Still, Bjorn could not stop watching the slaughter of his brothers. Horus was massacring them with contemptuous ease.

'Run back to father, whelp!' shouted Horus, and it seemed he was addressing Bjorn personally. He plucked a Vlka from the ground, crushed him in his claw, and flung his corpse into his fellows. 'Run away like the cur you are!'

He was laughing as he murdered Russ' sons.

Then the door shut on the carnage, and blademaker Iron Wolves moved in to weld it closed.

Twenty-Five

Twenty-Five

Wolf Cull

Bror's enemies changed in quality. No longer were desperate human thralls or mindless cyborgs sent against them. Now they faced the Sons of Horus themselves. At first they attacked in small units, perhaps because Bror's group was outside the Vi's main lines of attack, but after their first encounter word of their presence spread, and the number of warriors they faced increased considerably.

They fought through them all, charging recklessly into their guns, hacking them down.

Fall back. The order went out. It was delivered by Grimnr Blackblood, huscarl to the king. The wolf pack feared the worst.

Fall back. Unthinkable. The Rout did not fall back.

'Were we victorious?' Enrir was forced to shout over the battle noise. He had a fresh wound in his leg to go with that in his shoulder, and limped badly.

'There is no word whether Horus is dead or alive,' said Bror.

'We failed. Else Russ would have given the order himself,' said Ragner grimly. He cut down a Traitor Marine with his power axe and shot his boltgun one-handed into the chest of a second, shattering his breastplate and ribs.

'Brothers!' laughed Enrir. 'The passageways swarm with the Sons of Horus, and they do not have the desperation of men who have lost their beloved leader. Of course we have failed.'

There was a defensive wildness to his joking. The thought of their primarch dead chilled them to the core.

Diort's skitarii were down to three men. They fought well. To get past the traitors' thick battleplate they concentrated the fire of their projectile weapons on single targets. They were otherwise outmatched by the legionaries attacking the group. Bror and his brothers did their best to shield them from death, but one by one they fell, and the support they could offer the Vlka diminished.

Vox reports painted a grim picture. Strike groups attacked the fall back corridor in multiple places, attempting to break it down, isolate the wolf packs and destroy them individually. Horus had allowed them to penetrate so far into the Vengeful Spirit to trap them, that was clear to Bror. The Warmaster had exploited Russ' recklessness, though Russ had counted on Horus doing so. They were pieces on the tafl board building intersecting snares. The situation looked hopeless, but in truth they could not tell who had succeeded in their objectives until the battle was done.