Blood of Asaheim

by Chris Wraight

  They hadn’t judged him. None of them had the reproach in their eyes that he’d feared. Well, Váltyr perhaps, but he had always been a cold one.

  It was hard not to watch them sidelong, to observe the way they related to one another, to examine them like he’d seen biologis adepts examine xenos corpses on dissection tables. They were relaxed in one another’s presence, just as he had been once. Onyx Squad, for all its combined killing power, had always felt like an artificial creation. Járnhamar had once been home; for those who had remained, it still was.

  Ingvar’s wandering gaze flickered up to the head of the drekkar. That eyeless stare was as familiar to him as everything else. He remembered it watching over them before each mission, gazing coldly into empty space as objectives were outlined and timescales plotted. The drakk’s face had never been anything other than impassive to him then. Now, on his return, it seemed almost benevolent.

  In the past it had been Hjortur’s voice that had rung around the chamber. Hearing Gunnlaugur’s growly tones in its place was odd. For a while, it felt like a violation. Only later, as Ingvar watched the others take it in their stride, did it come to seem natural.

  Gunnlaugur spoke with a coarse, blunt authority. He had always been confident, but now it was different. A warrior spoke one way when his own life was at stake; when he had the whole pack to think about, his tone changed.

  It suits you, brother, thought Ingvar. You have grown.

  ‘Ras Shakeh,’ said Gunnlaugur, flicking the switch on a palm-held device and sending a flame-red hololith spinning up into the air before him. ‘Shrineworld of the Ras subsector. It is under the Ecclesiarchy with distant support from the Adulators Chapter, though our brothers have declared themselves no longer able to contribute to its defence. They are stretched, I am told, to breaking point.’

  Jorundur snorted, shook his head, but said nothing.

  ‘Before the Ras worlds were taken under the control of the Imperial Cult,’ continued Gunnlaugur, ‘it is said that an arrangement once existed between them and Fenris.’

  ‘By who?’ said Váltyr.

  ‘By Blackmane,’ replied Gunnlaugur, tersely. ‘And by Ulrik, and by Grimnar, and whoever else remembers what in Hel we were doing five thousand years ago.’

  Gunnlaugur’s tone gave away what he thought of what he was being asked to convey. Ingvar felt his spirits sag. After the euphoria of his return, it looked like the task ahead of them would not be glory-filled. It sounded perilously close to routine garrison work.

  ‘This is not garrison work,’ said Gunnlaugur. ‘It is the beginning of an offensive, a multi-front assault into abandoned space covering three subsectors. We are to be part of it.’

  Olgeir nodded in approval. ‘Good,’ he grunted.

  Baldr looked thoughtful. ‘Under whose command?’ he asked.

  ‘A warmaster will be appointed,’ said Gunnlaugur. ‘Don’t get carried away: this will be years in the making. We are the advance wave, sent to secure worlds prior to major troop movements. For a while it’ll be just us.’

  Jorundur chuckled. ‘That’s not garrison work?’

  ‘We won’t be sitting on our arses,’ Gunnlaugur insisted. ‘There’s enemy activity on the fringes, more coordinated then normal, more frequent. We’ll have hunting to do.’

  Baldr’s expression hadn’t changed. He looked pensive.

  Ingvar could sense the wariness in the room from the others. They weren’t stupid. They could tell when they were being shunted off to a nothing-mission.

  ‘Who governs this world?’ asked Baldr.

  ‘The Adepta Sororitas,’ said Gunnlaugur. ‘The Order of the Wounded Heart.’

  The silence of the chamber was broken by a collection of low growls, noisy expectorations and bitter-edged laughs.

  ‘Enough,’ snapped Gunnlaugur. ‘They’re servants of the Allfather.’

  ‘They’re servants of the Inquisition,’ said Jorundur.

  ‘They’re crazy,’ grumbled Olgeir. ‘With no love for us.’

  Baldr smiled softly.

  ‘When did you last care about being loved, great one?’

  Olgeir grinned, and patted the battered casing of sigrún.

  ‘When I was given this,’ he said. ‘Not since.’

  ‘The Sisters,’ said Váltyr, acidly. ‘They know it’s us that’s coming? They asked for us?’

  Gunnlaugur sighed. ‘They’d take anyone. They’re hard-pressed, just like everyone else. But, yes, they know it’s us. Grimnar’s sent word to the canoness. Get used to it, brothers. This is who we’ll be fighting with.’

  Jorundur shook his shaggy head. ‘I can cope with Sisters,’ he said. ‘I can’t cope with garrison work.’

  ‘Hel’s teeth,’ hissed Gunnlaugur. ‘How many times? This is a combat mission.’

  ‘Against what?’

  ‘As yet unidentified. Possible cult incursions. We’re waiting for more detail.’

  Jorundur spat on the ground.

  ‘Sounds terrifying,’ he said.

  Gunnlaugur looked distastefully down at the pool of spittle on the stone.

  ‘We leave in less than thirty-six hours,’ he said. ‘Use the time well. Ensure your armour has been sanctified by the Priests and look to your weapons. Take the transit-time to reach combat fitness. That is all.’

  An awkward silence followed. Ingvar remembered how it had been in the past, when Hjortur’s exhortations would have filled the chamber with echoing roars, and they would have raised their weapons as one, slavering for the coming blood-terror.

  It was muted this time. Olgeir did his best, with a low, rattling snarl, but no one else took it up.

  Gunnlaugur didn’t try to summon up more enthusiasm. His customary belligerence had a darker edge to it, something that Ingvar didn’t remember seeing in him before. As he turned to leave the chamber, his eye caught Ingvar’s.

  ‘Not what you’re used to,’ he said. ‘Work like this.’

  It wasn’t.

  I have seen hive-fleets block out the light of nebulae. I have seen the spawning fields where orks are born. I have seen metal legions rise silently from millennial tombs. I have seen living starships orbit the hearts of forgotten empires.

  Ingvar shrugged.

  ‘There’ll be hunting,’ he said. ‘I’m used to that.’

  Before leaving, each one of the pack came up to Ingvar. They were curious, asking about what he’d done while on duty with the others – they never called the Deathwatch by its name – how many kills he’d made, what sagas he’d recorded for inclusion in the annals of the Mountain. Váltyr asked him little, Olgeir a lot.

  Jorundur enquired about the Onyx skull pendant he wore around his neck.

  ‘A record of service,’ said Ingvar, clasping it self-consciously. ‘That and the bolter – it’s all I kept.’

  They seemed to understand that he couldn’t say much. They seemed pleased that he was back. As they spoke to him, probing for information, laughing at his stilted responses, some of the awkwardness between them faded.

  ‘You’ll have picked up bad habits,’ said Olgeir, his eyes sparkling. ‘We’ll have to beat them out of you.’

  ‘Try it,’ Ingvar replied.

  Gunnlaugur left the chamber first, accompanied by Váltyr. Before he left, he clasped Ingvar firmly by the arm.

  ‘We’ll speak properly, brother,’ he said. ‘When time is less pressing, we’ll talk.’

  Ingvar nodded. ‘We should,’ he said.

  Jorundur was next, curtailing his questions to go and work on Vuokho, muttering as he left about the stupidity of taking it out so soon. He didn’t smile exactly, but his bitter face lifted and the bruise-coloured lines under his deep eyes smoothed out just a little.

  ‘He’s not looked this happy in a while,’ observed Olgeir.

  ‘It’s all relative
,’ said Ingvar.

  ‘He’ll never admit it, but he missed you. Hel, I missed you.’

  ‘It’s good to see you too, great one.’

  Then Olgeir departed as well, taking the Blood Claw with him for yet more intensive training. Hafloí didn’t say a word to Ingvar, but shot him a sullen look of challenge from over his shoulder.

  That left Ingvar alone with Baldr. The heavy footfalls of the others faded into the darkness, and the chamber fell quiet.

  Baldr smiled. It was a plain, easy smile.

  ‘You’ve made an enemy there,’ he said.

  Ingvar spread his hands in a gesture of resignation.

  ‘A fearsome one,’ he agreed.

  ‘So, then. Tell me what you see.’

  Ingvar hesitated. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Járnhamar,’ said Baldr. ‘Tell me how we’ve changed.’

  ‘Tínd is gone. Ulf and Svafnir are gone. I’ll be honest, I never liked Tínd, but I’m sorry for the others.’

  Baldr raised a sceptical eyebrow. ‘Is that all?’

  Ingvar sighed. ‘Fjolnir, do not do this. Not now.’

  Baldr smiled. ‘Forgive me,’ he said. ‘You are newly returned. There will be time for questions later. But you do not deceive me: you see what I see.’

  ‘And what is that?’

  Baldr looked serious again.

  ‘You see Váltyr hanging in Gunnlaugur’s shadow, unwilling to stay in it and unable to leave it. You see Jorundur turning in on himself, bitter at missed chances for glory. You see Heavy-hand’s laughter becoming thinner since he no longer has Ulf to spar with.’

  Ingvar sighed. He had no appetite for hearing how the pack had been ravaged in his absence.

  ‘And what of you, Baldr?’ he asked. ‘I suppose nothing troubles you.’

  For a moment, something flickered across Baldr’s face – a faint play of unease, whispering around his golden eyes.

  ‘There’s trouble for all of us,’ he said. Then he smiled again. ‘I knew you were coming back. Something told me you were. Why is that? It’s been decades, and I knew you were coming back.’

  ‘Lucky guess.’

  ‘There’s no luck. There’s fate, and there’s will. If the will is mightier, then you carve out a life for yourself. If fate is mightier, then you’re carried along, twisting like a spar on the flood.’

  Baldr stopped talking, suddenly tense, as if he’d said more than he’d planned to.

  ‘I knew you were coming back,’ he said again. ‘Why is that?’

  Ingvar tried to shrug off the question, though Baldr’s manner unnerved him. There was an intensity to him that he didn’t recognise.

  ‘You sound like a Priest,’ he said. ‘Stop it.’

  Baldr reached for a pendant hanging around his belt then. He held it up: a bleached avian skull suspended on links of metal. Iron bearings had been hammered into the eye sockets, and a rough rune – sforja – scratched on the bone.

  ‘Do you remember this?’ Baldr asked, letting the hanging pendant turn slowly.

  As Ingvar’s eyes rested on it, he felt a sudden pang of memory. He reached out for it, letting the fragile skull clink against the palm of his gauntlet.

  ‘I had forgotten,’ he said softly. ‘By Russ, I am sorry, brother. I had forgotten.’

  Baldr lowered the pendant into Ingvar’s hand, letting the iron links coil around one another.

  ‘Don’t be sorry. Take it back. You were right – it has a wyrd on it. It has protected me, and a part of me lives in it. For all that, it knows you are the owner.’

  Ingvar took it and held it up against the red light of the braziers. He remembered giving it to Baldr as a token of their friendship on the night he’d left Fenris. Back then he’d had no expectation of seeing it again. It had been a piece of his life in the Rout that he’d left behind, a splinter of his being that wouldn’t follow him into his new life.

  A sálskjoldur; a soul-ward, a fragment, a remnant, something to cling on to against the coming of Morkai.

  ‘I had not felt myself,’ Ingvar said, gazing at the bone as it spun before him. ‘Not until now. This is the final piece of me, the presence that I left.’ He looked back at Baldr. ‘It was given freely. I have no right to take it back.’

  Baldr nodded. ‘I know,’ he said. ‘But what are rights between brothers? It has been calling to you. It is yours.’

  Ingvar regarded Baldr carefully.

  ‘You asked me what has changed,’ he said. ‘You have. You are more solemn, more serious.’

  He collected the coiled pendant in his fist and placed it around his neck. It hung down across his breastplate, nestling next to the Onyx skull amid the crevasses of his embossed armour.

  The two symbols occupied the same space uneasily: one a totem of Fenris’s strange and ancient magic, the other a symbol of clandestine Inquisitorial power.

  ‘But I thank you for this,’ Ingvar said, taking Baldr’s hand and clasping it firmly. ‘We have always been shield-brothers, you and I. We shall be again. Of all of them, I suffered your absence the most.’

  Baldr returned the grip firmly, almost hungrily.

  ‘We have suffered without you, Gyrfalkon,’ he said. ‘We need you back. You will make us whole again.’

  Ingvar released his grip. Talk like that made him uneasy; Gunnlaugur had used the same words.

  ‘We shall see,’ was all he said.

  Chapter Five

  The storm howled up from the Hunter’s Pass, bringing snow-swollen clouds boiling over the sheer passes. The mountain’s shoulders were lost in a haze of churning ice-white, piling up drifts against the old causeways and choking the ravines below.

  Only at the summit of the Fang, high above the surrounding peaks of the Asaheim range, was the air clear. Thunderheads circled below the Valgard landing stages, angry and majestic, buffeting and snagging against the granite cliffs like breaking black-foamed waves.

  Gunnlaugur studied the maelstrom remotely from the shelter of Vuokho’s cockpit, still waiting on the hangar apron.

  ‘A big one,’ he observed, watching the sweeps of brume and blizzard rotate on the auspex.

  Jorundur, strapped in beside him, flicked the final launch controls on the console.

  ‘Fenris always gives a send-off,’ he said, frowning as he concentrated on the pre-launch sequence. ‘She never likes to see her children leave.’

  Gunnlaugur grunted, and sat back in his seat. Valgard hangar 34-7 stretched away from them, perched right at the pinnacle of the mountain and open to the elements at the eastern end. A maze of red lights blinked on and off, half hidden behind the veils of gusting sleet that spilled in from the entrance. He could hear the grind of refuelling tankers running clear, and the shouts of kaerls as blast-hatches were slammed and locked.

  ‘Try not to kill us on exit, eh?’ came Olgeir’s cheerful voice over the comm. ‘Nice and smooth now, Old Dog, nice and smooth.’

  The rest of the pack were in the aft crew hold, below the cockpit. Gunnlaugur could hear coarse laughter in the background. That improved his mood. For all their complaints about the mission, the pack were glad to be under way and doing something, and that was reassuring.

  ‘You want to fly, hálfvit?’ replied Jorundur, his voice sour. He activated the main drive system, and a throaty, sclerotic roar broke out from below.

  Olgeir’s bellow of laughter made the comm-link crackle with feedback.

  ‘Any signal from the frigate?’ asked Gunnlaugur, shutting off the feed and watching the last of the ground crew scuttle out of view. The whole structure of the gunship shuddered as the engines gunned into their hammering rhythm. A messy tide of oil-speckled, fire-dotted smoke poured across the apron from the exhausts.

  ‘Not a thing,’ said Jorundur, easing power to the atmospheric retros. With a jerk, Vuokho lurched up fr
om the rockcrete floor, buoyed by a raging cushion of flame and smog. ‘But it’ll be there. Believe me, no one else will have taken it.’

  The lumen-bank mounted over the hangar entrance clicked off, and a whole series of indicators on the gunship’s control console went green. The cockpit’s head-up display flickered into life, overlaying a jumble of runes and vectors across the grimy plexiglass viewers. The whine from the main drives intensified, ready for the explosion of energy that would hurl them clear of the mountain.

  ‘It’s a decent ship,’ said Gunnlaugur, bracing for detonation. ‘Blackwing-class.’

  ‘That what they told you?’ Jorundur laughed. ‘I’ve seen it. It’s a heap of shit.’

  Before Gunnlaugur could reply, Jorundur switched power to the main thrusters. Vuokho pounced forwards, blazing down the short hangar length before thundering clear of the mountainside. They cleared the cliff-face in a bloom of evaporating snow and engine backwash. Jorundur took the gunship out wide before banking hard, bringing the prow up and feeding more power to the main thrusters.

  Gunnlaugur glanced down out of the port viewer. Below, already receding fast, was the pinnacle of the mountain, crusted with a dirty layer of sensoria towers, pockmarked hangar gates and defence batteries. The summit speared up through the moving layers of bruise-dark cloud, a lone bastion of rock and ice amid a continent’s-worth of seething squalls.

  It looked besieged. It looked as if the rage of the planet had closed in on it, throttling it, sweeping up to grab it by the neck and snuff the life from it.

  Gunnlaugur knew the history of the mountain, at least as it was related by the overlapping and semi-legendary saga-tellings of the fire halls. He knew that the Fang had been besieged more than once: by the forces of the great enemy, by armadas sent by the Ecclesiarchy in the civil wars of the past, by the Inquisition itself.

  Sky Warriors still boasted of those battles, chanting them in ritual war-rites or hearing them declaimed by the hot light of burning torches. Gunnlaugur loved them. He’d learned the Bjornssaga from the skjalds, word by word. He knew other legends by heart, other songs, some of them older than the Fang itself, their origins lost in the violent years of humanity’s first stumbling amongst the stars.