by Mark Clapham
Leaving Hoenir face down in the flames, Tormodr walked over to where Sindri sat, plucked the tankard from his grasp, and drained the contents in one swig. He then dropped the empty tankard in Sindri’s lap.
‘Gracious in victory as ever,’ said Sindri, calling for a kaerl to refill his cup.
Tormodr chuckled his deep, low laugh and reached out a hand to help Hoenir stand up.
‘One day, brother, one day,’ said Hoenir, shaking burning embers from his hair. His skin was red from the fire, but already healing. He gratefully accepted Anvindr’s cup, and took a deep swig. He rolled the liquid around his mouth and stared thoughtfully into the cup.
‘Foul,’ he said. ‘Absolutely foul.’
‘Big words,’ said Sindri, ‘from a man who just tasted burning coals.’
‘If you wish to take on mighty Tormodr,’ said Hoenir, ‘I am sure he will oblige.’
Tormodr grunted his assent.
Sindri shook his head.
‘No need,’ he said. ‘After today’s victory we should not be contesting each other, brothers. We should be revelling in our glory! The humans lost this whole system to the greenskins, and we came from the heavens to take it back. We have slain their nightmares, and delivered the head of the monster. No wonder they look upon us as gods.’
‘We are not gods,’ said Anvindr uneasily. ‘We just have a sliver of godlike power gifted to us.’
‘True,’ conceded Sindri.
‘Besides,’ said Anvindr, ‘the mortals fought this campaign as much as we did, and have died in many greater numbers. We could not have won this campaign without the Tallarns or–’
‘True, true, all true,’ said Sindri. ‘The humans die easily, albeit sometimes bravely– this is true.’ Sindri paused for effect. ‘But were they the ones that brought back the warboss’ head?’
Anvindr laughed aloud, and so suddenly that he was surprised by the sound of the deep and rolling laughter that came out of him.
‘No, we took the warboss’ head,’ he told Sindri once his own laughter had subsided. ‘We definitely did that.’
‘Then let us celebrate our great victory,’ said Sindri, raising his cup. ‘As conquerors of this system, who came and took the head of the monster.’
Sindri’s voice was loud enough to reach other campfires, and when Anvindr’s pack cheered together it could be heard echoed by other packs through the dark of the encampment.
Anvindr sat back and watched his pack, or at least most of them, celebrate. Sindri was right to mark the moment. It had been a long campaign, and they had fought well. In an endless life of battle, this had been a good and notable victory to be spoken of and remembered, passed down in the verbal records of the Vlka Fenryka. There was something in Sindri’s manner and humour, his dismissive attitude to lesser mortals and his jokes about being a god, that rankled Anvindr – but then that was just Sindri’s way. He was a natural joker, a taunter and a mocker, and in spite of that he had saved Anvindr and every other member of his pack a hundred times over. Let him have his ways.
They had all survived this campaign, even Gulbrandr. That was a reason to celebrate and enjoy each other’s company, regardless of faults. The pack fought on.
The one loss the pack had suffered, that of Liulfr, had been long ago but still ached at Anvindr like an old wound in the cold. He still blamed Liulfr’s death on the Inquisitor’s lackey, Interrogator Pranix. It had been Pranix’s scheming and keeping of secrets that had prevented Anvindr and his Wolves from sooner defeating the daemon hidden within Hrondir’s tomb, and Anvindr blamed Pranix more for Liulfr’s death than the daemon itself.
Anvindr shook his head. This was a night for celebrating recent victories, not for dwelling on ancient defeats.
Something broke the darkness of the sky above, a fiery streak that passed overhead and disappeared past the line of tents behind them.
‘See?’ asked Sindri. ‘The heavens drop stars from the sky in our honour.’
‘Perhaps,’ rumbled Tormodr. ‘But only if stars fire their afterburners to slow their descent.’
‘A ship?’ asked Anvindr.
Tormodr nodded. ‘One that must have landed not far from here, on that path of descent.’
‘Let’s go find this ship before the mortals do,’ said Anvindr, reaching to pick up the scabbard containing his chainsword, before remembering with a curse that he didn’t have it anymore. He checked his bolter instead before re-holstering it. ‘If Sindri’s right and the heavens honour us, it is only fair we should get there first.’
The Wolves had to cut through the Imperial Guard encampments in order to exit the camp on the side the meteor fell. Uniformed men and women rushed out of their way as the four giant Space Marines stomped through their camp and towered over them.
At the perimeter, a group of Cadians were preparing to move out to where they had seen the ship land, and Anvindr spoke to their lieutenant.
‘We’ll engage first,’ he told the mortal. ‘Inform your commanders and the Wolf Lord, so that the camp may prepare.’
‘Yes, my lord,’ said the Cadian, and as he went to relay his reports they set out into the desert.
They found it over a bluff, a small space vehicle stuck in the desert sands, embedded at an angle and covered in scars and scorch marks from entering the atmosphere. It was rounded and crude, an unwieldy vehicle, but it bore the aquila and ornamental skull insignia of a vehicle of the Imperium, as well as an unusual sigil with nine interlinked spheres.
‘Lacusian,’ said Sindri, indicating the linked spheres. ‘Remember them?’
‘Remind me,’ snapped Anvindr. So many worlds and armies he had encountered, he lost track. So old now...
‘Lacusians. The Hollow Worlds,’ said Sindri. ‘That’s their mark. Their guard wore green jackets. They were everywhere when we fought the tau.’
Anvindr remembered now. The Hollow Worlds, a system of artificial planets. He had never been there, but Imperial Guard regiments from those worlds had fought alongside the Wolves against the tau, a campaign that had ended for Anvindr in Hrondir’s tomb.
Allies, then. But what was a ship bearing the marks of both the Hollow Worlds and the Inquisition doing here?
The Wolves circled the ship, which was still white-hot from re-entry. Shortly, a rectangular panel in one side of the ship opened and a feeble glow came from inside: the red pulse of emergency lighting. Silhouetted within that dim light was a very dishevelled, but definitely human, man.
Anvindr tentatively lowered his bolter. The man had very little hair on his head, but wore a short, unkempt beard. Anvindr knew little of the ageing patterns of normal humans, but considered this man to be neither a child nor elderly. Beneath the beard, the dirty clothes and the overgrown fingernails, there was also something he recognised about this man.
His memory took him back to when he had stood in Hrondir’s tomb, with the Inquisitor Montiyf and the young Interrogator in his plain robes. This man was older, balder, carrying slightly more weight, but the eyes and manner, those were unmistakable. Anvindr found himself almost unconsciously lifting his bolter back up, taking a bead on the man before him. Sindri had been right in spite of himself, this was a portent of some kind, or a gift from the stars.
‘Captain Godrichsson,’ croaked the man, his voice clearly unused for a long time.
‘Interrogator,’ growled Anvindr through clenched teeth. The rank of captain was one the Space Wolves did not use, and this man knew it.
‘Inquisitor now,’ said the man, leaning on the interior frame of the ship hatch. He was clearly physically weak from his journey, and could not move out of the ship until the exterior had cooled sufficiently to touch. He was stuck standing where he was, in Anvindr’s sights.
‘Pranix,’ the Space Wolf hissed, his finger tightening around the trigger of his bolter.
‘Pranix?’ asked Hoenir. ‘That Pranix?’
‘Aye,’ grumbled Tormodr, raising his flamer.
‘So it is,’ said Sindri, quietly for once, without humour.
They all looked to Anvindr who looked to Hoenir, the only one of them who had not met Pranix before in Hrondir’s tomb. The only one with no reason to have let a grudge stew for long decades.
‘I am with you in whatever you decide,’ said Hoenir, also raising his weapon.
‘Nine worlds,’ croaked Pranix, with something that might have been a parched laugh. ‘Nine worlds fallen to the tyrant, and you think I’m the enemy?’ He leaned forwards, head low, and let out a chuckle, then threw back his head and laughed hysterically.
Anvindr realised the Inquisitor was delirious. Perhaps that was what stayed his hand. Or perhaps it was the memory that he had not acted against Pranix when he had the chance, all those years ago, and it had only been in the intervening decades that his resentment had stewed into murderous hatred. Had he lost his way?
‘I have wasted my journey,’ said Pranix, possibly to himself, but audible to Anvindr’s enhanced hearing. ‘All is lost.’
Then he collapsed backwards into the ship doorway.
Anvindr cursed, lowering his gun.
‘Help me get him out of there,’ he barked to Sindri.
‘What?’ demanded Sindri, outraged, his weapon still raised.
‘Just do it, damn you,’ shouted Anvindr, advancing on the ship, though he sympathised with Sindri’s bafflement.
Anvindr had wanted to kill this man for so long, but the nature of Pranix’s arrival, fleeing some great enemy of the Imperium, overrode Anvindr’s own desires. The Hollow Worlds, fallen to some tyrant? That could not be ignored, regardless of personal enmities.
Like it or not, and Anvindr hated it, one thing was certain – for now at least.
If they were to find out what calamity had occurred, if they were to rectify it and save the Hollow Worlds for the Emperor... they needed Inquisitor Pranix alive.
About the Author
Mark Clapham is the author of the Warhammer 40,000 novel Iron Guard and the short stories ‘The Siege of Fellguard’, ‘The Hour of Hell’, ‘In Hrondir’s Tomb’ and ‘Sanctified’, which appeared in the anthology Fear the Alien. He lives and works in Exeter, Devon.
After a half century serving in the Deathwatch, a Space Wolf makes an uneasy return to his pack-brothers. The Wolves must put their disagreements to one side however, as they are sent to defend a vital Imperial world from an assault by the corrupt forces of the Plague God.
A BLACK LIBRARY PUBLICATION
Published in 2015 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd, Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK.
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ISBN: 978-1-78572-178-6
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