Stormcaller

by Chris Wraight

  Olgeir felt the impact of Hafloí touching down behind him on the asteroid surface, scuffing a little as his boots scrabbled for purchase. Olgeir leaned down and grabbed a metal hoop embedded in the shaft’s wall. He pulled himself down into the shadow of the pit, moving hand over hand. As he went, he scanned the surface around him.

  ‘Las-fire damage,’ he voxed to Hafloí. ‘Lots of it. Approaching inner doors now.’

  The inner doors had once been adamantium and half a metre thick. Now all that remained were bulbous metallic outcrops of melta damage. The interior curve of the shaft was dented back into the rock by the force of explosions.

  Hafloí followed Olgeir down more slowly. He collided with the wall, rebounding awkwardly before steadying his descent.

  Olgeir smiled to himself, nudging himself further towards the base of the shaft. His helm-display showed no targets, no movements. The interior was utterly lightless, too cold even for infrared, so the way forward was picked out by his helm-lumens.

  ‘I’m getting nothing,’ voxed Hafloí from above him.

  Olgeir coasted down into what must once have been the main entry chamber – a spherical capsule about ten metres across, accessed by a hatch at the top and exited via a pair of standard blast-doors on his right-hand side. He arrested his fall and touched down lightly on the bottom of the chamber, sweeping his bolter-muzzle up at the empty open doorway in front of him.

  ‘Nothing here either,’ he replied.

  There was evidence of fighting – las-marks on the metal interior walls, blown hatch controls, scratches on the bulkheads, but there were no bodies. Aside from the sound of his own breathing and the interior hum of his power armour, the capsule was vacuum-silent.

  Hafloí touched down beside him. ‘How big is this place?’

  Olgeir recalled the schematics taken from the archives in Hjec Aleja. ‘Twenty crew. Twenty-nine rooms, augur-chamber, power plant, shield generator. This won’t take long.’

  He pushed off, gliding through the open doorway. He skimmed down a long circular connective tube beyond, filling it out and grazing the edges with his armour. The spaces narrowed down, small even by mortal standards, claustrophobic for Space Marine bulk. His lumen-gaze moved over everyday remnants of the station’s working life – devotional imagery set into the walls, prayer-beads, duty rosters. The further in he went, the more signs of violence emerged. Long, dark trails ran across the concave floor. Olgeir sniffed by instinct, as if somehow the smell of corruption could penetrate sealed battleplate.

  He passed an open hatchway to his left, blasted open like the outer doors had been, and ran a lens-scan. The chamber was big, more than ten metres cubic, dominated by a floating cluster of ruined machinery – brass spheres, metal coils, crystal transistors stamped with the icons of the Ecclesiarchy. Winged iron angels drifted amid the wreckage, gazing up at the roof with empty eyes.

  ‘Comms array,’ said Olgeir. ‘Still no bodies.’

  Hafloí pushed past, taking point and tumbling further down the corridor. ‘They’ve stripped it clean,’ he muttered. ‘There’s nothing here.’

  Olgeir followed him. The walls bore down on them, tight and clad in thick shadow. It felt like they were being dragged deep into the heart of the asteroid. More blood-smears appeared on the walls, thick and mottled with desperate handprints.

  Suddenly, Olgeir felt the hairs on the back on his neck prick up, pressing against the inner seal of his gorget. ‘Sense anything, whelp?’ he voxed, watching Hafloí’s boots disappear around the corner ahead.

  ‘Another shaft,’ Hafloí reported. ‘No targets. I’m going further down.’

  By the time Olgeir had followed him round, pushing against the corridor walls and roof to propel him along, Hafloí had gone ahead through another hatch opening, diving in headfirst. Olgeir did the same, squeezing his bulk carefully through the aperture. This shaft was smaller than the first, the space limited by a metal-ring ladder running down one side, and he grabbed the rungs to haul himself downwards. His breathing felt close and rapid inside his helm.

  The chamber at the bottom was carved from bare rock, no more than five metres across. Smashed equipment rotated gently in the cramped space around them, rolling away when pushed.

  Olgeir emerged through the ceiling and twisted awkwardly to right himself.

  ‘Nothing,’ Hafloí voxed, arresting his spin against the rough wall. ‘Nothing at all.’

  Olgeir let himself rotate, studying the chamber carefully. It looked like a storage area lodged down at the bottom of the station. The skull device of the Ecclesiarchy had been stamped over the entrance, though since gouged out with thick claw-marks.

  He wished he could use his sense of smell.

  ‘Might be right,’ Olgeir voxed, scanning for heat-sources just to be sure. Nothing came back from the blank, crudely cut chamber edges.

  ‘We should go,’ said Hafloí, kicking back towards the shaft entrance.

  Olgeir paused. He shoved himself over to the far wall of the chamber and pressed his gauntlet up against it. For a moment, there was nothing.

  Then, fainter than breath against the wind, he felt it – vibration, like a faint breath, brushing against the far side. His pupils immediately narrowed.

  ‘This is sensor-shielded,’ he said. ‘Hold position.’

  Hafloí halted at the base of the exit shaft, twisting around and training his bolt pistol.

  Olgeir ran his hands along the rock. He found a small change in texture, almost undetectable – a strip of stone that felt marginally different from that around it. He called up the schematics given to them by the Ecclesiarchy. There were no rooms marked beyond their position.

  ‘Secretive bastards,’ he muttered. He pulled a krak charge from his belt, clicked the countdown and clamped it to the stone strip. Then he pushed himself away, drifting back to the far wall. Hafloí drifted over to join him.

  ‘Ready yourself,’ Olgeir said, bracing himself against the wall and training his bolter on the clicking krak charge. ‘Fire through the detonation.’

  Hafloí locked position, wedging himself into the corner of the chamber to secure a firebase. Then the charge exploded in a stark, silent bloom of light, driving in the wall and filling the chamber with a blaze of swiftly extinguished flame. The far wall dissolved into dust and rock fragments, raining against the two Wolves’ armour.

  They opened fire in unison, pumping bolt-shells into the breach. As the rounds went off, the loosened wall section crashed away, breaking free from the bolts holding it in place. A howl of escaping air rushed past them, making the debris in the grav-free chamber rock and slam into the walls.

  ‘Now!’ ordered Olgeir, thrusting powerfully against the stone behind him.

  Hafloí did the same, and they crashed through the disintegrating wall section, bolters firing. With the escaping atmosphere came the high-pitched scream of semi-human throats on the far side, suddenly roused in throttled fury.

  They were no longer alone.

  There were many wolves on Fenris, just as many as there were warriors in the Halls of the Fang. Most snarled and roared with feral abandon, given over to the frenzy of the hunt. They slavered with the scent of prey in flared nostrils, they crashed through the snow in pursuit of agile prey.

  The Dark Wolf was different. It curled around the shadows, back arched, head low, hugging the frigid depths of the eternal pine-woods. It padded through the dream world of the underverse, following the spirits of the dead, escorting them deeper into the cold, cold tombs that waited prior to the battle at the end of the world. It never roared, and its soul was silent.

  The Dark Wolf knew many secrets. It had seen the galaxy decay, turning from magnificence into atrophy. It had seen the fires go out, one by one, snuffed into oblivion by the crawling march of the Annihilator. The Dark Wolf had watched the compromises being made and had listened to the lies being t
old. It knew the sources of those lies, and where they sprang from, and upon what date the untruths would catch up with their utterers.

  Njal had felt the Dark Wolf on his trail from the earliest of times. He remembered listening to its panting while still on the ice. Even in the Fang, the mightiest of fortresses, he had sensed it treading around the walls. In the utter night, when the vaults and tunnels of the Mountain were drenched in sleep, he had heard it snuffling in the outer twilight.

  The Dark Wolf had always been his companion, and they both shared the secrets of aeons. One day, Njal knew, they would meet. He would look up, and see the eyes of his mirror-self staring back, and know that the hour had come.

  There were times when he dreaded that meeting. There were times when he yearned for it. Neither dread nor yearning would hasten the day, though – it would come at the appointed moment, when his wyrd was accomplished and there were no more deeds ahead of him.

  Grimnar was the joy of the hunt, the roar of triumph and the tang of blood in the air. Ulric was the fury of the kill, the shake and rip of flesh breaking. Njal was the echo of death, the aftermath of murder. That was his lot, and it was as sacred and unbreakable as the Annulus itself. Such was the way of the universe. There was no pity in it, just the tight grip of fate.

  ‘I am the Law of Fenris,’ said Njal, feeling the eyes of the Wolf resting on him, as always, when he spoke. ‘You are bound by it, just as you were when you took the Helix.’

  Standing before him, the Grey Hunter Baldr nodded in response. Given what he had endured, he looked ready enough to fight – his eyes were clear, his stance solid. If he had not been told of what had happened, Njal would not have guessed he’d been under the curve of Morkai’s claws for so long.

  ‘This is a test of corruption,’ said Njal. ‘You know what that means.’

  ‘I do.’

  ‘You are Baldr, called Fjolnir, of Blackmane’s Great Company.’

  ‘I am.’

  ‘Fjolnir. The nightjar. What does that signify?’

  ‘It is a hunt-mark, from the ice. The mark no longer exists, not since the Rite, but the name I kept.’

  ‘Who gave it to you?’

  ‘The gothi of my tribe.’

  Baldr spoke clearly. As the words left his mouth, Njal listened for the faint stirrings of falsehood under them. A traitor had a thousand ways to give himself away, and the Rune Priest was a master of detecting them all. His psychic sense extended gently across the chamber, alert to the harmonics of maleficarum. The words spoken were a part of the examination, but there were other tests as well, hidden ones that only he would be aware of.

  ‘Did this gothi have you marked out?’ asked Njal. ‘To follow him?’

  ‘I do not know.’

  ‘Did he ever speak to you of the way of the storm?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘What age were you taken by the Priests?’

  ‘Five, of the home world.’

  Nightwing, who had remained hidden up until then, stretched out its pinions. It was perched high up above the fire. Njal, if he chose, could use the creature’s artificial eyes to see with, just as he did on the battlefield. The psyber-raven was a shrewd judge of souls, though, and seemed content enough. Had Baldr been obviously tainted, the raven would surely have gone for his eyes already.

  ‘Do you remember what happened to you on this world?’ Njal asked.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Nothing?’

  ‘I remember sickness, during the crossing. It lingered after we landed. I put it out of my mind.’

  ‘Describe the sickness.’

  Baldr paused. ‘Like a fever. I did not sleep. I had pain, often, here.’ He pointed to his right temple. ‘I performed battle-rites to remain of service. I thought it was warp-sickness.’

  ‘You suffered before?’

  ‘A few times. Never as bad.’

  ‘You never raised this with a Priest?’

  Baldr smiled faintly at that. Njal could understand why – he was a Sky Warrior, a member of the Rout of Fenris. What was he supposed to have complained of? Headaches?

  ‘Tell me your last memory, before the sickness took you.’

  ‘We were in a gorge, out from the city,’ said Baldr. ‘We attacked an enemy convoy. Hafloí, a battle-brother, was in combat with a Traitor. A witch. I charged it. After that, nothing.’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘My next memory was waking here.’

  Njal nodded. The fire-pit spat as a coal rolled from the heap. He considered all the answers. He considered the way they had been given. He considered the psychic resonances within the chamber, the echoes of a deeper reality under the one his mortal senses picked out.

  The Wolf made its presence felt again, like the aroma of bloody breath hanging over a kill.

  ‘Listen to me, Baldr,’ said Njal. ‘When you arrived at the Fang, when you were five Great Years of age and your body was as fragile as a twig, you were tested. You were under the eyes of the Priests for a long time. We rebuilt your body, we peered deep into your mind. We took it apart. We stripped it down, scoured it clean. We were looking for a sign – any sign – of aptitude. None was found. I say this with certainty. If it had been, you would have been given instruction. You would be a Rune Priest under me, or you would be dead. There are no alternatives.’

  Baldr listened carefully, taking it in.

  ‘And yet, here we are,’ Njal went on. ‘If you were the only one, then I might leap to one conclusion. But you are not. Some secrets are not talked about openly, not outside the Annulus. Tell me this: do you know the word “awakening”?’

  Baldr shook his head.

  ‘For a long time,’ said Njal, ‘it meant nothing to me. I do not willingly keep the company of inquisitors, but on occasion I am forced to suffer their presence. When they talk, I listen, and so a thousand stories reach my ears. Some talk of awakening, some of veil-cleaving, some of soul-latching. They all mean the same thing.

  ‘The galaxy grows old, Baldr Fjolnir. It withers, and it cools. Barriers that have existed for ten thousand years wear thin, like skin stretched too tight over bone. Things are leaking into the realm of the senses that never did before. I see it on every battlefield – men going mad, or bursting into flame, or rising into the air. Some hail these things as miracles. I do not share that kind of faith.’

  Njal grimaced a little as he spoke that word. Faith had always been a painful concept for him, too redolent of the fanaticism of allies, and nothing like the warrior fatalism of the Fenrisian creed.

  ‘There have been visions on Fenris,’ Njal said. ‘Ulric tells me the years are racing towards their conclusion. He thinks the End Times are here. We hear names whispered that have not been so much as thought of since the Fell-Handed fought alongside Russ. These are not idle fears, just as every mortal dreams of in the dark, but the visions of the Lords of Men.

  ‘We have come to recognise that some things long accepted as true may no longer be. We have been forced to see that some old protections have lost their power. We have no new ones. All that remains is the strength of our blades, and even they grow blunt.’

  For the first time, Baldr looked uneasy, as if those words hurt him. ‘Then, lord, do you–’

  ‘I said listen. These are possibilities, no more. You may be awakened. I do not know. From what you say, from what I see, from what I sense, I still do not know. There are ways of delving deeper. If we were in the Mountain, I would submit you to the trials, and Ulric and I would strip your soul bare before our eyes. That, at least, would bring certainty, if you survived it.’

  Nightwing emitted a thin vox-caw then, as if the creature somehow objected to that.

  ‘What I can do here is limited,’ said Njal. ‘It would be safer to end you now, just to be sure, but to throw away a warrior on the eve of battle… In these times, in this place, that is a
hard choice to make.’

  Baldr drew in a deep breath. ‘Anything, lord,’ he said firmly. ‘I will submit to any test. If you find fault, I will do the deed myself – my blade is sharp enough.’

  Njal maintained the gaze of scrutiny, his eyes boring out into the darkness. ‘What do you feel?’ he asked. ‘What does your blood tell you?’

  Baldr thought for a long time before answering.

  ‘It tells me I am restored,’ he said. ‘I would say I am cured. I would fight again, with my pack, just as I did before. But if you discovered any taint – any taint – better to end it now, and not to linger with a curse hanging over me.’

  Njal nodded. They were good words. He could understand why Gunnlaugur wanted Baldr back in his pack.

  ‘Well said,’ he responded.

  He raised his staff then, kindling fresh fire from the skull-tip. The shadows of the chamber lifted, shrinking back from the fire-pit like oil sliding from steel. Shapes were revealed – metal framed cages, stone thrones, brass orbs hung from the chamber roof and wrapped in a filigree of needle-thin wires.

  ‘There are tests we can perform here,’ said Njal, walking over to the nearest of the devices and beckoning Baldr to join him. ‘You recognise these things? They are like those used when we first brought you inside the Mountain. Sit.’

  Baldr took up position on a long stone bench. Above him hovered a spidery collection of probes suspended from a looped coil of cabling. As he pulled himself onto the stone, the tips of the probes glowed into life, glistening like tiny jewels in the dark. A machine began to work close by, gurgling and thrumming.

  Njal moved to the far side. Nightwing flapped awkwardly over to the other end of the chamber, taking position atop the heavy stone doorframe and observing intently. Baldr lay back.

  ‘Prepare yourself,’ said Njal, resting one hand on the housing of the machine, using the other to hold his staff.

  A faint crackle ran down the ebony shaft, like static discharging. Soon the veil around them would thin, and matter would run perilously close to non-matter. The entire chamber would be dangerous.