Amlodhi Skarssen Skarssensson, Lord of the 5th Company of the Space Wolves.

AHRIMAN HADN’T KNOWN what to expect from the Space Wolves. Uthizzar had not exactly been forthcoming after his secondment had ended. They were not friends enough for him to press for details, but he had assumed the grand tales and hyperbolic praise heaped upon the sons of Russ was the exaggeration of storytellers. Now he knew that was not so.

A pack of slavering wolves, dappled grey and white, with powerful, muscular shoulders, ranged ahead of the Astartes. Their eyes, slitted yellow, were locked on Magnus, and their jaws drew back to expose masses of long, overdeveloped fangs like ivory daggers.

The wolves snapped and snarled, and their monstrous, shaggy heads swung from side to side, as though deciding what to attack first.

Behind the wolves came hulking warriors in steeldust Terminator armour, with Amlodhi Skarssen Skarssensson at their head. He marched through the smoke and dust towards the ruin of Magnus’ pavilion, shoulders down as though he were advancing into the teeth of a blizzard. His armour was the battered grey of a thundercloud, and a blackened wolf pelt was secured around his neck on a bone clasp, the slain beast’s enormous skull and teeth forming his right shoulder guard.

Instead of a helmet, Skarssen wore a tight-fitting leather mask fashioned in the form of some hideous amalgam of wolf and demon, lacquered and pierced with fragments of stone. His eyes shone through the mask, cold flint to match the grey of his armour, and a black-bladed axe with an edge like napped obsidian was sheathed across his back.

His warriors were no less feral, their weapons and armour festooned with talismans and fetishes torn from the corpses of wolves. They followed in their leader’s wake, carried along in the slipstream of his march, juggernauts of ceramite that Ahriman wasn’t sure were going to stop.

He rose through the Enumerations, outraged at this blatantly challenging behaviour. Aaetpio squalled in fear, and Ahriman’s concentration slipped as his Tutelary fled to the sanctuary of the Great Ocean. He looked back at the snarling wolves, their form blurring for a moment as they stared at him with intelligent eyes that were chilling in their perception.

It took him a moment to realise that all the Tutelaries had fled. Anger turned to momentary confusion, and all eyes turned to Magnus.

Ahriman felt his primarch’s soothing presence in his mind, the words unspoken, but heard by all the Captains of Fellowship.

Hold, my sons, this is posturing, nothing more.

The giant wolves halted, forming a rough semi-circle around them and the terrified eunuchs. The wolves lowered their heads, teeth bared. The urge to send a pulse of destructive energy along the length of his heqa staff was almost overwhelming.

“Magnus the Red,” said Skarssen, as though there might be some doubt. His voice was booming and harsh, the voice of a killer. “I am called Amlodhi Skarssen Skarssensson, Lord of the 5th Company of the Space Wolves, and I bring a call to arms from Leman Russ, Great Wolf of the Legions of Fenris. You are to muster your forces and make all haste to the Ark Reach Cluster. This the Wolf King commands.”

To stand before a being so mighty as a primarch and deliver such a baldly aggressive demand beggared belief. Without being aware of it moving, he realised his hand was on the butt of his gun, and seething waves of outrage shone in the auras of his fellow captains.

His limbs trembled with aetheric energies, the gently lapping tide within roiling into a series of roaring breakers that demanded release. The influence of the Corvidae was at its lowest ebb, but Ahriman could still draw on the power of the Great Ocean to unleash phenomenal powers of destruction.

The aether swelled around him as he built energy in his flesh. This was what it meant to be alive, to tap into the wellspring of the Primordial Creator and wield that power as deftly as a swordsman wields a blade.

That energy swirled around Skarssen and his warriors, yet where it easily passed through the Astartes of the Thousand Sons, the Space Wolves were anathema to it. Skarssen’s aura was little more than a dulled haze, like winter sunrise through thick fog.

Was Skarssen veiled?

That seemed unlikely, though perhaps the many fetishes hanging from his armour were shielding him. The protection offered by such talismans was largely illusory, but belief in such things could be a potent force. Even as he formed the thought, Ahriman caught a flash of a bearded warrior in a leather skullcap in the midst of the Terminators, like a shadow amongst the deeper darkness or a whisper in a thunderstorm.

He sensed kindred power, but in the instant of its recognition, it vanished.

“Show some damned respect!” snarled Phosis T’kar, and the moment passed.

The captain of the 2nd Fellowship stepped forward with his heqa staff planted in the ground before him and said, “Speak thusly again and I swear by the Great Ocean I will end you.”

To his credit, Skarssen didn’t flinch, which was impressive considering the bludgeoning force of Phosis T’kar’s choler hammering his aura.

Skarssen kept his attention fixed solely on Magnus.

“Do you understand my message as I have spoken it to you?” he asked.

“I understand it,” said Magnus, coolly. “Take off your mask.”

The Space Wolf flinched as though slapped, and Ahriman sensed a ferocious build up of power. He gasped as the energy filling him was drained in an instant, siphoned off by a mind infinitely greater than his.

With painful deliberation, his limbs shaking with the effort of resistance, Skarssen reached up and unfastened the buckles securing his mask. He pulled it from his face to reveal features that were craggy and worn like a storm-carved cliff. Clean-shaven, with high cheekbones and a brow pierced with jutting canine fangs like a crown, his lower jaw was tattooed to mimic the toothed jawbone of a wolf.

Throbbing veins pulsed at Skarssen’s temple.

“That’s better,” said Magnus. “I never like to kill a man without first seeing his face.”

Magnus seemed to swell, growing in stature, while simultaneously remaining as he had always appeared. The wolves yelped, lowering their heads and backing away from the mighty primarch, and Ahriman saw the beginnings of… not fear exactly, but the wariness of prey.

Skarssen had come with one purpose, to bring the Thousand Sons to the Ark Reach Cluster. He had delivered his message in the most unequivocal way possible, but Magnus could not be so easily dominated by the brute force of the Space Wolves.

“Kill me and you will suffer the wrath of the Great Wolf,” hissed Skarssen.

“Be silent!” thundered Magnus, and the world stilled. All sound died as the wind ceased its moaning and salt crystals hung motionless on the hardpan. “You are nothing to me, Amlodhi Skarssen Skarssensson. I can kill you where you stand, before you or any of your savage brethren could lift a hand to stop me. I can smash your ships to debris with a thought. Know this and choose your next words carefully.”

Ahriman saw that Skarssen was not a warrior without courage, his aura instinctively rebelling at the challenge in Magnus’ words, but nor was he without the wit to understand that he was a mote in the face of the primarch’s power. He looked to his left and right, seeing the world frozen around him, every banner hanging motionless and every observer save the Thousand Sons like statues lining a triumphal roadway.

Skarssen lifted his head to expose the corded muscles of his thick neck, and Ahriman recognised the symbolism of the gesture.

Magnus nodded and the world snapped back into its natural rhythms. The wind blew once more and the silk banners flapped in the haze of dancing salt crystals.

“Wolf Lord Skarssen,” said Magnus, “I understand your message, but there is much to do on Aghoru before we can fight alongside your father’s Legion.”