The Victim's Dance Read online

  It was an old story, one that every Space Wolf and thrall knew. It was one of many, for there were indeed countless tales of battle and glory bandied about in the Great Hall of the Fang. But Tanngjost himself had told it often, for it was his favourite.

  ‘Thus did Skjelmagor speak,’ continued Tanngjost. ‘And he took his sword and shield and walked upon the fjords until he came upon a great rock that leaned out into the ocean, as if daring the waves to smash it down. His people pleaded with him to return and his wife said she would hurl herself into the sea if he continued with this folly. But Skjelmagor listened not! Conquest and glory meant more to him than any soul, even those whom he loved and who loved him.’

  The witch drifted a little closer. The spear in its hand glittered, so the long spike of its tip seemed to be on fire.

  ‘The serpent rose from the deep. Its maw was as wide as a longboat is long. Its teeth were as tall as the oaks of the Icencleft Valley. It had a hundred eyes and its tongue was another serpent still, writhing and hissing from between its jaws. It opened those jaws wide, and with a single gulp swallowed up Skjelmagor and the rock on which he stood, and half the water that swirled in that fjord! The people who had lost their king howled and wept. His wife screamed and tore at her hair, and swore she would skin the serpent alive with her nails or die trying.

  ‘But even as the serpent turned its massive head to the people watching on the shore, its eyes rolled back and its mouth lolled open. It reared up, just once, so those watching could see the long expanse of its barnacle-covered belly, studded with shipwrecks and the bones of long-drowned men. And then it crashed back down upon the shore, coughed up a flood of seawater, and died! And when the people of King Skjelmagor came to butcher the serpent to make their spears from its bones and their shields from its hide, they found the sword of King Skjelmagor still embedded in its brain. That is the saga of King Skjelmagor, and how he came to slay the beast of the fjords.’

  Tanngjost drew his combat knives and threw them to the floor. He did the same with Frejya. ‘I have told my tale,’ he said, still looking up into the witch’s featureless face. ‘Now it is time for you to tell yours.’

  Tanngjost undid the clasps beneath his shoulder guards and shrugged them off. His gauntlets and the plating around his arms went next. Finally he unfastened his breastplate, and as he pulled it away the many cables and neural jacks came free. He stood unarmoured from the waist up, segments of his power armour lying on the floor around him. All Tanngjost’s battles were written across his chest and back – the puckered skin of bullet wounds, the raised dark red lines of blade scars, and the gnarled stretches of burns from flame and acid. The new wounds on his face were at home with the old. Beneath the wounds of war were the scars of his surgery, where a lifetime ago he had been cut open and implanted with the organs that turned a man into a Space Marine.

  The eldar closed the circle. The witch hovered in front of Tanngjost and took its spear in both hands. The eldar had propped up Hengild’s body on its knees – Tanngjost adopted the same position now, kneeling on the floor among his discarded arms.

  The witch drew back the spear. The eldar danced with inhuman elegance, the circle around Tanngjost becoming a ring of multicoloured light. The xenos threw back their heads as the spear arrowed downwards.

  It punched into Tanngjost’s chest, a strike precisely through the centre of the heart. It emerged through his back, the cut so clean there was no blood on the silvered tip.

  The witch raised its arms and the eldar kneeled before it, the victim despatched, the dance finally completed.

  Tanngjost’s hand dangled by his side. His fingers brushed the hilt of the combat knife on the floor beside him.

  The dance was done and the eldar took a second to bask in the glory their tale had brought to the gods. This was a sacred work that was rarely completed so perfectly. The aliens allowed their guard to fall, just for a moment, for now their battle was finished.

  Tanngjost’s hand closed around the knife. His eyes opened. He planted a foot on the ground and lunged at the witch.

  The eldar knew much, for they were an ancient race and they had seen the history of the galaxy unfold. But they did not know everything. They knew that the Space Wolves were valiant and relentless foes, and that for one to play the part of the victim in their dance was the best possible omen. But they did not know what went on inside Tanngjost’s chest, about the extra organs implanted in him to make him more than a man.

  They did not know that he had two hearts, and that the witch’s aim with the spear was so perfect it was guaranteed to impale him through only one.

  Tanngjost moved faster than the witch could think. His teeth were bared and his eyes wild as he rammed the blade of the combat knife into the underside of the witch’s jaw, punching through the faceless mask and forcing the tip up through the roof of the mouth and into the alien’s brain.

  The seconds that followed happened in slow motion. Adrenaline flooded Tanngjosts’s system as his body compensated for the loss of his primary heart. He tore the knife free with one hand as he slid the spear from his body with the other. The dead witch had not hit the ground when he spun around to face the eldar leaping at him for revenge.

  He grinned at them, his teeth flecked with his own blood.

  The eldar cared for nothing but to kill the human who had dared to defile their dance by breaking from the character of the victim. For the second time in as many heartbeats, they let their guard down.

  Beneath the museum were the storerooms where exhibits were cleaned and stored, an endless dusty warren of forgotten heirlooms awaiting restoration that would never come. Into this warren had crept the Space Wolves of Pack Hengild, who wired their remaining grenades to the ceiling. Explosions stuttered through the museum, shattering glass and throwing fragments of ancient armour everywhere as sections of the floor were torn up and the Space Wolves attacked from below.

  Saerhimnar leapt out first. He smashed his axe into the back of the nearest eldar’s skull so hard that the weapon’s haft broke, leaving the head embedded in the eldar so deep the alien was split in half almost to the waist.

  Brother Vinnjar fired his bolter with his remaining hand, bracing the weapon in the crook of his elbow. Three shots slammed into another eldar’s torso, ripping it wide open.

  Ulli Iceclaw vaulted onto the museum floor and tackled another eldar to the floor. With the same motion he brought his rune axe down into its body and with a burst of psychic will, tore the alien’s soul away.

  The eldar’s numbers were cut in half. Tanngjost killed another, impaling one through the abdomen with the witch’s spear. The silver burned angrily in his hand, but he barely felt it.

  Brother Forgan hauled his heavy bolter out through the gap blasted in the museum floor. One of the eldar was on him in a storm of colour before he could bring the weapon to bear – he clubbed with it instead and the eldar wrenched it from his grasp with a motion more like a pirouette than a wrestler’s hold. Forgan grabbed the eldar around the waist and forced it down onto the floor as Saerhimnar snatched up the heavy bolter and rattled off half its ammunition belt into the eldar still bearing down on Tanngjost.

  The fight lasted a handful of seconds, but afterwards Tanngjost could recall every move, every drop of blood and every spent bolter shell. The eldar who did not die in the first few seconds fought back, but with the witch dead and half their number gone the Space Wolves had them reeling. Their colour fields bought them a few more moments as they evaded the Space Wolves bolter fire, but they no longer had the numbers or the alien witch to turn the tide in their favour.

  It was the last lesson learned at Phalakan Academy: even the eldar could not dance forever.

  Tanngjost led the pack through the playing fields of Phalakan Academy, where the planet’s future rulers would learn to hunt and duel amongst the forest groves and rolling grassland. Now it was speckled with craters
, the follies and summer houses in ruins.

  They hunted by scent.

  ‘He cannot hide his stink,’ said Saerhimnar as he followed the trail along the shore of an ornamental lake. He carried the pack’s heavy bolter – Forgan’s arm had been broken in the final melee and he had granted his battle-brother custody of the weapon. ‘He tried crossing the water to lose the trail, but we will find him.’

  ‘There,’ said Vinnjar. He gestured with the stump of his wrist, as if forgetting for the moment that there was no hand there to point with. Across the lake was a fragment of colour, darting for the cover of the trees.

  Saerhimnar and Forgan opened fire at the last eldar, the sole survivor of the aliens who had come to the academy to complete their dance. Tree trunks shattered into clouds of splinters.

  ‘Did we get him?’ asked Forgan, squinting across the lake.

  ‘I cannot tell,’ replied Saerhimnar.

  ‘I hope he lives,’ said Tanngjost. The pack looked at him strangely – he had barely spoken since he had put his armour back on and joined them in hunting down the survivor.

  ‘The alien is here to tell his story,’ continued Tanngjost. ‘Now his story is of how the Space Wolves fight back twice as hard when they are wounded, and how every one of ours they take will be repaid ten-fold. If he returns to his people, they will all know what happens when they choose a Space Wolf for a victim.’

  The smoke and debris cleared. The alien was gone. But whether it was dead or had escaped, the lesson had been taught. The dance was over, the victim had refused to die, and the story could never be told again.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Ben Counter is one of Black Library’s most popular Warhammer 40,000 authors, with two Horus Heresy novels to his name – Galaxy in Flames and Battle for the Abyss. He is the author of the six-volume Soul Drinkers series and The Grey Knights Omnibus. For Space Marine Battles he has written Malodrax, and has turned his attention to the Space Wolves with the novella Arjac Rockfist: Anvil of Fenris and a number of short stories. He is a fanatical painter of miniatures, a pursuit which has won him his most prized possession: a prestigious Golden Demon award. He lives in Portsmouth, England.

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