Beside him stood Jorundur. The Old Dog, if anything, looked slightly less hunched than he had done on past campaigns. His fury towards Hafloí had abated; even he could see how Vuokho’s last flight had turned the shape of the battle. Gunnlaugur suspected his wrath had never been full-hearted in any case. An odd relationship had developed between those two, as if Jorundur saw something in Hafloí worth protecting or encouraging. If that were so, then it gladdened his heart. Jorundur, for all his bitterness, was a priceless asset to the pack, a repository of knowledge and experience that outstripped even his. It would be good to see him fighting again with his old assurance.
Next was the whelp. Hafloí watched the dancing flames with only perfunctory interest. Death to him was like life: ephemeral, fleeting, of little importance when set beside the raw pleasures of the hunt and the kill. He had not had time to develop a deep connection to either Váltyr or Baldr and did not pretend to mourn more than he ought. His ruddy face was thrust out belligerently, as if chafing at the necessity to mark the passing. Gunnlaugur smiled with bleak foreknowledge. Hafloí would learn to mourn, should he live long enough. He would learn what it was to lose a soul-brother, one whose life had been shared amid blood and fire. For now, though, he was just as he should be: fearless, alive with boundless energy, uncaring of anything but the feat of arms.
Finally, set apart from his brothers, stood Ingvar. The shadows hung heavily on him, part-masking his stone-grey features. His expression was hard to read. Gunnlaugur knew that Váltyr and he had always chafed at one another, vying for the mantle of the pack’s deadliest blade. If Váltyr had become the more lethal swordsman, Ingvar, to his mind, had become the more complete warrior. Now, though, such contests were irrelevant, and Ingvar’s face betrayed nothing but grief. If he had stayed in the Halicon as ordered, he might have arrived in time to save him. Or perhaps he too would have died. Gunnlaugur could see the doubts preying on him even as the lambent red light played across his battered armour. Those doubts would not leave him quickly, adding more layers to his already conflicted soul.
Gunnlaugur’s eyes turned back to the pyre. Váltyr’s body was almost gone, slowly reduced to whitening ashes. The wounds he had taken had been burned away. Gunnlaugur hoped that, at the last, the blademaster had found some measure of peace in what had been a restless, doubting life. He would have deserved that.
Moving slowly, he raised the heavy shaft of skulbrotsjór, lifting the weapon in salute against the glow of the dying pyre.
As silently as he, the others did the same – Olgeir raising his sword, Jorundur and Hafloí their axes, Ingvar his rune-blade.
No words were spoken. The four of them held vigil as the last of Váltyr’s mortal remains were consumed. Only when the flames had died and the embers were cooling did they lower their weapons again.
‘The thread is cut,’ said Gunnlaugur softly.
Olgeir was the first to leave, nodding to Gunnlaugur as he stalked off, his face tight with emotion. Jorundur and Hafloí were next, both heading back to the hangars to work on Vuokho. Hafloí looked eager to be away; Jorundur pensive.
That left Ingvar and Gunnlaugur alone again, separated only by the smoking ashes. Ingvar made no move. For a while nothing passed between them but the low crackle and spit of oil-soaked wood.
‘How is Fjolnir?’ asked Gunnlaugur eventually. He tried to keep judgement out of his voice.
Ingvar stepped into the circle of fading light. Gunnlaugur noticed that the soul-ward pendant he’d worn since leaving Fenris no longer hung around his neck, though the Onyx skull still did.
‘The Red Dream has him,’ Ingvar replied. His voice was wary. ‘I believe him to be recovering.’
Gunnlaugur nodded. Baldr had been restrained, clapped in adamantium shackles and buried deep within the Halicon’s dungeons. Doors a metre thick locked him in. Even if he woke to madness again, there would be no escape from the citadel.
‘I hope you’re right,’ said Gunnlaugur. ‘I took a risk, accepting you both back. The gates had been sealed.’
Ingvar bowed. ‘I know,’ he said. He needed to say nothing more; the gratitude was evident.
Gunnlaugur hoisted his thunder hammer, locking it across his back.
‘I still don’t know if I was right,’ he said. ‘Even if he recovers he will be tainted. You saw what he did.’
Ingvar sheathed his blade.
‘I share your doubts. I nearly killed him myself.’
‘What stopped you?’
Ingvar hesitated. ‘Callimachus would have killed him without a thought. Jocelyn would have done it, as would the others. But we have never been a Chapter for rules, have we? We have always acted as our souls warned us.’
Gunnlaugur didn’t recognise those names, but he could guess well enough what Ingvar meant.
Ingvar looked directly at him. Weariness scarred his grey visage.
‘For better or worse, I am Fenryka. I doubted it for a time, but a wolf does not shed its pelt. I would give him a chance.’ He lowered his eyes. ‘If you permitted it.’
Gunnlaugur considered the words. As ever, something about Ingvar’s tone unsettled him. Perhaps he would just have to get used to that.
‘Váltyr never argued for your exclusion,’ he said. ‘You should know that. It was me. And you were right: that was for pride. I am shamed by it.’
Ingvar looked surprised. For a moment, he didn’t reply.
‘Thank you,’ he said, his eyes flickering briefly towards the pyre. ‘I had assumed–’
‘Váltyr was not jealous. He warred with himself. It was never about you.’
Ingvar nodded slowly, taking that in. At length his grey eyes rose again.
‘So what now, vaerangi?’ he asked. ‘We have survived. We have been blooded. What comes next?’
Gunnlaugur rolled his shoulders, feeling the deep-set fatigue in the muscles.
‘The canoness received word of reinforcements,’ he said. ‘If she’s right, then Njal is on his way.’
‘Stormcaller?’ Ingvar looked impressed. ‘Our hides are worth that much?’
‘Not ours,’ he said. ‘But this is more than one lost world. Hundreds are ablaze. This is a new war, one that has only just begun.’
‘At least not garrison work,’ Ingvar said wryly, working to raise a smile. The effort was weak, but Gunnlaugur did his best.
‘No, at least not that.’
Ingvar looked thoughtful then.
‘I have much to tell you,’ he said. ‘I learned things from the Palatine before she died. It may have been for those alone that fate brought us here. There are things about Hjortur we were never told.’
‘We shall speak of them,’ said Gunnlaugur. ‘Truly, we shall. But not now, not while the ashes of our brother are still cooling.’
He looked down at his hands.
‘I was wrong, brother,’ he said. ‘Your presence wore at my pride, and I let it govern me. Now Váltyr is gone I have need of counsel like never before.’ He looked back up. ‘Can the river flow cleanly between us again?’
Ingvar came towards him, grasping him by the arm.
‘We were both at fault,’ he said fervently. ‘I forgot myself. Never again, brother. I swear it.’
His eyes held steady – two orbs of flecked grey, like the plumage of the raptor that had given him his name.
‘I told the Palatine we were both of the blood of Asaheim,’ he said. ‘I am not sure I meant it then. Now I do.’
Gunnlaugur took Ingvar’s hand and gripped it in his own gauntlet. The two of them stood before the glimmering light of the pyre, alone at the summit of Hjec Aleja.
‘I am glad,’ he said.
For the first time in a long while he looked at Ingvar’s face and saw no challenge there, real or imagined. A future presented itself: their twin animal spirits, as lethal as any in the galaxy, working in tandem,
no bitterness dividing them.
‘For Fenris, brother,’ he said proudly. ‘Our blades together.’
Ingvar closed his eyes then, as if some terrible, crushing weight had been lifted from his shoulders. For a moment, he made no reply. When he spoke again, his voice was thick with emotion.
‘For Fenris,’ he said quietly, his head bowed.
Epilogue
The chamber was carved from a dark, glossy stone that reflected the light strangely. It wasn’t even clear where the light came from; it seemed to spin out of the air between ebony pillars, each one rough-cut and many-faceted, just like the walls and floor. The place looked like it had been carved from the heart of an asteroid.
Which it had: the room was a single node within Clandestine Station U-6743, operating under the auspices of the sub-adjutant proximal command group Theta-Lode-Frier, one of several thousand outposts placed at the disposal of Deathwatch kill-teams and scattered throughout the galaxy.
Seven Space Marines stood in the centre of that eerie, echoing space. Callimachus of the Ultramarines, Leonides of the Blood Angels, Jocelyn of the Dark Angels, Prion of the Angels Puissant, Xatasch of the Iron Shades and Vhorr of the Executioners had already received their skull pendant, the mark of their service during the incident in the Dalakkar Belt in which forty-six billion souls had died. They remained silent, their unmoving armour-shells as black as the stone that enclosed them. The atmosphere was one of resigned stoicism. None of them had enjoyed seeing the results of their last mission, not even Xatasch, whose humours were dark.
Only Ingvar remained. He stood among his brothers, his left shoulder guard as grey as dirty snow and bearing the insignia of Berek Thunderfist’s Great Company.
Callimachus, helm-less like the rest of them, approached him. The Ultramarine tried to smile reassuringly. It was hard for any of them to smile after Dalakkar, but he did so for the sake of form. His Chapter placed much store by the manners of occasion.
‘Last of all, the Son of Russ,’ said Callimachus, holding the pendant before Ingvar.
When he had joined Onyx, a mortal lifetime ago, Ingvar would have resisted bowing his head to anyone, let alone a Space Marine of another Chapter. Now such inhibitions had melted away. The long years, each one filled with strange horror-breeds and murderous missions in the dark, had changed him. He had studied the Codex with Callimachus. He had learned the beauty of sword-craft from Leonides. He had learned advanced void-war tactics from Jocelyn, the use of battle-shield variants from Prion, ancient methods of infiltration from Xatasch and close-range bolter techniques from Vhorr.
Like all of them he had become an amalgam, a lethal mix of different martial orders. At times that made him feel stronger than he had ever felt; at times it felt like he had lost his soul.
So he bowed before the Ultramarine, ready to receive the mark of his duty, and, as he saw it in his darkest moments, his shame.
Callimachus placed the pendant around his neck.
‘You have had the longest journey,’ he said.
Ingvar felt the iron chain settle on his flesh. Once he had been used to bearing all manner of totems and charms on his battle-plate, such as the soul-ward he had given to Baldr as a token of their unbreakable friendship. Now, like so much else, adorning his sable armour seemed strange, like rehearsing the moves of a half-forgotten dream.
‘We have all travelled,’ he replied. Little difference existed between his voice and that of Callimachus; even their spoken Gothic, once thickly differentiated by accent and idiom, had merged into similarity.
‘And now we must travel again, but apart,’ said Callimachus. ‘I grieve to lose your friendship. When we first met I thought you nothing better than a barbarian. Now I know you have a warrior’s heart and a scholar’s mind. I learned a lesson from you, Ingvar, one I will take back to Macragge.’
Ingvar bowed. ‘Our paths may cross again.’
Callimachus smiled. ‘If they did, we would be honour-bound to say nothing. I would look on you with haughty eyes, and you would snarl at me with contempt, and our brothers would approve.’
‘Because they are ignorant.’
‘Because they are pure.’
Callimachus looked solemn and regretful. He always looked solemn and regretful, like a statue carved from pure-grain nobility.
‘We have become mongrels, forever destined to bestride two worlds. It will be hard to return. It will be hard to become what we once were.’
‘But we will.’
Callimachus gave him a hard look. ‘Will you, Ingvar? Will you forget what you have learned when you tread once more on the cold plains of Fenris?’
Ingvar held his gaze. ‘I intend to forget nothing.’
‘Do not expect to find your home world as you left it. Do not expect your battle-brothers to be the same as they were. You may never tread in the same river twice.’
‘So you said to me before,’ Ingvar said. ‘But you forget, brother, I am still a Son of Russ. We are the arrogant ones, the boastful scions of a boastful primarch, and we do not respond well to being told what we may or may not do.’
Ingvar smiled then too. It was a warped smile, one that reflected the infinite horrors he had witnessed, one that still betrayed a certain guilty pride.
The onyx skull hung against his breastplate, dark against the sable ceramite. Already it felt like a repository of secrets.
‘With us,’ he said, ‘anything is possible.’
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chris Wraight is the author of the Space Wolves novel Battle of the Fang. He has also written Schwarzhelm & Helborg: Swords of the Emperor and Luthor Huss in the Warhammer Fantasy universe. He doesn’t own a cat, dog, or augmented hamster (which technically disqualifies him from writing for Black Library), but would quite like to own a tortoise one day. He’s based in a leafy bit of south-west England, and when not struggling to meet deadlines enjoys running through scenic parts of it.
A BLACK LIBRARY PUBLICATION
Published in 2013 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd., Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK
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Cover illustration by Raymond Swanland
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