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SPACE WOLVES

EYE OF THE DRAGON

Steve Lyons

The pressure on Ulrik’s chest suddenly eased.

The shadow of the gargantuan battlesuit above him – the shadow of death – unexpectedly disappeared.

He could barely see or hear past the alarms in his helmet. His auto-senses were in overdrive, diagnosing the damage to his armour, to his body, mostly telling him what he already knew. They told him only one thing that mattered: he was alive. His wolf amulet had protected him from being crushed, though it couldn’t have done so much longer.

The venerable Wolf High Priest had been spared to fight yet another day. He muttered a grateful prayer to the Allfather, as he looked for the agency through which his will had been done here.

The sky of this dreary alien world was screaming; its ground was trembling. Drop pods in blue-grey livery, the Space Wolves’ colours, were plummeting through the clouds, striking the ground like meteors. One of them had landed just behind the battlesuit, the force of the sudden impact throwing it off-balance.

Ulrik forced his battered armour, and his equally battered body, to move. Before the battlesuit’s shas’el pilot could regain control – before that heavy foot was raised to crush the life out of him again – he dragged himself out of the dirt and staggered away from it. His damaged lungs burned with every breath of air he gasped in.

The battlesuit loosed a volley of plasma rounds after him. They were comfortably off-target, though Ulrik felt their heat washing over him.

The first of the pods opened to disgorge fresh Space Wolves upon the battlefield. Ulrik recognised a few of them, saw the badge of the Sun Wolf on their shoulders and knew who must have brought them here; as if he hadn’t suspected it already.

Of all the twelve Wolf Lords, only one would have disregarded the High Priest’s orders and followed him here. Only one would have been so eager to prove himself – for the thousandth time – in action.

That one had just saved Ulrik the Slayer’s life.

Krom Dragongaze’s red cloak billowed around him as he stepped out of the drop pod. Its violent landing had sent cracks through the hard earth, but his gilt-edged artificer armour had easily absorbed the brunt of it.

He heralded his own arrival by firing a volley of explosive bolt-rounds into the air. In his other hand Krom clutched his signature weapon, Wyrmclaw, a huge double-bladed frost axe. It only took him a moment to choose his target.

‘Take out the battlesuit,’ he roared into his comm-bead.

Towering above all else, the tau machine was an irresistible lure to him, particularly as it was already damaged. The battlesuit’s head had been staved in and its pilot had thrown open its chest hatch in order to see. As a bonus, it seemed to have beaten the Wolf High Priest. The prospect of succeeding where Ulrik the Slayer had failed made Krom’s mouth water.

His orders were received and understood by his Wolf Guard, his company’s fiercest warriors. With the exception of the Old Wolf’s Kingsguard, Krom’s Wolf Guard was the largest among the Great Companies – thanks to the example he set for his warriors, he was quick to claim.

They leapt from the drop pod a breath behind their lord and fanned out around the enemy, bolt pistols and storm bolters rattling.

‘Keep your distance,’ their pack leader cautioned them over the vox-net. ‘One of those things can shatter power armour with a blow, but we have the advantages of speed and agility over it. Best to weaken its defences with ranged fire, then move in for the kill.’

That was Beoric Winterfang, always the calm voice of reason. His age and wisdom had been cited by some as a useful counterbalance to Krom Dragongaze’s hotheadedness, but he was one of Krom’s disciples all the same, and as loyal as the rest of them.

‘Sometimes, I wonder if you have wolf’s blood in you at all,’ Krom grumbled to himself, not for the first time. Beoric’s centuries of distinguished service, however, demanded his respect.

The battlesuit shuddered and reeled beneath the Wolf Guard’s sustained assault. It was anything but helpless, though. It snapped up a giant arm – more precisely, a multi-barrelled cannon attached to its shoulder joint – and unleashed a blinding storm of plasma rounds upon its assailants.

There was scant cover to be had, so there was little the Space Wolves could do to evade the white-hot fire that swept over them. They could only weather the onslaught as the markings and adornments on their armour blistered and burned.

Jormund Thunderclaw, a head taller than the others in more durable Terminator armour, pushed his way to the front of his battle-brothers. He planted his feet in the ground and brought his cyclone launcher to bear. A cluster of krak missiles screamed out from over his shoulders to blaze a laser-guided path towards their substantial target, bursting against the battlesuit’s energy shield and engulfing it in noise, fire and smoke. Its cannon continued to lash out, but half-blindly now.

Many of Ulrik’s strike force were recovering their wind, and the rest of the tau had begun a hasty pullback, finding themselves outmatched. The remainder of Krom’s Drakeslayers – his Blood Claws, Grey Hunters and Long Fangs – were harrying their foes’ heels, speeding their retreat. The High Priest had rejoined the battle too, in spite of his injuries.

Krom pierced the miasma around the construct with a narrow-eyed glare. His nostrils twitched at the scent of burning electrics. The battlesuit’s cannon had been silenced. Any moment now, he judged, its pilot would make a break for it, try to trample his way over the blue-grey perimeter that was tightening around him. Krom saw his chance and took it.

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