THE SPACE WOLF OMNIBUS by William King

Author:William King
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: The Black Library
Published: 2009-10-04T23:00:00+00:00

EIGHT

The jungle began to thin out. The river became wider and darker. Ragnar handled the pole easily, keeping the raft on the left bank under the outlying branches. Ahead of them were all the signs of war. Huge smoke clouds billowed darkly into the sky, reaching upwards like the stretching fingers of giants. Great tracts had been ripped from the nearby jungle by the movement of huge machines. Ork warplanes roared overhead, flashing across the sky to deliver their freight-loads of bombs. In the distance, he could make out their target: the massive walled city of Galt Prime.

It was a city on a scale that did not exist on Fenris. Skyscraper towers loomed over the massive plascrete walls, each as huge as one of the islands that erupted from the Worldsea. And there were other things, monstrous war engines, large as the huge buildings, that moved towards the human city. Ragnar knew these were gargants, mighty metal death machines built in the form of primitive effigies of the orks’ dreadful deities. They bristled with massive weapons. From where he was, Ragnar could hear the frightful roar as they lobbed giant shells into the crumbling city walls. Ragnar knew that the illusion of war was untrue. The city had already surrendered. The orks were merely indulging their appetite for destruction.

‘Russ take us! It looks like we arrived just in time to save the bloody city,’ said Sven, his lips twisting in a bitter ironic smile. Ragnar glanced over at him.

‘Do you want to do it yourself, or shall I give you a hand?’

‘I’m feeling generous so I’ll let you share in my glory. You can have a couple of verses in the Saga of Sven.’

‘As ever, you are too generous.’ Ragnar was suddenly glad that Sven was there. For all his childish jokes and nasty moods, he could think of no one better to have at his back if they really were going to infiltrate this ork army.

‘The best thing about this is that we’ll have the element of surprise,’ he said with a smile. ‘They’ll never expect us to come out of the jungle and completely overwhelm them like this. Inquisitor Sternberg is a master tactician.’

‘I almost feel sorry for those orks,’ added Sven. ‘Almost.’

Ragnar knew the humour covered a very real tension. For the past few days, as they had drifted downriver, they had come upon ever more evidence of the orks’ savagery. They had passed riverside villages burned to the ground and seen huge areas of the rainforest burning. As far as he could tell there was no reason for it other than sheer wanton destructiveness. It had been arson on a huge scale, the product of a mindless rage that Ragnar could not understand. This was hardly surprising: orks did not think like humans. They were, after all, a very alien race.

In the skirmishes they had fought and the ambushes they had laid for the orks, he had come to respect their brute savagery and battlelust. They were fearless foes, hardy beyond belief.

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