The wolftime, p.34
The Wolftime, page 34
He had also read that some animals burrowed through the snow and layered needles and dirt, letting the fire pass over them. Trees and plants were renewed by the devastation, so that even in the chilling aftermath the forest would briefly erupt with seed pods popping onto the freshly fertile ground, to await the real spring still half a Terran year away. Gaius considered the idea, of becoming a burrowing rat or germinating seed, but he could not shake the feeling that to stop moving was to bring a loss of momentum that would end his entire journey.
There were other times when rational thought was gone, dragged into somnolence by the catalepsean node. He laughed and cried as whim took him, sometimes shouting at the bad stars that continued to fall. The howl of Morkai carried on the crackle of flames, always just behind him. One night he snarled and snapped deliriously and gave chase when he saw a crowned stag leaping majestically past, its eyes wide with fear.
The trees themselves took on life, supping deep from Fenris’ spirit. The boughs of the trees grimaced and stared in cruel delight as he ran and ran. It was not only creatures of mortal origin that fled the devastation. Small half-insect, half-humanoid winged creatures flitted from branch to branch overhead. Some glowed like the falling rocks, others were brief glimpses of shadow. In the depths of the valleys, giants trampled trees into firewood and long-armed arboreal hunters with blood-matted fur swung through the branches ahead of them. Creeping, shambling, climbing and stomping, eyes of red or amber, teeth like steel, claws of fire, the near-mythical denizens of the deepest forest fled. Their voices chattered and screeched, lowed and hollered. Gaius heard the curses of swamp hags carried on the wind, listened for the crunching footfalls of ogres or the crack of trunks broken by the progress of towering godbears.
Every tale from the Aett and the book came to life, painted across the forest by their words, returning from Gaius’ memory to become living experience. And all the while he felt the wolf growing stronger. Not Morkai, though her growls made the ground shake under his feet. Fengr, the wolf within, the spirit of Fenris that Ullr claimed resided in the bodies of all Fenrisians.
But was any of it real or conjured from his fatigued brain?
Coming upon a craggy break in the trees, Gaius looked for some way to circumnavigate the mount rather than to climb its ice-slicked slopes. He was cogent again, brain fully active, and the sky was the dark of night-time, he was sure. The visions of the previous days were just a memory of mad imaginings. Hallucinations. Turning, he saw that the forest was still afire, about a mile behind him, resin burning as hot as promethium, iron-cone firs exploding like grenades.
No rest yet.
The terrain made him slow, forcing him to pick a way past boulders and over smaller rocks. About a hundred and fifty yards out from the trees, a terrible stench assailed his nostrils. Forcing himself to locate the source he discovered a large pile of faeces in the lee of a boulder. He had no idea what creature had dumped such a terrible mass but he could see shards of bone among the spoor: a predator. Given the strength of the smell and the subtle heat still emanating from the excretion he had to assume the beast was somewhere nearby.
Rounding the southern side of the peak, away from the worst of the wind, he was brought up short by the sight of a large figure. It seemed to be sitting on the slope of the crag, a thick body of grey with patches of moss like hair on the back and arms, its skin partially stratified like the nearby rock formations.
It looked so much like a giant person, shoulders hunched, round head low between them. Half-remembering his dazed encounters with mythological creatures, no doubt products of his imagination, Gaius knew that he was just making a pattern out of the natural features.
‘Begone, creature of the mind!’ he shouted with a laugh, thrusting his spear towards a buttock-shaped rock.
The boulder pile shifted with a terrible moan, rising to reveal that it was in fact a living thing. Gaius retreated several steps, astounded, while the monster rose to its full height, twice that of the Primaris Marine. It turned its oval head to regard him with lava-fire eyes. The moss was indeed hair, populating a broad chest and between the rocky thighs. Club-like fists rose in defence.
The thing growled and spoke, the words deep and rumbling like rocks falling down a chasm, its intent hostile. Gaius did not wait, but leapt forward, thrusting the spear again with more lethal purpose. The point, now hardened in fire, pierced the red maw of the creature, plunging upwards into the skull. A hammer fist swung even as it toppled, smashing Gaius sideways, hard enough that he felt something in his left arm break.
Held in his fist and stuck in the mouth of the troll, the spear snapped as the Space Marine and his foe both fell. His ribs crashed into a jutting stone, and a cry of pain ripped from Gaius’ lips.
The monster folded, collapsing backwards to tumble a short way down the slope.
Gaius lay on his front gasping for several seconds, eyes fixed on the mound that had been the troll. He had a recollection of phenomenal regenerative abilities, and the throb in his arm, now accompanied by a similar ache in the left side of his chest where he had hit the rock, told him that another bout, this time unarmed, would not end well.
Gritting his teeth, Gaius forced himself to his feet and limped down the slope, casting glances back to ensure the creature did not follow. Smoke drifted past from the fires as he descended to the forest again.
No time to stop, he had to keep running.
The memory of the fires ending was lost amongst the numbing ice, locked away somewhere in Gaius’ mind but swamped by far more immediate needs. His catalepsean node was no longer enough, keeping him in a permanent state of fatigued half-wake that was neither restful nor allowed him to be aware of the dangers around him.
It was a subconscious, animal need that forced him to burrow through snow with his hands. Through the ice layer and into frozen dirt, he used an entrenching tool he had fashioned in more coherent times out of a bone taken from a kill. Once out of the wind, he stopped, curled in the bottom of his hole with what little remained of his own body heat. Even this did not halt the plunging core temperature that would soon cause irreparable and then fatal damage to organs and muscle. His physiology took over where conscious thought could no longer operate.
As Gaius welcomed coming oblivion, his body refused – he was a Space Marine, and the Allfather’s design would not allow him to die easily. His sus-an membrane flooded his blood vessels with biostasis-inducing chemicals, shutting down cellular activity. He was all but oblivious as it happened, knowing only the tunnel he had dug, and the ring of whiteness above, slowly fading to red.
The ships were now more useful as firewood, piled onto sleds with runners made from the oars. They moved during the brief daylight, such as it was, and built up the bonfires to ward away the worst of the long nights. Though the firestorm had passed, they had not yet breached the crest of Helwinter and Frostnight was yet to come.
Normally they would have dug into shelter, but Gytha’s dreams kept returning, sometimes of the golden giant, often of the green ogre and the wolf at each other’s throats. She knew she would not find peace until she had spoken to the gothi of the Sky Warriors.
There was little chance to speak to the others about her visions. The wind tore the words from her lips and the labours of staying alive left everyone exhausted in mind and body. Lufa tried his best when they were finally warmed at the campfire; despite the hardships he still felt the entire expedition was a grand adventure.
‘We will see the Tower of the North?’ he asked, hands clasped under his arms, hood pulled tight so that only nose and mouth could be seen.
‘Perhaps, if the Sky Warriors do not stop us first,’ replied Gytha. That part gave her grave doubts. She knew there were a few tribes that lived on Asaheim but would hers be allowed to enter? Would the Sky Warriors permit strangers close to their fortress?
If any of us make it at all, she thought.
‘Do you think they will be there?’ he asked next, tilting his head back to look at the sky. ‘Or have they gone to the Upplands again?’
She knew what he meant. The sky was covered with rags of cloud torn by the strong winds, and between them the red wound across the heavens was visible.
‘Someone will be there.’
Unless the wolf has already fallen to the ogre.
Gytha was about to say something to lift her own spirits but was stopped by a shout from the darkness. A moaning roar followed that roused everyone even faster: the distinctive noise of a bear.
In the light of the fires the grey-furred beast lumbered from the treeline, pursuing one of the lookouts. The man stumbled on the ice and fell, and within moments the bear was on him, great jaws clamping down on his head. The rockbear swung the still-screaming warrior to one side then the other, silencing his cries.
Already armed and armoured, the aettgard on watch dashed to confront the beast while others scrambled for their weapons. Rearing up on its hind legs it dwarfed the warriors, its paws large enough to crush them with a single swipe. One of the aettgard dashed forward but was met with swiping claws that sent rings of chainmail and drops of blood flying, Chest opened, the warrior threw himself back, scrambling away in the snow as the bear dropped back to all fours.
‘It’s wyrdkine!’ shouted Gytha, noticing an odd gleam in the eyes of the beast, a diseased tinge to its fur.
‘Arrows!’ bellowed Faeras, bow already in the elder’s hand. ‘Flame!’
The aettgard retreated, forming a small wall of spears and shields a dozen strong, while behind them bows flexed and brands were snatched up from the bonfire.
The rockbear bellowed again. Gytha couldn’t help but think there was something plaintive in the noise, but the blood on the jaws and claws was real enough to dispel any sympathy. Korit was crying and tried to bury her face in Gytha’s furs. She pushed her daughter away.
‘Never take your eyes from the enemy,’ Gytha snapped, pointing towards the creature. ‘Never hide from your fear, look it in the face and defy it!’
The archers loosed two dozen arrows, some going astray, others finding the creature’s huge flanks. Pricked by their iron tips it moaned and broke into a run, heading straight towards the shield wall. The aettgard lowered their spears but the rockbear was too maddened to fear them, charging directly through their points with a splinter of wood and the panicked shouts of the soldiers.
The wall parted rather than be crushed beneath its bulk, though one aettgard fell under the rampaging beast, body pulped into the snow by broad paws. Gytha sensed Lufa moving forward, drawn towards the ring of archers and other fighters.
‘Wait!’ she called, but Bjorti already had matters in hand, lunging forward with strong fingers to grab the youth’s coat and drag him back. The blacksmith strode on, dragging his longsword from its scabbard as he did so. He discarded the sheath and took the weapon in both hands, reaching the line of archers as they loosed again. Though they were hurried, the range was much shorter and several arrows hit the bear about the face and chest, but not enough to pierce thick muscle and fat.
Yelling madly, one of the aettgard dashed from the dark behind the beast and hurled a throwing axe. It stuck deep into the bear’s shoulder, causing it to stumble. It turned at this new attack, away from the camp. From the other side the aettgard, now reformed, drove forward with shields and axes, shouting and cursing as they laid into the beast. It swung a massive paw and snapped the shield of one of its attackers, but rather than follow up this attack it bunched its muscles and fled, disappearing into the night.
‘It must have been starving, to come so close to a fire,’ someone said.
Other speculation followed but Gytha didn’t listen. Entrusting Lufa and Korit to their grandmother she drifted forwards, drawn by the muted conversations closer to where the fighting had been.
Three warriors had been slain, another two gravely injured. The helm had been torn from one by the bear’s blow and she looked into the dead eyes of Noraslov Fearbiter. The blow had left his face unmarked, though the top of his skull was missing.
They were not the first whose threads had been cut on the journey – some lost to violence, some to the elements. They would not be the last. Their wyrd had crossed with Gytha’s and she had brought them on this expedition. They might have lived long lives had she not spoken at the council, but they might have died in a raid with their neighbours, or drowned at sea, or been cut down in a fight over ut-geld. The only wyrd that linked them all was that one by one, Morkai’s jaws would swallow them.
She would mourn, they would burn the bodies and they would move on. Their next leg would be out onto the ice sheet to the north and there would be no turning back.
After that they would reach Asaheim, or die.
Pain worse than anything Gaius had encountered ripped him from darkness. This was not wakening from the long sleep Cawl had induced. Blood that had been ice sent daggers into every part of him, from brain to heart to lungs to gut, jagged nails tearing along the arteries, every muscle turned inside out. So arid was his body that he could not move jaw nor tongue nor breath to cry out his pain.
He blacked out again.
Eventually the agony subsided to a level with which his physiology and hardened mind could cope. Now his Primaris body proved itself superior to those that had come before. The Belisarian Furnace burned into life – that modification that gave healing above that of even a Firstborn. Other sensations returned. They brought with them the merest notion of survival and self-awareness.
Urgent need filled him, pushing him out of his burrowed shelter without thought or plan, simply to bask in the weak but beneficial rays of the Wolf’s Eye again. He lay like this for several days, dimly aware of the lightening and darkening above. His body recovered slowly, like an ancient starship whose systems were being brought back online one at a time, until he could make out the clouds above, the welcome feel of coldness again, though it was a burning across his skin. Water melted from hair and beard into his mouth like the blessed lubrication of tech-priests restoring movement to corrosion-fused gears.
Gaius roused, human thought replacing animal need. He had survived the worst of Helwinter. Daybreak showed him the way north, towards the Aett.
For days there had been nothing but ice, so to see an upthrust of rock in the distance was something of a surprise to Gaius. It seemed a sensible landmark to head towards and he adjusted his route, invigorated by the appearance of a tangible objective.
His arm was healing, as were his ribs, but his feet were starting to show the wear of poor protection, the soles more a thick scab than skin, his ankles also worn into raw flesh by the flapping bindings. His bones ached where they had been inlaid with augmetic sinew coils. His body craved energy to finish the healing process and he could sense it getting ready to cannibalise itself.
He hadn’t felt his skin for some time and assumed much of it was dead cells. He had taken pains to ensure the circulation to toes and fingers kept them intact – he needed to walk and needed to fight. Where implants for his warplate pierced his flesh the muscle was atrophying, the metal contacts conducting the freezing chill into his body. Sometime before he’d fallen into sus-an biostasis he’d smeared venison fat around the areas as an improvised sealant and now stank of dead crowned stag.
The upthrust revealed itself to be an island, more peaks coming into view over the course of the day. As the sun was setting, as best Gaius could judge by the ruddy smudge in the distance, he came upon furrows in the snow, straight and deep, half a dozen of them.
Sleds.
There were footprints too, showing that the sled-haulers were heading in the same direction. Buoyed by this thought even more than sighting the peak, Gaius pressed on and continued through the night. Before dawn he saw the flicker of firelight in the distance.
The island resolved into something even bigger, the shore of a land formation that stretched to the horizon. Come the Fire Season and the gravitic upheaval of passing close to the Wolf’s Eye, the entire land mass might sink beneath the waves or be sundered into an archipelago but for the moment it existed. It was quite new, young pines dotting the jagged mountainsides in small copses, the summits with the telltale jagged edges of volcanic calderas.
The sled-folk had made a camp in a valley mouth, having turned their transports into a temporary windbreak. Gaius kept a sharp eye on his environs. He could smell cooked meat on the breeze, which meant other creatures would too. They had sentries out, stamping their feet on snow packed by the passage of their companions, waving their arms and blowing clouds of mist that shone like ruby fog against the firelight.
He heard something he had thought he might not hear again: laughter. Deep and long, a miraculous sound amid the bleakness. Gaius made his way closer to the mountainside looking down onto the camp, and there he saw men and women and children, gathered about three huge fires, eating and talking.
There were pots near the fires, and a carcass on a spit. Gaius watched the grease drop from the rendtusker – he had caught and skinned one himself many days before – hissing as it hit the flames. There seemed to be a celebration of some kind, perhaps at having reached land after the wastes of the ice shelf. Jugs were being drunk from and passed around. To remain liquid at this temperature the contents had to be alcoholic.
Gaius had the taste of mjod in his mouth, a memory rather than a scent from the camp. Like honey and sunrise, followed by a hot cup of fyrkaf. He caught himself drooling, thick saliva dribbling down into the beard that had grown since his leap from the gunship. It hissed as the acid tracked a line down the rock on which he stood. That moment, his parting with the others, seemed a lifetime ago, and just a day earlier he had despaired of ever seeing Asaheim or the Aett.
