Fear will destroy any creature's will to fight eventually. Enough fear will unsettle a man, throw of his aim and make him forget his training however rigorous it was. Those who can create fear are therefore already a step ahead.
One of the most soul destroying actions in the book of war is striking an enemy where he thinks himself invulnerable. Scouts do this... swiftly, with devastating effect and often without even being seen.
This packs leader Jurgen Einarr was born a scout...
Every Space Wolf is chosen from among the men folk of Fenris
as a result of some heroic under taking or deed witnessed by a wolf priest.
Jurgen wasn’t chosen in the normal circumstances however.
Living among the isles of Fenris Jurgen of the Dragon Bane
clan was the son of one of the clan chief’s shield bearers who was also the
clan’s prized knife fighter. One fateful evening an opposing tribe the Troll
Slayers raided the Dragon Bane village killing the men folk including Jurgen’s
father and taking the women prisoner for slaves. The Troll Slayers had long
coveted the relatively safe and plentiful island the Dragon Bane clan inhabited
and so claimed it for themselves. At the time of the raid Jurgen and a handful
of his friends has been on a hunting trip but returned to find the village
partially destroyed with their rivals sleeping in their beds. Anger swelled and
boiled in all of them and a plan of attack was soon decided upon after oaths of
vengeance were sworn.
The plan according to
Jurgen’s rash fellows was simple – kill as many as possible, however Jurgen had
other ideas. One man had made the final decision to carry out this act,
reasoned Jurgen – the Troll Slayer chief – he would pay in the end but first
Jurgen decided to make life for the rival tribe unbearable on the island. His
friends rejected Jurgen’s thinking when he tried to reason against their
suicidal attack and hence they packed their possessions and prepared for the
attack.
Armed with their hunting spears and knives the teenagers
attacked the village by night. Unlike
the Dragon Bane people the Troll Slayers had positioned sentries around the
camp. The sentries soon spotted the boys emerging from the dark and had alerted
the camp by the time the teenagers had started their war cries and charged the
village. They were cut down easily by the men of the village and flung into the
waves which crashed against the islands cliffs. Jurgen sat atop a nearby hill
in the darkness and watched his friends’ demise.
He, however was unaware that he himself was being observed.
Hearing of the promised Troll Slayer attack on the Dragon Bane camp Olaf, Wolf
Priest to the Great Wolf had flown in to watch the event in the hope of finding
a worthy candidate for the Space Wolves. Disappointed by the battle Olaf had
been ready to leave when the old scent of the Dragon Bane clan arrived on the
wind once more. Deciding to investigate he had tracked the boys to their camp
and watched silently. He now stood a mile away gazing at the ‘coward’ Jurgen
sitting and watching his friends die. Then he noticed the blade clutched in the
youths shaking hands as Jurgen carved the rune names of his dead fellows into
the flesh of his arms.
After the pitiful attack the Troll Slayers relaxed in the
thinking the last of their ancient enemy had been slain. Fewer sentries were
posted in the evenings and foragers and hunters were sent out to gather food.
All the while a cave on the other side of the island was being stocked with
flint spears salted meats and stolen food by Jurgen along with warm furs.
The wolf priest had watched Jurgen sharpen his flints and
harden his spears with smoke for weeks and was beginning to tire of the youth’s
preparations when he found a Troll Slayer forager party of three men dead on
the island, spear wounds in their backs. A smile twitched the corners of his
mouth.
In the following weeks every foraging pack was killed, every
hunter party slain by an unseen assailant. Food stocks in the village started
to run dangerously low and tempers started to grow short. Meanwhile Jurgen’s
skills were being honed and sharpened and he was soon able to move through his old
village clad in his dark fur cloak without being seen. One evening his crept
through the camp and opened the tap on every barrel of ale in the brewer’s
stores. No one noticed the creeping tide of ale until Jurgen set it alight and
vanished into the darkness, the screams and shouts of the camps inhabitants
carrying on the wind.
In the morn the camp was a smouldering wreck, virtually
every building was a smoking pile of ash and confusion reigned, no-one knew if
the fire was accidental, the work of the same hand that had seen the hunting
and foraging parties killed or the work of the Gods.
That night the remaining members of the Troll Slayers tribe,
which was now less than a quarter of the strength it had been when capturing the
village, slept in the stone long hall which had survived the flames. The chief
had decided to post sentries around the camp to be sure that if the fire had
been started by the unknown foe he would be butchered before he could do any
further damage.
This didn’t trouble Jurgen. Moving though the dark like a
wraith he spotted the sentries from the cover of a shadowed grove of trees. He
could see three burly men all staring out into the dark watching for
something...anything. What they didn’t see was a pair of axes flying end over
end towards them through the night. The two unlucky men dropped to the ground
clutching their shattered bodies, the axes having broken ribs and cleaved flesh
such was the ferocity with which they’d been thrown. The third man looked at
his fellows in horror aghast until he too dropped to his knees after hands had
smothered his mouth and plunged a soot blackened knife into his throat, ripping
through his windpipe.
Moving into the camp Jurgen left less of a mark than the
wind, all the while being watched by the Wolf Priest. Jurgen dispatched two
more men while moving toward the long hall stabbing into kidneys and armpits.
On his last kill a slight cry left his victim and the only remaining Troll
Slayer warriors stormed out of the hall, four hulking brutes and the chief
himself. In one smooth movement Jurgen let fly another axe hurling it straight
into the neck of the closest warrior and drew his father’s knife. The remaining
men charged at the slight youth presented before them axes in hand. Jurgen
sidestepped the first man slicing at his hamstrings and sending him clattering
to the floor screaming in agony, he then followed through from his low fighting
crouch bringing his knife up faster than the next warrior could see and cut the
man’s wrist severing nerves, arteries and veins in one and then drove his
bloodied knife up into the man’s rib cage tearing at his heart. The next
warrior faltered after seeing this display and fled only to be cut down by his
companion’s axe flying after him. Now only the chief was left.
The chief raised his axe in challenge and charged axe,
raised high. Jurgen met the charge head on but at the last moment jerked
slightly to the left and jumped into the air just as his opponent’s axe began
to fall and buried his blade in the thick corded muscles of the chief neck. The
jump carried Jurgen on through the air and crashed him into the ground. The
chief’s initial war cry had died and he gave a grunt of pain as he pulled the
knife from his shoulder grinning as he tossed it away into the night. The grin
grew as he started to move towards the now unarmed youth. The grin twitched as
he became unsteady, beginning to stagger. Coughing blood, anger crossed his
face as he stumbled, then fell flat on his face, gurgling in his throat as he
drowned in his own blood. The knife had reached all the way to into his lungs
and slices many of the delicate blood vessels resulting in a tide of blood
filling the chief’s lungs.
High on one of the hills overlooking the camp Olaf smiled as
the chief died, he’d found one worthy and he began the walk to the village.
Jurgen searched until
he’d found his father’s knife in the darkness and returned it to its sheath on
his belt but quickly drew it again as another figure moved in the darkness. A
titanic figure clad in an ornamental suit of black armour strode out of the
darkness. By the time the giant’s hand had been raised in a gesture of peace
Jurgen’s knife was already in the in flight but the giant casually plucked it
from the air. A low grumble emanated from the giant’s lips “you’ll need a lot
more than that to fell me laddie. Come with me”
From this moment on Jurgen’s path was set to become a Space
Wolf. He passed every test the wolves could throw at him and soon took up a
place in a blood claw pack but resented the company of his fellows recognising
the same fiery eagerness that had killed his friends. Often Jurgen disappeared
for extended periods of time half way through a campaign only to be found weeks
later striding from the wreckage of a hidden enemy post having torn it apart
with few krak grenades and a ‘borrowed’ melta bomb. His pack gradually grew
used to his disappearances but rather than treating him as an outcast they soon
came to realise that Jurgen’s targets were often poorly defended communications
arrays, artillery pieces or officers which could have spelled danger for his
comrades either by calling in reinforcements or ordering artillery fire on the
packs position. Eventually the wolf priests gave into the youth giving him the
freedom of a scout. With the honour of being one of the few scouts to be
promoted from a blood claw rather than a grey hunter resting on his shoulders
Jurgen quickly became a scout of unequalled cunning and a tactical genius. He
now serves Morkai as his chief scout and a valuable member of the wolf
guard.
Long may they hunt...
Praise Russ
