The Burden of Loyalty

by Various

  Russ himself remembered none of that, nor of the time before, save for the fractured dreams that came to him in the brief lulls between battles – the smells of chemicals and the hum of arcane machinery; the half-aware sensation of floating in fluids, listening to the careful movements of attendants outside the amniotic tanks; the tick-tock of monitoring equipment; the whispering of voices that may or may not have been human.

  To have those memories was impossible, so they must have been projections from after the event, only crystallising once the Allfather had explained the circumstances of his creation. After that, Russ had been forced to accept that he had not been birthed on Fenris at all, and that the wolves, the ice, the storm and the summer-fire were all a random imposition on a childhood that had been conceived very differently.

  Of course, there was a sense in which he had always known that. Even before the Allfather had come he had felt the wrongness of it, as if some colossal sham had been perpetrated, locking him in a nightmare at once seductive and terrifying. The wolves bowed their heads before him, as did the mortal warriors he conquered or slew with such bewildering ease, and he wanted to scream at them, ‘Who are you? Why am I stronger than you?’

  There had been no understanding of this on Terra. The Emperor, the Allfather, his shifting visage always impossible to read, had kept him in isolation for a long time, doling out information in morsels, teaching him to use power armour, to command starships, to control the warp-awareness that ran through his veins as thickly as his hyperoxygenated blood.

  ‘I could leave Fenris now,’ Russ had once told his father. ‘The planet is too wild for life – it will never support the armies you deserve.’

  Leave Fenris. Unimaginable to think that he had ever said that. At the time of that exchange, decades ago, the Fenrisians of the VI Legion were being brutally moulded into the death world’s image. They had started to build the Fang, hollowing out the Great Mountain with earth-gougers the size of Warmonger Titans. The Emperor had clearly expected the Wolves to be drawn from the world of ice and fire, and that, whether by chance or design, their uniquely violent home would remain the proving crucible of the Legion.

  And so the pretence continued. Russ became more like the Fenrisians than they were themselves. He guzzled mjod with the baresarks, and wrestled blackmanes to the bloody snow, and roared out scorn and mirth across the sea of stars. He let the gothi adorn his armour and engrave his swords. He kept out of the counsels of Guilliman and the Lion, and ignored every emissary from Lorgar. He did just what the Allfather had told him – he became the weapon of last resort, the most faithful, the prosecutor of dirty wars.

  There was no resentment when Fulgrim’s purple-and-gold Legion took the Palatine Aquila, nor when Vulkan was taken aside for so long into secret confidence, nor, most of all, when Horus was made Warmaster and the arguments over who was the truly chos­en son became academic. Russ knew, right down in his gut, that the Wolves had been made the way they were for a reason, that none other could perform their blood-soaked function. In the final analysis, were the Imperium to falter, it would be his foot pressed against the neck of any usurper, watched over by the benign and inscrutable gaze of his gene-father, the author and definer of all his misery and his uncertainty, all his bliss and all his glory.

  But now that sham was over. He had truly become what he had once only pretended to be. He felt the world-soul pulse under his skin, and no scrubbing would remove the stain of it. The runes were no longer just marks, to be tolerated as the suspicions of a backward people. They spoke to him, like conspiratorial jailers gloating over the turning of a prisoner to the cause. In defeat, he at last understood why the Emperor had never let him leave Fenris behind.

  It has claimed me. It has clawed me back.

  He looked down at the runes again, scattered before him on the stone, the same pattern as before. The shape of it was emerging, dragged out into reality like a bloodied infant bawling on the tent floor. He stared hard, seeing some of the same things he’d seen before, and new things, blurred by doubt, intruding on the margins of the picture he’d created for himself.

  He was close now. He could hear some of the words, mumbled by fate and on the hinterland of hearing. Just a few more throws. Just a few more casts onto the shifting sea.

  The chime sounded at his doors, shattering his fragile sense of understanding.

  He had no idea how long he had been studying. From the burned-out braziers, it must have been hours. The only light in the chamber came from the ports in the far wall, letting the dull red of the gas clouds flood in.

  ‘Enter,’ he rasped.

  The door to Russ’ chamber slid open, revealing the familiar outline of Kva Who-Is-Divided, his heavy runic plate crawling with inscriptions in the lambent firelight. Beside the Rune Priest stood the One-Handed, Bjorn, radiating a mix of curiosity, defiance and doubt.

  Russ smiled. He was still young, the Bear. His ice-spirit had not quite been quelled by gene-breeding and psycho-conditioning, and burned much the same as any hunter out on the wastes.

  That is what we need now. That is why they call him out.

  ‘So then, One-Handed,’ Russ greeted him. ‘What do you know of the runes?’

  The intruder made his way up from the infiltration point, climbing steadily, moving silently. Manoeuvring a battleship the size of the Hrafnkel was a task of mind-bending complexity, requiring the coordinated actions of thousands, and so for over an hour his passage through the decks was unimpeded.

  He was able to hug the gloom of damage-darkened corridors. When he had to break into the open, his path lit by the grimy sodium lamps that dotted the lower regions of the starship, he attracted almost no attention – the crew were busy, and rarely raised their gaze towards one of the masters in any case, and would have found little to disturb them if they had.

  He took in the atmosphere of the vessel. The differences between this and his own Legion intrigued him. The smells were almost overpowering – a mix of ash and animal, thick as smog. The VI Legion seemed to care little for the fitting of their vessels, though every so often they would surprise him – an intricately carved stone, standing alone in the shadows, covered in traced outlines of mythical beasts; or weapons of exquisite artistry, hanging on chains over granite altars.

  He catalogued everything, transmitting visual records over the secure link, knowing the picts would be scrutinised. When he allowed himself to appreciate it, Hrafnkel was awe-inspiring in size and capability. The forge levels alone were colossal – he had crept along gantries in the high vaults, peering down through the columns of churning smoke, watching new armaments crawl off production lines, each attended to by armies of iron-masked ­menials. The thralls working the lines didn’t appear to realise that they were already beaten.

  Could they come back? Could they somehow rally, even at this late stage? The chance could never be discounted, and thus his presence was more than a triviality.

  He kept moving. The interior was labyrinthine, and corridors would double back on themselves with almost sadistic regularity. Most of the decks seemed to have been constructed as concentric circles, with chambers radiating out from central spokes. As he progressed, he gradually began to see patterns in the arrangement, as if the whole thing were some kind of ritual space, built for the ceremonial glorification of the warrior caste.

  It has not done you much good, he thought to himself as the first of his two targets came within augur-range.

  He started to go faster, tracking the path towards the comms-station, seeing it edge closer on the augur-lens with every step he took.

  Almost there.

  Kva did not come in with Bjorn but limped back off into the shadows to attend to his own business, his movements stiff as a crow’s. Once Bjorn was across the portal, the doors slammed closed.

  The primarch Leman Russ knelt on the floor, enclosed in a carved wyrd-circle, bone-tokens laid ou
t like scattered childhood toys. Until that hour Bjorn had only seen the Wolf King in battle-stance or seated on granite thrones passing judgement. To witness him that way – crouching in grimy armour – was unsettling.

  ‘Come closer,’ said Russ, remaining where he was, waving him in.

  Bjorn entered the old fire-circle, his plate still bloodied from the Iota Malephelos, his lightning claw hanging inactive by his side.

  ‘Why do you think you are here?’ asked Russ, pushing himself up from the floor.

  Bjorn could have given a dozen answers to that. It would have been safer to admit ignorance, but he knew that was not what was being asked for. ‘Because we are losing,’ he offered. ‘Because you are out of answers.’

  Russ stomped over to his true-wolves, reached down to Geri’s nape and ruffled the thick fur. ‘Aye, Gunn thinks that. My Einherjar think that. Now you.’

  ‘You expected different from me?’

  ‘I do not know. I spent a lifetime learning to sound the depths of the Fenris-born, and mastered it completely, and then you come along, and I see how blind I can still be.’ He looked back at him, and his blue eyes – so un-Fenrisian – glittered. ‘Tell me more.’

  Bjorn felt the danger in the room. Freki’s lips pulled back in a half snarl, exposing yellow fangs the length of his hand.

  ‘Prospero wounded us,’ said Bjorn, opting for the truth. ‘You, most of all. Now bad luck dogs us. We are hounded by it, so you remain here while the fleet is cut to pieces and you do not know what to do. You fear that we will die in the Alaxxes blood-well, never get out, never fight in the battle to come.’

  ‘Fear,’ murmured Russ, thoughtfully. ‘You truly think I fear.’

  ‘There are many breeds of fear,’ said Bjorn.

  Russ drew in a long, grating breath. Bjorn suddenly felt that he was half-right, though he didn’t strike near the centre of it. He was no more insightful than the rest of his Legion – everything was seen through the prism of hunter and prey, either fighting or fleeing, and so he had fallen short.

  ‘Do not think I grieve for Magnus,’ Russ muttered. There was animus there still. ‘Do not make that mistake. He was executed, and that was what we were charged to do.’ His fingers dragged through Geri’s nape, harder now. ‘Magnus was a bastard. Magnus was a liar. Magnus would look you in the eye and lecture you while he blundered through the immaterium like a raging konungur. Hel, we always knew more than him – what to touch, what not to touch. Our bone-rattlers knew more than him. There’s intelligence, and there’s hubris. I don’t grieve for Magnus, not for a second. I’d do it again.’

  For a moment, Bjorn saw the flash of old anger, the tidal wave of wrath that the old Russ could unleash within a heartbeat, glinting like the blood-red sun behind thick clouds, and believed everything he said.

  ‘Maybe so,’ Bjorn said, going carefully. ‘But Magnus was not the enemy.’

  Russ looked up. ‘Really? Tell me why not.’

  ‘Valdor knew about the daemon on Prospero, and he knew what it meant. Who gave us the orders? Who told us not to sanction Magnus, but to lay waste to his world?’

  The blue eyes never faltered. ‘It came from the Allfather.’

  ‘You know it did not.’

  ‘We did what was asked.’

  ‘We were deceived.’

  ‘We followed the order!’ Russ roared, taking a single step towards him. The twin wolves rose to their haunches, and the chamber suddenly seemed thick with the scent of kill-urge.

  Bjorn stood his ground. ‘And who could be relied on to do that? Who would carry it through completely, perfectly, even if it meant the breaking of a Legion?’ He took a deep breath. ‘We were dupes, my lord. We were Horus’ willing instruments.’

  Those were words of death. The VI Legion could endure almost any privation save for humiliation, and that was all he offered his liege lord. Bjorn maintained the gaze-lock with his primarch, never flinching, knowing that Russ could finish him with his bare hands and hardly break a sweat.

  The chamber fizzed with energy. Russ seemed to tower higher somehow, to drag the shadows to himself, to rear upwards, dark and hollow-eyed. He looked terrifying then – as he must have done at the end on Tizca, breaking the back of the Crimson King amid a world of unleashed murder.

  Slowly, though, the illusion eroded, and the threat passed.

  ‘Well said,’ Russ murmured.

  The primarch walked over to the chamber’s far wall. An iron-rimmed port opened out on to the void beyond. Open space glared back, the same rust-red as it had been for many months, clear of stars, churning and chaotic.

  ‘Do not think I don’t know what our nature has cost us,’ Russ said, gazing out through the dirty armourglass. ‘Other Legions have not borne the brunt as we have. Others have forged their own kingdoms. They tell me Guilliman wrote a book. Maybe, with all that time on his hands, he might have seen this coming.’

  Bjorn hung back, aware of Freki and Geri’s hungry eyes still on him. He could smell their eagerness to leap at his throat, held back only by the word of their master.

  ‘Gunn thinks I have lost my mind,’ said Russ. ‘You do too, I see. None of you know this mind. You never have done.’ He turned, and gave Bjorn a fang-filled grin. ‘Perhaps I have found the key, eh? Perhaps I have discovered what my father was always trying to tell me.’

  He walked back over towards Bjorn, and opened his palm. Bone-tokens rested on it, each marked with a rune of telling. He shook them, like a village scryer about to cast knuckle bones on a board. Bjorn looked at them doubtfully, but the primarch remained eager, his eyes alight with a gambler’s desperate enthusiasm.

  ‘Shall we see what they say, then?’ asked Russ, moving to throw.

  The comms vault was one of dozens scattered across the Hrafnkel’s vast innards. Each chamber was a node in a network, spread out like ganglia in a body, drawing together towards the command bridge nexus where every signal and scrap of data was processed. At the very summit of the system was the battleship’s Spire of Star-Speakers, occupied by the caste of blinded warp-dreamers and protected by concentric rings of steel-trap security. Breaking into that pinnacle would have been nigh impossible, and was in any case superfluous since the lower-order stations could give the intruder what he needed.

  He edged down the iron-ringed corridor ahead, keeping his body pressed against the nearside wall. At the end, five metres away, stood a pair of security doors, locked and braced and crowned with snarling wyrm heads. The space in front of him was deserted, though he could already hear the rhythmic tramp of boots from lower down.

  He crept forwards. The facing wall was lead-lined and equipped with low-level sensor-baffles, but he still could pick up blurred signals from the other side. He estimated six bodies within, none of them Space Marines, but all likely armed. He withdrew a wide-angle cortical deadener from his thigh – a neural blocker, capable of inducing coma across a ten-metre diameter – and activated the power pack. His bolter, too noisy for this work, remained holstered.

  He edged up to the doors, checked he was unmarked and entered a code into the door-release mechanism. He had plenty of combinations to try out, most taken from the mid-ranking official he’d immobilised six levels down, others gleaned from listening instruments placed against unguarded comm-grid stations. The first code failed, as did the second, but the third prompted a green access rune and the door’s locking mechanism clicked clear. As the heavy panel slid open he strode inside with the swagger of a true-born Wolf.

  The chamber was hexagonal, thirty metres across and tiled. A huge open shaft soared away above, lined with gargoyled columns and ironwork repeater-stations, and the gulf between them crackled and snapped with energy. A lone comms column stood below the shaft’s maw, a barb of dark metal studded with convoluted pipework, all connected to a metre-thick bundle of cables that snaked around its base. Cogitator stations, ancient an
d creaking, lined the chamber’s perimeter, their valves and neuroclusters flickering and chuntering as raw data flooded in from the Hrafnkel’s arrays of augur banks.

  His estimate had been near enough – seven mortals wearing Legion-grey shifts turned to see him enter and immediately bowed, clasping their fists across their chests. Two were encased in carapace armour and carried projectile weapons; the others had laspistols at their belts.

  He raised the cortical deadener and released the charge. A snap rang out across the chamber, echoing dully from the shaft’s walls, and the seven occupants slumped to the ground as one, their eyes glassy and blood trickling from their nostrils. He closed and brace-locked the doors behind him, then turned to the nearest cogitator station.

  The Wolves made very little use of written records, but their warships had all been built on Mars and the automated systems tracked battles just like any other Legion’s. He inserted more access codes into the receptor keypad, waited for the right one to slot in, then watched as the screens before him filled with sigils. He read the Crusade campaign marks with interest.

  Thuleya. Ghenna. Olama. Teris IX.

  There were plenty more, stretching back across the length of the galactic conquest. The VI Legion had not taken many worlds, but the record of their encounters was second to none in brutality. He scanned the loss tallies with a kind of morbid fascination.

  Six cruisers lost. Four cruisers lost. Command-pack lost. All packs lost.

  He wondered how many other Legions would have tolerated those wounds. His own? Possibly not, unless they were necessary for the ultimate objective. Then again, what was the ultimate objective for them now? The situation had become complicated. There was so much doubt, so much overlapping of aims, that only the immediate horizon had any clarity. That was the problem with using deception as a tool of war: the blade cut both ways, and just as sharply.