ASHES OF PROSPERO

by Gav Thorpe

  ‘Aye, a drake of ice and fury. It comes upon us at night. We have few enough to fight as it is, and none to crew a ship when the thaw comes. The light is its only dread, but the long nights draw closer. If this beast takes any more of us…’

  ‘Where are the others?’ an older woman called out from the crowd. Her scrawny fingers gripped a ragged shawl about head and shoulders.

  ‘Why do you not ride a metal sky-chariot?’ asked another, perhaps a daughter by their similar features. Auburn curls hung out of her fur-lined hood and a fresh cut marred her tanned cheek.

  ‘Hush now, Magnhild,’ said Rangvaldr, glaring at the older woman. He turned his annoyance on the younger of the pair. ‘Stow your questions, Tyra.’

  ‘No,’ said the daughter. She strode up the street, but her gaze did not fall upon Arjac. When she addressed him, her eyes seemed locked to the bearclaw icon upon his left greave. ‘Warrior, we are grateful that you have come, but we need protection. When will the Great Wolf send the others?’

  ‘There are no others,’ said Arjac. The townsfolk greeted this statement with deepening frowns and sharp intakes of breath but raised no spoken complaint. ‘The Sons of Russ are sorely beset and the Allfather’s servants call us from across the heavenly bridge.’

  ‘We gave our sons and daughters to the war against the wyrdkine and the felhird, and a beast of that battle plagues us still,’ called Magnhild. ‘All we asked is that the Great Wolf send us warriors to guard us from this long shadow of war.’

  ‘This is Foehammer,’ said Arjac, presenting his oversized thunder hammer. Crackling power engulfed the head as his thumb touched the activation stud. ‘Its lightest touch shatters fortresses.’ He lifted his similarly massive storm shield. Its boss, wrought as a cruciform Terminator honour with a skull at its centre, shimmered with a blue sheen. ‘This is the anvil shield. It wards away blasts that can cleave mountains.’

  He took a step forward, towering over Tyra.

  ‘Look at me, child,’ he said quietly.

  His confidence was like a stoked hearth that thawed the bone-chill. Tyra’s timidity evaporated like the ice in his beard. Hesitantly, she raised her head, her eyes a startling green like bright emeralds in her sun-kissed face. Arjac smiled, his elongated incisors denting his bottom lip.

  ‘You need to slay a beast,’ he said, turning his attention to the rest of them. ‘So the Great Wolf sent me.’

  The Imperium had many heroes, alive and dead. Some were deserving of such a title; some were later manufactured to be so. Any histiographer, Priest, Imperial Commander or common citizen that met Logan Grimnar was in no doubt that they were in the presence of a true Hero of the Imperium. The Great Wolf radiated calm assurance and strength. His movements were fulsome, possessed of vigour and purpose. His gaze always held a measure of respect, his countenance one of intelligence and contemplation, while those that witnessed him in battle saw a savage warrior, brutal and unflinching in his violence.

  As he stepped inside, Njal saw that Logan wore his Terminator armour, bound with rune-torqs and wolf totems. Atop the back hung the head and pelt of Fellclaw – the Wolf Priests often sung the tale of how the Great Wolf had tracked and slain the massive thunderwolf as part of his trials to become one of the Wolf King’s most lauded heirs. A few steps behind, a thrall in thick jerkin and grey leggings held the Chapter Master’s helm, absent-mindedly stroking the revered artefact as though it was a living thing, soothing its spirit. Logan’s face was a mask of studied interest in his companions, framed by hair increasingly more grey than black.

  Another retainer close at hand bore the Axe Morkai, a symbol of Logan’s victories over the darkness on the world of Armageddon. To the ungifted observer the weapon looked like a double-headed axe with silver-red blades, clasped to the haft by bindings fashioned in the likeness of the deathwolf Morkai.

  To Njal’s wyrdsight, the runic wards that had been placed upon the weapon shone like brazier-fire. The axe’s bloodlust writhed and coiled inside the blade, kept at bay with anointments of water drawn from the polar glaciers of Fenris and the rune-craft of the Stormcaller, so that it now served the warriors of the Allfather as it had once slain His servants.

  Njal saw a companion of many decades – the pillar upon which the Space Wolves had relied for these last centuries. He needed no wyrdsight to see the weight upon the shoulders of his feal-lord, despite Logan’s attempts to appear unburdened by the woes and disasters of recent years. He stood beside the throne of the hall, upright and as unyielding as the Fang itself while he spoke to a small gathering of Space Marines and unaugmented humans. Those with whom he conversed would know nothing amiss, but to Njal the extra depth to the occasional frown, the slightest lag in gesture and answer, and the half-seen grimace behind Logan’s replies all betrayed the toll it had taken.

  The role of the Great Wolf was not an easy task for even the strongest and most courageous Son of Fenris. Being such when Magnus the Red had brought spiteful war to the home world was a test few would pass. To hold such rank, when the invasions of the Dark Powers had opened the Great Rift and the Legion of the Despoiler roamed free, was to lead in a time of peril not seen since the cataclysm of the Nightwinter when Horus had risen against the Allfather. The Imperium was upon the verge of desolation, as was Fenris itself. Its fighting forces were stretched to breaking. Its alliances, millennia-old pacts and decrees broken by the machinations of daemons and traitors.

  Yes, Logan had reason indeed to be fatigued, but he would be the last to admit any such drain.

  The Great Wolf did not look around as Njal entered, his attention devoted to those around him. Two of the Space Marines Njal knew well, for they were Space Wolves, of Logan’s personal Wolf Guard.

  There was a third, clad in the primary-blue plate and icons of the Ultramarines Chapter. The outsider – or utlander as the Fenrisians would say – was a giant among giants. Logan Grimnar in full battleplate was no meagre sight, but the Son of Macragge that stood next to him was even larger.

  He was called Lieutenant Arlandus Castallor and was one of a new breed of warriors: the Primaris Space Marines. He was clad in ornate battleplate to fit his stature; like his modified gene-seed, it was a marvel of ten thousand years of secretive development. Castallor had been despatched across the tumultuous tides of the warp by none other than Roboute Guilliman himself, the primarch returned from the jaws of death. It had been Castallor’s arrival with news of Guilliman’s return that had prompted Njal’s sojourn into the ice to seek the guidance of a vision quest.

  Yet for all his bulk and officer rank Castallor lacked the presence of the Great Wolf. Sheer size could not replace centuries of experience, and wargear was no match for charisma and gravitas. The Ultramarines Lieutenant deferred to Grimnar in his expression and pose, and though he would be counted a veteran among warriors of normal lifespan there was something naive and untoward in his countenance.

  Logan had welcomed the emissary as he would any other, as he had several packs of Primaris brothers that had been despatched with Castallor to bolster the numbers of the Space Wolves.

  There was something about these new warriors that did not sit easily with Njal and the other senior warriors of the Chapter. The recruits were another step removed from those they protected and Grimnar had, in privacy, voiced his concerns that it might again fall to the Space Wolves to police the ambitions of their Brother-Chapters.

  The humans Njal did not know. They were arrivals from after he had left the Fang. By their uniforms and robes, he could deduce that they were a high-ranking officer of the Astra Militarum, a tithe-warden of the Departmento Munitorum and an Astropath attached to the Imperial Navy.

  ‘…orks have sought the opportunity to overrun three star systems while we are beset at Gathalamor,’ explained the Imperial Guard commander.

  ‘Orks are opportunists,’ replied the Great Wolf. ‘There is no plan behind their conquests, only the lust for battle. The Space Wolves cannot stifle every xenos threat that raises its
ugly head. In the end, there will be justice. One war at a time. Gathalamor must be held first.’

  ‘A forge world is under threat,’ added the Departmento Munitorum official, fidgeting with a data-slate. ‘Vital war supplies…’

  ‘I am sure the Adeptus Mechanicus have a Titan Legion or two that can deal with the greenskins,’ Logan said patiently.

  Njal paid them little heed. He did not need to know the details of their conversation. He could tell from the small instances of regret in Logan’s expression that they continued to petition him for aid of one kind or another; aid the Space Wolves were in no position to provide given that they were already stretched far beyond their normal duties and campaigns.

  As he watched Logan, the Rune Priest also studied his surroundings through the augmented gaze of Nightwing. Upon his shoulder the psyber-raven turned to and fro, taking in the vastness of the King’s Hall. It was not the largest space within the Fang, smaller than the Hall of the Great Wolf where the whole Chapter could assemble with much room to spare, and dwarfed by some of the kilometres-long subterranean gunnery ranges used by the Long Fangs to carry out anti-tank combat drills. Even so it was an impressive space, modelled by tradition on the longhall where Russ himself had been raised, but on a far grander scale.

  It was longer than broad, nearly five hundred metres by two hundred, the roof thirty metres above his head held up by three dozen pillars modelled as great ironoak trees that were much prized by Fenrisian carpenters. Carved ravens and ice owls looked down from the branches, and winterfurs clung to the heavily ridged trunks and peered from knotholes. The trees themselves had the semblance of faces, rendered as the ygdras giants of Fenrisian legend. They gazed down upon the proceedings beneath them with a mixture of expressions; benign, mischievous and hostile. Between the spread of their chiselled canopies glittered a roof moulded in stone with the effect of bound thatch, each meticulously rendered blade of straw covered in gold leaf. Even here dwelt sculpted creatures both real and mythic – tuft-eared cats prowled through the thatch after mice and rats while aelfkid wove strands into protective wyrdleif and runes of hospitality.

  The floor was cast ferrocrete, but shaped as thousands of irregular flagstones, the expanse between the columns broken by three great firepits. The pits were dormant, light provided by the hundreds of lumens hung from the boughs of the fake trees, masquerading as storm lanterns used on the prows of Fenrisian wolfships.

  Clusters of benches and chairs were placed strategically throughout the hall, creating the illusion of secluded nooks for quiet conversation despite the overall size of the room. It was a place for discussion and conjecture, cooperation and sharing, not the theatre of grandeur and command that was the Hall of the Great Wolf.

  The hall was built so that despite its magnitude it left one with a sense of humble means, the careful artifice of the architect and craftsmen aligning to create an illusion of a primal world and its primitive inhabitants, but rendered with all of the cunning and technology of the vast Imperium. It was, like so much of the Space Wolves, a veneer of barbarity and ignorance that served to mask a far more sophisticated mindset than most outsiders would credit. A charming glamour like that cast by the wyrdmidons in legend to lure sailors to their doom, hiding the lethal rocks within the guise of softly shoaling coastline.

  It was no surprise that Logan chose to meet his petitioners here, away from the overbearing sparsity of the Hall of the Great Wolf, with nothing of the military nor Imperium in sight. It veiled the power of the Space Wolves, tempering both the fears and expectations of his visitors.

  The Stormcaller stopped a short distance away and waited patiently for Logan to conclude his discussion. The Great Wolf did so with an indication that the matter would be continued later, and with reassuring words and expression sent the others away, escorted by Alrik and Sven. When the last of them had passed from the King’s Hall Logan finally turned his eye to Njal.

  ‘You look cold,’ said the Great Wolf.

  Njal smiled at the joke, his concerns about Logan’s health and state of mind dismissed in one simple moment of jest. Whatever grief the Great Wolf held in his heart, his mind and body were as active and sharp as ever.

  Logan’s expression turned serious. ‘Was your vision quest successful? Did you find what you sought?’

  ‘I found a great many things, but none of which I sought,’ replied Njal. ‘The frost was late this year and the ice bears hid in their caves. The kraken have sunk to the blackest depths and the carrion-fangs roost only in the highest forests. Trolls roam in packs, in numbers unseen before. Their galling cacophony rings through the valleys where the noise of honest labour and life once echoed. The taint of Magnus and his followers still stains the snows, and perhaps we will not see it cleansed in our lifetime.’

  ‘We knew this already,’ said Logan. ‘You set out looking for guidance from the Allfather, to find answers in the spirit of Fenris. I have learned much from our ambassador from Macragge, concerning the ordering of this broken galaxy and the plans of his primarch.’

  ‘Did he desire you swear an oath?’ Njal asked, sharply. ‘Does Lord Guilliman wish our fealty?’

  ‘He was wise enough not to ask,’ said Logan. ‘Though I do not doubt that the primarch thinks himself our commander. It was claimed that he went before the Allfather himself and was blessed with an audience.’

  ‘The portents have not changed.’ Njal said the words quietly. ‘The storm breaks everywhere. This much you already know. The return of the Thirteenth, the wrath of Magnus, the Great Rift… All were part of the same design. A blood moon, the reddened maw. War, Logan. War the likes of which the Imperium has not seen for millennia. A war that may never end, such is the desire of the Dark Powers.’

  ‘But what else?’ demanded Logan, stepping closer, his insistence rolling from him like waves of heat. ‘The Eye has opened. What of the Wolf King?’

  Njal did not answer at first, dismayed by what he saw as desperation in the stare of his feal-lord. The Great Wolf’s brow furrowed at his silence, extracting meaning from the wordless response.

  ‘No sign?’

  ‘None, my lord. There are stirrings, tempests through which even I cannot gaze. Even so, I saw a sleeper entombed in rock, and a white storm that rode upon a chariot of lightning. A shadow rises to the call of the Allfather’s messengers, a darkness that strikes from within. The benighted ones turn their supernal gazes upon our worlds – the Eater of Worlds, the Corpse-King and the Misbegotten Child move once more. The Cyclopean Fiend, we have already seen. Even the Golden One has broken his gaze from the Empyrean again. I felt its glare like a fire in my soul.

  ‘But nothing pertaining to the Sons of Fenris. Though the Thirteenth have come back and the Eye has opened, I saw nothing of Leman Russ’ return.’

  Logan seemed to sag, if such a thing was possible in Terminator armour. His eyes turned to the stone floor, a sigh heavy from his chest.

  ‘We should be thankful, Logan,’ Njal continued. ‘Our father-king vowed to return for the Wolftime, when the world is ending. He will come for the final battle, it was told. That he has not returned means there is still hope. Slim, but hope all the same. If we hear the howl of the Wolf King ere we die, it will be to the lament of the Allfather and all that follow Him.’

  ‘I suppose you are right,’ said Logan. ‘Perhaps it was just vanity to hope that where one returned… It matters nothing. He has not come, but we are still here and that is what counts.’

  ‘It seems that most are not here…’ Njal looked pointedly around the hall, though it was clear his remarks encompassed all of the Fang. ‘These halls are rarely filled, and only ghosts walk these chambers at the moment.’

  ‘There is scarce a warrior remaining,’ answered Logan. ‘Some recovering from injuries, Blood Claws in their initial training, the venerable fighters that slumber. A few squads from the Great Companies since returned after their Wolf Lords departed. There is not a long day that passes without the astropaths relating s
ome fresh call for help.’

  ‘Recruitment?’

  ‘Continues. But we cannot drag blood from the rocks. Dozens of tribes were lost to Magnus’ spite, and Grand Master Aurikon’s purgings curtailed their numbers further. It is of no benefit to take those who will not pass the tests, nor to lower our standards. We are recovering, but it is a slow process, Njal.’

  ‘What of the newcomers?’

  ‘The Primaris Marines?’ Logan pursed his lips, giving genuine consideration to the question. ‘Exemplary. They fight as you might think they would. We have campaigns that would have ended poorly but for their presence.’

  ‘But…’

  ‘Who can say what Cawl’s tampering with the gene-seed has done to the Canis Helix?’ Grimnar dropped his voice to a conspiratorial whisper. ‘The wulfen-curse is still there, but are the Primaris Marines stronger against it, or weaker?’

  The Stormcaller nodded.

  ‘And when strife is upon us, how is it that the Great Wolf remains throne-bound?’

  ‘Not for long,’ Logan replied grimly. ‘You saw my new guests. Adjutant-colonel Mastroshka and her companions are on their way to the Gasai sector. Orks. As if the Infernal Powers and their followers were not enough of a tragedy. The greenskins feel empowered to move against the realms of the Allfather.’

  ‘And you will answer the call?’

  ‘My absent Nightwolves return from victorious conflict at Gehenna as we speak. I am taking a ship in a few days to rendezvous at the system boundary.’

  ‘Not even time to take on supplies and victuals?’

  ‘No. I will take what I can with me, but the armoury works at capacity and still the arsenal is near empty. If our foes think to bleed us dry, they are canny.’

  Njal absorbed this without comment, while Logan levelled an expectant stare at him. It took several seconds for the Stormcaller to realise what his lord would not ask. Not for lack of authority, but from respect for Njal’s own status as a leader.