field of slaughter stretched for almost a hundred metres down the pa.s.sageway, with dead aliens piled in drifts almost as high as Ragnar's chest. Hogun's Blood Claws had waged an epic fight, driven slowly but steadily backwards by the sheer weight of their foes. Ragnar fought back a wave of dread, expecting to find the torn corpses of the pack somewhere ahead.

Instead, a trio of gore-splashed warriors leapt from behind a pile of alien corpses, levelling their bolt pistols at Ragnar's head. One of the Blood Claws had lost his helmet in the battle, and his eyes were wild with battle l.u.s.t. Recognising their lord, the Blood Claws lowered their weapons at once and stepped aside. 'Hail, Ragnar Wolf Lord,' the bare-headed warrior cried breathlessly.

'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.