The closest beast billowed out of existence at his blow, the second with a violent burst of thought that overwhelmed its hunger and dispersed its essence. Another snapped at him. He swayed aside, its immaterial teeth snapping shut an instant from tearing his insubstantial existence apart. He thrust his heqa staff into his head, feeling its primal hunger and rage as its essence was obliterated.
The pack broke off its attack, wary of him, but unable to halt their pursuit. The instincts of the void hunter were murderously sharp, but they demanded satisfaction. They would attack again, soon.
They came at him three more times. Each time they retreated to a pack that grew larger with every passing moment, while he grew weaker and bled irresistible morsels of energy into the void.
He could not long keep up this pace of battle. Combat in the aetheric realms was more draining than battling in the physical. In the material realm, an Astartes could fight for weeks on end without rest, but here such endurance was measured in minutes. A high-ranking warrior of the Thousand Sons could travel the Great Ocean far longer than most, but the strain of this fight was pushing Ahriman to the limits of his endurance.
A great maw raced up at him from below, a thought-shaped need of monstrous proportions. Its teeth closed on his leg, tearing into his light, and his pain bled out like glittering diamonds, brilliant white and impossible to resist. His staff carved into the beast, and it vanished in its moment of triumph.
He could not fight them much longer, and it seemed they knew his resistance was almost at an end. Their eagerness for him had them jostling one another, each beast desperate to make the kill and secure the choicest cuts.
His energy was fading and one of the fiery heqa staffs winked out of existence.
How galling to die after such a tantalising glimpse of the future.
Then came a howling cry that split the Great Ocean, a furious sound that scattered the hunters as a wild darkness rose out of the swelling tides and currents. Fangs like swords of ice snapped and bit through the void-hunters. This was form and will honed to a knife-edge, a force streamlined for destruction and utterly without mercy. Yellow eyes, a shaggy pelt of black fur and slavering jaws roiled amid the frenzy.
Even before Ahriman’s mind formed the image, he saw the phantasmal outline of the wolf, a beast larger and more powerful than any living animal could ever be. It tore through the void-predators, howling as it destroyed them with brutal swipes of thunderous claws and bites that swallowed each enemy whole.
Within the dark of the wolf’s body, Ahriman caught fleeting glimpses of the furious will that drove it: a distant shadow in dark armour, not black but deep, metallic grey. The wolf howled, and waves of untrammelled fury spread into the Great Ocean with the force of a boulder dropped into a millpond. The predators scattered, cowed by this apex predator.
And, like fading inkspots on a blotter, they melted into the darkness.
The wolf turned towards Ahriman, its form turning in on itself and folding like the pieces of an origami puzzle until all that was left was the shadow at its heart, the subtle body of an Astartes in the hard grey of the Space Wolves.
He drifted towards Ahriman, and it took no special skills to feel the primal, bruising energy that suffused this traveller’s flesh. His sheer vitality was incredible. Ahriman was a controlled reactor, but this warrior was a violent supernova. Both were deadly, both burned as bright, but where Ahriman could pluck a single soul out of a horde of millions, this warrior would destroy a million to kill the one.
The wolf was gone, but Ahriman saw it tightly leashed within the warrior’s heart.
“We should go, brother,” said the wolf warrior, with a voice like colliding glaciers. “The longer we tarry, the more our presence will draw fouler beasts.”
“I saw you,” said Ahriman. “You came with Skarssen.”
“ LordSkarssen,” corrected the warrior. “But, aye, you speak true, brother. My name is Ohthere Wyrdmake, Rune Priest to Amlodhi Skarssen Skarssensson of the 5th Company of Space Wolves.”
“Ahzek Ahriman, Chief Librarian of the Thousand Sons.”
“I know well your name, Ahzek Ahriman,” said Wyrdmake, with a feral grin, “for I have long desired to meet you.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
The Wolves of Fenris/A Meeting of Minds/The Dam Breaks
THERE ARE NO wolves on Fenris.
Ahriman had heard that before, a nugget of scandalous rumour passed down from nameless source to nameless source. Such contention was, of course, ridiculous; the evidence padded alongside the Thousand Sons as they marched into the Mountain once again. A score of iron-furred wolves roamed at will along the length of the column of warriors, like herding dogs watching over a flock.
Six hundred Astartes marched into the Mountain, the Thousand Sons and Space Wolves together. At the head of the column, Magnus the Red led the way, surrounded by Terminators of the Scarab Occult and flanked by his captains. Lord Skarssen and his retinue of Wolf Guard marched alongside the towering primarch. Ohthere Wyrdmake walked at his master’s side, and the Rune Priest inclined his head as he caught Ahriman’s eye.
They had spoken last night, yet Ahriman still did not know quite what to make of him.
Land Raiders crunched their way uphill alongside the Astartes, the war footing at the behest of Yatiri.
The tribal elder had come down from the Mountain with Khalophis prior to the arrival of Lord Skarssen and begged to see the Crimson King. The Space Wolves were en route, and he had been forced to wait until after their arrival. As important as the Aghoru were to the Thousand Sons, mortal business took second place to Astartes business.
Ahriman had watched as Yatiri was shown into the glittering pyramid of Magnus, seeing the fear in his body language. Like all the masked tribesfolk of the Aghoru, Yadri cast no shadow in the aether, his life-energies somehow hidden from the sight of the Thousand Sons. He came with his fellow elders, and Ahriman saw their anger, no matter that they were masked and unreadable.
Whatever passed between Yatiri and Magnus had been serious enough for the primarch to order Ahriman to gather warriors from every Fellowship and assemble a battle march.
Seeing the Thousand Sons preparations, a warrior calling himself Varangr Ragnulf Ragnulfssen, herald of Lord Skarssen, had come to Magnus to request an audience.
And so the Space Wolves marched with the Thousand Sons.
They had marched past the deadstones, the rocks streaked with oily black tendrils like rotten veins. Upon seeing the condition of the deadstones, the Aghoru dropped to their knees and wept in fear. Ahriman paused to examine the stones, knowing only one thing that could have had so dramatic an effect on such impervious stone.
“What do you think?” asked Phosis T’kar.
“The same as you,” he had replied, and walked on.
Ahriman watched the warriors of Lord Skarssen as the march continued. They set a brutal pace, and the Thousand Sons matched it. What was a fast walk for the Astartes was a punishing run for the Aghoru. Despite that, the tribesmen kept pace with the armoured warriors, fear lending their limbs strength to endure the exhausting temperature of the day.
“They don’t feel the heat,” said Phosis T’kar as the march continued.
“Who?”
“The beasts Skarssen brought with him,” clarified T’kar. “They come from a world of ice and snow, yet they seem untroubled by this heat.”
Ahriman watched as a wolf that reached to his waist padded by. Its fur was a patchwork of grey and white, thick and shaggy around its forequarters, sleek and smooth at its rear. As though sensing his scrutiny, it swung towards him, baring its fangs and narrowing its yellow eyes in a blatant challenge.