Wolf's Honour Part 7

The young s.p.a.ce Wolf looked back the way he'd come and saw the rest of his team rus.h.i.+ng up to join him. Haegr was out front, smoke curling from the barrel of his bolt pistol. Ragnar scowled at the burly warrior. 'You could have warned me about the barricade,' he growled.

'Barricade? You mean this pitiful thing?' Haegr drew back a foot and kicked the layered flakboards apart. 'I thought it was just a pile of rubbish.'

Shaking his head, Ragnar gave the wound in his leg a cursory check. Finding nothing serious, he bent and picked the flamer and plasma gun off the bodies of the dead stormtroopers. 'Take these,' he said, pa.s.sing them over to two of the Blood Claws. 'Flamer up front. Let's go.'

The Blood Claw with the flamer nodded curtly and stepped to the head of the staircase. The iron rungs receded into darkness.

A breath of cold air rose up from the depths, smelling of old stone and lingering rot. Ragnar bared his teeth and slapped the lead Blood Claw on the shoulder. Slowly, cautiously, they began their descent.

EIGHT.

Descent into Darkness The iron stairs rang as the s.p.a.ce Wolves made their way into the command bunker's lower level. With a draconic hiss the flamer spat a stream of burning promethium down the length of the dark staircase. Ruddy orange light pushed back the cave-like shadows for a moment, revealing a steep descent to a ferrocrete landing and a switchback leading farther down. Teeth bared, the lead Blood Claw clambered slowly down the stairs with Ragnar and the rest of the team close behind.

Bolt pistol trained over the Blood Claw's right shoulder, Ragnar strained his senses to the utmost, listening for tell-tale signs of ambush. In the distance, he thought he could hear the crash and echo of gunfire, but the stone walls of the bunker made it hard to gauge where the sound was coming from.

Once again, a cold wave of vertigo swept through him, and the young s.p.a.ce Wolf fought to control his balance on the narrow stairs. Shadow shapes flitted at the corners of his vision, further disorientating him. Ragnar growled softly and forced himself to concentrate on the feel of the weapons in his hands and the presence of the Blood Claw in front of him as they made their way down the stairs.

Ragnar signalled for the lead Wolf to halt at the bottom of the first staircase. They listened in the gloom. Faint sounds reached Ragnar's ears. Was it whispering or the faint scrabble of claws on metal? Whatever it was, the sound was coming from around the corner of the staircase. Ragnar signalled to the Blood Claw, who nodded and swiftly thrust the flamer around the bend. An all-too-human scream of horror was quickly swallowed in the flamer's hissing roar.

The Blood Claw held down the trigger for a full second before drawing back out of the way. Ragnar swept past, bolt pistol levelled, and pumped sh.e.l.ls at the burning, flailing forms writhing on the staircase. He advanced into an inferno, killing men with shots to the head and chest or ending their agonies with a sweep of his blade. Power packs and ammunition cooked off all around him, filling the narrow s.p.a.ce with thunderous detonations and deadly ricochets. Behind him, the rest of the team swept down in Ragnar's wake, eager to come to grips with the foe.

There was a small landing at the base of the stairs, piled with smouldering corpses. In the dim firelight, Ragnar's keen senses picked out an open doorway to the left of the landing. As he approached, he heard the distinct double click of a pair of grenades being primed, and the twin silver canisters were lobbed through the doorway at his feet. A lesser man might have panicked. Ragnar simply knocked them back the way they'd come with a sweep of his armoured boot. They detonated less than a second later, close enough to pepper him with bits of searing shrapnel, but the effect on the rebels in the chamber beyond was far worse.

Ragnar charged through the doorway into the reeling squad of rebel troopers, knocking two men off their feet with bolt pistol shots before slas.h.i.+ng into the rest with his frost blade. The room was nearly pitch-dark. Ragnar's keen senses caught the ultrasonic whine of thermal-vision goggles and marked the locations of the rebel Guardsmen in the stroboscopic flashes of their weapons. Light burst from a lasgun to his right, sending a beam point-blank into Ragnar's breastplate. The flash revealed a snarling Guardsman little more than a metre away, his sunken cheeks crudely carved with blasphemous sigils. Ragnar spun on his heel and lashed out with his sword, eviscerating the soldier with a sweeping cut.

A shotgun went off, spraying his right shoulder and the side of his face with lead pellets. Ragnar howled in fury and fired a round in the direction of the flash, hearing the meaty sound of the sh.e.l.l striking home in the rebel's chest. As Ragnar drove deeper into the room a chainsword slashed in from the left, glancing off his left pauldron and tearing open his chin. Without hesitation, the young s.p.a.ce Wolf tore upwards with his keening frost blade, severing the rebel's arm near the elbow.

There was another flash, this time behind Ragnar, as Haegr fired at another target. The young s.p.a.ce Wolf glimpsed the rebel who'd struck him, reeling away, blood jetting from his shorn arm. Another traitor cowered on the floor near the far wall, his blood spattered hands pressed to his face. Ragnar shot them both for good measure.

Thunder and man-made lightning burst again and again in the confined s.p.a.ce. Guardsmen thrashed and spun, hammered to the ground by bolt pistol sh.e.l.ls. Within moments, the survivors broke and ran, loosing ragged volleys of lasgun fire as they fled down an adjoining pa.s.sageway to the north.

Ragnar heard Haegr and Torin step to the mouth of the pa.s.sageway and fire on the retrearing troops. The young s.p.a.ce Wolf stood near the centre of the dark room and tried to get his bearings. He swayed unsteadily on his feet. Strange smells a.s.saulted his senses over the reek of propellant and the stink of ruptured organs. The hairs on the back of his neck p.r.i.c.kled. Somewhere, impossibly far away, he thought he heard a howl.

The rest of the team spread out into the room. In the darkness, Haegr chuckled cruelly. 'The fools should have stayed put,' he said. 'I've never met a man who could outrun a bolt pistol sh.e.l.l!'

'There's a room at the far end of the pa.s.sageway' Torin cut in. 'I can see some sort of faint, purple glow.'

Sorcery, Ragnar thought. That had to be the source of his hallucinations. Madox and the Thousand Sons served the dreaded Changer of Ways, a vile G.o.d of madness and illusion. Now, it appeared that the rebels were turning to their unholy patrons for help against the implacable Wolves.

Ragnar peered around the dark room, straggling to focus. Time was running out. Beyond the danger of whatever sorceries the rebels were trying to invoke, the extraction flight would be over the base, circling and strafing any traitor vehicles that emerged from their shelters. They couldn't remain for long. If they weren't back on the surface within a few minutes, there wouldn't be anyone waiting to take them back to base. He didn't want to try his odds fighting his way back on foot with half a dozen enemy prisoners in tow.

The young s.p.a.ce Wolf tried to summon the maps of the bunker complex to the forefront of his mind. He knew that the vault adjoined the main war room on this level, but how many pa.s.sageways connected to it? The spilled blood in the room made it difficult to think. Ragnar started to pace, fighting the urge to charge off into the gloom in search of something to kill. Sounds echoed in the darkness. A howl seemed to echo from another pa.s.sageway to the south.

'Did you hear that?' he hissed.

To Ragnar's surprise, Torin answered at once. 'I did. It could be Sigurd or the other team. If they're pinned down, we're the only ones in position to reach the vault.'

Ragnar stifled a curse. Torin was right. He was letting his imagination get the better of him, and time was wasting. He worked his way past the fallen bodies of the rebel soldiers and reached the mouth of the north pa.s.sageway, where he too could see a dim, purple glow pulsing slowly at the far end. As he pa.s.sed Torin, he whispered, 'Is there anything else you feel? Do you see shadows?'

'Yes,' Torin whispered back, 'perhaps worse than before, but let's worry about that later. For now, let's just get down this corridor.'

Ragnar nodded to himself. He shouldered his way alongside Haegr and checked the ammo load for his pistol. Satisfied, he focused on the light in the distance and set off at a loping run with the rest of the team behind him.

They pa.s.sed through half a dozen small rooms along the way, cluttered with debris and devoid of life. As they drew closer to the pulsing ethereal light, Ragnar could feel the invisible tides of sorcery was.h.i.+ng over him in waves of oily filth. A strange, acrid stench burned in his nostrils and set his teeth on edge. Buzzing atonal notes echoed in his ears, growing louder with each step he took.

Distracted as he was, Ragnar didn't notice the flak-board barrier until he was within three metres of the end of the pa.s.sageway. The enemy had laid boards over the doorway to well above human height, their grey sides reflecting the s.h.i.+fting purple light from the ceiling of the room beyond.

Ragnar slowed his pace at once. 'Barrier ahead,' he said gruffly, his voice sounding tinny and distorted over the infernal buzzing in his ears. 'We'll get the plasma gun-'

Haegr laughed. The sound was deep and guttural, like the growl of a bear. 'A barrier for you perhaps,' he growled, 'but not for mighty Haegr!'

The huge s.p.a.ce Wolf charged right at the slabs of flakboard, his thunder hammer ready in his hand. With a bloodthirsty shout, he crashed against the barrier. The flakboard exploded inward in a shower of debris, falling apart so easily that Haegr stumbled forward with an awkward shout into a hail of gunfire and a chorus of excited cries.

'Morkai's black breath!' Ragnar shouted angrily, and then chased off after Haegr. Shouts and war cries echoed after him as Torin and the Blood Claws took up the chase.

Sharp blasts of thunder rang from the walls of the chamber as Ragnar charged through the doorway and found himself in the bunker's expansive war room. Situation tables and logic engines had been overturned or moved to create defensive positions across the wide, rectangular room, and more than a score of huge, burly figures stood or crouched behind their barricades and unleashed a storm of fire upon Haegr and Ragnar both. Beyond them, at the opposite side of the war room, Ragnar saw a pair of gleaming steel doors: the entrance to the bunker's emergency vault.

Stubber sh.e.l.ls whipped through the air around Ragnar or rang off his ceramite armour. One gouged a fiery path across the side of his head before ricocheting off his thickened skull. Tracer fire criss-crossed around him in a deadly web of sh.e.l.ls. A few metres away, Haegr had crashed against the face of an upended hololith table and was smas.h.i.+ng at the traitors on the other side with his crackling blood smeared hammer. Bullets sparked and howled off the curved surfaces of his armour, though Ragnar saw where almost half a dozen rounds had left red-rimmed holes in the burly warrior's arms, waist and legs. The hits didn't seem to slow Haegr in the least.

A heavy blow struck Ragnar in the left arm, and fiery pain blossomed just above his elbow. Snarling the young s.p.a.ce Wolf turned and blasted away at the rebels taking cover behind the barricades to his left. A huge figure reared up behind a broken logic engine.

Ragnar caught sight of a twisted, misshapen hunk of gleaming muscles and a scarred lump that might once have been a human head. The mutant turned its beady red eyes on Ragnar and levelled a short-barrel heavy stubber at him. Roaring, the young s.p.a.ce Wolf charged at the mutant, blazing away with his bolt pistol. Sh.e.l.l after sh.e.l.l rocked the monster, blowing gory holes through its ma.s.sive arms and torso, but the mutant refused to die.

Its heavy stubber hammered at Ragnar, spitting a stream of tracer rounds at the onrus.h.i.+ng s.p.a.ce Wolf. Hammer blows struck Ragnar in the chest and abdomen, but the blessed armour plate held against the heavy stubber rounds. Howling like a beast, Ragnar leapt onto the toppled logic engine and buried his blade in the monster's cartilaginous skull. Sickly grey and yellow matter spewed from the frost blade's whirring teeth, but the mutant refused to die. It howled and thrashed, throwing down its smoking gun and reaching for Ragnar's blade. Horrified, Ragnar shot the monster twice in the face and dashed its blasphemous corpse to the floor.

Howling, gibbering figures rushed at the young s.p.a.ce Wolf from every direction. A Guardsman with a skinned face swung a chainsword at Ragnar's left leg. Ragnar parried the stroke with his frost blade and kicked the onrus.h.i.+ng rebel in the head, bursting it like a melon. Another mutant, this one wearing the tattered uniform of a PDF staff officer, wrapped a long, barbed tentacle around Ragnar's left ankle and with surprising strength hauled the s.p.a.ce Wolf off his feet. He landed heavily, smas.h.i.+ng his head and shoulders against the metal and gla.s.s case of the logic engine before rolling, senseless, to the floor.

For less than half a second he was too stunned to move. Sounds rolled like surf in his ears: shouts, gunshots, screams and thudding blows. A blade of some kind smashed into Ragnar's back again and again, grinding off the armour. Figures crowded above him; a gun went off, the round burying itself in his backpack. Then a tentacle squirmed wetly around his throat and began to squeeze.

Ragnar roared like a wounded beast and lashed out with his whirring blade, shearing through ankles in an arc around his head. Mutants shrieked and toppled like felled trees, bleeding their lives out onto the floor. Ragnar used the impetus of the swing to flip onto his back, his bolt pistol hammering at the foes still looming above him. Three mutants reeled backwards with smoking holes in the backs of their heads. The tentacle around Ragnar's throat came away with a spasmodic jerk.

An upended table nearby exploded in a blue ball of plasma, scattering flaming debris across the room. Two mutants staggered away from the explosion, blinded and firing wildly into the melee. Battle chants and bloodthirsty cries rang from the stone walls as the Blood Claws in Ragnar's team charged into the fray. Ragnar caught sight of Haegr carving a gory path through a knot of struggling mutants, bursting them apart with earth shaking blows from his hammer. A shadow pa.s.sed across the young s.p.a.ce Wolf's vision, but this time it was Torin, leaping nimbly over a barricade of smashed logic engines and opening the throats of the mutants hiding behind them.

For a moment, the room seemed to spin. Ragnar felt as though he was falling, but then he heard a guttural voice snarl into his ear. 'Watch your head!'

Something in the tone of the voice galvanised him. Ragnar rolled to the left, just as a roaring chainblade smashed into the ferrocrete where his head had just been.

Heart racing, Ragnar threw a blind swing behind him as he lurched to his feet. His frost blade swept through empty air, and then he heard the chainblade's throaty rasp, and a terrible blow struck him in the back of his left thigh.

The pain was immense. For a brief, agonising instant, Ragnar could feel the teeth of the chainblade tearing through his flesh. He staggered, but his sacred armour sensed the impact and locked his left knee-joint to keep him upright. Snarling in agony, the young s.p.a.ce Wolf spun on his immobilised leg, barely warding off a second blow aimed at his neck.

He found himself staring at an enormous, hyper-muscled mutant, wielding a two-handed chainsword in its clawed fists. Ragnar recognised the weapon at once: it was an eviscerator, a ponderous but devastating weapon favoured by would-be martyrs in the Guard's Ecclesiarchal auxiliaries. The young s.p.a.ce Wolf realised that the leering mutant was wearing the tattered remains of a priest's homespun robes. An Imperial aquila, once the priest's most prized possession, hung upside-down on a necklace of body parts strung around the mutant's bull-like neck.

The mutant gibbered a stream of blasphemies and pressed its attack. The eviscerator was a clumsy weapon in human hands, but the muscle bound traitor wielded it like a willow-switch. Ragnar blocked one powerful blow after another, knowing that if his defence failed, even for a moment, the mutant would hack him in two.

A blurring stroke leapt at Ragnar's face. The young s.p.a.ce Wolf blocked the eviscerator in a shower of sparks, and shot the mutant in the left knee. The monster staggered, bellowing through a mouth full of pointed teeth, but it pressed its attack without pause.

The mutant charged forwards, slas.h.i.+ng across Ragnar's left pauldron and leaving a deep gash in the ceramite. A lightning-fast return strike nearly took off half the young s.p.a.ce Wolfs face. Ragnar shot the mutant twice more, once in the belly and once in the groin, and this time, when the mutant lurched beneath the impacts, the young s.p.a.ce Wolf lashed out with his frost blade and severed the traitor's left hand at the wrist. Hot blood spurted onto Ragnar's face as the mutant howled in agony, and the young s.p.a.ce Wolf rushed in to finish off the traitor, but the former priest dropped its weapon and seized Ragnar's sword wrist in a vice-like grip.

Ragnar felt servos whine under intolerable pressure as the mutant closed its fist. The cuff of his gaundet began to deform under the pressure. Bones grated in his wrist. Ragnar put the bolt pistol to the mutant's head and pulled the trigger, but the weapon was empty.

The mutant looked into Ragnar's eyes and hissed cruelly. Ragnar felt a wave of panic as the bones in his wrist and arm began to splinter. It was as though a wild beast came howling up from deep in his breast. With a savage growl, Ragnar leapt forward and buried his teeth in the mutant's over-muscled neck.

He bit deep, feeling flesh and cable-like muscle tear within his powerful jaws. Blood, hot and bitter, filled his mouth. The mutant shrieked, pummelling Ragnar with the stump of its left arm, but the young s.p.a.ce Wolf wrenched his head left and right, widening the wound and digging for the pulsing arteries buried within the neck.

Ragnar could feel the heat of the mutant's heart-blood. He hungered for it, longing to feel it spilling in a flood over his gaping jaws. It was the purest, most vivid thing he'd felt in his entire life. For a fleeting instant, Ragnar was gone. What remained behind was something raw and elemental: a wolf in name and deed.

He tore out the mutant's throat, and then he started to feed.

NINE.

Wolf-bitten A powerful blow smote Ragnar on the side of the head. The force of it knocked the young s.p.a.ce Wolf onto his side, but he was back upright in moments, showing his red slicked fangs and crouching protectively over his kill. Sigurd's pale face appeared before him, blood spattered and severe.

'By the holy name of Russ the Frimarch I take your soul into my hands, Ragnar Blackmane!' The priest's voice trembled, but the words were powerful, infused with the strength of centuries of faith. Ragnar blinked, drawing back from the image of a wolf's skull amulet that Sigurd brandished before his eyes.

'The wolf cannot have you! Your heart is not yours to give, but belongs to the Allfather, now and forever more! Remember your oaths, son of Fenris! Remember who you are!'

The words were like the tolling of a bell inside his head, cold and bright and irresistible. He fell heavily onto the floor, shaking his head dazedly.

After a moment, Ragnar's vision cleared. Sigurd the Wolf Priest loomed above him, his wide eyes fearful, but his expression hardened into a mask of determination. His Iron Wolf amulet was clenched in one gauntleted hand.

Ragnar could feel blood trickling over his lips and staining his breastplate. A shudder pa.s.sed through him. The young s.p.a.ce Marine rose to his knees with an effort, and as he did so he noticed the b.l.o.o.d.y figure sprawled beside him. Ragnar looked down at the mangled corpse of the former priest and felt a wave of horror and revulsion crash down upon him. Blessed Russ, he thought despairingly, I'm wolf-bitten.

'Forgive me,' he said hoa.r.s.ely, unable to tear his eyes away from the gaping wound in the mutant's throat.

'Forgiveness is earned in battle,' Sigurd said coldly. 'Stand and fight like a man, Ragnar, not an animal.' The Wolf Priest brandished his crozius before the young s.p.a.ce Wolf. 'Just as Russ overcame the wolf inside him out of love for the Allfather, so you must too rise above the beast within. Now get up. The foe awaits.'

Nodding Ragnar lurched to his feet. The battle in the war room was over. Sigurd and the remaining Blood Claws had arrived and overwhelmed the remaining traitors as Ragnar struggled with the huge mutant. Smoke and the stench of burned flesh hung in the air, and the bodies of the traitor Guardsmen lay in b.l.o.o.d.y heaps behind their makes.h.i.+ft barricades. Harald and his pack-mates stood among the carnage, clutching their weapons and watching the exchange between Ragnar and Sigurd with wary, fearful eyes. It was all Ragnar could do not to hang his head in shame.

A heavy blow to the shoulder nearly knocked the young s.p.a.ce Wolf off his feet. Haegr loomed over Ragnar, chuckling deep in his throat. 'You call that a bite? Mighty Haegr would have taken that monster's head off with a single snap of his jaws!'

The huge s.p.a.ce Wolf's laugh was infectious. Soon, every warrior in the room was laughing along with him, but for Sigurd and Ragnar.

'You want something to chew on, come over here and try your teeth on this,' Torin said, pressing his fingertips to the cold steel doors of the vault. 'Our time is almost up, and the Allfather alone knows what they're up to inside.'

Ragnar rubbed his chin with the back of his hand and turned to Sigurd. 'Have you got any charges left?'

'Two,' the Wolf Priest said, and nodded to Harald. The Blood Claw pack leader waved a pair of his men forward, and they began setting the charges against the door.

Harald turned to Sigurd. His eyes pa.s.sed over Ragnar, as though afraid to see what lurked within the young s.p.a.ce Wolfs gaze. 'We're sure to kill everyone inside when these go off,' he said.

'No,' Ragnar replied, shaking his head as he reloaded his pistol. 'These doors are doubly reinforced, designed to protect the general staff in the event of a major attack. More likely the Shockwave will rebound back on us, so I suggest standing well off to either side of the door.'

The battered and bloodied s.p.a.ce Wolves quickly took up positions around the vault. Ragnar could still feel the sickly wash of unclean energies rippling from within. He nodded to the Blood Claw waiting at the threshold. The warrior keyed the fuse and leapt clear.

Sure enough, a tremendous concussion shook the entire room, throwing the armoured warriors back against the stone walls and sending clouds of broken debris flying through the air. When the smoke cleared, Ragnar leapt forward, weapons ready, and found a hole melted through the thick steel doors just wide enough for a s.p.a.ce Marine to fit through. He threw himself into the gap while the metal edges were still red-hot, with Torin, Haegr and Sigurd just a few steps behind him.

The vault was a small redoubt, with a narrow, thick-walled pa.s.sageway beyond the molten doors that opened into an octagonal chamber barely ten metres across. Two bodies, charred almost beyond recognition, were sprawled on the stone floor at the far end of the pa.s.sageway. Beyond them lay a scene of b.l.o.o.d.y pandemonium.

There were perhaps twenty officers and staff aides crammed into the chamber, shouting and babbling desperate pleas to their newfound G.o.ds. Their ornate uniforms were torn and stained where they had dug into their flesh with ceremonial knives, and their faces were painted in fresh blood. More blood had been spilled on the floor. A young orderly, little more than fifteen, had been dragged to his knees and slit from ear to ear, and the red flood that had poured from his narrow throat had been used to paint a blasphemous circle in the centre of the room. It was towards this terrible sigil that the rebels directed their pleas, their gore-stained hands outstretched in abject wors.h.i.+p. As Ragnar charged into their midst he saw a ghostly figure take shape within the sigil. It was a towering form clad in ancient, baroque armour of blue and gold, its edges inlaid with blasphemous sigils, and its curved plates decorated with charms and fetishes of bone and withered skin. Flickering purple flames glinted hungrily in the oculars of the Chaos champion's horned helmet, fixing Ragnar with a glare of eternal malice. In one hand, the sorcerer held a sword made from tooth, horn and soulless, black iron. Flames leapt hungrily in the palm of his other hand, hissing and spitting in the dank air.

For a fleeting moment Ragnar's heart leapt with bloodthirsty joy at the thought that he'd come face-to-face with Madox himself. Yet there was no glint of recognition in the sorcerer's strange eyes as he raised his blazing hand and called out a horrific string of syllables in a raw, hateful voice.

A howling torrent of pink and purple fire burst from the sorcerer's hand, aimed right at Ragnar's chest. The bolt struck one of the rebel officers a glancing blow as it pa.s.sed, and the traitor dissolved right before the young s.p.a.ce Wolfs eyes. Cursing fearfully, Ragnar threw himself to the side and the sorcerous flame struck his right pauldron a glancing blow. He heard the ceramite hiss and scream beneath the blast, scattering molten droplets upon the floor. The bolt continued on, missing Haegr by a hair's breadth and cras.h.i.+ng into the onrus.h.i.+ng form of Sigurd.

The sorcerous flames washed over the Wolf Priest in a chorus of thin, unearthly howls and a crackle of brittle thunder. Two Blood Claws to either side of the priest were thrown to the floor by the blast, but Sigurd was unmoved. The flames curled away from the rosarius that the Wolf Priest held before him, and he called out in a powerful voice, 'Traitor! Servant of false G.o.ds! I abjure you, warrior of the Thousand Sons! Look upon the sons of the Wolf and despair!'

The Thousand Sons Chaos s.p.a.ce Marine laughed at the Wolf Priest and uttered a stream of vile curses that caused the rebel Guardsmen to fall thras.h.i.+ng to the floor. Baring his teeth, Ragnar gathered his courage and charged at the unholy warrior, snapping off shots with his bolt pistol as he went.

Explosive rounds detonated harmlessly against the champion's breastplate and helm, leaving scarcely a mark on the ensorcelled armour. Undaunted, Ragnar stepped close and unleashed a storm of deadly blows with his master crafted frost blade, fully intending to chop the Chaos s.p.a.ce Marine to pieces.

Not a single blow found its mark. Whether by sorcery or pure, deadly skill, the champion blocked or evaded Ragnar's every move. The huge figure moved like quicksilver, seeming to antic.i.p.ate the young s.p.a.ce Wolfs attacks, and countering them with disdainful ease. At one point Ragnar sensed he'd found an opening in the sorcerer's guard and nearly found himself impaled on the champion's unnatural blade.

A shadow flowed into Ragnar's field of vision to his left. Torin was there, catching the sorcerer's blade against his chainsword. Sensing an opportunity, Ragnar lunged forward with a slas.h.i.+ng cut to the champion's shoulder, but the Chaos s.p.a.ce Marine fell back, dodging the blow.

Shouts and battle cries echoed in the confined s.p.a.ce as the rebel troops reared up from the stone floor like beasts, and threw themselves at the s.p.a.ce Wolves. Dimly, Ragnar heard Sigurd repudiating the traitor Guardsmen in a loud, sonorous voice over the roar of chainblades and the bark of laspistols. Then a mountainous form loomed to the young s.p.a.ce Wolf's right and unleashed an earth shaking blow upon the Chaos champion. Haegr laughed as the sorcerer leapt backwards out of the path of the falling hammer. 'That's it, traitor! Dance like a maid!' he roared. 'You can't match blows with mighty Haegr!'

The sorcerer's hateful gaze never wavered, however, as he fell back, step by step, across the chamber. Ragnar counted the steps and gauged their distance to the far wall. He'll have his back up against the bricks in a few more metres, he thought, pressing his attack, and the b.a.s.t.a.r.d's too good not to know it, too. He's trading s.p.a.ce for time.

A flash of understanding nearly stopped Ragnar in his tracks. 'Ambus.h.!.+' he cried out, just as the air seemed to thicken and tear like rotted parchment, and a host of gibbering horrors appeared in the s.p.a.ce Wolves' midst.

Something heavy and rank landed wetly behind Ragnar and uttered a piping lunatic cry. Fearful of turning his back on the deadly Chaos Marine, the young s.p.a.ce Wolf pivoted on his back foot and thrust out his pistol at a writhing column of pink and purple flesh. The daemon's four th.o.r.n.y tentacles wrapped around Ragnar's arm and chest, and the column of muscle contracted, hauling the young s.p.a.ce Wolf towards the creature's serrated beak.

Ragnar cried out as the black beak gaped mere centimetres from his skull. Then he felt the lash of another set of tentacles around his neck and waist, and he was jerked to a painful halt. Yet another daemon had trapped him in its talons, and now the two unholy creatures gibbered and squawked at one another as they vied for his flesh.

An entire pack of tentacled horrors fdled the octagonal s.p.a.ce, snapping and las.h.i.+ng out at everything that moved. As Ragnar struggled, he saw a pair of rebel Guardsmen torn to pieces in a messy spray of blood and entrails. Sigurd reeled within the grasp of a trio of snapping monsters, thick purple ichor smoking from the crackling edges of his crozius. The Blood Claws were beset on every side, but Harald stood in their midst, holding the burning husk of a daemon in his power fist and shouting a rallying cry to his men.

Growling angrily, Ragnar squeezed the trigger and the bolt pistol bucked in his hand, blowing a smoking hole in the daemon standing before him. Shrieking, the monster recoiled, drawing its tentacles still tighter. The daemon behind Ragnar pulled back just as fiercely, and the young s.p.a.ce Wolf felt the bones in his neck creak from the strain. With a savage curse, he lashed out with his free hand, and the frost blade slashed through two of the tentacles that bound him. Ichor gushed over Ragnar's armour as the daemon in front of him unwrapped its remaining tentacles and tried to slither away. Immediately, the young s.p.a.ce Wolf was hauled backwards towards his second a.s.sailant, but Ragnar levelled his bolt pistol and fired twice more at the wounded daemon, blasting its head apart in a shower of dissolving flesh. Then he spun in mid-air, levelling his frost blade and impaling the daemon that had been so hungry to draw him into its embrace. The rune-marked chainsword tore through the daemon's abominable form, causing it to discor-porate into a cloud of foul, clinging mist.

Ragnar twisted as he fell, landing hard on his back and skidding across the stone floor. His bolt pistol came up, seeking targets. The entire chamber was filled with a riot of struggling, slas.h.i.+ng bodies, and the crash of battle roared surf-like in his ears. The light inside the chamber seemed to pulse and s.h.i.+ft. Shadows flitted at the corners of the young s.p.a.ce Wolfs eyes, but he muttered a prayer to Russ under his breath and focused on the battle at hand.

He caught sight of a Blood Claw grappling with a snapping, strangling daemon a few metres away and put a bolt-round through the monster's nominal head. Another warrior went down beneath the thras.h.i.+ng tentacles of a pair of purple horrors. Ragnar pumped sh.e.l.l after sh.e.l.l into the daemons' muscular bodies until the s.p.a.ce Wolf managed to tear his sword-arm free and hack one of the monsters in half.

A severed head bounced across the floor. The face was masked with blood, but Ragnar knew from the scent that it was one of Harald's battle-brothers. Some distance away, the young s.p.a.ce Wolf saw Haegr pull a las.h.i.+ng, snapping daemon from his chest with one broad hand and smash it against the wall beside him. Another monster darted in, bloodstained beak clas.h.i.+ng hungrily, but the Wolfblade crushed it with a downward sweep of his ma.s.sive hammer.

Another daemon erupted in a gout of purple ichor. Harald raised his dripping power fist in triumph, his fangs glinting in the faint light. Then Ragnar saw the monster rising like a snake behind the pack leader, its tentacles rearing back to strike.