[Space Wolf 02] - Ragnar's Claw

by William King

  Ragnar looked at the old man sullenly. He seemed serious but it was hard to tell. The archivist was known to have a strange sense of humour. Age had made him somewhat eccentric; senile, some claimed. Ragnar breathed in the man’s scent. There was some resentment there. Judging by his stance and his tone it was not directed at Ragnar but at the off-worlders. It seemed that the archivist, too, was reluctant to give up the secrets of the Space Wolves to people he did not know.

  “Can you not at least give me some idea of how long?” Ragnar asked, now using the native tongue of Fenris, a speech that doubled as the secret battle language of the Space Wolves. He saw the archivist’s good eye flicker once in the direction of Sternberg. His own gaze followed.

  “As long as it takes,” said Tal. Ragnar caught what he was looking at too. No flicker of understanding passed over Sternberg’s face. Presumably the inquisitor did not know their language, then. For some reason Ragnar found himself hoping that was the case.

  “There are millions of runestones, Blood Claw, and the indexes are not necessarily all that reliable. Such procedures take time. You would do well to learn patience, as would your off-world companions.”

  “I will bear that in mind,” Ragnar said sourly. “I hope all of the people on Aerius who are dying learn patience too. The fate of a world hangs in the balance here.”

  The archivist snorted. “When you reach my age, youngling, you will realise that the fate of a world always hangs in the balance somewhere.”

  “How much longer is this going to take?” Inquisitor Isaan asked, glancing around the Hall of Battles with impatience. She did not sound happy. Things were obviously not going quite as well as she had imagined.

  “As long as it takes,” Ragnar said. He followed her gaze, oddly glad that Sternberg had not accompanied them, allowing him to be alone with the woman. Sternberg had shown far less interest in the wonders of the Hall than she and waited with the archivist.

  The great statue of Oberik Kelman, 23rd Great Wolf of the Chapter, glared down angrily at the pair of them. Kelman had been a famously temperamental man, given to terrifying rages when frustrated. Just at the moment Ragnar thought he knew how the Wolf must have felt. He was straggling to keep his temper in the face of the inquisitor’s impatience. It was not that he blamed her. He too would have liked to have seen quicker progress but he also felt that she blamed him, and her constant questioning of him would not make things happen any quicker.

  “And how long precisely will that be?” Karah Isaan glared at him with cat-like green eyes. She was almost as tall as he was, brown skinned, with a pert nose and wide lips. Her hair was lustrous black. She was quite the most exotic woman he had ever seen, but right at this moment there was nothing remotely attractive about her.

  “I can see why you are an inquisitor,” Ragnar replied. “You do not easily abandon a line of questioning.”

  “And once again you are avoiding giving me an answer.”

  “The answer is plain, lady: I don’t know. I am not an archivist. I am only here to be your guide.”

  “And to be our watchdog.”

  Ragnar looked at her, startled that she would suggest such a thing. In that tone of voice it was close to being an insult. “Those are words I would call you out for, if—”

  “If I were a man?”

  Ragnar almost smiled. That was exactly what he had been going to say. The womenfolk of the islands did not fight, and he had no idea how to deal with a woman who behaved as if she were the equal of any warrior. Instead of speaking he merely grunted assent.

  “I would not let that stop you,” she said. “I have been trained to fight. All of my calling are.”

  “I am sure. But it would be a most terrible breach of hospitality. We do not slay our guests.”

  “You are very certain you could slay me.”

  “Yes.” A simple statement of fact. “I am a Space Marine.”

  Another simple statement of fact. He was one of the mightiest warriors humanity could produce, enhanced in a hundred different ways, taught to kill in every way, bloodied in combat against the vile forces of Chaos. There was no way any normal mortal could stand in combat against him.

  She smiled at him, showing small perfect teeth. It was a cold smile, with nothing friendly in it. She moved her hand. Ragnar sensed a gathering of energies, but was unsure of what was happening.

  Then he tried to move and his limbs would not respond.

  A psyker, he realised. She was a psyker, one of those witches gifted with extraordinary mental powers, one of which was now quite obviously the ability to paralyse any target she wished.

  Ragnar suddenly felt very foolish… and very angry. He exerted his strength, willing his limbs to respond. Her arrogant smile grew wider and colder as she watched him struggle. This just served to make him angrier still. Somewhere in the dim depths of his mind, the beast that had been part of him since he became a Space Wolf began to snarl with frustrated rage. It did not like being caged, even if the cage was his own body.

  Perhaps this was the threat he had sensed when the strangers had first appeared. Psykers were notoriously prone to possession by the daemons of Chaos. Perhaps even now one of them had wormed its way into the very heart of the Fang.

  “Space Wolf, I could kill you now and there is nothing you could do about it,” she said calmly.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Ragnar could almost smell the woman gloating — and he was livid. He could not sense any other alteration in her scent. She did not appear to be tainted by Chaos. Perhaps, after all, she was simply doing all this to prove a point. Beads of sweat stood out on his brow as he forced his numb limbs to move. Time seemed to slow to glacial time as he urged his body to reject her hold on him.

  One of his fingers quivered slightly and a look of utter shock appeared on her face, as if she had never seen anyone break her hold before, no matter how slightly. He smelled her sudden loss of confidence, and a faint flicker in the power as that affected her control. Suddenly, somehow, he could move. It was like being encased in molasses but at least his limbs were his own once more. He seemed to be moving with incredible slowness, but at least he was moving.

  She let out a faint shriek. His hand was round her throat, almost before he had thought of it. With his superhuman strength all he had to do was close his fingers and her windpipe would be crushed.

  “And now I could kill you,” he hissed. “And there is nothing you could do about it.” He opened his hand and stepped back. “But that would be neither honourable nor hospitable.”

  They stood for a moment, glaring at each other. Both of them were breathing hard. He realised that the use of her powers must be as draining to her as hours of heavy exercise was to him. He himself was exhausted from resisting them as he had not been after a two hundred mile forced march.

  “You are very strong-willed,” she said eventually, and he was not sure whether it was admiration, fear or dislike he smelled — perhaps some combination of them all.

  “Apparently,” he said.

  “And there is something else within you. I sensed it, as I wove the web.”

  “Is that what you call it?”

  “I saw something like a wolf: large, dark, fierce.”

  “It was something woken when I joined the Chapter,” he said, not sure whether he should be discussing this with anyone from outside the Space Wolves. “A Wolf Spirit.”

  “No. It’s part of your own spirit. Something that separates you from normal people.”

  “It was bound to me.”

  “I suppose that is one way of looking at it. Albeit a primitive way.”

  “Now you are being insulting again.”

  She smiled and this time there was some warmth in the smile. “I do not mean to be. It is just that when you are a psyker you become very aware of things. One is that the way people see the world is the way the world is — for them. That doesn’t mean that it is the way the world really is in an absolute sense.”

  That was a c
oncept of some sophistication but Ragnar thought he could see what she meant. He knew his own view of the world had changed radically since he had joined the Wolves. Once he had seen the world very differently, with the eyes of a Fenrisian barbarian. Now he looked at it with the altered eyes of a Space Marine. Perhaps it was possible that some day he would learn something that would supersede his current view of the world. It had happened once; he had to admit to the possibility that it might happen again. On the other hand, he did not want to follow this line of thought too closely. Down such paths lay heresy, not a fate any Space Marine wished to consider. “Perhaps you are right. But do you know what the world is like, in an absolute sense?”

  “You still have not answered my question,” she said. This time she sounded marginally friendlier and her smile held more warmth.

  “If one method of questioning fails, you try another,” Ragnar said.

  “And you find another means of evasion.”

  “Truly I do not want to. I am not an archivist. I know there are many millions of runestones kept here in these Halls. Not all of them are catalogued by the Thinking Engines. Some records exist only in runescript inscribed on the tablets of stone themselves. Others are held only in the sagas memorised by the Wolf Priests.”

  “There are gaps in the records of your auto-librams.”

  Ragnar was not familiar with the term, but it sounded like she was referring to the Thinking Engines. He nodded thoughtfully.

  “It is the same with us,” she continued. “The machines are old, dating from the Dark Age of Technology, and their systems have been reconsecrated many times by the tech-priests of the Adeptus Mechanicus. Each time that happens, information is lost. There are flaws in the copying process. And, of course, much information is recorded under the individual seal of a specific inquisitor - and sometimes those seals are lost when the inquisitor dies and no one can then access his records.”

  Ragnar looked at her. This was the most forthcoming he had ever seen any member of Sternberg’s retinue. Something in her scent told him to be careful. Perhaps this was a trick the inquisitors used, confiding a little information to make the person they were talking to do the same. Not that it mattered very much, he thought. There was nothing here to hide — as far as he knew.

  “And of course, some records are destroyed.”

  Ragnar glanced at her in astonishment. “Deliberately?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “Because the knowledge in them is deemed too dangerous for anyone to possess - because it might lead to heretical thought or heretical deed or because it pertains to certain things that were not meant to be known.”

  “Who decides that?”

  “The Masters of our Order. Sometimes individual inquisitors. Over the millennia the definition of what constitutes heresy has changed. Yesterday’s blasphemy is today’s orthodoxy. Surely it is the same with you?”

  Ragnar just looked at her, mouth open with disbelief. He did not think that this was the way the Space Wolves looked at things at all! He could tell by the way that she tilted her head, and by the alteration of her scent, that even his lack of reply was considered an answer. He had told her something and it was being filed away in her memory for future use. To fill the silence, he said, “We do not believe that is the case. We hold with the old ways from the time of Russ. The truths do not change.”

  He stopped, realising even as he spoke that the silence had been another inquisitor’s trick designed to make him talk. So simple, but so effective. He stopped again.

  “You might think that is the case but I’m sure if you looked closely at the history of your Chapter you would see that it’s not true.” A hint of challenge was in her voice. He wanted to respond instantly, to contradict her, but he could see that was what she wanted, another trick. He was starting to understand the game. Well, he could play it too. “Do you always interrogate people?”

  She smiled and lowered her gaze, then shook her head. Her laughter was quiet and self-mocking. “You are good at this,” she said. “I see why they gave you to us.”

  Clever people often saw subtlety where there was none, Ragnar thought to himself — and then wondered if that was really the case. Was Ranek being subtler than he had imagined by doing this? Was that the reason he had been chosen for this task? Was Ragnar’s presence some sort of elaborate trick, designed to make the inquisitors think one thing, while another happened? Or was it he, Ragnar, who was now being overly subtle? It was enough to make his head spin.

  “Yes,” Inquisitor Isaan said. “I always interrogate people. It is what I was trained to do. Trained all of my life the way you are taught to fight and kill. Trained in such a way that interrogating people is part of my thought pattern and habits. Trained in a way that makes it automatic and unstoppable.”

  “You sound a little bitter.”

  “Maybe I am. A little.”

  And maybe you’re not, Ragnar thought. Maybe this, too, is just another pose to win the confidence of the people you are talking to. He began to see how being with the inquisitor was starting to infect his own thoughts. He was starting to think with a subtlety and deviousness that was not normal for him.

  “I am not sure I would like to live in your world,” he said eventually.

  “Someone has to. Someone has to find the Emperor’s enemies just as someone has to slay the Emperor’s foes.”

  “There is truth in what you say.”

  “Always, if you look for it. That, too, is part of being an inquisitor.”

  “You would know more about that than me,” he said with decision. Then another thought occurred to him. “You are a psyker. Why do you not simply lift the knowledge you need from other people’s minds?”

  She smiled again, this time coldly, as if this was a subject she did not care to discuss. “Some psykers have that gift, but not I, my talents run in… other directions. Even for those with the gift it is not that simple. A strong-willed individual can resist them. More subtle ones can mask their thoughts or even send false thoughts. And there are other risks…”

  “Risks?”

  “Yes. Those who enter the minds of heretics often become heretics in turn. Their very thoughts are a contagion.”

  “There are more ways of entering the minds of heretics than by simply reading their thoughts. I would have thought that trying to understand them could lead you down the same path. At least, so we are taught.”

  “There is wisdom in that,” the inquisitor said. Silence fell between them for a long moment.

  They walked back to the part of the hall where Inquisitor Sternberg waited for the archivist to do his work.

  Ragnar could tell by the way the man was standing that he had not yet got what he came here for. Perhaps it was time to try a distraction, he thought.

  And he believed he knew just the thing.

  “And where are we going?” asked Inquisitor Sternberg.

  Ragnar could hear the beating of the man’s heart, strong and regular. He shook his head and the noise disappeared into the background, became one with the hum of the grav-pod as it flashed upward through the elevator shaft towards their destination.

  Questions, always questions, thought Ragnar. It was all these people ever seemed to think about.

  “You shall see in a moment.”

  “This one is not an easy one to get answers from,” Karah Isaan said. Her hand flickered in an intricate gesture. Some sort of secret sign language, obviously, like the one the Space Wolves themselves used in certain circumstances.

  Sternberg shook his grizzled grey head and his smile widened. “That’s something of a compliment coming from an inquisitor,” he said.

  Ragnar sensed the change in his scent and studied the man closely. It was an attempt at humour, even friendliness. He was watchful. He felt he was getting the measure of these people now. Even friendliness was a weapon to them, just one weapon in their arsenal, one of the many techniques they used to get information from people. Ragnar d
id not know why this made him wary. He had nothing to hide. They were on the same side. Both were soldiers in the service of the Emperor of Mankind. Yet there was something about them that made him want to keep his guard up, a sense of duplicity, of hidden motives cunningly concealed, that was alien to his culture and to his experience. Perhaps it was simply part of their exoticness, but he did not particularly like it. And perhaps it was this deeper sense of threat that still tugged at his brain. He did not know why he felt it, but it was there.

  He tried to push that thought aside. Perhaps it was the nature of their work. Inquisitors were the investigating agents of the Imperium, trained to detect threats to the security of the human realms, hidden and unhidden. They lived in a world of concealment and secrecy, of duplicity and darkness. Living in that sort of world must have some effect on them, help turn them into what they are.

  “Why will you not answer?” Sternberg asked. He smiled as he said it. This was all part of the game for him.

  “I think you will realise why when we get there.”

  “It’s some sort of surprise, then,” Karah suggested.

  “It is difficult to conceal anything from two such clever inquisitors as you,” Ragnar said with just a trace of irony.

  “Humour? From a Space Marine? Who would have expected that?” said Sternberg. There was a trace of irony in his voice too, Ragnar noted.

  At that moment the gravpod stopped. The light within flickered from red to green. A soft chiming note sounded and the door swished softly open. They walked forward into a massive chamber, part of a natural cavern in the flank of the Fang, one side of which had been walled off with translucent crystal. The only illumination came from the inside of the grav-pod and the cold light of the stars visible through the armourglass of the window. The sky was black. The moon was visible.

  “Is it a projection?” Karah asked. “It is daytime, yet the sky is as dark as night.”

  “I think I understand,” Sternberg said softly, “and I think I know why our young friend did not tell us where we were going.”