“Must have known we were coming,” Sven said, a nasty grin twisting his ugly face. “Maybe the survivors of our last battle came here to warn them not to cross us.”
“Or maybe they just wanted their womenfolk out of the way before they collapse the roof on us,” Lars suggested.
Sven bared his teeth in a snarl. He had not liked the other Blood Claw’s tone. Hengist moved between them, to break up any potential brawl. Now was not the time for a squabble over precedence in the pack. Instantly Sven and Lars moved apart.
“I don’t think that’s what’s going to happen,” Hengist said. “No, I think we’re in for something different.”
“Like what?” Ragnar asked.
“I wish to hell I knew. Whatever it is, one thing’s for sure. It won’t be pleasant.”
Ragnar was forced to agree. Like the sergeant, like all of them, he could sense the presence of something else in the air, could sense the gathering of forces to oppose them. There was a power here, deep beneath this mountain. He was certain of it. And he was certain that this power was strong and ancient and evil. He decided that he had better give voice to a thought that was obviously on the mind of every Blood Claw.
“Perhaps we should turn back, sergeant,” he said.
“Not yet,” Hengist said. “We haven’t found what we came for yet.”
“And I doubt we’re going to,” muttered Sven.
Not unless what we came to find was death, thought Ragnar.
“What was that?” asked Lars. Ragnar looked at him. There was no need to ask what the blond-haired Blood Claw had meant.
He had heard it too. Somewhere off in the distance a great drum was beating. Its vibrations could be felt through the walls like the throbbing of a massive heart.
“It’s our subhuman friends letting their kinfolk know that dinner will soon be served up. And that it consists of tender young Blood Claws,” Sven said in his surliest voice.
Nils shook his head. “Food. Always thinking of food,” he said mockingly.
The corridor descended downwards. The way was illuminated by glowing fungi. Vast mushrooms blotched the damp floors and walls and sent an eerie greenish glow shimmering through the air. Ragnar could taste their spores on his tongue, and their scent almost overpowered all others. It was sweet and sickly and smelled of rot and corruption. There was something about it that reminded him of corpses. Here and there trails of luminescent slime threaded their way between the growths and vanished into holes the size of a man’s head in the walls of the tunnel. The image of loathsome slug-like creatures fastened itself in Ragnar’s mind and would not depart. Perhaps such creatures were what the nightgangers ate.
He knew that there were tunnels running parallel to the one they were in. He could sense that those tunnels were filled with vast hordes of nightgangers. Occasionally he would catch sight of their forms fleetingly as they passed the mouth of a side tunnel, but the mutants kept their distance and did not come within striking distance. Either they had learned their lesson, or they were waiting for something they knew was to happen.
Ragnar suspected that it was the latter. Hengist pushed on oblivious, following a trail that seemed obvious only to him. Ragnar was not sure whether this was because of the sergeant’s keener senses and greater experience of tracking or because the sergeant’s weird was upon him, and he was following his death-path. Ragnar had heard of this happening to others back in the island. Men would hear the siren call of their doom and rise from the table to march to their deaths in a troll’s lair. He did not see why a Space Wolf should necessarily be exempt from such a thing, although at the moment he thought it best to keep his suspicions to himself.
Ragnar risked a glance over his shoulder. Far, far off in the distance he thought he caught the glimmer of glowing eyes. He hurried on to catch up with the rest of the pack.
Suddenly the trail ended. Ahead of them was a long stone bridge over a vast chasm. Ragnar stood on the chasm’s edge. Somewhere far below he thought he heard the sound of water. Sven picked up a pebble and tossed it into the abyss. They both stood there counting but there was no sound of the stone hitting bottom.
On the far side of the chasm was an archway in the wall. It was of dressed stone, and even at this distance Ragnar could see each block had been carved with a leering daemon head. It seemed that Hengist’s tracking skills had not led them false, and that they had indeed found what they had come for.
The sergeant turned and looked back at the Blood Claws. His ancient, lined face looked pale and drawn in the light of their shoulder lamps. His eyes glittered feverishly in their sockets.
“As I suspected,” he said. “A temple of Chaos.”
“Maybe we should go back now, and report it,” said Lars.
Hengist turned on his heel, readied his weapon and strode towards the bridge. He paused at the edge, knowing that it was not the leader’s duty to place himself unnecessarily at risk. He halted for a long moment, and then said: “Ragnar, advance and scout out the doorway. Be careful. The bridge might not be safe.”
As if I needed anyone to tell me that, Ragnar thought as he paced forward. In the distance, behind them, he was sure he heard the murmuring as of a great crowd.
Wide enough for just one Space Marine at a time, and stretching several hundred paces across the chasm, the stone felt solid beneath his feet, but Ragnar was taking no chances. He advanced cautiously, placing one foot slowly in front of the other, only gradually placing his full weight on his leading foot. It would not do to forget how heavy he was now in his power armour, despite his agility and speed. Also, there could be traps or deadfalls on the bridge. Ragnar knew that anything was possible where the devilish minds of Chaos worshippers were concerned. The stones looked solid but if there was even a slim chance of them giving way and sending him plummeting down into the abyss below, Ragnar wanted to be prepared. If he was going to die here, he wanted to die in battle. That was the only way a warrior should go.
Now where had that thought come from, Ragnar wondered, feeling the beast stir warily within him. Had it come from whatever was in the temple ahead? He could feel the presence of something there, just as surely as he could feel the cold moist breeze on his brow. It pulsed outwards through the gloom like an invisible, spectral beacon. He offered up a prayer to Russ and to the Emperor for the safety of his soul, and pushed on, his armoured feet scuffing dust from the narrow causeway.
Ahead of him, the archway grew larger. He realised that it was immense. Just as this bridge was longer than it had first appeared, so was the opening correspondingly more huge. He began to appreciate how much labour had gone into the creation of this obscene place. This whole structure was no recent work. The flagstones over which he passed had been worn down by many feet. The thing was centuries, if not millennia old.
In the gloom and distance his eyes had been fooled. Now he was starting to realise the scale of the deception. He guessed that the arch was maybe ten times his height, and that each of the blocks making up part of it was at least as tall as he was. The hideous twisted heads chiselled from the stone looked large enough to swallow a grown man at a bite. In a way, the artistry that had gone into their creation was wonderful. They looked like the heads of real living monsters about to emerge full-grown from the stone. He half expected those yawning mouths to gape wider and snap at him as he approached.
From up ahead, through the towering black archway, Ragnar thought he heard a faint murmuring or chanting, but he could not be sure. He moved across the flagstones up to the archway itself. He paused there for a moment, and glanced through, and what he saw took his breath away.
He looked down a vast flight of marbled steps into an enormous chamber carved from the very heart of the mountain. At the far end of the chamber stood a massive statue of what Ragnar perceived could only be an enormous daemon. The statue appeared to be made of some form of crystal and inlaid with bone. Each scale of its shimmering skin was a jewel. Colours constantly shifted and moved across its surf
ace, mingling and shifting endlessly. The statue was perhaps five times the height of a man but such was the aura of power that surrounded it that it seemed much larger still. Its eyes flickered like flames. There was something about the glow of its skin that made it hard to focus on, that baffled Ragnar’s eyes, seeming to suggest that at any moment the statue might change form into something else, or spring into sorcerous life.
Great metal wings were folded round the statue’s shoulders like a cloak. Its head was curiously bird-like. It stretched out monstrous talons in a gesture that was at once curiously human and supremely menacing. The thing gave the impression of something at once bestial and god-like, of being at the same time something far greater and far worse than human. And from it, waves of dark power seemed to pulse like the malicious heartbeat of an insane god. Ragnar knew without having to be told that this was an effigy of some aspect of Tzeentch, the Great Mutator, the daemon lord of vile sorcery. His implanted knowledge gave him absolute certainty of that awful fact. Ragnar’s skin tingled from the sorcerous emanations the thing projected.
So great was the impression of the statue, and so much did it draw his eye, that it was several heartbeats before Ragnar could begin to take in the rest of the chamber. It was as sickening as the statue was impressive. Multi-coloured flames jetted from the walls of the chamber casting their hellish illumination to the furthest corners. From the way they danced and from their pungent smell Ragnar could tell that these were jets of natural gas.
It was what their light revealed that was so daunting. Scattered across the floor were piles of hideously mutated corpses, bloated and twisted but immediately recognisable as having once been human. It looked as if their flesh had been heated unto liquefaction and flowed into new and bizarre shapes. Heads had swollen like balloons to twice their previous size. Fingers had fused together to form flippers. Masses of entrails had exploded from stomachs, become twisted tentacles which looked to have strangled their owners. In some cases the small fangs in their mouths had become huge tusks. Fur had sprouted from some of their skins. In other cases the skin had become transparent to reveal the mass of internal organs. One poor wretch had sloughed away his skin like a snake to reveal the pink mass of muscle and vein beneath. Here was an awful example of the true power of Tzeentch.
At last Ragnar knew the fate of the previous pack. Hanging from great structures of carved bone were their armour and their weapons. A howl of horror and rage was drawn from Ragnar’s open mouth. In the flickering light of the gas jets the great statue of Tzeentch seemed to smile mockingly.
He turned and beckoned for his comrades to follow him across. They came over far more quickly than he had, loping from flagstone to flagstone.
“By Russ!” he heard Sven mutter. “This is a foul place.”
“A Temple of Tzeentch,” Hengist said. “The Great Mutator. One of the All Father’s four greatest enemies.”
“We must destroy it,” Strybjorn said.
“Excellent idea,” Lars said. “But how?”
“Use grenades,” Nils said.
“That will not work,” Hengist said. “Unless I miss my guess, that evil thing is bound with foul sorcery. It will take greater weapons than we possess to destroy it. We must inform the Chapter of what we have found here.”
“I think you will have other things to worry about, false marine,” said a cold and mocking voice.
Ragnar looked up. A figure had appeared before the altar of Tzeentch. He was not quite sure how it had come to be there. He had seen no one enter the temple. Ragnar found his eyes drawn to the speaker. It was hard to resist the impulse to stare.
The newcomer was garbed like an odd parody of a Space Marine. His armour was bulky and appeared to be of archaic design. More, it looked as if parts had been removed, and replaced or repaired or modified with bands of gold or black iron. Red glowing eyes burned out from within a massive and intricately horned helmet. It held a bolt pistol of equally antique design in each hand.
Ragnar could see that its armour was impossibly ornate. Glittering jewels and daemon heads were inlaid all over its surface and shimmered in the light of the gas jets. Perhaps it was just a trick of the light but some of those heads seem to leer and yawn and wink, stretching in a manner no natural metal could. From the memories placed in his brain by the Fang’s teaching machines, Ragnar knew he looked upon one of humanity’s deadliest foes, a Chaos Marine.
“It is you who are the false Marine,” replied Hengist. “It was your kind who broke your vows to the Emperor and to humanity.”
“It was your senile god who broke faith with us. He was too weak. And humanity proved itself ungrateful and unworthy of our rule.” The voice carried a taint of arrogance, perhaps even boredom.
“The rule of daemons and daemon worshippers. The rule of those who bent their knee before our most ancient enemies. You are scum, worse than scum.”
“And you will have a long time in which to repent those words, and to whimper prayers of mercy to He who will soon consume your soul. And believe me, your prayers will not be answered.”
“You will not talk so proudly once I have taken your head and cast your foul corpse into the abyss.”
The Chaos Marine laughed. It was not a pleasant laugh, Ragnar thought. It was too mocking and too full of confidence by far. No warrior should be able to laugh that way when confronted by a full pack of Space Wolves. The blue and gold armoured warrior appeared to read his thoughts.
“You and all your yapping puppies could not manage that.”
“Could they not? The least of these Blood Claws is a better and truer warrior than you, oathbreaker.” Hengist spat on the polished floor of the Chaos temple.
“I admit they were handy enough against ignorant superstitious subhumans but as you can see I am armed and equipped at least as well as you.” The sorcerer-marine gestured theatrically about him. “Perhaps I should remove my weapons and fight you with a spear. That way you might at least have a chance. But no, that would still be too easy for me. I could use my bare hands.”
“You talk a brave fight, for one who hides in the darkness below the world!” Ragnar interjected, feeling his anger mount.
“I have nothing to prove, slave to a false god. For ten thousand years the name of Madok had caused his enemies to tremble.”
“Only if they were weak-willed fools cowed by empty boasts.”
“Your prattle wearies me, youth, and since you have been good enough to give my brethren time to arrive, I think we should proceed with the slaughter.”
As Madok spoke doors in the side of the temple slid open and more Chaos Marines were revealed. Hengist raised his gun to fire but Madok was quicker. Both his pistols leapt up and began blazing away. Bolter shells clipped the sergeant’s armour as he dived into cover behind the archway. Two of the pack were not so lucky and were cut down by a blaze of fire from the Chaos Marines.
Ragnar followed Hengist’s example and leapt out of the line of fire. Strybjorn and Sven and several others of the pack held their ground and responded. Their shells flashed across the temple but some evil power seemed to send them astray, and they exploded harmlessly on the flagstones around the Chaos Marines. Ragnar looked across at Hengist for orders. The sergeant raced across the archway and rolled into position beside Ragnar.
“There must be a full squad of Chaos Marines in there, maybe more. They will prove too much for a pack of Blood Claws. The Chapter must be warned of this. Take Sven, Strybjorn, Nils and Lars and head back to the surface. The rest of us will hold them off for as long as possible.”
Ragnar wanted to protest. The beast within him was strong. The smell of blood made his hackles rise and filled him with the lust to kill. More than that he felt it unfair that he should be denied the chance of a hero’s death. Hengist seemed to sense the emotions passing through his mind.
“Sometimes the life of a Space Marine is not easy,” he said. “Now take the others and go.” He bellowed for the Blood Claws who were to follow Ragnar to
fall back. Even as he watched, Ragnar, saw Kraki and Volgard go down to the Chaos Marines’ fire. He saw too that they had yet to take a casualty even though they were advancing slowly and relentlessly as automatons across the open floor of the temple. He could hear their otherworldly, unnerving laughter as they came on. Surely indeed they were protected by some malign power, Ragnar thought. Then he knew for certain that it was time to go.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Fighting Retreat
“Let’s go!” Ragnar yelled and raced back across the stone bridge away from the temple. He did not need to look back to see if the others were following him. He sensed their presence behind him and caught their scared, angry scents. Like him, he guessed they were frustrated and furious at being forced to leave the combat with the Chaos traitors. He cursed that such a blasphemy had been perpetrated on the holy soil of Fenris at all, and wondered how long the Chaos scum had been lurking below the surface of Asaheim. He guessed that they had come under cover of the last meteor storm, but part of him gagged at the thought that perhaps they had been here for months, years, decades even. Impossible! Ragnar refused to countenance such a thought. And now, having uncovered such a nest of vipers in their midst, they must flee!
Not that they were going to be spared any fighting, Ragnar knew. Up ahead of them he could see that the way was blocked by a horde of nightgangers, led by what looked to be a rune-weapon wielding shaman. The creature pointed a long, skull-tipped staff at Ragnar. He saw a halo of eerie reddish light crackle around its tip and then a bolt of searing mystical energy arced towards him. The Space Wolf sprang to one side just in time and it shattered the stones where he had been.