Wolf's Honour Part 14

Sigurd said nothing at first, although the priest's stiff, silent demeanour told Ragnar that his point had hit home. Finally he said, 'We saw the battle unfold above the shadow world, but could only guess at the outcome.'

'The Fist of Russ is gone, and many brave men are feasting in the Halls of Russ now,' Ragnar said gravely. 'We detected a signal as we tried to make planetfall. Was that yours?'

'Yes,' Sigurd said. 'Bulveye was against it, but I thought it worth the risk. Lookouts spotted the aerial battle and the fires of your crash, and Torvald volunteered to search for survivors.' The priest spread his hands. 'The Wulfen caught your scent and led us to the agri-combine just in time.'

'It seems that the Wulfen saved you as well,' Ragnar said thoughtfully. Memories of the confused melee in the rebel command bunker flashed through his mind. 'The last I saw of you, you were surrounded by daemons.'

Sigurd gave Ragnar a hard look, but reluctantly nodded. 'It was a grim battle,' he agreed. 'They came upon me all at once, rising out of the aether like ghosts. This world we're on lies across Charys like a shadow, allowing them to step between the two at will.'

'I know,' the young s.p.a.ce Wolf replied. 'Inquisitor Volt and Lady Gabriella unravelled the mystery, which is what led us here in the first place.'

The Wolf Priest nodded in understanding. 'The daemons seemed to take particular interest in me for some reason. Perhaps a priest makes a better trophy than a mere warrior,' he said ruefully. 'I struck down several of the abominations, but to my shame the rest of them overwhelmed me. They pinned my arms and somehow dragged me back across the threshold into this nether realm.' Sigurd nodded to the towering form of the Rune Priest just ahead. 'But the foul creatures didn't realise they were being hunted. Torvald and the Wulfen ambushed the Chaos sorcerer and his daemons even as they ambushed us.'

Ragnar remembered the sight of the towering Wulfen grappling with the Chaos sorcerer in the vault beneath the rebel command bunker. 'So Torvald and his warriors can cross between the worlds as well?'

Sigurd frowned. 'Were that possible, I would have returned to the battle straightaway,' he snapped. 'No, the crossing is affected by sorcery. Sometimes it's possible to be caught up in the spell and drawn across the threshold, but only for a moment.' He shrugged. 'The Wulfen pulled down the sorcerer and tore him apart, and Torvald turned his axe upon the daemons besetting me. When the battle was done I tended their wounds as best as I could, and they treated me as one of their own.'

'But how did they come to be here?' Ragnar asked. 'Torin says the Thirteenth Company was lost during the time of the Heresy'

'Lost?' Sigurd seemed astonished by the notion. 'Bulveye's company was never lost, Ragnar. When a Wolf Lord is slain a new one is raised up to take his place. The same is true for the great companies, but a place for the Thirteenth remains at the table of the Great Wolf back on Fenris, as though they are expected to one day return. Think on that, Ragnar. The Thirteenth Company was sent into the Eye of Terror by Russ, and for ten thousand years they have continued their mission, regardless of the cost'

The thought was a sobering one. Ragnar studied the grey, featureless mountains ahead and tried to imagine wandering them for ten thousand years, until Fenris was nothing but a distant memory. Unbidden, he felt the wolf within him stir. 'Their honour has cost them dearly' he said.

'Honour always does,' the Wolf Priest replied.

For a while, they ran on in silence. The footfalls of the Wolves were like a heavy drumbeat across the sloping plain, beating out a war-song in time to the baleful lightning overhead. Ragnar considered his words carefully.

'How does a man come to be wolf-bitten, Sigurd?'

The Wolf Priest shot Ragnar a sharp look, but abruptly relented as he met the young s.p.a.ce Wolfs golden eyes. He considered the question for a moment before he replied. 'All of us have the wolf in our blood,' he said. 'It sharpens our senses and gives us the glad rage of the berserker in battle, but like any wild thing it tests its bonds constantly, waiting for the chance to break free.'

Sigurd stared thoughtfully at a pair of Wulfen loping silently along beside Harald's pack. 'It is a constant struggle between man and wolf,' he said, 'and not every soul is strong enough to keep the beast at bay,' The priest laid a hand on the Iron Wolf amulet at his breast. 'We bind the beast with sacred oaths to Russ and the Allfather, and we of the priesthood purify our battle-brothers with rituals and devotions to strengthen their resolve. For most, that is enough.'

'Yet not enough for Bulveye and his warriors.'

Ragnar expected a pious retort from the young priest, but when Sigurd spoke, his voice was surprisingly compa.s.sionate. 'It is not our place to judge these warriors,' he said with conviction. 'Even the ancient Dreadnoughts must sleep between times of war, lest they succ.u.mb to their feral natures. How hard must it be to keep one's soul intact after a thousand years of war, much less ten'

The Wolf Priest shook his head solemnly. 'It is a testament to their courage and honour that they have endured as long as they have.'

The young s.p.a.ce Wolf nodded thoughtfully. 'But... is there no way to restore them?'

Sigurd stiffened slightly. Ragnar was straying into the proscribed territory of the priesthood. 'The transformation is a gradual one,' he said guardedly, 'but once begun, the process is inexorable. As the wolf within gains power, it exerts physical changes on the body' He gestured to the Wulfen nearby. 'Much depends on the will and the faith of the warrior. The degradation can be halted, sometimes indefinitely, but it cannot be undone.'

The priest's words sent a chill through Ragnar's veins. 'Gabriella says that my eyes have changed colour,' he said numbly. 'How much longer do I have?'

Sigurd frowned. 'Truly, I do not know,' he said reluctantly. 'Again, it depends upon the warrior. The process begins slowly, but accelerates as the wolf gains power.'

'How slowly?' Ragnar asked.

The Wolf Priest glowered at Ragnar. 'Are you trying to shame me with my lack of experience?' he snapped. 'I confess I do not know for certain. The curse usually strikes initiates hardest, because their minds are still adapting to the changes taking place within them. Once a warrior becomes a full-fledged battle-brother. .. the curse takes years for the transformation to take hold.'

'Years?' Ragnar exclaimed. 'But I felt nothing before I returned to Fenris, just two months ago!'

Sigurd stared sharply at the young s.p.a.ce Wolf. 'That's not possible,' he said. 'Even with an initiate, it takes at least a year for the first changes to make themselves known.'

'If I were wolf-bitten a year ago, Ranek would have known it,' Ragnar declared, 'and I would have never been sent to Terra to serve House Bellisarius.'

The young priest thought it over, and his expression began to darken in consternation. 'It's true,' he said at last. 'Something else must be at work here, but I confess that I don't know what it could be.'

Ragnar nodded. 'Perhaps Bulveye or Torvald can tell us,' he said, daring to hope that things were not as hopeless as Sigurd suggested.

'Perhaps,' the priest allowed. 'We should reach the Wolf Lord's camp in a few more hours. I expect we'll learn a great deal then.'

They reached the first, wood-fringed foothills south of the grey mountains not long afterwards, and Torvald led the Wolves along the winding track of a dry streambed until they were hidden within the walls of a narrow, stony defile. Their pounding footfalls echoed crazily from the rocky walls as their course led north and east from one canyon to the next. The trail doubled back more than once, and without a pattern of stars to navigate by Ragnar soon lost track of where they were.

Within an hour Ragnar began to pick up the faint scents of other Wolves, and reckoned they were approaching the perimeter of the camp. His experienced eyes scanned the slopes of the rocky canyons through which they pa.s.sed, but if there were sentries observing their approach he couldn't detect them. Then, abruptly, the canyon sloped steeply upward and the path narrowed to a cleft in the stone barely wide enough to admit the broad s.p.a.ce Marines.

Ragnar felt a p.r.i.c.kling sensation race across his skin as he worked his way through the pa.s.s. Once through the cleft he quickly scanned the close-set walls of the defile that surrounded him and saw a pair of iron bars that had been driven into the stone on either side of the pa.s.s. Skulls and iron tokens carved with runes hung from each of the bars, and a wave of invisible power radiated from them.

'Those are way-posts, part of Torvald's system of wards,' Sigurd explained as he emerged from the cleft behind Ragnar. 'They confound attempts to locate Bulveye's camp using sorcery.' The Wolf Priest gazed upon the way-post with a mixture of awe and superst.i.tious dread. 'Torvald and his kin have learned a great deal during their long campaign in the Eye.'

The path to Bulveye's camp had been carefully chosen, the approach forcing the Wolves to travel single-file and climb a steep, rocky approach into a high, sheer-sided canyon. At the southern end of the canyon, Ragnar saw the first of Bulveye's warriors: a pair of men crouching in the shadow of a boulder, covering the entrance to the canyon with a pair of plasma guns. Both warriors wore cloaks of tanned hide that had been covered in dirt and dust, and their motionless forms allowed them to blend in perfectly with their surroundings. Like Torvald, their long hair was thick and braided, and their beards hung halfway down their patched breastplates. They said nothing as the rescue party climbed past, studying them with cold, lupine eyes.

A little farther up the canyon a ma.s.sive boulder had been rolled into a narrow place, creating a kind of dog-leg to prevent a clear line of fire into the area beyond. More warriors stood guard on the other side of the boulder, brandishing old, worn bolt pistols and ancient, nine carved blades. Their armour was decorated with intricate runes and carvings of battle scenes or voyages, and there were skulls or other battle trophies hanging from their broad belts. The warriors stared at Ragnar and the newcomers with frank but wary interest, stealing sidelong glances at one another and communicating in subtle gestures or nods.

More than a dozen metres further up the canyon they came upon a series of well-worn but serviceable wilderness shelters built alongside the rock walls. The camp looked as if it had been occupied for some time, and many of the shelters were marked with recent war trophies such as daemon talons and damaged pieces of blue and gold armour. More than a score of yellow-eyed warriors sat outside the shelters, cleaning their weapons or making repairs to their gear. On the surface, it looked no different from any other s.p.a.ce Wolf field camp that Ragnar had seen... except for the wary, challenging stares of the battle-brothers and the sense of history that stretched like an invisible tapestry across the camp and its inhabitants.

He'd felt such a thing once before, back when he was but a young lad plying the salt oceans of Fenris. His longship had been blown far off course during a storm, and they'd put in at a small island in search of fresh water. There they stumbled onto the camp of a small band of their clansmen who had been stranded there by a similar storm two years before. Ragnar still remembered the first time he'd set foot in their camp, and how the survivors had stared at him like a pack of wild dogs. They had lived in another world altogether since they had been lost, and their experiences had forged a bond that no one else could understand, much less share. It was a world in which he and his clansmen could not ever fully belong, and Ragnar felt the same sensation as he walked among the warriors of the Thirteenth Company.

They pa.s.sed silently through the small camp and headed up to the far end of the canyon. Just off to the left, Ragnar was surprised to find a pack of huge, Fenrisian wolves stretched out in front of the entrance to a large cave. The wolves raised their s.h.a.ggy heads as Torvald and the Wulfen approached, and the smallest of the pack rose onto its paws and loped into the darkness beyond the cave mouth. Torvald raised his axe, signalling for the party to halt, and went inside without a word. The Wulfen sank onto their haunches, some closing their eyes to rest while others dragged sc.r.a.ps of flesh from pouches at their belts and tore at them with their powerful jaws.

Harald's Blood Claws lowered Inquisitor Volt carefully to the ground. The old man spent several long minutes fishing a metal vial from his pack. He opened it with trembling hands and drank its contents in a single swallow. A little further away, Haegr set Gabriella on her feet. Though obviously tired, the Navigator was studying the Wulfen and the grim little camp with wide-eyed interest.

Ragnar slowly turned in place, surveying the canyon and its strange, forbidding inhabitants. He reminded himself that despite the differences between them, they were bound by the same oaths and the same world. The Thousand Sons were still their implacable foes, and Ragnar had no doubt that they would be able to count upon Bulveye and his warriors when the time came to strike at the heart of Madox's grand scheme. For the first time since crashing upon the shadow world, the young s.p.a.ce Wolf felt a spark of real hope.

Suddenly, a sharp cry echoed from the rocky walls. Ragnar whirled to see Gabriella stagger and fall to her knees, her hands pressed tightly to her face. Fierce green light from her pineal eye flared between her pale fingers.

'Lady!' Ragnar shouted, rushing to the Navigator's side.

The young s.p.a.ce Wolf had nearly reached Gabriella when a wave of sorcery buffeted him like an unseen wind. Its terrible energies sank through his armour and deep into his flesh, setting blood and bones afire. A cry of terrible agony tore its way past Ragnar's lips as he collapsed to his knees.

Dimly, he was aware that he was not alone. Harald and his Blood Claws had fallen too, and were writhing upon the ground. Even Haegr was down on one knee, his eyes screwed shut with pain.

Ragnar closed his eyes as another wave of agony wracked his body. His muscles roiled beneath his skin, and his flesh crawled. He tasted blood in his mouth, and then he was aware of nothing but a chorus of hungry, b.e.s.t.i.a.l howls filling the air and a red tide rising up to swallow his mind.

The air above the rolling plain hissed with bolts of lascannon fire, and rumbled with the thunder of heavy guns. Pillars of black smoke rose into the sky from the burning hulks of tanks and armoured personnel carriers, painting the western horizon the colour of old blood.

Rebel troops had reached to within half a kilometre of the Charys starport before their offensive ground to a temporary halt. Outnumbered and outgunned, the Imperial defenders had managed to retreat in good order despite constant artillery barrages and furious a.s.saults. The causeway linking the capital city to the starport was choked with bodies and wrecked vehicles, testament to the desperate rearguard action fought by the Twentieth Hebridean Foot and the Tairan Irregulars, two of Athelstane's veteran units. The tattered colours of the regiments fluttered in the rough wind blowing over the causeway, surrounded by the bodies of their fallen colour guard. Both units had died to a man, holding back the traitors' armoured a.s.sault long enough for the rest of the Imperial units to reach the port's fortified perimeter.

Now the frenzied rebel troops found themselves under the guns of the starport's defenders, forced to march across hundreds of metres of open ground covered by mines, anti-tank guns and artillery batteries. After two b.l.o.o.d.y a.s.saults, the traitors were forced to pull back out of range until their heavy artillery could be brought forward to pound the Imperial positions.

Just over a kilometre from the beleaguered defenders, the first batteries of rebel guns were being rolled into position by the light of the dying sun. Bare-chested gun crews strained and cursed as they unlimbered heavy, stub-nosed siege mortars and tried to roll them into position along the reverse slope of a low, treeless hill. Other crews took pry-bars to squat, wooden crates containing the ma.s.sive high-explosive sh.e.l.ls. Within the hour they would be ready to fire the first salvoes.

The gun crews were exhausted, and they'd grown careless with the promise of impending victory. No sentries were posted to watch the surrounding terrain, so there was no one to take note of the eight armoured figures observing the battery from a copse of trees a hundred metres to the west.

Mikal Sternmark flexed his armoured fingers around the hilt of Redclaw and tasted the scents of the enemy troops. 'Ammunition?' he asked of his men.

Sven eyed his two packmates. 'Jurgen and Bors can shoot those b.l.o.o.d.y flashlights for another month before they run dry,' he said, scowling at the h.e.l.lguns in the Wolves' hands. He checked the power meter on his meltagun. 'And I've got one shot left.'

Haakon cleared his throat. Several pieces of shrapnel had lodged in his neck over the course of the afternoon, leaving him hoa.r.s.e. 'I'm out of rockets,' he grated. 'Bjorn, Nils and Karl are down to five rounds each.'

'Grenades?' the Wolf Guard asked.

Sven shook his head. 'Not since that fight back at the crossroads.'

Sternmark nodded, although he couldn't honestly say he remembered which fight Sven was talking about. The day had blurred into one long, deadly pursuit. They would retreat a few hundred metres, lay an ambush for their pursuers, and then strike, kill as many as they could and retreat to the next ambush point further down the road. The Wolves had left hundreds of dead traitors and wrecked vehicles in their wake, until finally they'd eluded their pursuers inside the drainage network at the edge of the city.

They could have slipped into the low hills south of the capital, lain low until nightfall, and then crept past the rebel positions under the cover of darkness and into safety behind the Imperial lines, but Sternmark would be d.a.m.ned before anyone said he slunk back to camp like a whipped dog.

The red tide was rising. He could feel it pressing against the backs of his eyes, and he welcomed it.

'We'll advance in standard skirmish formation,' he told his men, and then pointed with his bloodstained blade at a team of gunners who were fixing fuses to a trio of waiting sh.e.l.ls. 'Sven, when we're in range, you put your last shot right there.'

Sven let out a low whistie. 'Pull the trigger and eat dirt. Aye, lord.'

The Wolf Guard ignored the Grey Hunter's impertinence. He was already moving, gliding swiftly from the shadows beneath the trees.

They raced across the low ground in moments, unnoticed by the labouring artillery crews. Sternmark measured the distance with a predator's eye, and then nodded to Sven and sank to one knee. Without hesitation, the Grey Hunter raised the meltagun to his shoulder and fired.

The three heavy sh.e.l.ls detonated in a single, earth shaking blast that staggered the kneeling Wolves, and pitched Sven onto his back. For a single instant, the slope of the hill was painted in fiery orange. Then a shower of earth and smouldering pieces of flesh fell in a dark rain around the rebel battery.

Sternmark was on his feet before the flash had completely faded, charging among the stunned and wounded artillerymen. Redclaw flashed and hummed, splitting torsos and severing arms. A handful of gunners staggered to their feet and ran, screaming curses. h.e.l.l-guns barked, and their smoking bodies tumbled to the ground. Within seconds, the slaughter was complete.

The Wolf Guard studied the guns. One of the mortars had flipped onto its side, but the rest seemed unscathed. 'Sven, you and your brothers right that mortar,' he said. 'Bjorn, Nils and Karl, fetch more sh.e.l.ls.' He pointed to the summit of the hill. 'Haakon, you'll spot for targets.'

The Wolves leapt into action at once, realising Sternmark's plan. Haakon strode swiftly up the slope while the other three Terminators pulled apart more crates and hefted mortar sh.e.l.ls like oversized boltgun rounds. Within moments, they were being fed into the breeches of the six waiting siege mortars.

'Targets?' Sternmark called.

Haakon peered over the slope. 'A motorised battalion between us and the starport,' he said, raising the targeting surveyor in his hand. 'Range six hundred and fifty to seven hundred metres.'

Sven and his packmates raced between the mortar tubes, dialling in the range. When they were ready he raised his hand to Sternmark. The Wolf Guard smiled coldly.

'Fire.'

The mortars went off in a staggered volley, spitting half-tonne sh.e.l.ls high into the air. They screamed like the souls of the d.a.m.ned, and Sternmark threw back his head and howled along with them. By the time the first sh.e.l.ls burst among the unsuspecting rebels Sternmark had crested the slope and was charging towards the foe.

Haakon had guided the sh.e.l.ls right onto their target. The rebel unit had been a.s.sembling behind another line of low hills, their trucks and armoured cars ma.s.sed in a disorderly knot behind the highest ridge line. Now the vehicles were smashed to pieces or tossed around like children's toys, spraying burning fuel across the blackened earth. Bodies and pieces of bodies lay everywhere, and wounded men tried to crawl or stagger away from the scene of carnage.

The Wolves raced among them, slashing and striking without mercy. Sternmark scythed his way through the screaming traitors, his teeth bared at the smell of hot blood. Las-bolts crackled through the smoky air. Once, an infantryman lurched upright, struggling to aim a meltagun with a pair of charred hands, but Nils blew him apart with the last of his storm bolter sh.e.l.ls.

Sternmark found the battalion commander trying to climb out from under a pile of bodies, and struck off his head with a casual swipe of his sword. Enemy return fire was intensifying as the survivors recovered from the shock of the barrage. He spied almost a platoon of soldiers retreating farther south, firing wildly at the warriors of Fenris.

Snarling the Wolf Guard made to pursue the fleeing traitors, but Sven let out a yell. 'The way is clear, lord!' he said, waving his chainblade from the summit of the next hill. We're fifteen hundred metres from the starport.'

Sternmark paused. For a moment he couldn't make sense of what Sven was saying. His bodyguard rushed up to surround him, firing well-aimed shots into the retreating traitors. Mikal tasted the blood of his foes upon his lips and eyed the fleeing rebels hungrily.

Somewhere, off in the distance, he felt a tremor, like the fall of a heavy sh.e.l.l or the first drumbeat of a coming storm. It tugged at him, making his veins tremble like plucked wires and catching the breath in his throat.

Mikal turned, seeking the source of the thunder. Haakon gripped his arm. 'What are your orders, lord?' he asked in his rough voice.

Sternmark struggled to focus on Haakon's face. He could sense the rebel troops escaping, drawing further away with every pa.s.sing moment, and longed to run them down. 'We...' he began, struggling to pull the words from the red tide in his mind. Chase them. Drag them to the earth and tear open their throats.

Haakon frowned, worried. He, too, seemed to feel something strange in the air. 'The men are waiting, lord,' he said.

'The men...' Sternmark echoed. He breathed deeply, and then nodded towards the slope. 'Right. Let's go.'

The Wolves fell in behind their leader as he marched stolidly up the slope. At the summit he saw the broad expanse of the starport spread before him and the killing ground littered with the dead. Energy bolts and tracer fire sped back and forth across the corpse choked field as Imperial troops and rebel forces along the causeway traded volleys.

Sven eyed the field warily. 'A quick and easy run for once,' he said.

The Wolf Guard shook his head savagely. 'I've done enough running for one day' he growled. 'From here, we walk.' And, raising his ancient blade to the sky, he started forward.

For ten minutes, the s.p.a.ce Wolves strode across the smoking plain, in full view of both sides. Redclaw caught the light of the setting sun and her blade shone like an evening star, drawing the eye of every soldier within sight. Almost at once, rebel gunners opened fire on the slowly marching warriors, but the las-bolts and stubber fire flew wide of their targets. Sternmark did not alter his pace in the slightest, his head straight and his stride measured. A chance shot cracked against his side, but his armour held and he missed not a single step.

By the time they reached the middle ground between the two sides, the Wolves could hear the cheering from the Imperial fortifications. Return fire stabbed out at the rebel troops, providing cover for the heroic s.p.a.ce Marines, and lone voices called out encouragement to Sternmark and his men. More shots flashed through the knot of bloodstained warriors. The rebels were firing grenades at long range, sending hot pieces of shrapnel ringing against the Wolves' flanks. A missile streaked from a rebel position to the south, but its aim was poor and the shot fell short.

Three hundred metres. Two hundred and fifty. A shot from a heavy stubber smashed into Sternmark's hip, shattering against the armour and sending splinters into his leg. Mortar rounds whistled overhead, smashing into the earth ahead of the Wolves like burning fists.

'Nice day for a walk!' Sven shouted into the din. A las-bolt cracked against his leg, and he brushed irritably at the scorch mark it left. 'Pity about the bugs, though!'

They were climbing the long slope up to the first of the Imperial entrenchments. Sternmark could see the grimy, cheering faces of the troops, calling out to him from their firing positions. They were less than a hundred metres away.

He faintly heard the clatter of treads far off to the west, and a l.u.s.ty shout went up from the rebel positions. Then, too late, he heard the hollow boom of a battle cannon.

The world seemed to slow to a turgid crawl. Sternmark's senses grew supernaturally sharp. He could feel the rumble of displaced air as the heavy sh.e.l.l arced towards them. Pulverised rock and bits of dirt rang off his armour like tiny chimes as he turned, looking back towards impending doom.

The sh.e.l.l was a dark, thumb-shaped smudge in the air, spinning lazily as it fell. Next to him, Sternmark heard Sven draw in a sharp breath.

'Allfather protect us,' the Grey Hunter said, and the world vanished in an eruption of earth and flame.

SEVENTEEN.