Wolfsbane

by Guy Haley

  'What do I want? It is not what I want. It is what your wyrd requires of you,' said Kva.

  Bjorn let out a bitter laugh, halfway to the howl of misery of a wolf rejected by his pack.

  'My wyrd asks a lot of me.'

  'It will ask more of you. Much more,' said Kva sternly. He did not approve of Bjorn's self-pity.

  Kva held out his hand in a fist, palm down. The power armour shook with palsy.

  'Why?' said Bjorn in despair. 'Why must I be separated from my brothers? Why must I bear this burden? Why not a jarl, or a gothi? I am nothing.'

  'This is why,' said Kva. He turned his hand upwards, and opened it.

  Upon Kva's palm was a rune scorched into a wooden tile. The symbol had many meanings. While its mystic significance could be interpreted accurately only by the gothi, its mundane meaning was known by all the Vlka Fenryka.

  Bear. It was the rune for bear.

  Kva laid the rune on the table next to Bjorn's rough apotropaic eye.

  'Tomorrow is the solstice, when Fenris is closest to the Wolfs Eye,' said Kva. 'Tomorrow, the door to the Underverse cracks ajar.'

  Bjorn's eyes widened. Kva's ravaged features filled a world crowded with glowering spirit animals.

  'You will come to the Krakgard with the primarch.'

  'What?'

  'Tomorrow.'

  Bjorn lifted his head suddenly from the table, coming awake from a drunken stupor. Already, his oolitic kidney was purging the toxins from his blood, and his head was clear. The feast continued as it should, full of a warrior's joy at life. He blinked.

  For a moment he thought he must have slept, for there was no sign of Kva in the hall, but his eye fell on the rune tile on the table, its scorched lines challenging him. Instinctively, Bjorn reached for his mjod horn. He raised it to his lips, but stopped, and slowly held it from him and poured the mjod away onto the floor.

  Before he left, he scratched out the eye on the table.

  They set out at dawn from the Sunrising Gate, as the Wolfs Eye was making its move against the world. The gate was only a third of the way up the Fang, but from the causeway leading down from the mountain the curve of the world was visible, and the Volda Hammarki bent across it like a brigandine of studded plates wrapped around a barrel-chested warrior. A rim of fire emerged over the peaks as the gates opened, white and vicious, an arc that filled a quarter of the horizon. So close was the sun during the Season of Fire that its edge lost constancy, and writhed with the serpents of coronal ejection. A king standing over his defeated enemy the Wolfs Eye rose over Fenris, and the earth quaked in response. Valdrmani, the wolf moon, skulked on the opposite horizon, blanched by the sun's ferocity.

  Storms sped over the lower mountains, lashing the slopes with vicious squalls. The snow of winter had gone, and all but the very largest glaciers were undergoing violent summer melts. Water raced through every gulley, brown as ale, whetting the blades of the mountain ridges with their erosive force. Lightning crackled around the mountaintops. All the while the earth shook and rumbled.

  At Kva's command, Bjorn was first out into the morning, dressed in his tribal leathers. He squinted into the dazzling light of the home star. Though his occulobe compensated for the glare, he wore a pair of goggles made from slitted hide, and his view of the world was restricted to a narrow band.

  Leman Russ strode past him without comment. An escort of ten Wolf Guard followed, led by Grimnr Blackblood. Then Kva at the head of a party of gothi. They were eight all told, the oldest and the most powerful of the Rune Priests, grizzled grey-hairs, their long fangs flashing ivory in the dawn.

  None of them wore power armour. They were garbed like Bjorn in ritual leather gear and masks. Out of his battleplate, Kva was all but helpless, and was carried by his twin guardians in a chair fashioned from mammot ivory. Plates of bone and horn dangled from every neck, wrist and waist, carved with potent runes of protection.

  Russ stopped at the brink of the causeway and drew in a deep breath. The air was dry and warm. In the lower reaches the temperature would be as high as the tropical norms of Old Earth, even at the pole. At the equator it rose so high as to be dangerous to human life. 'A fine summer's day,' said Russ.

  Kva's bearers brought him to a halt by the king.

  'The beginning of the end,' said Kva. 'At midnight, Fenris begins his journey away from the Wolfs Eye. He has warmed his hands too close to the fire, and snatches them back. Winter will follow shortly after.'

  Russ looked over the planetary violence with an approving eye. 'This is a hard world. This is our world,' he said.

  'As it is in body, so it is in spirit,' said Kva. 'If it were not so hardened, we would not survive this undertaking.' He shook his staff. The wolfs teeth and bone fetishes rattled. 'Downwards,' he said, 'to the Krakgard.'

  From anywhere but the Fang, attaining the summit of the Krakgard would have meant an arduous ascent. But from the mountain housing the Aett every direction was down. The party moved in single file along the killing lanes of the Sunrising approach. As the group descended, the peaks of the Fang's brothers grew, from modest seeming crests to gargantuan masses of stone. That is, until Bjorn looked behind, and beheld the endless majesty of the Fang itself, its great pyramidal form puncturing cloud and air. Through the clouds banking up against its eastern flank and the aurorae rippling over the summit, the lights of the fleet shone.

  They left the main causeway soon after, heading down steps hewn from stone. Cairns of skulls - wolf and human - guarded the entries to the many landings. Niches carved into rock held small ivory figurines of past warriors. The path went into the deep valley dividing the Krakgard from the Fang. By way of a single stone arch without walls they crossed a river foamed with summer's flood two hundred metres below. For a while they walked in humid shade. Mosses and ferns grew everywhere, expending last year's hoarded energy to put forth shoots and seeds and hoard again before the ice returned. It was hot, and the air so wet from the river's vapour the Vlka's weapons beaded with condensation.

  Thereafter the path turned upwards again, zig-zagging skywards through black crags.

  The Krakgard was the Vlka Fenryka's funeral mount, and possessed by a brooding spirit whose voice whispered just below the breath of the hot summer winds. Not long after beginning their climb, the first of the paths leading to the tombs of mighty heroes broke away from the main road, and after that they appeared with regularity.

  The party came presently to a hollow in the mountain, where the dirty tongue of a glacier pressed down from higher vales to lap at a tam. Blue icebergs floated in the water. Black scree paved the ground with sword-blade shards. By the lakeshore was a ritual space demarcated by poles of wood bleached grey and festooned with threads of Space Marine skulls. In the middle was set a pointed menhir as tall as Russ, crudely hewn to resemble the Fang.

  At the shoulder of the ridge where the path turned downwards towards the tam, a wide platform was cut into the stone. It was enclosed by a low wall, and paved with slippery slabs. A hundred wolf skulls sat on the wall facing outwards. They were from blackmanes, the very largest breed. At the centre of the platform was a boulder as high as Bjorn's waist, polished smooth by years of human contact.

  'The Wolf Guard will go back to the valley and await the primarch's return from the mountain by the bridge,' said Kva.

  'We will not,' said Grimnr. His followers looked to one another uneasily. 'You cannot mean I should leave my primarch.'

  'He does. Obey the Rune Priest, Grimnr,' said Russ. He sounded weary and tense, thought Bjorn. 'Obey his command as if it were my own.'

  'And what of Bjorn?' said Grimnr, gesturing at him angrily.

  'Bjorn will wait here as sentinel,' said Kva. He pointed at the boulder. 'You will sit upon the Rock of Vigilance, and face towards the Aett. Do not look into the corrie.' Kva moved to address them all. 'We gothi shall undertake a struggle of the flesh and of the spirit that you cannot join. There are wards around this place. The skulls and the stone shall prot
ect you, Bjorn. Do not leave them for any reason. You must not look into the corrie.'

  'How am I to play witness if I cannot watch?' said Bjorn gruffly.

  'Yes, why does he get to stay, and we, the Wolf Guard, are sent away?' demanded Blackblood.

  'He is to be the herald of failure,' said Kva to Blackblood. 'Do you wish to take this burden from him? His is an ill wyrd. You may share it, if you want.'

  Blackblood scowled, his single eye turning flinty. He spat on the stone. 'No,' he said.

  'Then you will wait at the bottom,' said Kva. He turned back to Bjorn. 'If Lord Russ does not return, it is you who shall take back the tidings of his loss.'

  'How will I know?'

  'If he does not return by sunset, you will know. You will look away,' said Kva. 'I do not care what you hear. You must not turn back, or any ill that befalls us will befall you too, and through you, the Legion. If we are to fail, you must take the news back to the Aett. That is your task, no more. Wait until evening. Never look into the corrie, no matter what happens. Do not look!'

  'If that is my wyrd, that is what I shall do,' said Bjorn, 'though I do not wish to have this fate.'

  'It is your wyrd, Bjorn the Fell-Handed,' said Kva, 'and I am sorry that it is so, but the Allfather's weaving makes no allowance for personal feeling.'

  'One-Handed,' insisted Bjorn. He looked up fiercely, his temper finally breaking. He had had his fill of the gothi's inscrutable pronouncements. 'I am the One-Handed.' He slapped the stump of his left arm. 'Why must you call me Fell-Handed? Is it some kind of bad jest?'

  Kva gave him a guarded look. 'Because it is your name, Bjorn, It was braided into your wyrd the moment you were born, follow your thread a little further, and you shall see that it is what you are truly named.'

  'Are we done?' growled Russ impatiently.

  'We are, my jarl,' said Kva.

  'Then, Grimnr, to the foot of the stair,' commanded Russ.

  Grumbling, the huscarl directed his warriors away from the platform. Russ stared at Bjorn until the warrior took his place upon the stone, and had turned away from the corrie.

  One by one the gothi filed past, Kva in his chair going first. Russ went last. He nodded at Bjorn as he went by.

  Bjorn listened to the clack of the gothi's bone charms dwindling into the distance. Russ' heavy tread followed. In the vale of the Krakgard sound was weirdly amplified - Russ' footsteps were as loud as an artillery barrage creeping over a battlefield.

  Hot wind stirred Bjorn's beard. His stump ached. He wished for his lightning claw to hide his maiming.

  He wished for a great many things.

  Twelve

  Syrtyr's Breath

  A U-shaped valley snaked down from the corrie, terminating suddenly in a vertiginous drop half a kilometre away, a legacy of harder glaciations and past tectonic upheavals. Framed by its end were the forests and plains around the Volda Hammarki. The valley funnelled storm breezes that chased themselves up the mountain vale as a hot, steady wind.

  The reduced group made their way to the ritual circle. It was set on a nub of hard volcanic rock, different in type to the surrounding slate. At the centre was a slight dimple, not apparent from the platform overlooking the tarn. From within shone a yellow light. Smoke rose up and blew across the ground, splitting apart on the sharp stones. The menhir carved to resemble the Fang stood guard over the hole, its belly tinted orange by the world fire.

  Leman Russ walked over to the hole. The smell of hydrogen sulphide made him turn his face aside. He could not look directly down the hole for long. When he did, heat curled his hair, and beat him back. He stepped away with a brief impression of infinite depth, and the world forge churning in the world's heart.

  Kva had his twin guardians carry him to the edge of the ritual circle.

  'That is Syrtyr's Door, the soul forge, the entrance to his kingdom of the dead.'

  'I have not seen it before,' said Russ.

  'You have seen the cavity.'

  'I have passed it, yes. It is a circle of skulls with a crack in the rock, no more remarkable than any of the Krakgard's sights. I paid it no attention,' said the primarch. 'This is a place for gothi's business.'

  'Often the mysterious is hidden in plain sight. Syrtyr's Door is active only on this day,' Kva shifted in the chair. 'In one respect, it is a volcanic vent of unusual properties. A geological oddity. In another respect, it is a door to the Underverse. What do you, oh son of the Emperor, believe it to be?'

  Russ stared at the hole which led to the glowing heart of the world. He understood the volcanic processes which could lead to this unusual phenomenon well enough. The rational explanation. Then he looked to his gothi, and the skulls and the runes, and he knew in his heart what it truthfully was.

  'It is the entrance to the Underverse,' he said.

  Kva nodded. 'There is ice, there is fire, water, and air, and spirit…' He pointed his staff at the glacier, the vent, the tarn, the sky and Leman Russ. 'And there is earth.' At the pronouncement of this word, the twin guardians lowered Kva to the ground. The feet of his chair touched the stone. He drew strength from it and his disability seemed less pronounced. 'The elements of Fenris are together in balance in this place. You embody its soul. Only you can make this journey. It can only be done now, and it can only be done with our help.'

  He gave two sharp rattles of the bones on his staff. The gothi arranged themselves into a circle between the poles and their necklaces of skulls. Russ stared at Kva. No trace of a Librarian of the Legiones Astartes was evident in this man, nor in any of the others. They were pagan priests, rune casters, ice shamans.

  Kva cracked his staff upon the stone three times. On the fourth strike, the other gothi began to hammer the butts of their staves into the ground. In time with their slow rhythm, they chanted. First one began to sing, then the next, and so on until all seven of them repeated hypnotic phrases timed with the striking of their staffs that overlaid and interwove with each other as intricately as knotwork.

  'Fenris is at its perigee,' said Kva. 'It is the solstice, the absolute height of summer. Hearken to me, Lord of Winter and War. Within the Underverse you will encounter uncanny beings. Wights, and worse. Dealing with these beings requires the focus and poise of a duel. Never let your guard down. You may drink of their mjod and ale, but take none of their wight's meat, or you will be lost in the Underverse forever. Answer no questions lest they snare you in their webs of deceit. Treat them nobly, as you would a mortal lord, and they will provide what you wish to learn, though you may not like the answers, and there will be a cost. Come to me.'

  Russ walked over to the crippled priest's chair. The chanting of the other gothi made him woozy, and he walked unsurely, like he had stepped onto dry land from the rocking deck of a ship after a long, rough voyage.

  Kva gestured to him. Russ bent low.

  'More than anything, remember, my lord, what you are,' whispered Kva, so quietly no other could have heard.

  Russ nodded. 'I am Leman Russ.'

  'No,' said Kva. 'This is who you are,' and he spoke a name Russ had never heard into his ear, a name he knew without being told had been intended for him, before he had been stolen away from Terra.

  The name affected him. Russ' ears buzzed. He stood tall in wonder, head spinning. Kva's ruined face filled his world.

  'Remember that you are more than a wolf. Are you ready?'

  'Yes,' he said.

  'Go to the door and look within.'

  Russ walked somnolently to the vent. The heat made him hesitate. 'Stare into it,' said Kva. 'Do not fear the heat. The ice in your soul will protect you.'

  In a state of detachment he put his head over the hole, full into the rush of hot gases. His skin prickled prior to roasting. He felt his body rally itself to repair the damage. He burned, but as quickly as he burned, he healed. It was nevertheless agonising.

  'There can be no gain without suffering,' said Kva. 'Everything given by the Underverse requires a sacrifice. Do you ac
cept this, my jarl?'

  'I do!' said Leman Russ through gritted teeth. The chanting of his priests mingled with the pulse of pain afflicting his face. He was lightheaded from holding his breath against the burning gases.

  'Then breathe deeply of Syrtyr's breath, and fare well. You and I shall not meet again in this life.'

  Russ hesitated only for an instant before he filled his lungs with searing air. His mouth burned, his throat burned. His lungs wilted. The chants of the priests droned louder than battle's noise, and Russ thought he had been tricked, and would die, a victim of the witches he had naively fostered.

  The vent in the ground rushed towards him, gaping like a maw, and Leman Russ fell from this world into some other place.

  Syrtyr's Door had opened.

  Winter footsteps make a particular sound. The crunch-squeak of air in compressing snow, the shush-slide of feet displacing delicate crystals. It is the sound of peace. It is the sound of death. Death to be out in inimical seasons when more sensible creatures sleep. Peace to be had in the emptiness of the world, where a man might be one and alone under the vaults of creation with nothing to trouble him. There are no boundaries between life and death in a landscape like that. They lose their divide. It is an easy landscape to learn from, equally easy to vanish in, to let the body cool and the soul rise. An easy landscape to give in to.

  Russ knew the sound of winter footsteps as well as his heartbeats.

  Whiteness faded to blue gloom. His mouth popped open, and he sucked in a gusting breath. Lungs that had burned now froze with painful air. His eyes were already open, for their moist surface was chilled by the cold. As if some enchantment were lifted, now they saw.

  The footsteps were his. He was walking across a crisp snowfield, his feet plunging through the crusted surface to the powder beneath. Each step buried his legs to the knee. He slowed, and stopped.

  The field of night lit the world a subtle blue. A billion ice crystals winked at a billion stars in cosmic flirtation.