Blood of Asaheim

by Chris Wraight

  No servitors droned around that place; no conveyer belts brought raw materials to the hammer’s bite. Less than one weapon a year left that anvil, and many more were destroyed by their maker before they reached the Iron Priest for blessing.

  Few ironworkers would have had their painstaking energies so indulged by the Jarls. Arjac, though, the one they called Rockfist, was a special case.

  The man-mountain stood over the anvil like a frost giant bearing down on a prone victim. His thick armour-plate shone blood-red in the light of the furnace, picking out the battered runes that ran down the length of his arms. His bald head hung low over his work, streaked with dirty sweat.

  A blade lay on the anvil-top, shining with ruddy heat. Arjac worked it skilfully, using a light hammer to hone the edge down to a bite point. The image was incongruous – Arjac’s immense body, bulked out further by thick sweeps of ceramite armour, tapping delicately at the sliver of metal before him.

  Gunnlaugur said nothing. He remained in the shadows, watching respectfully. Arjac never looked up. The hammer rose and fell, glistening from the firelight, chipping out sparks as the impurities in the metal were beaten out.

  Eventually Arjac snatched the blade away and plunged it into the cauldron. A swollen bloom of steam hissed up around it. He withdrew it and brought it into the light of the furnace. He turned it over and over, scrutinising what he had done.

  The blade was the length of his forearm, ideal for a duelling gladius. Gunnlaugur looked at it appreciatively. His was no trained eye, but he knew how to use a sword, and it looked like he could use that one.

  ‘Fancy it, stripling?’ asked Arjac, never lifting his head.

  Gunnlaugur smiled. ‘For me?’ he said.

  Arjac let the metal fall back on the anvil.

  ‘For no one,’ he sighed. ‘It’ll be melted down, just like the others.’

  ‘Seems a waste.’

  ‘A waste? Of what – metal? There’s more down here than we could use in a thousand years.’

  Arjac straightened out of his stoop. Fully extended, his bulk was even more intimidating. Gunnlaugur, whose own physical presence was immense, seemed almost slight in comparison.

  ‘A waste is sending a warrior out with a defective blade,’ Arjac growled, rolling his great shoulders in slow circles. ‘In any case, only an idiot goes into battle with a sword.’

  Arjac’s huge thunder hammer, fomadurhamar, hung from an immense iron frame at the rear of the chamber. Even powered-down, it exuded a quiet air of implacable solidity – much like its master.

  ‘Agreed.’

  Gunnlaugur’s preferred weapon was also a thunder hammer, one that shared his moniker – skulbrotsjór – safely stowed over the war-altar in his personal Jarlheim chamber. The two warriors shared a similar view of much in life, including which was the proper tool to break heads with.

  Arjac came around from the far side of the anvil and approached Gunnlaugur. The furnace-light exposed a brawler’s face, broad from tight bands of muscle, lodged deep amid stocky neck-sinew and his armour’s fibre-bundles.

  For a moment, Arjac looked straight at Gunnlaugur, appraising him as he would a newly-worked slab of metal. Gunnlaugur wouldn’t have let many look at him like that – since being elevated to Wolf Guard, only Jarl Blackmane, the Priests and Grimnar himself had the authority to subject him to any kind of scrutiny.

  Arjac, however, was different. Arjac was exceptional in every respect. His blood was that of an Iron Priest’s, as was his temperament. Only his peerless skill at close range combat had kept him away from the lava forges where he longed to be. Gunnlaugur knew, just as everyone else knew, how much Arjac yearned to settle back among the true weaponsmiths, crafting artificer axe-heads and lightning claws among the silent, brooding anvil-masters.

  But Arjac never complained. That generated a respect in the halls of the Fang. It had made him the first mentor Gunnlaugur had ever sought during his centuries of service in the Rout. To his surprise, Arjac had been receptive. Perhaps the Anvil of Fenris had seen something of himself in the raw Gunnlaugur. Perhaps, since he was rarely approached for serious counsel, he welcomed the chance to pass on some of his accumulated battle-lore.

  Whatever the reason, the two of them always met on the rare occasions when both were present on the home world at the same time. Gunnlaugur had benefitted much from the exchanges. He hoped, perhaps optimistically, that Arjac had as well.

  ‘You look bad,’ said Arjac.

  ‘As would you, if you’d been where we’ve been.’

  ‘No doubt. How runs the pack?’

  ‘Blooded,’ Gunnlaugur said, truthfully enough. ‘We’re down to five. Losing Tínd caused us problems, but we did what we were sent to do, and most of us got back home.’

  Arjac grunted. The big warrior seldom spoke much, and when he did he was curt.

  ‘Glad you did,’ he said. ‘Now, why are you here?’

  Gunnlaugur took a deep breath. His eyes flickered over to the anvil again, over to where the discarded blade lay cooling.

  ‘We’ll leave again soon,’ he said. ‘Blackmane wants us to take on a Blood Claw. He may want us to take Ingvar Eversson back too.’

  Arjac raised a charred, stubbly eyebrow.

  ‘The Gyrfalkon? He’ll come back,’ he said. ‘Why pretend otherwise?’

  Gunnlaugur shrugged. ‘Because I do not know how to handle him,’ he said. Anything less than full honesty was a waste with Arjac. ‘Not any more.’

  Arjac looked at Gunnlaugur steadily. His golden eyes were unwavering, the same eyes that could detect minute flaws in steel while it lay under the hammer.

  ‘You really want my counsel?’ asked Arjac. ‘I’m not a Jarl, nor a Priest. You could speak to Blackmane yourself.’

  ‘I could.’

  ‘But you won’t.’

  Gunnlaugur shook his head. ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘You’re a fool. One day you’ll see why Grimnar thinks so highly of him.’

  Gunnlaugur felt his heart sink. He didn’t know what he wanted from Arjac. He didn’t even know why the issue with Ingvar was exercising him so much. In the fifty-seven years since Hjortur had died he had never felt the burden of command weigh heavily at all; now, suddenly, it seemed like one of Arjac’s anvils, shackled to his ankles and dragging him down into the abyss.

  ‘I’ve built the pack around me,’ he said, speaking half to Arjac, half to himself. ‘Váltyr’s my sword-arm – I’ve learned to use him, and time has only made him deadlier. Baldr and Olgeir are as dependable as Freki. Jorundur is a sour old hound, but he’s got his uses and flies a gunship like it’s an ice-skiff. I’m proud of all this. I would not see it broken.’

  Gunnlaugur shook his head.

  ‘There’s no room for him,’ he said. ‘Not now. He made his choice.’

  Arjac’s expression remained static – not judging, not scornful, not sympathetic. Like the rock that gave him his moniker, he was unmoveable.

  ‘Then you must defy Ragnar,’ Arjac said. ‘But tell me truly, stripling: is that really what disturbs you?’

  Gunnlaugur looked up. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘You are Járnhamar’s vaerangi. If your pack is your concern, then stand up to the Jarl over it – he may not bend, but he will respect you. But if you are the problem, if your weakness is the issue, then he will laugh in your face and cast you from his presence like a churl. I have heard the Young King likes to laugh – he will not need a good excuse for you.’

  Gunnlaugur felt a flash of anger, a stab of the pride that always lurked just beneath the surface with him. Instinctively his right hand curled into a fist.

  Arjac was quicker. The huge warrior shoved Gunnlaugur away from the anvil, pushing him hard in the chest. His expression flickered into something harder: contempt, spiced with the first spikes of combat-fury.

 
Off balance, Gunnlaugur stumbled backwards. He hit something as he staggered – a weapons-rack – and metal blades and hilt-pieces clattered to the stone around him.

  ‘What is it, Wolf Guard?’ mocked Arjac, striding after him, his enormous fists poised to strike. ‘Afraid of the Gyrfalkon? Has your blood run cold since you last sparred with him as an equal?’

  Gunnlaugur kicked back, thrusting himself at Arjac. The two of them crashed together, grappling like two old bears in a cave.

  ‘I fear nothing!’ Gunnlaugur roared. His arms clasped around Arjac’s torso, and he pushed back violently. ‘You know this!’

  Arjac took the strain, and a strange sound burst from his mouth. Half blinded by rage, Gunnlaugur nearly missed it, already pulling his fist back ready for the punch.

  Then he recognised the grating chortle, the closest Arjac’s forge-dried throat ever got to genuine laughter.

  Gunnlaugur halted, the momentum suddenly gone from his furious assault. He broke clear of Arjac, his cheeks flushed crimson, and spun away from the embrace.

  Arjac regarded him tolerantly, smiling all the while.

  ‘Good,’ he said. ‘Good. For a moment I thought you’d lost it.’

  Gunnlaugur caught his breath, his anger replaced, just as quickly as it had arrived, by shame.

  Why am I so quick to wrath? he thought. Why am I so easily goaded?

  Arjac returned to the anvil, still chuckling.

  ‘You’re letting this get to you, stripling,’ he said, picking up the blade and looking at it again. ‘Hjortur would have named you pack-leader if he’d lived long enough to choose. Blood of Russ, I would have done – you can hit hard enough when you want to.’

  Gunnlaugur let his arms fall to his sides. He felt strung-out. One mission after the other, year after year; it would take its toll eventually.

  ‘So what would you do?’ he asked.

  ‘With Eversson? I’d welcome him as a brother. I’d want a blade of his pedigree in the pack. If he challenged me, I’d beat him down. If he challenged the others, I’d foster it.’

  Arjac ran his gauntlet along the edge of the anvil.

  ‘A pack is a sacred thing,’ he said. ‘It has a life of its own, greater than ours. You cannot control that life, you can only guide it a little. If fate brings you and Ingvar back together, the pack will shape itself around both of you, one way or another.’

  Gunnlaugur listened.

  ‘Pride makes you strong, stripling,’ said Arjac. ‘Let it make you stronger – you deserve to be where you are – but do not let it blind you. None of us is greater than the pack. In the final reckoning, the pack is what must survive.’

  Arjac’s eyes lost their focus. It was as if he were addressing himself as much as Gunnlaugur.

  ‘Remember this,’ he said. ‘You, me, Ingvar, the Old Wolf himself, we are nothing in isolation. We only live for the pack: that is what makes us deadly, what makes us eternal. Nothing else matters.’

  Gunnlaugur bowed. He had his answer. He had what he had come for.

  ‘I understand,’ he said.

  Arjac nodded.

  ‘Good. Then you can leave me to work.’ ‘I can. My thanks, lord.’

  Arjac scowled. ‘Do not call me that. We are the same rank.’

  Gunnlaugur smiled to himself. For a moment, he had genuinely forgotten.

  ‘Of course,’ he said.

  Wolf Guard. Vaerangi.

  Arjac took up a hammer again. That was the cue to leave, and Gunnlaugur turned back towards the distant roar of the Hammerhold. He walked slowly, turning Arjac’s words over in his mind.

  We only live for the pack.

  They were familiar words, but it felt strange to be reminded of them.

  That is what makes us deadly, what makes us eternal.

  With every step he took, he felt a little stronger.

  Nothing else matters.

  Chapter Three

  The Thunderhawk Vuokho stood on the apron. Steam drifted up its ugly, chipped grey surface as the ice it had picked up on the way in evaporated in the heat of the hangar. Beyond it, further along the cavernous interior towards the entrance ramps, servitors and kaerl ground crew clattered and banged their way through a thousand menial tasks. The gunship hangars of the upper Valgard were never still; always the constant growl and whine of engines cycling up, or the tinny clunk of weapons being loaded, or the rumble of refuelling tankers crawling across the rockcrete floor.

  Jorundur Erak Kaerlborn, the one they called Old Dog, looked over his pride and joy with a watchful, cynical eye. He knew every centimetre of its surface, and each fresh scratch or dent annoyed him a little more. He didn’t care about the way the thing looked – given his own dark-eyed, sunken-cheeked visage, that would hardly have been reasonable – but he cared deeply about how it flew. Vuokho was as much a member of the pack as he was, a part of the whole, a component in the system. If it were ever lost then they would grieve for it as much as they had done for Tínd; perhaps more, for Tínd had been a difficult one, given to rages and with a fair slice of Gunnlaugur’s fierce pride boiling away within him.

  Jorundur didn’t like taking Vuokho out on training missions. The machine-spirit hated the charade of it – it had been bred to hunt, just as they had been. If he had had his way he would have been left on his own with it more often, taking it out and up into the high atmosphere where the sky fell into nightshade-blue and the stars dotted the arch of the void. That was where its engines operated at the perfect pitch of efficiency, where the true power of its thrusters could be unleashed in bursts of furious velocity.

  In space, a Thunderhawk was a clumsy, compromised thing, hampered by atmospheric drives it couldn’t use; on land it was a bulky monstrosity, squatting against the earth like a deformed mockery of a prey-bird. Only in the inbetween spaces, the thin airs where void and matter met, only there was it unsurpassed.

  ‘Brought it back safely, then,’ came a voice at Jorundur’s shoulder.

  He didn’t need to turn to see who was speaking. He carried on staring at the gently cooling chassis, moving his glistening, scrutinising eyes slowly over its outline.

  ‘This time,’ he replied as Váltyr drew alongside him.

  Jorundur was not sociable. He had none of Baldr’s easy manner nor Olgeir’s generous humour. Of all of Járnhamar, Jorundur found Váltyr the easiest to rub along with; the two of them shared an appreciation of the colder side of killing.

  ‘What did you make of him?’ asked Váltyr.

  ‘The whelp? He can run. I’ve seen him fight. He’ll be all right.’

  Váltyr nodded. ‘We need new blood,’ he said. ‘Things have felt… tired.’

  Jorundur gave a dry snort.

  ‘That’s because they are.’ He drew closer to Váltyr, and lowered his voice. As he did so, lank grey-black hair fell around his face. ‘Everyone is tired, blademaster. If they keep sending us out, year after year, with no chance to breathe or retrain or remember what we’re doing, we will be more than tired – we’ll be dead.’

  Váltyr didn’t pull away.

  ‘Times are hard,’ he replied evenly. ‘What do you want? A soft bed and a weekly steam-bath?’

  ‘I wouldn’t turn it down.’

  ‘No, perhaps you wouldn’t.’

  Jorundur was older than the next most experienced member of Járnhamar by a good hundred years. In the normal run of things he’d have shifted sideways into a heavy weapons squad a long time ago, taking his place amid the hoary old veterans with their gnarled gun-hands and konungur-tough hides. No one knew why he’d resisted it, staying in the ranks of the Hunters even as the chance for promotion to the Guard had passed him by. Some said it was because he lived for flying and would have missed the chance to pilot a gunship, others that he found the company of Long Fangs even more objectionable than that of anybody else.

&n
bsp; Jorundur was happy with the speculation; he liked to keep people guessing and never explained himself. In any case he knew well enough that Gunnlaugur needed to keep him in the pack: things had long been too straitened to countenance the departure of a seasoned pair of weapon-arms, no matter how pinched-faced and snipe-tongued their owner was. As things had turned out for him, that was good enough.

  ‘So is this thing combat-ready?’ asked Váltyr, moving away from Jorundur to inspect the flanks of the Thunderhawk.

  Jorundur followed him.

  ‘What do you mean?’ he asked, feeling suddenly uneasy. ‘We’re going back out? Already?’

  Váltyr nodded, reaching the first set of wings and running his finger along the thick leading edge.

  ‘Like you said, they will keep sending us on these missions.’

  Jorundur spat on the ground, shaking his shaggy head in disgust.

  ‘Morkai’s teeth,’ he swore. ‘We’re not ready. Olgeir could spend three weeks with that whelp and we still wouldn’t be ready. Who’ll take Tínd’s place? Arse of the Allfather, this is pathetic.’

  Váltyr smiled. ‘I knew you’d be pleased,’ he said. ‘They’ve given us two days, and this thing needs to be fully operational. They’re loading up a frigate right now. I’ve seen it. It’s a shit-bucket, but it looks fast.’

  Jorundur spat again. He could do that all day.

  ‘Where, then?’

  ‘Ras Shakeh.’

  ‘Never heard of it.’

  ‘Two months away, on the fringes of protected space. Grimnar thinks we need to be pushing out a bit, extending our reach as others withdraw theirs.’

  Váltyr reached up towards a cracked picter-lens embedded halfway up Vuokho’s cockpit armour, but Jorundur slapped his hand away.

  ‘Lunacy,’ hissed Jorundur, rounding on Váltyr and prodding him in the chest, pushing him away from the sacred adamantium. ‘We need to retrench, not expand. Will someone ever tell the Old Wolf that we’re all taking losses? Does he think that we can pick up the slack of every half-manned Chapter in the segmentum?’