Legends of the wolf the.., p.101
Legends of the Wolf: The Omnibus, page 101
‘No, it cannot be used,’ she said weakly. ‘But, also, it must be. That is the great riddle.’ She shifted painfully, and her too-wide eyes flickered warily towards the others. ‘I know the struggle your kind have with… what do you call it? The warp. I know it. And you are wise to mistrust it. Some of my kind mock the efforts you make to keep it secret, keep it hidden. I do not. What right have we to laugh? We tried to answer the same riddle ourselves, and failed. Maybe there is no answer. Or maybe the answer changes. But the riddle itself – it is still spoken, every hour, with every living heartbeat, by all who draw breath.’
By then, the null-collar felt hot, even through his armour. He could feel his flesh searing, just one more spike of pain to add to the cacophony in his mind.
‘Then perhaps it is best if the curse stays around my neck,’ he said. ‘To prevent the greater harm.’
‘And so you will die,’ the xenos said. ‘Pointlessly, but that would be your choice.’ Then, with a change of expression as sudden and complete as the other shifts in emotion, her face filled with fear. ‘There are worse things than death, though. Many worse things.’ She managed then to push herself up a little, to shuffle towards them. The movements were crippled, pathetic, and all of a sudden she seemed more supplicant than sage. ‘You could help me, if you chose. Not to keep me alive – too late for that – but to… take something for me. Carry it with you, just for a little while, until it can be moved to a place of safety. You cannot imagine what that would mean, what agonies it would prevent.’
‘Why would I do that?’
‘Because I can end your pain, too,’ she said, utterly seriously. ‘I can set you free.’
‘It cannot be trusted,’ said Ingvar.
‘Of course it can’t,’ said Gunnlaugur. ‘That is not in question.’
‘But it is here, in front of us,’ said Olgeir doubtfully. ‘What did we expect to come across?’
Hafloí said nothing, but glanced at Baldr. For the time being, Baldr was silent.
The pack had withdrawn a little way from the xenos. Olgeir kept his weapon trained on it, and all the rest remained armed and alert. They spoke over the pack-comm, keeping their words locked within their helms. As they debated, the alien creature closed her eyes, placed her remaining good hand over her chest, and tried to breathe.
‘It is a warlock,’ said Ingvar. ‘A twister of fates. I’ve seen what they do to armies. To worlds.’
‘As have I,’ said Gunnlaugur, his growl giving away some irritation. ‘It’s not just the Deathwatch that fights xenos.’
‘There’s no strength left in it,’ said Hafloí. ‘Not that I can see. It’d say anything now, just to get what it wants.’
‘Its jewel,’ said Ingvar. ‘That’s what it wants you to take. Those things are more valuable than starships to them – I’ve seen them fight like daemons to retrieve them.’
‘Other things covet them too,’ said Gunnlaugur. ‘Or so it is said.’
‘So it’s in no position to demand anything,’ said Hafloí. ‘We could take what we want, if we chose, then walk away. When did we start making bargains with such filth?’
‘If we make an oath,’ said Baldr quietly, ‘we keep it.’
Gunnlaugur turned to face him. ‘Then you wish to take the chance,’ he said, almost accusingly.
‘I’ll do what you order, vaerangi,’ said Baldr. ‘But know this – I am dying, right now, right here. In the void, I can hold it back, just a little. For a little while, on this planet, the pain eased. But now it’s back, and I can feel it tearing me apart. Njal never intended the collar to be permanent – it was something to keep the power in check while he took me back to Fenris. It’s breaking up at the edges now. One of us will give out soon. Perhaps before we get to Ragnar. Maybe just after. I only say this to make the choice clear.’
Gunnlaugur grunted. He’d guessed at that for some time. They all had. Still, to hear it baldly stated, that was different. ‘We all saw you,’ he said carefully. ‘When you were… not yourself. That is the danger.’
‘Aye,’ said Olgeir. ‘It was always the danger, one we accepted at the time. We never knew what chance to end this would come our way, save that it would be just as perilous. It was always going to be.’
Baldr looked at him, grateful for the words. ‘I didn’t expect such counsel from you, brother,’ he said.
Olgeir shrugged. ‘Decisions were made. We stand by them.’
‘The creature is terrified,’ said Ingvar, his voice full of doubt. ‘Hafloí speaks the truth – it will say anything, just to get what it wants. They are powerful, those witches, but can it do what it promises? Only Njal himself had the power to remove the collar, you said – even the monster on the plague-hulk couldn’t, and that thing was steeped in sorcery.’
‘Njal is not here,’ said Baldr patiently. ‘Even if he is on Cadia, I would be dead before we found him, or any other Priests of the Chapter. The xenos may be lying or deluded, but I see no other chances.’ He turned back to Gunnlaugur. ‘I’m not begging. If you forbid it, I’ll offer my neck for the knife. But that is the choice. One way or another, time is up.’
Olgeir snorted. ‘Then that settles it. What have we been doing, all this time, but searching for a cure? Let him die now, when one stands before us, we might as well have stayed on the Heimdall.’
An uneasy silence fell. Beyond the crater’s ridge, the wind skipped and moaned.
‘Gyrfalkon?’ asked Gunnlaugur.
Ingvar didn’t reply for a moment. ‘I don’t know what I expected to find,’ he said, eventually. ‘Only that something would come, and we would know it when we saw it.’ He looked squarely at Baldr. ‘If it was anything but xenos… I learned to hate them more than all else. But then maybe that is my fault to remedy.’
‘It was you who made the argument on the Heimdall,’ said Gunnlaugur. ‘And you who brought him back inside the walls on Ras Shakeh.’ Then he looked at Baldr. ‘But, both times, it was I who gave the order. So Heavy-Hand is right – what would be the point of that risk, now, if we spurned the chance when it came? Danger is what we were made for.’
Baldr felt the collar around his neck suddenly flare, driving a sliver of heat into his chest, as if it somehow knew the way the argument was going. He clenched his jaw tighter, stifling the cry, and said nothing.
‘Take the creature’s stone, and let it do what it can,’ Gunnlaugur said finally, his voice still betraying his deep uncertainty. ‘We’ll keep our weapons raised. Ruin or no ruin, death or vindication, we’ll have an answer before the sun is up.’
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
By the time they returned, the xenos was looking worse. Her pallor had faded, her eyes were ringed with grey. In places, her skin looked almost translucent.
Baldr stood before her. The rest of the pack resumed their original positions, guarding them both, weapons raised. It was a strange feeling, to sense the bolters of your own battle-brothers, aimed at you as much as they were on the xenos. Just in case.
‘We accept the bargain,’ Baldr said.
‘You will take the spirit stone?’ the xenos asked, her voice close to breaking. ‘Keep it safe, ward it at all costs?’
‘You have my word.’
‘And return it to my people?’
‘When we can.’
The xenos looked at him for a long time, as if her damaged eyes were capable of piercing through his mask and judging the truth of his words. ‘Remove your helm.’
Baldr reached up and twisted it free. The cold night air washed over his skin, offering some level of relief from the fizzing ache across his face and neck.
‘Tell me your name, son of the Wolf King,’ the xenos said.
‘Baldr, called Fjolnir.’
‘And I am Caerlainn, of the people of Ulthanesh Shelwe. A name is important. Both will be needed.’
The collar throbbed, twitching like a living thing.
‘So what needs to be done?’ Baldr asked.
‘Only contact.’ She smiled, a pain-filled grimace. ‘If it does not injure your pride too much, you will need to stoop.’
Baldr dropped to one knee. His bulk far surpassed the frail, slender creature lying before him, and he had to lower his head a long way before she was able to reach out for the collar.
‘It will hurt, of course,’ she said.
‘Just begin.’
Her fingers made contact with the bone torc.
And everything disappeared. Everything snapped out of existence, save for the agony, which sharply increased. Baldr tried to straighten, to throw his head back and howl, but he couldn’t move. It was as if his body had ceased to be entirely, save for a point of pain, a singular nexus. He saw nothing, heard nothing but the great roaring, like surf, or perhaps millions of voices, crashing onward, unending, merciless.
That might have gone on for hours, or just moments – he lost all sense of time and space, only the one reality of unbearable pain, ramping up, flooding his entire being, eating him up, destroying him.
This is the end of all things,+ came a voice he recognised: an alien voice, hers. +The moment when a life ends, in this world, and lingers, for a moment, in the next. That is the pain you feel.+
He had no way to reply. Somewhere, on some plane of existence, he knew he had physical lips, locked apart in a rictus of anguish, but here, in the place he had been taken to, all he had was the kernel of himself, the spirit of fire, the soul he had always been, alone.
Then, just as suddenly as it had come, the agony cracked. A sound like ice grinding against ice shuddered through the darkness, and he had a sensation of falling, dropping fast, accelerating down a bottomless shaft into the depths of the Underverse, unable to reach out and grab anything to arrest it.
Slowly, the roaring died away, receding into a muffled silence. The sense of falling faded. Everything became cold, perfectly dark, perfectly still.
He looked down, and saw his hands, his body. He was not wearing armour. He was wearing furs, stitched leather, a ragged half-cloak, just as he had once worn when a hunter in the Ascurii. He was standing on a polished stone floor, featureless and black. Columns marched away into the darkness, cut from the same black stone. The place was frigid, echoing, empty.
He turned, and saw the xenos standing next to him. She didn’t appear to be injured now. Her robes were different, too – pale white, like bleached bone, and traced with a fine golden lattice of runes. She had a broken torc in her hand, as well as a pendant with a shattered animal skull hanging from it.
‘Both were destroyed,’ she said. ‘The first was killing you, the second was keeping you alive. This ward was on the verge of failing, so you had a day, maybe two, left.’
Her voice rebounded down the long, dark halls, before being swallowed up by the shadows. Out of the corner of his eye, Baldr thought he saw other things in the gloom, shifting, murmuring, but couldn’t get a clear view.
‘What is this place?’
‘You call it Hel, I believe. But I am guessing – I do not see what you see. Not here.’
‘Then, this is death.’
‘Not yet. A place between life and death, perhaps. Once, my people could move between these many worlds at will. Now even we cannot escape, when the hour comes.’
He looked down at himself. The clothes he wore were just the same as they had been. They smelled the same as they had done in another life – the dry smell of old, cold animal hides. He had his axe at his belt, the same axe he had carried the day the beast had come for him in the endless forest, the one that had hesitated, that had let him live.
God-marked.
‘So, it was easy to accomplish,’ he said. ‘In the end.’
The xenos laughed. ‘Easy? No, not easy. For you, it was the work of a moment. For me, it took rather longer – and exhausted what remained of my physical form. We count ourselves masters of this craft, and yet… I was dying already, of course, but this action has sealed the compact.’ She looked briefly haunted. ‘You were unlocked by the enemy, I think, in the first instance. That will leave a trace. I cannot erase that entirely, so you must guard against what you do with your gift. Or curse. Whatever you choose to call it.’
‘And you must stay here,’ he said, knowing the truth of it even as the words left his mouth.
‘My body is burned away. When you return, you will see nothing but a husk. I am the stone, now. The stone is me. Should you lose it, or see it destroyed, the pain you just felt will be mine to endure for eternity. Should you return it to my people, a chance remains to avoid that fate.’ The xenos smiled dryly. ‘Perhaps now you see why I was keen to strike the bargain.’
‘But you trust me.’
‘What choice do I have? But yes, I trust you. There is a certain kinship, amongst those who have been in such places.’
‘So I see now that this was always ordained.’
‘You see that, do you? Strange, that I do not. But maybe you were fated to be here for me, eh? You may not be the end in this, just the means. That is the great deception – to believe that we are the significant thing in any given nexus of events. Maybe you are, maybe you are not. My ability to tell has been… curtailed.’
Baldr felt no sorrow for the xenos. Ancient hatreds remained strong, whatever debt of honour now lay between them. ‘Your thread is ended.’
‘In this place, surely. But there are other worlds, human. Ones that you may glimpse soon, if you have the wit for it.’
Baldr’s eyes flickered, half catching one of the denizens of the shadows. He almost recognised what it was, but then it was gone, evaporating into nothing. He felt uncomfortable, as if he were being tricked or deceived, and yet his senses had never been clearer. All his old training, all his old beliefs… they would either be needed more than ever, or would have to be cast aside. He needed guidance. Or maybe that was the last thing he needed. He needed to return to the source. Or maybe he needed to keep running, forever, further and further away.
‘This is not an awakening,’ he said. ‘It is more like rebirth. I am a child again.’
‘Something the masters of your race understand.’
‘Hence their caution.’
‘The craft in your containment device was great. If you had not been fighting it for so long, perhaps it would have been too great to overcome, even for me. But you had been consuming one another for a long time, and I do not think it was ever meant to be employed for such a span.’ She looked down at the splintered bone pieces. ‘It is a valiant thing, to try to hold back the tide. I admire the ambition of it. But it must fail, in the end. More of you will awaken, growing in number with every generation, until what is rare now becomes as common as breathing. It cannot be stopped. Maybe this will be the blaze that consumes you, just as it was for us, or maybe you will find a way to master it, but every species must take the test, sooner or later.’
Baldr reached up to touch his face, pressing his fingers into the flesh. It yielded more than he was used to. His bone structure was less pronounced, his muscles less hardened. He had forgotten just how fragile it was to be a human, before the Test of Morkai had changed him, so long ago.
‘I will be an aberration,’ he said.
‘In the eyes of many.’
‘It will cause strife.’
‘Your Imperium already has plenty of that, I think.’
‘We call it maleficarum. The craft of witches. Only the way of the storm is permitted, the craft of the old gothi, and even that is hedged with peril. That has always been what we were taught.’
‘Then keep teaching it. I am not telling you it is false.’ The xenos began to fade, then, her robes becoming translucent, then gauzy, then spinning into flurries of dust. ‘All of it, all the way back to the origin, is stories. Endless stories, told and listened to by every mind and soul that has ever been. A story is neither true nor false, though it may be noble, or it may be base. Tell the story you must, either to yourself, or to those you encounter. Just be sure to believe in it, to live it, to act as if every word of it must have been, and could never have been otherwise. Nothing else exists. Nothing else remains. Just voices, speaking in the dark, building the worlds that we labour in, that we both destroy and preserve.’
She was almost gone now. In this place, she had no jewel at her breast, just a skein of golden light that spun and rippled in the murk.
‘Hel is the home of the unworthy warriors, is it not?’ she asked, her lips like snuffed candle-flames.
‘That it is.’
‘Then, when the time comes, Baldr of Fenris,’ she said, in a voice no louder than a child’s whisper, ‘ensure that you do not return here. Your soul belongs, I foresee, in the Halls of Fire.’
When he opened his eyes, he saw the world again, its emptiness, its cold wind and its racing, burning skies. He saw his brothers, all of them staring at him. He saw the body of the xenos, lifeless now, its skin already hardening, becoming brittle.
It was darker, now. His collar was gone, and the only remaining light came from the firelit distance, in addition to the wisps of refracted ghostliness that shimmered in the cloud cover.
He lifted his hands, turning them, trying to assess how he felt.
A weight had gone. The pain, for the most part, had gone. What pain remained was like that of a healed wound – more wholesome, speaking of recovery. He knew without having to look that scar tissue ridged along his collarbone.
Of the collar itself, there was no sign – it was neither in pieces on the ground nor in the xenos’ grasp. The soul-ward pendant, too, was gone.
‘Speak to me,’ said Gunnlaugur, aiming his bolt pistol at Baldr’s head. It was a command, not a request, and made from wariness.
