Wolfsbane

by Guy Haley

  Leman Russ turned around on the spot. Though he had heard his footsteps and felt his forward motion, there were no tracks leading to where he stood. Snow lay undisturbed on the flat plain. In every direction the hard blue-white horizons met the blue-black sky at an uncompromising edge. Cold bit at his shins like iron. Cold raked his lungs like claws. The stars were alien, the chill deeper than the deadliest Fenrisian night. Were it not for his primarch's body he would be dead already.

  Russ had learned at the side of the Emperor. There were no gods, no real magic, no dream quests or visions. These things, where experienced, were manifestations of the warp filtered by the human consciousness. They were not in an objective sense real. There were the sciences of the mind, there were the sciences of the soul. This was the Imperial Truth as He taught it.

  Before the Emperor, Russ had learned at the feet of gothi. He was raised with a belief in wights and ghosts, where kaboldr and imgr crept from the Underverse to add supernatural peril to a world already crammed with mortal dangers. In that belief system, such places as Russ now travelled were as real as the waking world, and far more deadly.

  Alone in the snowfield, Russ knew what he believed. Russ had seen too many supposedly unreal things that had proved to be all too real. He was wise enough to know that whether something was real or not was irrelevant The better question was, could it kill him?

  Kva had said yes. Kva was rarely wrong.

  The bums he had suffered at the door were gone His ritual leathers were missing, and he was dressed in a suit of skins from many wolves, inexpertly cut and stitched to fit his giant's body, their tails dangling from odd places. It was a mockery of a chieftain's garb. The sort the trickster wore in the saga tellings. He noted that well.

  Not that it mattered. Nothing would, if he didn't get out of the cold.

  Constellations of runes joined star to star. When he looked askance, he could see the lines between, drawn in starlight, but when he moved to better see they vanished back into the dark. One collection he recognised, a jumble of marks that, if looked at in a certain way, defined the outline of a Gloriana-class void ship. This too vanished when he looked too hard. His own, he wondered, or Horus'?

  A single, drawn-out howl sounded to his left. Russ whirled, clouds of ice smoke issuing from his mouth as profusely as that from snow drake.

  A lone wolf sat far away, close to the horizon. Its black pelt blended with the night sky behind it. Even with his primarch's eyes, Russ could barely see it. A flash of white teeth and yellow eyes, and it headed away.

  Russ' face set. Without a second thought, he broke into a running pursuit. The arctic wastes went on for leagues. The wolf ran hard, and Russ pounded after, never falling behind yet never gaining either. The air burned his lungs. The back of his throat tasted of chilled copper. The insides of his nostrils crackled and stung, all the moisture frozen from them. He yanked a wolf tail from his motley suit and clamped it in his teeth. It tasted rank, stank of musk and was soon covered in ice from his breathing, but it stopped his lungs from turning into blocks of frozen meat.

  On he ran, never faltering. His feet numbed in his boots. His gloveless hands cramped into claws. He did not stop. Ahead of him the wolf loped onwards. Glimmering crystals burst from its every footfall, but its feet did not sink into the snow and it left not a trace of its passing. Russ, in comparison, stumbled often, his feet swallowed by unseen dips. More than once he blundered into snow that came up to his chest. When it seemed the wolf would vanish ahead, the deeper snow would end, and Russ would stumble forwards, cursing the ways of all priests between ragged pants. For hours they ran. The light never changed. The sun did not rise.

  Finally, as his lungs burned like molten metal and his extremities felt the early gnawing of frostbite, a yellow light appeared over the horizon. Russ was too exhausted to cheer. He pushed himself on in the trail of the wolf all the harder.

  The wolf slowed. The light split into two, then three, then more becoming many small windows in the low walls of a chieftain's longhouse. Like an upturned wolf boat fifty metres long, its roof swelled generously in the middle, tapering towards either end, where crossed angular posts tipped with carven wolves' heads made frames to support the central beam. A thick covering of snow hid the shingles of the roof, and lay piled in delicate towers upon the posts. Light poured from a smokehole, and from the open gates fires cast a great yellow trapezium of light upon the ground.

  Slowing further, the wolf approached, and as it neared it lost some of the form of a wolf. With a bound it skipped from four to two legs, its forelimbs changing shape and becoming like the arms of a man. In the next few steps its shoulders broadened, its rear legs lengthened. In all other respects it remained a wolf, hirsute, so dark it looked like a shadow upon the light patch of snow. Its hands were clawed, and though it walked upright, the hind legs retained a wolf's configuration of hock, stifle and pastern.

  The man-wolf howled to announce its presence, and swaggered into the hall.

  Russ jogged up. He could not see beyond the light within. Despite the killing cold, the windows were unshuttered, as though the hall's master was enjoying the few gentle days of a Fenrisian spring before the summer of the Wolfs Eye cast all into ruin.

  Russ held up his hands to his eyes to shade them, but could see no better into the light.

  There was only one course of action open to him.

  Leman Russ set his shoulders and strode within the hall.

  Thirteen

  The Court Of The Erlking

  Inside, the hall was clingy as any human dwelling. The brilliant light seen without vanished as soon as Russ stepped through the gates into the single room. Two rows of posts delineated a large central space, with shadowed aisles down either side. A huge pile of coals upon a slab of stone in the centre crackled with the slow dying of fires. Torches in iron sconces attached to the posts provided inconstant light that hardly supplemented the red glow of the hearth.

  The room was full of man-wolves as large as legionaries.

  At long tables sat hundreds of them, gnawing on glistening roasts that smelled of man flesh and drinking soured mjod from leaden lanxes. Ranks of hairy backs hunched over their meals. Many wore leather harness, a few coats of mail. Their weapons were leant together in neat conical stacks at the ends of each table, and they were huge and brutal, though the man-wolves surely did not require weapons; their teeth and claws would be sufficient to kill a great white bear.

  The odour of kennels assailed Russ' nose. The smell was similar to that in the Aett at a gathering of the Great Companies, but far stronger and with an elusive odour of sickness, as of animals confined too long and grown distempered from it.

  At the head of the hall was a dais upon which was another table, this one set transversely. In a hall of men, the space behind the high table would be screened off into separate rooms to quarter the jarl and his family, but this was no human hall and there were no rooms. The floor was ice, not earth covered with reeds. There were no domestic tools or utensils. No weavings to block the cold. No skins to rest on. Gnawed bones were piled where, in the Verse, children would sit to listen to the stories of their elders. The walls were scored with claw marks. There was no comfort in this Underverse aett, only meat, ice and fire.

  The king of this place was a great black wolf bigger than all the others, so massive he barely fit in his throne, and hulked over the table as if on the verge of hurling it in rage. He ignored the primarch, and conferred with his jarls through mouthfuls of bloody flesh. On the board before him and his warriors was a long wooden platter. Already mostly consumed, the animal that provided this lord's meat was obvious from the delicate finger bones picked clean and piled upon the wood, and the long, flat shape of the body.

  In front of the table lay a sleeping wolf of the more usual kind, though even by the standards of Fenris it was enormous. Like all the other wolves in the room, it was ill-defined, as if composed of shadow and not of flesh.

  The sole thing of
any craftsmanship within the room was a great spear held horizontally to the wall behind the king by a pair of iron brackets.

  The Spear of the Emperor. Russ' own accursed weapon.

  Russ strode up to the fire. When dealing with wights and fell beings a man should never display fear. The truth of this had been shown to the primarch many times.

  He stood by the fire pit. The man-wolves ignored him. They continued their feasting, biting and rending at their meal, crunching upon hands crabbed from roasting. Rib bones broke between flashing teeth. When two wolves reached for the same morsel they snapped and snarled at one another. Violence was a moment away.

  'My lord!' shouted Russ.

  No attention was paid him. It was as if he were not there.

  He looked around at the hunched beast-men, threw back his head, and howled. The power of his call was magnified many times in that uncanny hall. The timbers shook. Snow slumped from the roof. The fire died back.

  Their attention was his. Silence fell. A hundred pairs of yellow eyes stared at him from the gloom.

  The giant king stood, thrusting his granite throne backwards with ease.

  'Who is this who comes into my hall and makes the call of challenge?' He spoke in rumbling juvjk, the hearth language of Fenris.

  A coal in the fire cracked. A patch of embers collapsed in on themselves, sending up sparks that fled for the smokehole.

  'I am Leman of the Russ, Lord of Winter and War, the Great Wolf, primarch of the Vlka Fenryka that men call Space Wolves, the Sixth Legion of Terra, master of Fenris in the Verse, and son of the Emperor of Mankind. I beg your indulgence, lord. The night is cold, and I have travelled far. Could I stay a while and rest? I call upon the law of hospitality.'

  'You are a king?'

  'I am,' said Leman Russ.

  'Such poor tailoring is unfit for a king,' said the wolf, holding up his hand to gesture at Russ' clothes. 'And you are no wolf. See the false wolf, walking on two feet!' he mocked.

  The warriors laughed, a barking cacophony full of threat.

  'Do you know who I am, mortal?' Russ smiled openly, though within his skull he was thinking quickly. Every word he said must be weighed. Speaking poorly could trap him there forever. 'One of your names is the Erl king. You are the lord of wights and of the alvar, the god of the nettagangr. This is the Muspjall, the hall of those who die deaths that serve no one. Those slain by age serve at your tables, and here cowards are devoured.'

  The wolf nodded approvingly. 'I am that and many other things,' he said. His pink tongue flopped clumsily in his jaws as it formed human words. Growling further roughened his speech, which was wet and throaty to begin with. 'Here I am the Great Wolf, like you. Leman of the Russ, I have many names, and that title belongs to me more than it belongs to you. I say thee begone. You have no place in my hall, creature of the Verse. This is my domain. Go out and freeze.'

  His retainers snarled.

  'Hearthlaw demands you accept me king to king,' shouted Russ confidently over their growling. 'We are not at feud. I come here unarmed and in openness. Deny my right to warmth, and you will bring a bad cast upon your wyrd. This is code in the Underverse as it is in the lands above.'

  The Great Wolf growled. A retainer wearing antlers and draped with charms tapped his arm, and the wolf bent low so that it might whisper into his ear.

  'My gothi tells me you speak truly. Sit then, join my warriors, if you dare. You will not live long here. They are not welcoming of human company.'

  'I am no ordinary man,' said Russ.

  'And yet you are still a man. Amarok! Make space for our guest.'

  A wolf detached itself from the mass of the feasting shadows, and held out its arm in welcome indicating a space upon the bench. Russ went over. The wolf was his equal in height, bulging with muscle, though it seemed composed solely of smoky air, and had no certain features beyond its burning eyes, ivory teeth and lolling tongue.

  'You rudely followed me to this hall,' said the wolf named Amarok. 'Enjoy the rewards for your stalking.'

  Grumbling man-wolves made space. Russ took his place at the table.

  'Take meat,' said Amarok, thrusting a wooden platter at Russ. Upon it was a man's leg, bent in half at the knee and charred.

  'I shall not,' said Russ.

  Shadow wolves snarled and yipped at each other, their language too uncouth for Russ to comprehend.

  'You insult us?' said Amarok. 'Is our food not good enough for the king?'

  'On the contrary,' said Russ humbly. 'I honour you. I have taken advantage enough already. Your lord grants me shelter, it is all I require. Your warriors are strong, I would see them stronger still. I will not deprive them of their meat.'

  'Then at least drink,' said Amarok. 'Refuse this, and we shall kill you for the insult to our hospitality.' A lanx was pushed at him. It was made of hammered lead, with childlike representations of wolves scratched into the rim by claw tips. The workmanship was crude beyond belief.

  Dark mjod filled the drinking bowl to the brim. Its surface sparkled with frost. The liquid did not move, being frozen through and through to the bowl.

  'I thank you,' he said, and lifted the lanx to his mouth. He bit hard, his sharp teeth shearing through lead and ice. He chewed both, and swallowed. The lead was bitter. The mjod was chilled colder than the depths of the void, and burned his throat, but he smiled.

  'A good mjod,' he said.

  The shadow wolves laughed growling laughs. Amarok's brow wrinkled with malevolent humour.

  'You appear to be having trouble with your refreshment. Allow me to help you.'

  Amarok snatched a torch from the post behind him, and held it over the bowl. With supernatural rapidity, the ice melted, and the surface of the mjod churned with miniature waves. Russ raised the lanx again. Amarok followed the bowl with the torch so that it singed Russ' hair. The mjod thrashed and bubbled, steaming now. Russ raised it to his lips and drank, and drank, and drank. The mjod was boiling hot. Its fumes pushed up his nose and made his eyes stream. Still he drank, ignoring the pain.

  He set it down with a gasp. Amarok looked at him with wide eyes and bared teeth. All Russ' great efforts had succeeded in lowering the level of the mjod by a finger's width, but it amazed the shadow wolf nonetheless.

  'You… you drank,' it growled. 'You have supped enough to make the level drop.'

  'Most refreshing,' said Russ. He belched appreciatively.

  Amarok recovered. 'Then drink more.'

  'Oh, I thank you but no. I have had my fill. Such a marvellous lanx could sate the hersirs of four aetts. Your generosity knows no bounds - for this I am thankful, and will sing the praises of your tribe in the lands of above.' He ran his finger over the section he had bitten away. 'I am sorry about the bowl's edge, it was a pretty thing.'

  The shadow wolves laughed, all except Amarok.

  'You insult me!' he snarled, and lunged for Russ.

  The primarch backhanded the wolf across the muzzle as casually as if he were chastising one of his own animals. Amarok tumbled backwards with a yelp, rolled into a crouch and prepared to leap.

  'Enough!' roared the Great Wolf. 'This man of the Russ is our guest, no matter how unwelcome. You offered him meat, he declined it politely in the proper form. You offered him drink, he imbibed his fill. He abides by the hearthlaw. You cannot harm him, Amarok, or you risk expulsion from this place. You are a guest here, as much as he.'

  Amarok's ears pressed against his skull, and he bowed his head, turning it to the side to expose his throat to his king.

  'I recognise my failing and will be sure to correct it.'

  Russ' skin crawled to see this malefic abomination display the customs of the Rout.

  Tension receded a little. The Great Wolf barked out a command. Servants appeared from nowhere, whisking away the platters and bones of the feast. They were the shades of men and women of advanced years; the dead who had been slain by shameful age alone.

  'If our guest is mighty enough to drink of our
mjod, perhaps he would enjoy another challenge?'

  'Most certainly,' replied Russ, and clapped his hands together. 'The nights here are long. I am sure you would appreciate the diversion.'

  The shadow wolves howled with mirth, and banged their drinking horns and lanxes on the table boards.

  'I am willing to provide this entertainment, in exchange for a boon,' said Russ.

  'And what boon would you ask?'

  'I will ask a question, and you must answer.'

  'Very well,' said the Great Wolf. 'My wisdom is widely known. I think now you did not come to this hall by accident. Yet you have me intrigued, mortal. I will grant your request. Four tasks I will set you. Let us say the drinking of the mjod was the first, and that you have already failed. Three more await.'

  'That is hardly fair. Had I known it as a mead-challenge I would have tried harder. I fail before I begin.'

  The Great Wolf snarled. 'You seem weak, so I will be fair. Succeed at one of these tasks, and I shall grant your request. Fail them all, and you will remain here in my service forever.'

  The challenge was fair, as custom demanded. Russ expected this mirroring of his own welcome to the Emperor, so many years ago. He wondered if he had appeared as savage as the Great Wolf to his father, that first time they had met.

  'I will fight for you, if I fail,' said Russ.

  The Great Wolf laughed, his warriors joined in.

  'You are too feeble to join the murder-make with the enemies we face, little man! No, we require a fool to make my warriors laugh after their labours in battle. And, if you are unsuccessful in the task of mirth-bringing, you shall be devoured nightly, and remade to try again.'

  'It does not sound so bad,' said Russ with a careless shrug. 'It is in a man's nature to wish to be of use.'

  'So we have a bargain?'

  'We have a bargain.'

  The Great Wolfs teeth pulled back in a canine parody of a grin. 'Your jesting had better be good, Leman of the Russ. My teeth are sharp.'

  The Great Wolf stood tall and raised his arms. He lifted the forefinger of his left hand and swept it downwards through the air. Russ drew in his breath at unanticipated pain. By some employment of Underverse sorcery, a wound like the stroke of a single claw opened upon his right breast.