After an instant of hesitation he turned his head and began screaming instructions to his troops. It was a mistake. Without breaking stride Ragnar raised his bolt pistol and put a shell through the man’s head. It exploded like a melon hit with a sledgehammer, a puddle of brains and blood filling the peaked cap as it fell from his head. Shouts of confusion echoed from behind the wall of sandbags, then a few heretics, braver and perhaps more experienced than the rest, stuck their heads up in order to take shots at their attackers. But a wave of withering fire from the Wolves behind Ragnar scythed through them, sending their corpses tumbling back amongst their comrades. With a single mighty bound, Ragnar cleared the wall of sandbags and dropped into the rebel position. It was dark but his altered eyes adapted instantly and he took in his new surroundings in a glance All around were the enemy, clad in the crumpled and filthy uniforms they had once worn so proudly as part of the Imperial levies, but their insignia had been ripped off and hastily replaced with the evil symbol of the Ruinous Powers, eight arrows radiating outwards from a single watchful eye. The stink of disease was strong, more powerful even than the reek of unwashed bodies and death. All of the heretics looked emaciated and unclean. Some showed the signs of something far, far worse. Most of the men looked superficially human, only slight bulges and blisters indicating where they were about to change. A few, however, were more twisted and warped, corrupted by the evil power they served. One mutant close to Ragnar had scaly skin and clutched its lasrifle with fingers that resembled small tentacles; his eyes extended on long, slug-like stalks. A second heretic was huge: his chest barrel-like, his arms as thick as a normal man’s thighs, his fingers ending in long cruel talons. His face was pockmarked with craters of glowing, greenish fungus, which wept an oddly luminescent pus as he opened his mouth to shout a warning.
Ragnar thumbed the brass ignition switch on his chainsword and the mighty weapon leapt to life, shuddering in his hands as the potent micro-engine in the hilt brought the rotating blades up to speed. Without thinking, he snapped off a couple of shots, sending the taloned giant straight to hell with a hole in his guts big enough to put a fist through. The force of the second shot blasted Slugeyes backward three yards into the wall. Ragnar snarled in satisfaction, then ducked as two of the rebels regained their wits enough to fire at him. The glittering trails of laser fire passed over his head. Screams sounded behind him as the beams seared the flesh of other heretics who had been attempting to sneak up on him. He threw himself forward, bringing his chainsword around in a long sweep, beheading one mutant and hacking the arm off a second, before burying the duralloy blades deep within the chest of a third. With one swift kick, the Wolf dashed the corpse from his blade and raced on, heading for the chamber’s exit. Triumphant howls and despairing cries from behind told him that his fellows, the Blood Claws, had

arrived and had already begun the bloody work of butchering their foes.
Ragnar raced into the corridor. The head of a heretic officer appeared round a door. “What is going on?” he shouted, in oddly accented Imperial Gothic. The man’s face was pale and he looked ill. His body had the lean look of one who had suffered a long sickness; his eyes burned with a feverish light. He obviously had not recognised Ragnar for what he was. Ragnar took his head from his shoulders with a sideways cut of his blade.