Lukas the Trickster

by Josh Reynolds

  ‘Promethium.’ Lukas scratched his chin.

  ‘Promethium?’ Einar asked with an unhealthy interest.

  Kadir tapped one of the casks. ‘How many of these caches do you have hidden away in the mountains, Trickster?’

  Lukas shrugged expansively. ‘A few hundred. I make a batch every time I come out here. It helps to pass the time.’ Lukas had everything he needed to brew mjod in his battle-plate and in his head. It required some effort, to be sure, but he had never been afraid of that.

  Granted, the first few batches had almost killed him, but he didn’t see any reason to worry the others with that little admission. He had perfected the mix over the hundreds of batches since, and now it was as smooth as a mica-dragon’s hide.

  The Blood Claws rolled the casks out into the middle of the barrow. There were eight in all, sealed in wood reinforced with kraken ichor. Without the ichor, the mjod would eat through the wood. He had gone through a good many batches before he figured that out. Trial and error, that was the way of it.

  ‘What now?’ Ake asked. He gestured to the kegs. ‘Did you bring us out here just to sit and drink?’ He didn’t sound entirely bothered by the prospect. Maybe he was mellowing after all. Lukas smiled. One could only hope.

  ‘We sit, drink and swap sagas, the way we would if we were in the Aett.’ Lukas leaned back, his power pack scraping against the stone. ‘I thought you might enjoy it.’ He swept a hand out. ‘Consider the mjod my apology for getting you banished, if you like.’

  Ake snorted and sat. ‘I would prefer not to have been banished at all.’ He reached out and caught up one of the casks, lifting it over his head. He thrust a thumb through the wood, puncturing a neat hole, and opened his mouth to gulp at the pungent, dark liquid that spilled out. Only when his pate was dripping and his hair sodden did he set it down, his thumb plugging the hole. He grinned at Lukas. ‘But it’s a start.’

  Lukas laughed and the others joined in. Soon the mjod was flowing nicely, and their tongues had been loosened enough to talk. Lukas started things off with an only somewhat exaggerated story about the time he had tricked Berek Thunderfist into eating wolf dung. The others howled their laughter, and he sat back, allowing someone else a turn.

  That too was part of the tradition. One tale apiece, as the drink flowed and the dark pressed close. A tradition begun in ancient days and appropriated by Russ. Another tool to hammer his warriors into shape. A good trick. Sagas shaped them, whether they knew it or not. Gave them something to emulate, and hold on to when needed. A good thing, mostly. But sometimes they believed too hard. And in believing, were caught fast. It was like the old tale of the magic box and the ice-cat. The sagas were a square drawn on the ice with a shaman’s stick, and the warriors no wiser than the ice-cat who had climbed into something that wasn’t there and been trapped, to die of starvation.

  Einar’s story was the shortest – a monosyllabic saga of but ten words – but amusing enough. Ake boasted of his combat prowess, fighting orks on some hell-world. Not an original tale by any means, but told with passion and drunken gesticulation. Dag told the longest story, reciting every twist and turn of a highly embarrassing if entertaining situation involving a rogue trader’s daughter.

  Lukas listened to them all, boastful and rueful alike. These were the foundations of sagas to come. Stories that would grow in the telling, if their tellers survived. By the time Kadir had finished his tale, Lukas had thought of a way to help them do so. As the jeers faded, Dag caught his attention. ‘Your turn again, brother.’

  Lukas sighed. ‘Very well.’ He upended the cask he held and drained the last of it. He set it aside and hunched forward. ‘I will tell you of Fenksworld, a hive world in the Calixis Sector. Cities stacked upon cities, rising from the core to the clouds.’

  Dag whistled. ‘It must have been a sight to see.’

  Lukas grimaced. ‘It was a tomb in all but name. The wind was artificial, stirred by great fans, the weak light of the sun captured and reflected through a billion solar emitters, the waters so processed and polluted they might as well have been poison.’ He spat and rubbed his nose. ‘I can still taste it in the back of my throat.’ He tapped one of the talons hanging from his shoulder-plate. ‘An uprising. Xenos influence. Genestealers turning the downtrodden and luckless from the honest light of the Allfather to a darker faith. They swarmed through the underhive like vermin, polluting everything they touched with foul markings and the bitter stink of their alien masters. We came at the behest of the world’s masters, and we killed for them.’

  The Blood Claws were hanging on his every word. They had all seen their share of war, but they were greedy for tales of bloodshed and glory. Lukas watched their faces and wondered if he had ever worn such an expression. He doubted it.

  ‘My pack was to move forward, to take a position. To hold it until reinforced. But the others wanted to attack, to go on the offensive. That was the proper way of it. The enemy were fleeing – broken, easy meat.’ Lukas frowned, remembering. ‘We gave in to our kill-urge, and paid for it. They led us into an ambush. Xenos monsters came pouring out of the dark, and we fought them.’ He traced old marks on his battle-plate, grisly gouges made by the talons of things that could rend ceramite as easily as paper. ‘I learned then that the proper way was not always the right way…’

  He trailed off. He had heard something. A faint sound, far away but drawing closer. A hum that caused the roots of his teeth to itch. He looked at the others and saw that he wasn’t the only one who had detected it. ‘You heard…?’ he began.

  ‘Vehicles,’ Ake grunted. ‘And not Adeptus Astartes.’

  Lukas was on his feet an instant later, racing for the entry way.

  Chapter Eleven

  VARAGYR

  641.M41

  Hetha, shield-maiden of the Jahtvian tribe, ran through the gloom, her broken sword heavy in her aching hand. The forests seemed darker now, even given the season, and the trees clutched at her. Rain fell in thick sheets, the ice with it, and the ground shook underfoot, making it hard to stay upright. She blinked the cold from her eyes, trying to stay focused on the patch of shadow ahead. She could hear the others running with her, panting heavily. They could not allow themselves to be separated.

  ‘Keep going, the barrow is close,’ she shouted, fighting to be heard over the storm, her voice harsh with fear and exhaustion. ‘We’ll find shelter there.’ Grunts of assent reached her ears. They were too tired – too frightened – to argue with her. Good. It was the only way they were going to survive the night.

  The barrow was forbidden to them. It was the haunt of fell spirits, and on many a night laughter and howling had been heard emanating from its depths. Whoever slept there did not do so peacefully. But they had no other choice. They were being chased by worse things than ghosts. The svartalfar, the night-devils, rode the storm winds, and no steel could stay them, no prayer could ward them away. They had found that out the hard way.

  The creatures had already taken Floki and Asger. If she strained, she could still hear them screaming, somewhere up above the trees. They would not die soon. That sent a chill worse than the wind through her, and she tightened her grip on her broken blade. There was blood on it, though she wasn’t certain that it belonged to one of the night-devils.

  Things had become confused in those final moments. Men screaming, hacking at the shadows as their torches were doused by the wind. Bodies falling into the snow, or being dragged backwards into the dark by unseen hands. And above it all, the laughter. She had cut herself a path to freedom, striking at anything that sought to hinder her. Her sword had struck something – or been struck – and snapped in two, even as she stumbled free of the melee.

  Despite the damage to it, no thought of discarding the weapon passed through her mind. It was one of the few iron blades her tribe possessed, brought at no small cost from the Isle of the Iron Masters many hundreds of winters ago,
before the tribe had found their way to Asaheim by the will of the gods. She had grown to womanhood listening to her grandfather’s stories of Fire Mountain and the great, belching metal vessels that had greeted her ancestors’ dragonships.

  She had hoped to see that strange island for herself one day. But that had been before the fire in the east and the screams in the night. Before the svartalfar. She could hear their great spectral vessel riding the winds, like a dragonship but crewed by unseen daemons and growling like a wounded wolf. It skimmed across the treetops despite the weather. The night-devils clung to it, their cruel blades bared and their pale faces twisted in monstrous glee. She shuddered, remembering those smiles.

  Hetha had faced trolls and drakes – aye, and men as well. Cruel men, and wild ones. But none of those had been filled with such unholy mirth as they went about their business. Such malice could not be fought. It could not be reasoned with. It could only be fled from, though the thought of it twisted within her. The tribe needed to be warned. They had to abandon this land and seek the sea. Surely the night-devils would not follow them.

  That thought alone kept her moving, despite the growing numbness in her limbs and the ache in her chest. They had to escape. To bring word. Some of them must make it back to their steading. If not her, then one of the others. The thought died in a scream as something rose up beneath her. A grip like iron caught at her and dragged her swiftly down, to where a drift of snow had formed against the trunk of a tree. She struggled, but couldn’t break the grip. She tried to yell a warning to the others, but a wide, flat palm covered her mouth, stifling her calls.

  ‘Shhh, sister,’ her captor growled in the common dialect of the tribes. The hand pressed over her mouth covered almost the whole of her lower face. She could feel his enormity and the terrible strength in that grip. She smelled sour meat and weapon oil. ‘Quiet, little one. If you scream, the trick will be ruined.’

  She squirmed in her captor’s grip, and he pulled his hand away from her mouth. ‘I will not scream,’ she hissed. ‘Are you a troll?’

  A sound vibrated through her back, shaking her to her bones. It took her a moment to realise that it was a low, basso chuckle. ‘Do I look like a troll?’

  ‘You smell like one.’

  ‘That would be Halvar. Wave, Halvar.’ Something twitched in the dark, and Hetha swallowed. She and the others had run right through these beings without spotting them. They crouched in the snow, as still as the loose stones that littered the ground. She caught glimpses of the others, held like herself, their faces white with fear. Squinting, she made out patches of grey, pale against the dark. ‘Your steading,’ her captor said, his voice unsettlingly close to her ear. ‘Has it been attacked? Is that why you’re running?’

  ‘No,’ she said, her voice cracking. ‘But something is in the forest. It took our people. Carried them away. Laughing.’

  ‘Hnh. Never heard of a troll that laughed.’ Her captor leaned down, and she caught a glimpse of a fiery beard and thick braids the same colour as her own roughly cropped hair. Yellow eyes flashed. She knew those eyes. Every son and daughter of her tribe did.

  ‘Varagyr,’ she whispered.

  Her captor laughed softly. ‘Aye, that we are, little one. The Wolves That Walk the Stars, in the flesh. You know us. May we know you?’

  ‘H-Hetha.’

  ‘Hello, Hetha. I am called Lukas.’ He sniffed. ‘Jahtvian, are you?’

  ‘I–yes,’ she said. Of course he would know. The gods knew everything. Especially this god, if he was the one she thought he was.

  ‘Why are you out in the woods, Hetha?’

  ‘We… we came looking for our lost people.’

  ‘Did you find them?’

  ‘Yes,’ she gasped, trying not to remember. She squeezed her eyes shut, but that didn’t block out the echoes of the screams. Lukas’ grip on her shifted, his arm tight about her. It was a comfort rather than a binding.

  ‘Easy,’ he murmured, and she felt the word rumble through her. ‘Easy as it goes. Tears will come later. For now, I must know how many. What they looked like. How close.’

  Hesitantly at first, but with growing satisfaction, Hetha began to speak. The Varagyr had come, and soon it would be the svartalfar who screamed.

  From where he crouched, half sunk in the snow, Kadir listened silently as the woman spoke. Her words came in a rush, one tumbling over the next. He could smell her fear, sharp and sour. He studied her. She wasn’t some milk-pale daughter of the southern sea, but a woman of the taiga – raw-boned, with skin burned brown by the intemperate weather. Her hair, raggedly shorn, was as red as Lukas’ own. And her eyes were a dark amber, like dollops of melted gold.

  And there was something in her face – a certain leanness, not the result of privation. He glanced at Lukas and saw a similar leanness there. He restrained a grin of understanding. Of course. He wondered how many generations had passed since Lukas had last visited the Jahtvians for longer than it took to drop off a deer.

  As she finished her tale, he met Lukas’ gaze. ‘Well, what are they, then? Not trolls.’

  ‘No. Worse than that. Eldar.’

  Kadir blinked. ‘Eldar? Here?’ He had never faced that breed of xenos before.

  ‘Corsairs,’ Lukas growled. Nearby, Halvar made a gesture of warning. A moment later, Kadir heard the low hum of an anti-gravity engine piercing the storm. And something else – laughter.

  Kadir felt his hackles stiffen at the sound. It was shrill to his ears, and full of malice. An unhealthy sound that scraped against his hearing, it sent a wave of revulsion roiling through him. ‘If we can hear them, that means they’re flying low,’ Lukas muttered. ‘Good. Makes things easier.’ He looked at the woman. ‘I need you to scream, Hetha of the Jahtvian tribe. As if you were hurt. Can you do that?’

  Kadir caught Lukas by the shoulder. ‘Are you certain of this plan, Strifeson? We don’t know how many there are.’

  ‘Well, I guess we’ll find out, won’t we?’ Lukas bared his teeth in a wide grin. ‘If I’m wrong, feel free to point it out, pup.’

  ‘Oh, I will, be sure of that,’ Kadir growled.

  Hetha pushed away from Lukas. Her fear was apparent, but it didn’t stop her. She moved quickly, rising to her feet and running away from them at an angle. She shouted and screamed as she ran, doing a good impression of a woman out of her mind with panic. Of course, that probably wasn’t far from the truth. The hum of the engine grew louder as the keen hearing of the hunters caught the screams of their prey.

  Trees were forced aside, reduced to broken husks by the armoured prow of the xenos skiff. The broken bodies of mortals had been impaled on narrow butcher’s hooks or ensnared in barbed chains and left to bleed out along the curved ridges of the hull.

  Wild laughter slipped through the air, and Kadir could see thin shapes clinging to the hull or crouched on the deck. Eldar. Just as Hetha had described them. They looked fragile, but he knew better than to take such creatures at face value.

  Halvar and the others had released Hetha’s companions. Hopefully the mortals would have enough sense to stay out of sight. The Blood Claws readied themselves, their eagerness palpable. Kadir gestured, and Ake nodded. They would have to be quick.

  Lukas and Kadir rose up out of the snow as the skiff slid past, antigravity generators humming. Softly, quietly, they padded towards it. The crew were too busy looking for their prey to notice Kadir catching hold of the side. The Raider bobbed slightly as he hauled himself up with one hand, the other wrapped tightly about his chainblade.

  The eldar saw nothing, heard nothing, until it was too late.

  Kadir leapt over the rail, and his blade struck the steersman in the head. The teeth of the blade growled, tearing through armour and flesh with ease. The alien died in a burst of gore. As its grip on the tiller slackened, the vehicle began to list. Kadir drew his bolt pistol and put a shot through
the chest of the eldar in the fanciest armour. The creature flew backwards and over the rail. He kept shooting until the weapon clunked empty and he was forced to holster it. Eldar rushed him, trying to retake the controls before the Raider crashed.

  Kadir held his ground. The first xenos to reach him moved with a lethal grace, and its serrated blade carved gouges in the plates of his armour. It struck him twice before he realised it, and the eldar leapt back gracefully from his counterstroke. Splinter shots sparked off his armour as its fellows tried to divert his attention. They scrambled along the railing, seeking to surround him. Kadir howled and slashed at his opponent.

  Chainblade met xenos steel with a grinding shriek. The creature was stronger than he had expected, and for a moment it held him back. Its face was exposed, a pale, thin mask twisted in an inhuman snarl. Whorls of ink marked its flesh, and its teeth were capped with red metal. Kadir forced the blades aside and drove his head into the eldar’s. Bone crunched and blood sprayed his features as the impromptu headbutt crushed its skull.

  As the body fell, he turned and swept the legs out from under a xenos crouched on the rail. His chainblade severed the creature’s limbs at the knee, and the eldar tumbled howling into the forest. He ducked his head as more splinter fire cascaded over him.

  Kadir chopped through the barrel of a rifle, reversed his blade and drove the weighted ferrule into the chest of the eldar wielding the gun. Its armour crunched gratifyingly, and the creature fell, twitching. As he stepped over it, something grey clambered over the edge of the prow rail. Several eldar turned, but too late. A plasma shot erased the head of one, and a second fell with its torso torn open.

  Lukas grinned at him. ‘Well done, pup.’ He dragged an eldar to its feet. ‘See? Even he is impressed.’ The xenos hissed something that might have been a curse and tried to stab him with a curved knife produced as if from thin air. Lukas lifted it easily and tossed it over the rail. ‘Maybe not.’

  The skiff was making a strange sound. Its hull scraped against the trees, and it began to list even further. Without someone to steer it, it was at the mercy of momentum and circumstance. Kadir staggered as the prow dipped sharply, striking the ground. The skiff shuddered and something within it exploded.