Prospero Burns

by Dan Abnett

  ‘Asaheim,’ said Hawser, so cold he could barely speak. It felt as if all of his blood had gone solid.

  ‘Yes,’ said Longfang.

  ‘A whole great year I lived in the Aett, I never went outside of it. I never saw the top of the world.’

  ‘Now you’re seeing it,’ said Longfang.

  ‘What are we doing?’

  ‘We’re being quiet,’ said Longfang. ‘This is my tale.’

  The rune priest began to advance down the long white shoulder of the vast snow field. His head was low, his stance wide-spaced. The gossamer-white pelt across his back caused him to almost vanish into the lying snow. He had a long steel spear in his right hand.

  Hawser followed him, head down, putting his feet in Longfang’s footprints. The prints were shallow: the snow was as hard as rock. Their breath came out of their mouths in long sideways streams like silk banners.

  Snow stopped its slow, gentle fall and began coming in from the direction of the mountains, loose flakes driven by the wind in circling, dizzy patterns. Hawser felt it sting his face. The nature of light in the world around them changed. A shadow against the sky tilted. The horizon was filling up with a grey vapour. The sun seemed to look away. It was as though a veil had been drawn, or a screen pulled across a door. There was still sunlight, bright yellow sunlight, at the top of the sky, and it was reflecting its neon-burn off the ridge of the snow line, but down where they were, the snow was suddenly a dark, cold pearl colour.

  Longfang pointed. Down at the tree line, huge, slow shapes processed in a loose, plodding group. They were vast quadruped herbivores, part bison, part elk, darkly pelted in black, woolly coats. Their bone antler branches were the size of tree canopies. Hawser could hear the snort and huff of them.

  ‘Saeneyti,’ whispered Longfang. ‘Stay low and quiet. Their antlers work as acoustic reflectors. They’ll hear us long before they’re in spear-throwing range.’

  Hawser realised he had a spear of his own.

  ‘Are we hunting?’

  ‘We’re always hunting,’ said Longfang.

  ‘So if they heard us, they’d run?’

  ‘No, they’d turn on us to defend the calves. Those antlers are longer and sharper than our spears, skjald. Remember to put that in your account.’

  ‘I thought this was your account, priest?’

  Longfang grinned.

  ‘I just want you to get the details right.’

  ‘All right.’

  ‘And watch the treeline,’ Longfang added.

  Hawser turned to look at the edge of the forest. He could see its shadowed, evergreen blackness through the snow. The towering tree trunks looked like the ends of Bibliotech book stacks. He knew that even in full sunshine, light didn’t dare penetrate the mossy darkness of the fir glades.

  ‘Why?’ he asked.

  ‘Because we may not be the only ones hunting,’ Longfang replied.

  Hawser swallowed.

  ‘Priest?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘What is the point of this tale? What is the purpose of telling it to me?’

  ‘Its point is its point.’

  ‘Very gnomic. I mean what am I supposed to learn from it?’

  ‘It’s about time we trusted you with one of our secrets,’ Longfang replied. ‘A good one. A blood one.’

  As if to emphasise the word, Hawser realised he could suddenly smell blood. He could smell Longfang’s blood. Immediately afterwards, he smelled something else too: the dung-stink and ferment-odour of cattle. He could smell the saeneyti.

  The wind had changed. It was bringing the stink of the herd up towards them. The clouds moved, shoved by the wind, racing and scudding. The sun came back out and turned its glare on them like a lamp. They were black dots in a broad neon snow field.

  They were painfully visible.

  The big bull leading the herd turned its bearded head and made a booming, trumpeting sound through nostrils the size of sewer pipes. It shook its crown of antlers. The herd took off in agitation, hooting and braying, waddling their huge bodies away double-time, kicking up powder snow.

  The bull peeled away from the fleeing herd and came back up the slope.

  ‘Shit!’ said Hawser. He hadn’t fully appreciated the size of the creature. Four, perhaps five metres tall? How many tonnes? And the width of those antlers, like the spread wings of a drop-ship.

  ‘Move yourself!’ Longfang shouted. He had his arm crooked back, the spear locked to throw, standing his ground. The bull was coming on. It was too big, too tall, too cumbersome to develop any real speed, but it was inexorable and it was angry.

  ‘I said move!’ Longfang cried.

  Hawser started to stumble across the snow away from Longfang.

  ‘No. To the side. The side!’ Longfang ordered.

  Hawser was running away from Longfang and the approaching bull. If it ran Longfang down, it would simply run him down too. Longfang intended him to turn wide, out of its line of charge.

  Given the breadth of its antler crown, that was going to be some distance.

  The snow was hard to run on. He was already out of breath. It felt like he was struggling with his old, human body, the one he had worn before Fenris, the weak, aging Kasper Hawser. Every step was an effort to lift his feet high enough to clear the snow. He had to bound. The light, fluorescent-bright, burned his eyes.

  He looked back in time to see Longfang cast. The spear flashed in the bright sunlight. It seemed to strike the huge beast, but it vanished against shaggy black hair. The bull saeneyti kept coming. Longfang vanished in a welter of pulverised snow.

  Hawser yelled the priest’s name involuntarily.

  The bull swung towards him.

  Hawser turned and fled. He knew it was futile. He could hear its muffled thunder, its snorting and grunting, the oceanic surge of its gastric caverns. He could smell its rank breath, its spittle, its giant mauve tongue. It boomed again like a carnyx.

  Hawser knew he wasn’t going to outrun it. Expecting an antler spike to split through his torso from the back at any moment, he turned and threw his spear.

  It weighed too much. It didn’t even reach the saeneyti, even though the bull was closing the distance and was scarcely five metres away.

  Hawser fell on his backside. Wide-eyed and helpless, he watched death ploughing towards him, head down.

  A black wolf hit the saeneyti from the side. It looked like a normal wolf, until Hawser tried to reconcile the size of it compared to the saeneyti bull, which he knew to be the size of the very largest prehistoric Terran saurians. The wolf had gone for the nape of the neck. It had closed its jaws just in front of the humped shoulder mass where the saeneyti carried its winter fat.

  The bull lifted its head and let out an excruciating, throttled noise. It tried to twist its head to hook the predator with its crown of antlers and toss it away, but the wolf was tenacious and held on. Jaws clamped, it made a wet leopard-growl that was half muffled by the bull’s pelt.

  Blood as black as ink was running down the bull’s wattle, spattering the snow between its front feet. It was streaming down through the black wool. The saeneyti snorted again, pink froth foaming at its mouth and nose. Its eyes were wild and mad, red-rimmed, staring insanely out from under the thick fringe of winter fur.

  It went down hard, front legs collapsing first. It fell onto its front knees, and then the back end followed. Finally, its body went over in a catastrophic roll onto its side like the hull of a capsizing yacht. Hawser could see the saeneyti’s huge, protruding tongue shuddering between its yellow teeth, lips peeled back. Its breath pumped out in clouds like a malfunctioning steam engine. Blood vomited out of its mouth across the snow and lay there smoking.

  The wolf maintained its grip until the bull gave up its last, trembling rumble, then it let go. Blood dripped from its snout. It padded around the massive corpse twice, moving quickly, head low, sniffing.

  It stopped beside the head of its kill, and raised its own head, ears upright, to
stare at Hawser. Its eyes were golden and black-pinned. Hawser stared back. He knew if he tried to get back on his feet, the wolf would still be taller than him.

  ‘There are no wolves on Fenris.’

  Hawser looked up. Longfang was standing beside him, staring at the wolf.

  ‘That’s evidently not true at all,’ Hawser replied in a tiny voice.

  Longfang grinned down at him.

  ‘Try to keep up, skjald. There were no wolves on Fenris until we got here.’

  Longfang looked back at the wolf.

  ‘Twice he’s helped protect you,’ he said.

  ‘What?’ asked Hawser.

  ‘He had a different name last time you were in his company,’ said Longfang. ‘Then, he was called Brom.’

  The black wolf turned and ran for the forest, accelerating as only a mammalian apex predator can. It vanished into the enormous darkness under the evergreens.

  After a few seconds, Hawser saw its eyes staring out of the blackness at them: luminous, gold and black-pinned.

  It took him another few moments to realise that there were another ten thousand pairs of eyes watching them from the shadows of the forest.

  ‘I think you should explain,’ said Hawser. He felt angry, and curiously cold given the heat washing across the courtyard. ‘What do you mean he was called Brom? What do you mean by that?’

  Longfang didn’t answer. He stared back at Hawser with a sneering look that defied argument.

  ‘This is ridiculous!’ Hawser exclaimed. ‘This is just some of your myth-making! This is a mjod story! A mjod story!’

  He hoped this would provoke a reaction, stir something in the old rune priest that would make him reveal some actual truth.

  Longfang remained silent.

  ‘Well, I don’t think much of your account then,’ said Hawser.

  He heard footsteps behind him and turned. Bear was walking towards him, with Aeska Brokenlip close behind him. They were both spattered with Quietude gore. Hawser became aware again of the constant noise around him, the swirling din of end-war circling the pit.

  ‘Tell him to speak plainly to me!’ Hawser said to Bear, rising. ‘Tell him not to insult me with riddles!’

  Bear crouched down beside the priest. He leaned his axe against the orange-tiled wall and reached out to the priest’s throat. Aeska looked on, wiping spats of blood off his nose.

  Bear stood again and looked at Aeska.

  ‘What?’ asked Hawser.

  ‘Heoroth Longfang has gone,’ said Aeska.

  ‘What? No. He’s hurt but he’s mending.’

  ‘Bio-track on his armour says his thread parted twelve minutes ago,’ said Bear flatly.

  ‘But I was just talking to him,’ said Hawser. ‘I was just talking to him. I was watching over him while he healed himself.’

  ‘No, skjald, you were seeing him through the last of the pain,’ said Aeska. ‘I hope your account was a good one.’

  ‘I was watching over him while he healed!’ Hawser insisted.

  Bear shook his head.

  ‘He was holding on long enough to watch over you,’ he said.

  Hawser gazed down at the body of the rune priest propped up in a sitting position against the alien wall. He had words in his mouth, but they were all broken and none of them worked.

  Others were approaching. Hawser saw it was Najot Threader, Tra’s wolf priest. He approached with a retinue of thralls clad in cloaks of patchwork skin.

  ‘Look away,’ said Aeska Brokenlip.

  Nine

  Twelve Minutes

  For all of the forty-week voyage, he considered those twelve minutes.

  Their work done, Tra left the 40th Expedition to stamp out the ashes of the Olamic Quietude, a miserable effort of funereal cleansing that would eventually take three years, and effectively end the 40th Expedition’s exploration. Tra had been summoned to its next operation. Hawser was not told what it was. He did not ask. He did not expect to be told.

  What he did expect was censure for the death of Heoroth Longfang. He felt the loss was essentially down to him and, adding the fact of Longfang’s high status as a veteran, he didn’t hold out much hope for a continuing relationship with the Vlka Fenryka.

  Or, indeed, with breathing.

  No censure was made. As the ship got under way, the company just gathered quietly to make its respects. Hawser was given simple instructions.

  ‘They’ll each come to you,’ Bear told him. ‘Learn their accounts.’

  ‘Who will?’ Hawser asked.

  ‘All of them,’ Bear replied, as if it was a stupid question.

  ‘Was that a stupid question?’ asked Hawser.

  ‘You have no other kind,’ replied Bear. ‘Learn their accounts.’

  They came to him, all right. Every single member of Tra, one at a time, or in small groups. They came to Hawser and they told him the stories they had of Heoroth Longfang.

  There were a lot of them. Some were multiple versions of the same event, retold by different witnesses. Some were contradictory. Some were short. Some were long and ungainly. Some were funny. Some were scary. Most were fearsome and bloody. Many recounted incidents when Longfang had saved the storyteller’s life, or taught the storyteller a valuable wisdom. There were expressions of gratitude, and respect and appreciation.

  Hawser listened to them all and he learned them all, relying on all his eidetic tricks and Conservatory training. By the end of the process, he had committed four hundred and thirty-two discrete accounts of the rune priest to memory.

  Some of the stories had been given to him flat and expressionless, matter-of-fact. Others had been related grimly by men moved over the loss. Some had been told to him by men who were plainly poor storytellers, and he’d had to go back several times and quiz the teller to make sense of what he was being told. Some had crucial elements missed out accidentally due to enthusiasm. Some were just tangled messes he’d had to unpick. Some were stories related with mirth, remembering Longfang with considerable affection. In such cases, the process of conveying the stories to Hawser was often interrupted as the tellers struggled to stop laughing so they could finish their accounts.

  All the while, listening to the stories with a serious or smiling aspect as was appropriate, Hawser thought of the twelve minutes. Heoroth Longfang had stayed with him for twelve minutes, talking, finishing his story, sharing his truth. Twelve minutes from his bio-track flatlining. Twelve minutes of postmortem survival.

  Heoroth Longfang had stolen twelve minutes from the Underverse’s tally-stick for a reason. To keep him safe? To show Hawser something? To prove something?

  Once the stories were his, the sending away began. Longfang’s body, held in a stasis casket, would be shipped back to Fenris to be burned out on the ice fields of Asaheim, at some high point overlooking the forest migration trails of the saeneyti where the old priest had liked to hunt, but this was another kind of letting go. The company gathered in one of the ship’s main chambers to feast in memory of Longfang for as many days and nights as Hawser’s account lasted.

  Godsmote had shown Hawser some pity. He had warned him to rehearse well, to practise dramatic recitation, to space the stories out so that smaller reflections were worked in between longer epics. He told the skjald that, under no circumstance, should he hurry along. Long rests should be built in, long rests of ten hours or more. These periods of reflection also prolonged the event. The recitations would be done in Juvjk, the hearth-cant, because that was one of the solemn and sacred uses of the hearth-cant. Wurgen terminology could only be used for technical embellishment.

  Tra was using a warship called Nidhoggur. Hawser did not imagine that the warships of the Vlka Fenryka resembled the ships of other Legions Astartes except, perhaps, in their basic construction. Hawser had not seen other Astartes warships, but he’d travelled on several Imperial Fleet vessels, and Nidhoggur was a strange craft by comparison. He got the impression that the Vlka Fenryka regarded both their starships and their trans
atmospherics as boats, and the void simply an extension of the gale-wracked oceans of their home world. Interior spaces had been finished with bone, polished ivory and wood, like the inside of the Aett. It was a Unification Era cruiser that had been progressively altered and adorned until most of its old identity had been lost, and a great deal of new identity imposed.

  Environmental controls were set several points down from Imperial standard, so Nidhoggur was darker and colder than any vessel he’d travelled on before. Too much warmth, Hawser was reminded as he shivered in a corner of the living spaces, made a man sluggish. Too much light, and a man’s vision grew blunt. A lamplit dusk prevailed in most of the deck spaces.

  The chamber employed for the sending off was a hold space that was left unused except for such events. Only a member of the Vlka Fenryka as venerable as Longfang deserved such a ceremonial farewell.

  The hold reminded Hawser of a slice of urban underhive, a piece of favela wasteland from the slums of an old-Terra city. It was dirty and littered, and twilight-dark. Most of the surfaces of the place were blackened with soot. Piles of loose cables, insulation, broken metal spars, ceiling liners and tangled wire suggested that the space had been either vandalised or customised over the years, perhaps both.

  Combustible material was dragged in, heaped up, and lit under the scorched vents of the hold’s extractor ducts. Eye-watering smoke filled the chamber. On this deck level, Hawser presumed, the ship’s emergency detection and containment systems had been disabled, or had long since fried out.