Sven made a few practice passes with his deactivated chainsword just to loosen up.
“I don’t remember that being covered in the Codex Tacticus.”
“I am a brilliant improviser.”
“Apparemly.”
“Well, what about it? I don’t cast up all the times I have pulled your fat out of the bloody fire. What about that time on Venam? When I saved you from those heretics before they could chop you up with your own chainsword? You never bloody well hear me mention that, do you?”
“Not more than once or twice a day.”
Sven was in full flow now, not to be stopped. “Or how about on that space hulk near Korelia or Korelius or whatever it was bloody well called — when I saved you from those tyranids? I never mention that, do I?”
“You just did.”
“Or what about that time—”
“Sven?”
“Yes.”
“Shut up.”
“Don’t tell me to bloody well shut up, Ragnar bloody so-called Blackmane. Just because you have a head swollen to the size of a small bloody planetoid, doesn’t mean I can’t kick your—”
“No! Can’t you hear it?”
“Hear what?”
“That!” There was a sound of cracking ice. Ragnar saw a crevasse start to open ten strides away.
“Glacier’s breaking up,” he hissed, beginning to run forward, as the crack splitting the ice came nearer.
“I would never have noticed,” said Sven sarcastically.
“Quite probably,” said Ragnar, racing forward and leaping over the gap. Sven was a few strides behind him, but leapt fractionally too late. It was obvious that he was not going to make it across the widening gap, and was going to tumble down, Russ alone knew how far. Ragnar leaned out and grabbed his friend’s outstretched hand, tugging him forward and sending him sprawling in the ice beside him.
“Siding with the ice fiends now, eh?” said Sven around a mouthful of snow.
“No — just saving your life yet again.”
“So you say. I was doing fine before your sneak attack sent me sprawling.”
“Going to wedge open the crevasse with your thick skull, were you? Best use for it, most likely.”
Sven bounded to his feet and cast a casual glance over his shoulder, checking on the distance separating them from the ice fiends. Several hundred strides lay between them still. It looked like the fiends were waiting to see whether the crevasse took them. “Yours is the only head around here big enough to fill that hole,” said Sven cheerily.
The ground beneath their feet started to move again, as the glacier shook. “Maybe we should get off this frozen river of ice before it swallows us both up,” said Ragnar.
“Well, looks like the only way out is through them,” said Sven, gesturing to the approaching ice fiends.
“And your point is?”
“Just giving you directions in case you get lost again,” said Sven, turning and racing towards the approaching creatures. Ragnar followed him, the snow crunching under his ceramite boots and splashing off his greaves, his breath clouding the air like steam. The ice fiends bellowed challenges. The two Blood Claws answered with whooping war-cries. As they closed the distance Ragnar realised how big the creatures were. They were almost twice his height. Long white fur covered their bearish bodies, massive yellowing tusks protruded from the gaping caverns of their mouths. Long dagger-like claws tipped the three digits on each paw. Their faces were a startling combination of humanoid and beast. Their yellowish-red eyes gleamed with a malign and bestial intelligence and a glittering malevolent hatred of all not their kind. There were close on ten of them, all male, a pride of hunters. Ragnar knew they would fight until either they were dead or their prey was. There was no more insensately ferocious life form on the surface of Fenris. Unless it was Sven, he thought.
Ragnar thumbed the activation rune of his chainsword and it roared to life. He sprang into the ice fiend pack, chopping right and left. His first blow took off a taloned hand and sent blue blood spurting to stain the snows.
Briefly and incongruously a screed of information placed there by the tutelary engines back in the Fang blazed across his brain. He recalled that the blood of an ice fiend contained different chemical elements from human blood, designed to prevent it from freezing in the winter chill of the arctic wastes. He also remembered that it was poisonous, just as the creature thrust its stump into his face and a deadly searing jet of the stuff spurted into his eyes.
Ragnar was grateful as the translucent second lid dropped into position over his eyeball. Even so, the pain was immense as the corrosive stuff began to eat away at the specially hardened flesh. He shook his head to clear it away and a massive impact sent him sprawling into a snowdrift. Gratefully he scooped up a handful of snow to wash the poison ichor from his eyes. From the scents of the beasts and the sounds of their heartbeats he could tell there were none within striking distance. He could hear Sven leaping among them, chopping away with his blade, preventing the beasts from getting at him.
“Just as I thought!” he bellowed. “Leaving me to do all the work, while you have a bloody kip in the nice soft snow.”
Ragnar retracted his second eyelid and wiped his eyes. The stinging had started to diminish as his enhanced body adapted to the poison. He saw Sven carve a ruinous path through the ice fiends, hacking left and right with his mighty chainsaw-edged blade. It looked like his fellow Blood Claw was going to do just what he claimed and take out the entire pack all by himself, when one of the beasts grabbed the Space Wolf from behind, immobilising his arms. Another knocked the chainsword from his grip with a buffeting blow.
Ragnar leapt forward, burying his own blade in the back of the beast that held Sven immobile. It let out an ear-splitting howl and dropped the Blood Claw as it clutched its wound. Ragnar hacked again, smashing his blow into the creature’s neck and beheading it. He could hear Sven scoop up his blade. A moment later they laid into the beasts with their potent weapons. Chainsaw blades ripped through fur and flesh. Blue blood flowed. The beasts kept coming, filled with the insensate savagery of their kind, determined to kill the human interlopers.
The Space Wolves matched savagery with savagery, and brute strength with superior speed and weaponry. Within heartbeats Ragnar carved up two of the fiends, severing limbs and spilling ropy intestines. In five heartbeats he could see that more than half of the ice fiend pack was dead. Even so, the monsters kept fighting. Their claws scrabbled against the hardened ceramite of Ragnar’s armour with a hideous keening screech. Their foetid breath stank in his nostrils. The reek of their blood and fur and internal organs began to overwhelm all other scents.
Ten heartbeats later it was over. All of the ice fiends lay dead or dying. One of the wounded lashed out at Ragnar even on its dying breath. He avoided the stroke easily and sent it to hell with a flick of his blade.
“Fierce buggers, aren’t they?” said Sven, rotating the blades of his chainsword in a snowdrift to clean it.
“I’ve seen worse,” said Ragnar scooping up a handful of clean snow to wipe the alien blood from his armour.
“Well, they won’t be killing any more bloody bondsmen, that’s for sure.”
“You have it there,” said Ragnar quietly. He felt an obscure melancholy start to sneak over him now that the excitement of the battle was over. The creatures had not presented much of a challenge after all, and in death had started to look slightly pathetic.
“Useless beasts,” said Sven. “Not even good to eat.”
“I suppose not.”
“Cheer up, Ragnar. You’d think it was you that had taken your death wound, not them.”
Ragnar attempted a smile, wondering at the change in his mood. Such things were becoming rarer and rarer as his body adapted to the changes that becoming a Space Wolf had wrought, but still they sometimes took him off guard. Suddenly, his eye caught sight of a distant flickering, as something massive dropped through the white clouds to the south-west.
A moment later, he heard the sonic boom of the approaching aircraft.
“Looks like we’ve got company,” he said.
“Help has arrived. Too bloody late as usual. I’ve done all the work. You’ll get all the credit.”
Ragnar reached down and wadded up a snowball. A second later he snapped it into Sven’s face. So swift were the Blood Claw’s reflexes that his comrade almost evaded it despite Ragnar’s speed. Almost.
“Sneak attack, eh?” said Sven. “Well, there’s only one bloody response to that.”
A moment later, a snowball smacked off Ragnar’s armour, and then a second.
They were still fighting when the Thunderhawk’s landing skids dropped into the snow nearby.
Ragnar was surprised to see Sergeant Hakon emerge from the hatch of the gunship. He thought the veteran had returned to Russvik to take charge of training once more. The old Marine was even more grizzled-looking now than when Ragnar had first met him, five years before. His face was still a patchwork of scars, his eyes still chips of blue ice. His hair and long sideburns were pure grey. His canines were monstrous fangs. He surveyed the two Blood Claws for a second and the fighting stopped.
“You’re wanted back at the Fang,” he said.
“We’re flattered that you came all this way to get us,” said Sven. Over the past few years, they had all lost some of their awe of their leader. “Has our liege Berek Thunderfist decided that he needs a bigger audience when the skalds sing his bloody praises?”
“You should watch your tongue, youth,” said Hakon, “or Lord Berek might rip it out. He always had a bit of a temper that one. Or I might do it myself, if you don’t show some respect for your elders.”
Hakon’s voice was a flat and flinty as ever. Sven’s cheerfully ugly face lost some of its cheeky expression at the sergeant’s tone. Perhaps he had not quite lost all awe of the old man, Ragnar thought.
“Why have we been summoned?” asked Ragnar. It was not every day that a veteran sergeant and a gunship was dispatched to recover two Blood Claws on a hunting expedition.
“It’s not just you,” said Hakon. “Every Wolf on the planet has been called back to the Fang.”
“Every one?”
The sergeant nodded.
“Must be something big,” said Sven.
“Aye, youth, must be. Such a thing has not happened since you and your friends discovered that Chaos nest under Daemon Spire Mountain, and that was the first time that had happened in over a century.”
“It’s nice to know we’ve brought a bit of excitement into your otherwise dull lives,” said Sven.
“Get in. You’re not the only cubs I have to pick up today,” the sergeant said.
Ragnar followed Sven into the innards of the armoured gunship and strapped himself in.
“Who’s he calling a bloody cub?” muttered Sven. “About time we were made Grey Hunters, that’s what I think.”
“Do you have an idea what all this is about?” asked Aenar Hellstrom brightly from across the hold. His oval face looked almost obnoxiously young and cheerful. Aenar was part of the most recent intake of Blood Claws to Lord Berek’s company. A whole new pack of them, the second Ragnar had seen since his own acceptance by Lord Berek. Looking around he could see a couple of other members of the pack — the saturnine Torvald and the massive brute everyone just called Troll.
Sven grunted, not wanting to reveal his ignorance to one of the cubs, as they thought of the youngsters. It would not do. After all, he and Sven and Strybjorn were veterans of sorts, the oldest Blood Claw pack, and Aenar and his ilk had not even been off-planet yet. Aenar whooped as the Thunderhawk shuddered and roared its way through a patch of turbulence. Was I ever like that, Ragnar wondered with all the world-weariness of his extra five years? It’s a wonder that Hakon did not shoot me.
Ragnar exchanged knowing glances with Sven who looked as if he were about to cuff the younger Blood Claw. Ragnar glanced around the inner cabin of the Thunderhawk. It was indeed a strange mix the gunship had picked up on its trip around the wastes. Along with Hakon there were other veterans, Long Fangs bearing the insignia of three different great companies, Grey Hunters, Blood Claws, even a Wolf Priest who had been scouting for new aspirants along the ridges near the glacier valley. It seemed like a fair cross-section of the Chapter had been abroad, about their own business in the winter-bound lands of the northern continent.
Hardly surprising really. Most had probably been doing the same as him and Sven, keeping their skills sharp by hunting, tracking, climbing mountains, practising winter world survival strategies. It was part of the routine for most of the Wolves when at home on Fenris. Those not involved in mandatory duty rosters were left free to pursue their own interests, unless of course some emergency came up.
What could be going on, Ragnar wondered? What was so important that all of these warriors had been recalled to the Fang? Had the Thousand Sons returned? Had a nest of Chaos worshippers been uncovered? Or was it something else — a summons to battle beyond the stars? He fervently hoped so.
Ragnar took a deep breath and began to murmur cleansing prayers to Russ. He needed to calm his mind, and be ready for anything, to be certain that whatever the challenge was, he could meet it. In a way it did not really matter what awaited them back at the Fang, he would find out soon enough, and be ready. It was his sworn duty as a Space Marine and a bondsman to Berek Thunderfist and Great Wolf Logan Grimnar. It was his duty to Russ and the Emperor and the spirits of those who had gone before him.
He felt a great calmness pass over him, as the ancient words of the prayer triggered responses programmed deep into his body’s central nervous system. At once he felt both at peace and alert. The beating of his double hearts slowed. His breathing became deeper and more relaxed, his mind clearer and calmer. It was becoming easier, he thought. The more he practised these ancient rituals, the more effective they became, and the quicker he got results.
“You’ll soon be as god-bothering as Lars was,” said Sven. Instantly a vision of their old comrade, killed by a monstrous ork warlord on Gait, sprang into Ragnar’s mind, dispelling the serenity that filled him. Lars had been a strange fey youth, perhaps marked for the Rune Priesthood had he lived. Ragnar knew that he himself had little in common with him. He doubted he was going to hang himself from the tree of life to gain mystical knowledge. As far as he knew, he possessed no trace of psychic powers.
Rather than laughing, Aenar greeted this remark with a look of even deeper respect. He was one of the ones who had started calling Ragnar “Blackmane”, after the skin of the great wolf he had killed during his initiation quest. Ragnar felt he could do without looks like that. They made him feel a little too responsible for his liking. Sven saw the look too and shook his head disgustedly.
“Ragnar slew all ten ice fiends,” he said with heavy sarcasm. “I stood and watched his splendid bladework.”
“Really?” asked Aenar breathlessly.
“No, you idiot. He bloody well did not. He spent most of the fight wiping the tears from his eyes. Tears of envy at my god-like bloody prowess I might add.”
Disbelief scribed itself on Aenar’s face. Sven shook his head in disgust again, leaned back, closed his eyes and started to snore. Outside through the portholes, Ragnar could see the wolf-marked face of the moon, glimmering against the jewelled blackness of the sky.
No matter how many times he saw it, the sight of the Fang always astonished Ragnar. The massive peak, thrusting clear of the atmosphere, was the home of his Chapter. It was said to be the highest mountain in the Imperium, one of the greatest natural wonders, and Ragnar had never found any reason to doubt this. It dwarfed all the lesser peaks, the way a wolfhound might dwarf a terrier. Within its hollowed core lay one of the mightiest fortresses in the galaxy, the central and most important base of one of the oldest and most renowned of all Space Marine Chapters.
A thrill filled Ragnar when he contemplated it. In ancient days the place had been home to the man-god, Leman
Russ, primarch of the Chapter, and the Emperor’s mightiest bondsman. From here he had set out to distant Terra and fought against the traitorous factions of the Horus Heresy. Here he had overseen the transformation of the first generation of Fenrisian warriors into the very first Space Wolves; he had given his own blood and genetic material to ensure it. This was the place that every one of the thousands of warriors who had become Space Wolves over the past ten thousand years called home. In the time since their founder’s disappearance, the Wolves had done their best to live up to his legacy.
The Thunderhawk screamed down the Valley of the Wolves, towards its landing site, passing over fields worked by the thralls of the Chapter, and over the mines and refineries that kept its warriors supplied. In the hellish glare of the venting gas jets, Ragnar saw the massive metal pipes clinging like enormous steel vines to the mountain sides. A cloud of dark smoke rose from the towering metal chimneys to wreathe the ridges of the great mountain. Abruptly the gunship decelerated, slowing from fantastic velocity to a standstill in a few dozen heartbeats.
Ragnar, like everybody else, was thrown forward against the straps of his restraining harness. Sven opened one eye and looked around.
“I see our pilots haven’t improved any with practice,” he said, and closed his eye once more.
The Thunderhawk landed on the hydraulic platform and descended into the depths of the Fang.
Ragnar emerged from the gunship into the great landing bay. All around. Space Wolves and thralls stood frozen in amazement. A great booming blast echoed through the cavernous hallway, seeming to disturb the clouds that had formed under the vaulted ceiling.
Servitors — half-man, half-machine — halted, red warning lights blinking on their craniums, and gazed around in wonder. Ragnar himself paused, half wondering if what he was hearing could be real. Every nerve of his body thrilled and responded to a knowledge imprinted deep in his brain by the teaching machines. This was the Horn of Doom, sounded only in moments of the gravest crisis to the Imperium and the Chapter, a signal calling every man to battle.