“Switch off your shoulder lamp. You and I are going to wait here, and surprise whoever is sneaking along our trail.”
Ragnar nodded and obeyed. Now he knew his instincts served him well. That knowledge gave him some small, grim satisfaction.
Ragnar’s eyes swiftly adjusted to the gloom. The faint glow of the lake gave him just enough light to see by. In the distance he could see the lights of the rest of the pack receding into the distance. He could hear their faint footfalls on the rock. Excitement and fear churned in his stomach. He knew the others would turn and race back at the first hint of trouble, but he wondered whether they would be in time.
The presence of Sergeant Hengist crouched behind a nearby rock was very reassuring. Hengist was a long proven and battle-tested warrior, for whom Ragnar had every respect. At such a time as this, with his first real battle since the struggle in his home village impending, that was an important consideration. He forced himself to concentrate on the litanies he had learned back in the Fang, to clear his mind of fear and worry and all other emotions that might reduce his chances of survival. He prayed to Russ and to the All Father to make his arm strong and his eye sure and to guide him through the coming conflict. Ready icons flickered across his senses, as his power suit told him that all his battle systems were fully function. Ragnar was prepared for the coming fight.
That was, if there was to be a conflict. Ragnar was still not entirely sure that there would be. So far his keen senses had been unable to detect any sign of anyone or anything following them. Perhaps Hengist was simply imagining things. At the same time, he knew this was mere wishful thinking. Hengist’s senses were much keener than his own, and the sergeant had many more years of experience at interpreting the data they absorbed. It did not seem at all likely that Hengist had made a mistake. Furthermore, Ragnar’s own dire foreboding and keen instincts spoke to him at some deeper level, telling him that danger was near. Somewhere in the depth of his mind, the beast stirred, responding to the threat. Suddenly Ragnar was glad of its presence, glad of all the implants and the training he had received back at the Fang. He felt strong and powerful and capable. He knew that no ordinary mortals could possibly prove a match for him, and the potent weapons he carried. The more cautious part of his mind reminded him that a pack of his brethren, equally capable and equally well equipped, had already gone missing down here, and his foreboding returned redoubled.
The flicker of a hand signal caught from the corner of his eye told him that Hengist had spotted something. A moment later Ragnar heard a faint soft padding, as of unshod feet on the wet sand — and he knew that the sergeant was right, that they were being followed.
He clutched his weapons tight and steeled himself for action. His body tensed and coiled like a great spring, and he made himself ready to move and strike at a heartbeat’s notice. Nearby he sensed the sergeant also had made himself ready. Ragnar peered out into the gloom and became aware that a wave of shadowy humanoid figures was moving towards them, as quiet, stealthy and inexorable as a tide moving up a beach.
His heart sank when he saw quite how large the crowd was. There must be hundreds of people following them. It seemed to him in that moment that the odds must be insuperable. He shook his head, commended his soul to Russ and to the Emperor, and made himself ready to die. Then suddenly he sensed Hengist move, heard the sound of something whip through the air close by. A moment later, light blazed through the cavern, and there was a roar like thunder as something exploded in the midst of the oncoming crowd.
Ragnar had a second to realise that the sergeant had thrown a grenade before the full horror of the scene illuminated by the terrific detonation etched itself on his brain. In that brief blazing instant, in that hellish light, he caught his first real glimpse of the denizens of the terrible under caverns deep beneath the surface of Fenris. From the descriptions he had heard, he saw that they were undeniably nightgangers.
They were bestial. They had bodies roughly humanoid in outline but slouching and ape-like. Huge saucer eyes evolved to capture the slightest hint of light dominated their ape-like faces. Their skins were pale white and leprous, blotched in places with bizarre birthmarks and the stigmata of mutation and disease. Ragnar was reminded in an odd way of the twisted forest outside the cavern’s mouth, and he realised that in some way these people were probably the human equivalent of those disfigured trees there.
And yet the most horrifying thing was that these creatures quite obviously were, or had once been, people. They, or their ancestors, had been as human as his own clan. How long had it taken for this to happen, Ragnar wondered? How many aeons spent in slow devolution underground had been needed to produce this race of monsters? Had the stigmata of mutation been passed on from generation to generation growing slowly worse as the cavern folk became more bestial and unknowing? Or had it all happened at once, the product of some strange magic unleashed in this dark world deep below the mountain peaks?
Not that it mattered much at this moment. Even as he watched, the nightgangers recovered from the shock of the explosion that had rent through their midst. They milled around looking for a cause. Hengist chose that moment to lob another grenade. Once again the mighty flash rent the age-old gloom. Once more the misshapen folk of the underworld died, flesh torn, blood raining down on the survivors. Blinded by the unaccustomed light of the explosion, they recoiled, clawed and webbed hands clasped over saucer-like eyes.
The scent of the blood combined with the tension of the wait goaded the beast within Ragnar to fury. He leapt up from his hiding place, bolt pistol spitting death. He unleashed shot after shot into the crowd of pursuers. They were so close packed that every shell found a home more often than not. Sometimes they blasted through the tightly packed mass of flesh and buried themselves in another target. Screams of pain mingled with roars of bestial fury.
And yet, misshapen though they were, the nightgangers were not lacking in courage. Either that or they were over-blessed with stupidity. Ragnar knew his own people would most likely have broken and fled at least momentarily before the torrent of supernatural death raining down on them but these denizens of the underworld did not run. They were made of sterner, or perhaps madder, stuff. Swiftly Ragnar realised that opening fire had been a mistake. The muzzle flash of his gun and the blazing contrail of his bolter shells unmistakably gave away his position to the nightgangers. They could not help but notice where he was, and with a mighty roar of frenzied rage they raced towards him.
Ragnar answered their war cry with a wolfish howl of his own, and was reassured to hear it echoed back from the throats of the approaching Blood Claws. He pulled the trigger again and again as the frenzied mass of mutants approached, sending bolter shell after bolter shell rocketing into his targets. Heads burst, chests were torn apart as the shells exploded in their targets. The nightgangers had no armour capable of resisting those terrible shots. All they had in their favour was sheer weight of numbers, that and an insanely ferocious courage.
Hengist lobbed grenade after grenade from his own hiding place, and every one exacted a hideous toll on the nightgangers. It seemed to Ragnar almost as if a giant hand was reaching down into the middle of his foes and tossing them about like leaves before the wind.
The nightgangers were close enough now so that he could make out details of their individual appearance. He was shocked to discover the extent that mutation had affected them. Some of the miserable creatures were covered in fur, some of them had horns protruding from their heads, some of them had hooves and claws and shark-like rows of teeth in their hideously distended jaws. They were like aberrations from the wildest depths of nightmare. It was as if the gates of hell had opened to let a horde of gibbering misshapen things flop through into the world.
Even as he fired, a detached and calculating part of Ragnar’s mind find itself wondering if the nightgangers were really so different from him. After all, he too now possessed an excess of body hair verging on fur, and he had fangs, and his eyes had altere
d. He swiftly pushed these thoughts aside. They had nothing to do with the fight in which he was engaged, and they verged dangerously close to heresy. The alterations to his body were signs of his kinship to Russ, marks of the Emperor’s favour and blessing. They were products of an ancient mystical process that dated back to the Dark Age of Technology. The stigmata shown by these nightgangers were signs of something else. Perhaps they were the badge of Chaos, of those whose souls had been as corrupted by its warping influence as their bodies had been.
The nightgangers were almost upon him now. Ragnar leapt atop the rock behind which he had been waiting. The nightgangers had not responded with missile fire and he had no need of cover. In hand-to-hand combat, occupying the higher ground would give him a temporary advantage. With a swift mental command he upped the magnification of his shoulder lamp so that it would dazzle any nightganger who looked directly at it. A touch of a switch activated his chainsword. It vibrated angrily in his hand as the serrated edges of its blades accelerated up to their maximum cutting speed. Ragnar laughed aloud, feeling the full battle rage come upon him. The beast roared within his soul, demanding to be unleashed.
The nightgangers were almost upon him. Hengist tossed a last grenade that tore another apart and then Ragnar heard the sergeant’s chainsword activate as well. He looked down into the sea of mutant faces, let out a long angry howl and then dived into their midst like a swimmer leaping into a turbulent sea.
Even before he landed he lashed out with his chainsword. It passed through flesh like a cleaver through meat. The smell of friction-heated bone reached Ragnar’s nostrils as the scream of the chainsword hit a new high note cutting through bone. The moment passed as the chainsword took the limb clean off. Blood gouted from the stump. Ragnar took off a head, severing vertebrae cleanly and easily before taking the top off another. As he did so he kept up a steady stream of shots from his bolt pistol against bodies too closely packed for him to miss. The screams and howls of his victims echoed in his ears, goading the beast within him to ever greater fury and lending ever more strength to his frenzied limbs.
In moments the nightgangers recovered from the shock of his charge, and leapt to meet him. They were armed only with crude hatchets, stone-tipped clubs and spears. They struck at him wildly at first, and their blows, unable to make proper contact with his fast moving form, slid harmlessly off the smooth curved ceramite of his armour. He was aware of their strikes in much the same way as a man would be of rain striking his cloak. The sensation was at most uncomfortable, but certainly not painful.
He moved through his foes like a whirlwind of death, leaving dead and dying nightgangers in his wake. For a brief triumphant instant he felt like nothing could stand against him. He was invincible, unstoppable, a god of death reaping the lives of his enemies. In that ecstatic instant he had some inkling of how Russ must have felt after his apotheosis. He whirled and struck and kicked, feeling bones crunch beneath his blade. He stamped down and reduced the fingers and skulls of fallen enemies to jelly. He howled long and exultantly and his bloodlust was echoed in the calls of his comrades. At that moment Ragnar felt as if he did not need them, that he was capable of routing and killing all the nightgangers on his own. It did not matter how many of them there were or how brave. There was simply no way for them to overcome him. The struggle was going to be so one-sided.
Then he felt a bite of pain in his ribcage. He looked down to see an axe blade lodged in the hardened ceramite of his armour. It was made of black iron and yet it had cut through one of the hardest substances ever produced in the foundries of the Fang. How could this be? Then he noticed the red glowing runes that blazed on its surface and he had his answer. Evil sorcery was at work here.
For a moment he felt a surge of panic. He half expected to feel evil magical power flow through his body like poison. He knew of such fell weapons, tales of their power had been implanted in his brain by the teaching machines of the Space Wolves. They could have all manner of dreadful powers, built into them by their daemonic makers. Who knew what this one would be capable of?
He stood frozen for a moment and the nightgangers took advantage of his confusion to swarm over him, striking and rending as they came. A blow from a stone club sent his pistol to the ground. Another blow from an axe grazed his forehead drawing blood. Some nightgangers grabbed his legs, others grabbed his arms. They howled with triumphant bloodlust convinced that they had captured their prey.
“In the name of the Emperor, fight boy!” he heard Hengist shout. The words stirred him from his daze and he suddenly realised that it did not matter if he were poisoned or cursed. If he did not start to fight back he would be dead in a matter of moments anyway as the nightgangers’ weapons buried themselves in the joints and chinks of his armour. With a roar he flexed his limbs. Servo-motors whined with the strain as he cast the nightgangers off, hurling them aside as if they were made of straw. He whirled around, wielding his chainsword with both hands, lopping limbs and heads off everything within his reach.
From the corner of his eye he caught sight of a nightganger chieftain or shaman lifting another of the cursed axes to throw at him. Snarling with rage Ragnar bounded forward bringing his chainsword down in a mighty arc of death. It took the shaman on the skull and cleaved it in two, passed right through his neck, his chest, his stomach, his hipbone. With one blow he clove the shaman clean in two sending entrails and internal organs toppling out onto the stone floor of the cavern. In that moment, he saw that he had cleared the whole area around him. He reached down and plucked the axe from his armour, casting the foul thing as far away from as he could.
Looking around he saw that Hengist had left a trail of destruction right through the nightgangers and had now turned at bay to confront them. Even as the sergeant braced himself to strike once more there was a howl of dismay from the nightgangers as the other Blood Claws ploughed into their ranks. Together Hengist and Ragnar leapt into the fray once more.
It was all too much for even the nightgangers’ courage. This time they turned and fled, leaving the corpses of their many dead strewn across the floor of the cavern.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
The Temple of Chaos
Ragnar looked at the scene of carnage. He could not begin to count the dead nightgangers. He could only guess that at least a hundred had died All around he could hear sporadic fire as the other Blood Claws blazed away at their retreating foes. He would have carried on shooting too but he was more interested in what Sergeant Hengist was up to.
Hengist had bent over the body of the dead shaman and was inspecting his throwing axe without touching it. Ragnar moved over to beside his leader.
“What is it, sergeant?” he asked.
“These weapons have been touched by the power of Chaos,” Hengist replied.
“I thought as much. One of them pierced my armour during the combat.”
“What? Let me see.” Hengist bent forward and looked at the place where the axe had smashed through ceramite. He inspected the break closely then sniffed.
“No blood,” he said. “It did not break flesh. You were lucky.”
“Lucky?”
“Sometimes these weapons bear a poisonous power. Sometimes they carry the taint of Chaos itself. That alone can be enough to drive men mad.”
He tapped the utility belt at Ragnar’s waist. “Best use repair cement on that break. It should at least hold your armour together until we get back to the Fang.”
Ragnar did as he was told, smearing the quick-hardening paste into the gaps in his armour and waiting for the few moments it took to harden on contact with air.
“What now?” he asked.
“We go on,” Hengist said.
The Blood Claw pack pushed on deeper into the mountain. As they progressed, Ragnar became more and more aware of signs of occupation. Here and there bones cracked for marrow lay scattered through the passage. Close examination showed that they had once belonged to someone human or near-human.
“What do thes
e people eat?” Sven asked.
“Always thinking about food, eh?” Nils replied.
“When they’re not eating each other, you mean?” Strybjorn added.
Ragnar nodded. Try as he might it was difficult to picture what the nightgangers subsisted on. Unless they ate the huge roaches that occasionally scuttled away from the light. Perhaps they ate the bats or the eldritchly glowing fungi that spotted some of the walls. Or perhaps they made forays onto the surface to hunt. Strybjorn’s words conjured up another image of warring clans of the hideous mutants fighting each other in the dark and consuming their dead victims.
Was that what had happened to the previous pack, he wondered? Had they had their armour split and their flesh winkled from it the way Ragnar used to get crabmeat from a shell? But if so, how had it happened? It did not seem possible that the nightgangers could overcome a fully armed and prepared pack of Blood Claws. By Russ, he and Sergeant Hengist had routed what must have been a whole tribe of them virtually on their own. Their weapons were too primitive, their tactics too simple for them to have overcome a whole unit.
And why had the other pack come here in the first place? Their mission had been to conduct a routine investigation of the area in which the great meteor shower had fallen. Had they somehow been lured down here to their dooms? Was that what was happening to Ragnar and his comrades even now? He wished he had answers for these questions, but he did not.
Still, he told himself, he would doubtless find out the truth soon enough.
“Looks like this cave complex has just been abandoned,” Lars said.
“You’re right,” Ragnar said with a quick glance around the area. Pots and pans, small stone statues, necklaces of finger bones, leather sacks full of unidentifiable stuff lay strewn everywhere as if they had just been abandoned. Ragnar sniffed the air. The scent of the nightgangers was still everywhere, fresh and strong. Some of the scent traces were subtly different. Women and children, most likely, Ragnar thought.