'I wonder if the rabbit thinks the same thing as he sticks his head into the snare,' Sternmark hissed. He found himself thinking of his fallen lord Berek, and the melta charges laid beneath his bier. The cold demands of duty focused his mind somewhat, helping him ignore the awful sensations wracking his body. He bared his teeth, tasting the strange scents around him. 'How many of our brothers remain?' Sternmark asked.
The skald folded his arms thoughtfully. 'It's hard to say,' he answered. 'We've Gunnar and Thorbjorn's Long Fangs here at the starport, as well as half of Thorvald's Grey Hunters.' He paused, his lips pressing into a grim line. 'But we've lost contact with the rest.'
'Lost contact?' Sternmark gave the skald a hard look. 'What does that mean? Are we being jammed planet-wide?'
'There is some jamming yes,' Silvertongue replied, 'but some packs have simply stopped responding to our calls. We aren't sure what's happened to them.'
'Not sure?' the Wolf Guard snarled. 'They're dead, Silvertongue. What other explanation could there be?' Sternmark brought his fist down on the ferrocrete parapet, sending up a spray of broken fragments. The rage was rising within him once more, and it was getting harder and harder to find a reason to fight it. He looked out across the killing field. 'What are they waiting for? Let's get to the bloody business of the day and be done with it!'
Silvertongue eyed the Wolf Guard warily. 'I expect they are still waiting for their heavy artillery,' he said. 'We have enough heavy weapons left to make a frontal assault very expensive, and before he left Inquisitor Volt instructed the priests to lay a series of wards that will keep the daemons at bay.' The skald peered closer. 'My lord? Your eyes… they've changed—'
The Wolf Guard seemed not to hear him. 'Wards?' he spat. 'Those won't last long with all those sorcerers out there.'
'Aye, that's true,' Silvertongue replied carefully, 'but we only need a few more hours.'
Sternmark glared at the skald. 'What in Morkai's name are you talking about?' he demanded.
Something in the Wolf Guard's face took Silvertongue aback. He recoiled slightly from Sternmark, as though suddenly confronted by a snarling Fenrisian wolf. 'I… I thought you'd been informed,' he said quickly. 'Lady Commander Athelstane has ordered every available ship made ready for launch. She believes that there are enough transports still able to fly to evacuate the entire starport in one go—'
'Evacuate?' Sternmark spat, the word bitter on his tongue. 'She would have us abandon our honour and slink away like whipped dogs?'
He staggered, overcome with fury. The red tide surged, angry and wild, and swallowed him up entirely.
Silvertongue shouted something his voice urgent, but the Wolf Guard did not hear. He was gone, running like a shadow ahead of the crimson sunset towards the distant command bunker.
Bulveye led Ragnar and his companions into the dimly lit cave, setting his wolves to guard its threshold once more with a quick gesture and a few whispered commands. Beyond the entrance, the cave narrowed quickly into a long tunnel that meandered for several dozen metres into the side of the mountain. To Ragnar's keen night vision the passageway seemed shrouded in twilight. Veins of dark ore ran in serpentine paths through the rough stone walls, and runes of warding were chiselled at every corner to foil the questing spirits of their foes.
Finally they came around another narrow turn, and Ragnar's eyes narrowed at a sudden blaze of firelight. The passageway emptied out into a large, high-ceilinged cavern almost twenty metres across, laid with furs and rough stone benches in the style of a lord's feasting hall. The warriors of the Thirteenth Company had felled some of the strange trees that dotted the foothills at the base of the mountain and had piled the logs in a crude pit at the centre of the cavern. The wood burned without sound or smoke, giving off a fey, otherworldly blue light.
At the far end of the cavern, ailing servos creaked and whined, and a pair of careworn servitors struggled upright at their master's arrival. Bulveye turned and addressed the newcomers sombrely. 'Enter my hall with the blessings of the Allfather,' he said, and beckoned to the servitors.
The Wolf Lord welcomed them according to the ancient tradition, with handclasps, bread and salt. The gesture was both strange and oddly reassuring. Custom and tradition are all they have left, Ragnar mused, as Bulveye bade them sit by the fire, and then strode off to a far corner of the cavern. He returned with guesting gifts: a gold ring for Gabriella and iron daggers for her Wolfblade. The weapons had been forged on Fenris, Ragnar noticed, and beautifully made.
Another piece of home, he thought, turning the blade over in his aching hands. He realised, for the first time that he would never see Fenris again, and a terrible melancholy stole over him.
A few moments later the first of the pack leaders filed into the cavern. They were silent, implacable figures, marked by ten millennia of warfare: the pauldrons of a World Eater champion sat on the shoulders of one warrior, while another wore the breastplate of a fallen lieutenant from Abaddon's infamous Black Legion. They wore cloaks of daemon hide or necklaces of hellhound teeth, and the twisted skulls of those they'd slain were spitted on iron trophy spikes jutting from their backpacks. The pack leaders took their places around the fire, each according to his position within the warband, and they spoke quietly amongst themselves as they waited for the council to begin.
Sigurd stole quietly into the hall shortly afterwards, his expression solemn. Rather than take a seat among the warriors he kept to the shadows at the back of the hall, arms folded, and deep in thought.
Ragnar stole a glance at Torin and Haegr. The two warriors were silent and withdrawn, their eyes hooded and shoulders hunched as they fought their silent struggles with the beasts beneath their skins. Beyond them, Inquisitor Volt and Gabriella sat on a bench to themselves. Volt was sitting ramrod-straight, his gaze moving constantly around the cavern, while the Navigator sat with her arms tightly folded across her chest, lost in some tormented reverie.
Torvald was the last to arrive, striding slowly past the fire and taking a seat at Bulveye's right. The Rune Priest surveyed the assembled warriors and nodded. Then he struck the cavern floor thrice with the butt of his axe. 'The blessings of the Allfather be upon you, brothers,' he said in the silence that followed. 'Our foes gather before us, calling us to battle. Ere the swords sing and the blood flows, hear what our lord has to say.'
Bulveye surveyed each of the warriors seated around the fire. 'It was Torvald's runes that led us to this place,' he said. 'He consulted the Fates, and when he took his hand from the leather bag, he was holding Tyr's Rune, the Rune of the Spear.'
One of the warriors let out a sullen growl. 'Yet when we got here, what did we find? A host of enemies and the shadow of an Imperial agri-world,' he said. 'If he was here we would have found him by now—'
'We have been here for some time, trying to puzzle out the riddles of this place,' Bulveye interjected sharply, throwing a warning look at the pack leader. 'Now our distant kin have arrived, with answers to some of the questions we seek.' The Wolf Lord nodded to Ragnar. 'Tell us how you and your brothers came to be here.'
The young Space Wolf eyed his companions and rose uneasily to his feet. As quickly and succinctly as he could, he related the events on Hyades and the Chaos uprising around Fenris, and then told the grim tale of the battle for Charys and their desperate foray to the shadow world. 'The heart of Madox's ritual lies here,' he said, 'within a great temple at the centre of the shadow city to the north.' He paused. 'Inquisitor Volt can tell us more about what our enemy intends.'
Ragnar gestured to the old inquisitor, who raised his head with a scowl and rose slowly to his feet. 'The enemy intends nothing less than the perversion of the Space Wolf gene-seed,' Inquisitor Volt declared. 'And in so doing the Thousand Sons will inflict a wound upon the Imperium from which it may never heal.'
Bulveye glowered at Volt. 'How can you be so certain of this?'
'How? The evidence is sitting right here, before your very eyes!' Volt pointed to the Wolfblade. 'See how they have been changed already by Madox's spell?' He cast an accusatory stare at each of the warriors seated around the fire. 'You all feel it, don't you? Madox is reaching into the very core of your being, warping you from the inside out!'
'You speak of nothing that I and my brothers have not struggled with for ten millennia!' Bulveye growled. 'The warp twists everything it touches.'
'Do not dissemble, lord!' Volt snapped. 'We have no time for denials or deceptions! You saw what happened to Harald and his warriors. Has the curse Ragnar spoke of ever struck so quickly before? Somehow I doubt it.' The inquisitor turned to Sigurd. 'Come here, priest. It's your duty to safeguard the souls of your battle-brothers. Tell us then, are these transformations normal?'
The Wolf Priest stiffened at the mention of his name. Slowly, reluctantly, he stepped forward into the firelight. His eyes were yellow-gold, like two brass coins. 'No,' he said gravely, 'they are not.'
'There!' Volt snapped. 'You hear it from one of your own priests. Lady Gabriella felt the initial wave of sorcery as the ritual reached its culmination. That energy has crossed the aether into the physical realm, where it will wash over Charys and then down the sorcerous anchor lines until it charges the vast sigil that Madox painstakingly built.' The inquisitor began to pace, his hands clasped tightly behind his back. 'The Chaos uprising was both a cover and a lure to draw the Space Wolves within reach of the sigil,' he said. 'As the sigil becomes charged, every one of the great companies will be affected; even Fenris will be caught within the web of power.'
Sigurd scowled at the inquisitor, but he took a deep breath and spoke. 'The aspirants will succumb first,' he said, 'then the younger warriors. The senior pack members will hold out for some time, I expect, but slowly, they too will be overwhelmed. In the end, perhaps even the great Dreadnoughts beneath the Fang will awaken in the darkness and howl for innocent blood.'
Pandemonium broke out as pack leaders leapt to their feet, shouting angry oaths or denouncing Volt as a liar and a blasphemer. Bulveye sat in silence, brooding darkly over the news. Finally Torvald rose to his feet and raised his axe high. Lightning crackled from the blade and a sharp thunderclap deafened everyone in the cavern. 'Sit down!' the Rune Priest commanded, and the pack leaders reluctantly obeyed. Then Torvald addressed Volt directly. 'What you are talking about would require enormous amounts of psychic power,' he said.
'Naturally,' Volt replied. 'That is why Madox and his lord had to perform the ritual here, in the Eye of Terror. They can draw upon the warp to fuel their sorceries, and then channel those energies through the sigil around Charys. No one, not even Grimnar himself, could resist such a spell for long.'
'And then?' Torvald asked.
Volt's expression became a mask of dread. 'Then blood will flow across a dozen worlds,' he replied. 'The Wolves will turn upon the sheep they once swore to protect. I expect millions of Imperial citizens will die, and that would be just the beginning. The Inquisition would declare the Space Wolves excommunicae traitoris, and then there would be war.'
Ragnar felt his guts turn to ice. Volt was right; the Inquisition would spare no effort to hunt the Wulfen to destruction. Virus bombs would fall upon Fenris, and those that did not flee to the outer reaches of the galaxy, or into the Eye of Terror, would be slain. Of course, the Wulfen would not go meekly. By the time the war was over, entire sectors would lie in ruins. The Imperium would need thousands of years to rebuild, provided its foes did not decide to take advantage of humanity's weakened state and move against it.
'Now we know why the Chaos cultists were taking the progenoid glands from dead Space Marines on Hyades,' Ragnar mused. 'Madox needed Space Wolf gene-seed for his ritual.' He frowned as another thought struck him. 'But what of the Spear of Russ? What does he need with that?'
Volt shook his head. 'I've been wondering about that myself, and I can only speculate at this point,' he said. 'I believe that Madox required a relic of great significance to bind the ritual to your Chapter. The spear – tainted with the blood of Berek Thunderfist, a Wolf Lord – is the fulcrum for Madox's ritual.'
Once again, the cavern erupted in wild shouts as Bulveye's warriors reacted to the news, and this time it took the Wolf Lord himself to end the tumult and bring the council back to order. 'It is no surprise that Madox would have chosen the spear for his diabolical spell,' Bulveye told Volt. 'For we Wolf Lords swore our allegiance to Leman upon that self-same weapon and formed the great companies of our Legion. The most binding oaths of our brotherhood were wrought with it.'
The news stunned Ragnar. Did Logan Grimnar or the priests at the Fang realise the spear's importance, or had its true significance been lost over the course of thousands of years?
'But how did Leman lose his spear?' one of the pack leaders cried. 'It's inconceivable!'
'Morkai's black teeth!' Torvald swore, shaking his head. 'He was constantly losing the damned thing. You may not remember any more, but I do.' The Rune Priest pointed to Bulveye. 'Do you recall the time he drank all that stormwine on Sirenia and tried to throw the bloody spear at the moon? Took us four days to find it afterwards.' He chuckled ruefully and grinned at Ragnar. 'Truth be told, he hated that big boar-sticker, but the Allfather gave it to him as a gift, so he was stuck with it. He dragged it out for ceremonies, and then he'd stick it in a corner somewhere and forget about it. Drove his huscarls mad.'
'Never mind how he lost the spear,' Bulveye said, turning his attention to Volt. 'You said this sigil had to charge itself before it reached full power. Does that mean we can stop the ritual before it is too late?'
'Yes, I believe so,' the inquisitor replied. 'We must find a way to reach the temple at the centre of the city and wrest the spear away from Madox. Without that focus, the ritual energies will dissipate.'
Ragnar clenched his hands around Bulveye's iron dagger. He could feel his fingertips changing as thick talons began to take root. 'What about our brothers who have already succumbed?'
'If the ritual is disrupted before it causes too much corruption to the gene-seed, they may revert to normal,' Sigurd said, 'but every moment brings us closer to the point of no return.'