Astral Bears – Black Library Submission

Image Credit: Space Wolves: Wolf Guard by HarryOsborn

A man came through the door and struggled to close it against the freezing wind. In the myths of the men of the hall, he would have been a giant: almost as broad across as he was tall. He wore a bear skin across his shoulders, and those feasting saw the snarling beast’s muzzle masked his face as he turned to face them. 

“This how you welcome a fellow warrior to your hall?” he said. 

In response, a man at the end of the table closest to the new arrival stood, picked up a pistol, and fired at the newcomer’s chest.

The laughter of those assembled died on their lips as, rather than the wet sound of the round parting flesh, the ping of the shot richocheting off armour echoed around the hall.

The newcomer threw back the bear skin. He wore thick ceramite in a brown the colour of old, dry bone. He wore no helmet, and he was bald other than a single, thick braid of hair which dangled from his chin to his belt. On his pauldrons was the mark of the Astral Bears, and that of a Lieutenant. 

Hrothgar threw back his head and roared, and the sound was amplified by the engines of the chapter’s land speeders and bikes as they descended upon the village surrounding the hall. 

Many think a bear is slow due to its bulk. But it is ferociously quick on the charge, especially when it has become lean through a long hibernation, and it senses pray right upon the doorstep of its cave. 

The man who had welcome Hrothgar didn’t have the chance to get off another shot. The space marine crossed the distance between them in an instant and slammed into the man with his shoulder, sending him flying and then breaking wetly against one of the columns holding up the roof. Hrogthgar grabbed the next man and flung him horizontally across the table to smash aside three of his fellows. Then Hrothgar drew tomahawk and bolt pistol from his hips, and proceeded down the hall.

Those across the table were dispatched with unerring bolt round, which seeming tore more easily than usual through their flesh. Those directly before Hrothgar met a worse fate, either at the end of the space marine’s blade or boot. Hrothgar cast about him with short, brutal swings, carving the men’s bodies open with great rents acoss their chests, their armour offering pathetic defiance. 

Those who weren’t privileged enough to feast inside the hall were being treated just as brutally by Hrothgar’s brothers, whose mobile squads were conducting sweeping arcs of the compound and slashing deeply into their reserves. Some squads managed to form up in the wide spaces between the longhouses, but the Bears were not afraid to use the hulls of their vehicles to plough through the flanks of the enemy.

Before long, Hrothgar had reached the lord at the head of the table. He gave the lieutenant a strangely wet, gurgling laugh.

An infection of Death Guard 

What begins as a routine purge mission of a chaos cult by the Astral Bears chapter of primaris space marines quickly becomes more complex when an infection of the Death Guard chapter of chaos space marines reveals itself and the cultists just won’t stay down. Lieutenant Hrothgar and his brothers struggle with their own identity as descendants of the revered hunter Jaghatai Khan as they fight to uncover the sorcerer at the root of the infection.