The wolftime, p.44
The Wolftime, page 44
‘He survived,’ said Njal. ‘Killed a Blackmane and was found nearly dead by this woman. I’ve seen what he did through her eyes, a saga worthy of any fireside.’
‘A Primaris survived the journey from the Broken Valleys back to the Aett,’ said Ulrik, chewing over the words and their meaning. He stepped forward and Gytha started to shake at his attention. ‘Where is he now?’
‘He protected me, killed those soldiers,’ said the woman, taking a deep breath. ‘He said he had to confront his wyrd here.’
‘The Imperials are holding him after he went through half a squad of Tempestors,’ added Arjac.
‘Half a squad?’ Grimnar rubbed his chin, unimpressed.
‘He stopped and gave himself up when he realised what he was doing,’ explained Njal.
‘I saw it in his eyes,’ said Gytha, looking at Ulrik and then Grimnar. ‘The same as I see it in yours. The heart-fire. The spirit of the Wolf King.’
Grimnar stroked his beard and looked deep in thought.
‘Fengr,’ he muttered.
‘We will make sure that you are safe,’ Njal told the gothi. ‘Your gift is very valuable.’
‘I promised I would return to the upplanders,’ she replied. ‘Gave my oath.’
‘And you made your oath in full knowledge of what it would mean? They will take you away.’ Njal was uncertain about her future but sensed enough power in her that she might pass the Imperials’ tests. It was rare for a Fenrisian to be subjected to them.
‘I did. Gaius explained.’
‘In that case we must help you honour it,’ said Ulrik. ‘In return, it is not for the Imperials to judge what a warrior of the Chapter does on Fenris. They have no jurisdiction.’
‘It might cause trouble with the primarch,’ said Arjac. ‘Blood spilt.’
‘There will be no trouble with Guilliman,’ declared Logan. By his sides the wolves sat up, alert to a change in his mood. The Great Wolf looked at Gytha, a smile on his lips. ‘Your bravery is incredible and your will is to be respected, as is your oath. Your wyrd has brought you to perform a great service for us. I can see you know that there is a price to pay for what you have done, so let it be a comfort to you that your people will be allowed to settle in Asaheim under our gaze, joining the kaerls of the Sky Warriors. You will be returned to the Scions for travel to the Imperial fleet and their judgement of your powers.’
‘I understand,’ she said, looking at the Great Wolf. Njal was impressed at how steady her gaze was. ‘Thank you for your welcome. I have done as I swore, and I shall not fear Hel.’
‘Indeed not.’ Logan flashed a look to Arjac, who turned and with a gesture escorted Gytha from the hall. When she was gone, the Great Wolf cracked his knuckles and directed his attention to Njal. ‘All the signs point in the same direction. Gottrok. I was right. I’ll need you to break the grip of the warlord-sorcerer.’
‘My rune-brothers will be equal to the task,’ said Njal. ‘I have another labour I must attend to.’
‘What task could be more important?’ demanded Logan. ‘I need my runethegn at my side.’
‘The woman’s visions have revealed to me gaps in my own sight. Recent events have clouded my mind and my eyes, and I must look again with fresh thought. I have become too detached, I think. This woman and her story remind me that I must be at one with our place. I am leaving the Aett to seek the spirits within the world, as the Wolf King once did when the galaxy was split by war.’
‘To what purpose?’ asked Ulrik.
‘I do not know yet. For our salvation, maybe. Or to see the doom we cannot avoid. Perhaps even to hear the call of the Wolf King from across the othersea.’ Njal turned and started down the hall, staff tapping on the ferrocrete. ‘Do not look for me. I will only return when it is the right time.’
‘You shall be missed on the Gottrok,’ Logan called out.
‘I think not,’ Njal said with a smile. He turned his head and met the Great Wolf’s eye. ‘You will be far too busy to miss me.’
Logan grinned and there was no weight on him; the centuries flowed from his face as he showed his fangs.
‘True,’ he said. ‘There are a lot of battles ahead before we reach the Wolftime.’
Gytha recognised the hall that connected to the sky wharf where Lieutenant Thaker’s ship had landed and knew that she was about to see her world for the last time. Arjac stopped and from a doorway another Sky Warrior appeared, slightly smaller but more scarred and aged.
‘I’m Ullr First-Shot,’ said the newcomer. ‘I’ll take you the rest of the way. I have business with Gaius.’
Arjac turned and left them for the last hundred paces to the mechanical gateway.
‘How do you know Gaius?’ she asked, to keep her mind from what lay behind the sealed portal. ‘Are you brothers-by-sword?’
‘We were,’ said Ullr. He walked slowly, matching his pace to hers as though equally reluctant to cover the short distance ahead. ‘There is ut-geld between us.’
‘He did not speak of you, but his geldfut weighs on him like a yoke.’ Ullr simply grunted in reply and Gytha felt that she needed to say more. ‘Without him we would have not fulfilled our wyrd to come here. I think it was his wyrd too, but he doesn’t accept that. He thinks he failed your test.’
‘The Test of Morkai?’
‘Yes, he thinks that because I healed him that he is not worthy of being your sword-kin.’
Ullr halted and gently held her arm to stop her too, turning her towards him.
‘He would have died, after slaying the Blackmane, yes?’
‘He thinks so. I don’t know for sure. The wound was barely bleeding. We fed him the wolf’s blood and bound his wounds, but he is a Sky Warrior and his body healed itself more than our bandages and salves.’
Ullr accepted this with a nod, gaze flicking away. ‘The other feats, the sea serpent and steering the ship through the storm, that’s true as well?’
‘I would think him a legend if I had not seen myself, and who knows what other feats before we found him?’
A glimmer of a smile moved the bearded face of the Sky Warrior. He set off again, far quicker in stride.
‘Good,’ he said.
Every step brought Gytha closer to the darkness after her visions. Another Sky Warrior gothi had come to her, Hrolf War-Tongue, sent by the Stormcaller. He had said that she was strong, the spirit of Fenris flowed in her if she allowed it. He had taught her a few words, verses to recite that would strengthen her mind, and shown her three runes of protection she could draw in the air or with her thoughts if she needed them. That was all he could give, he had said, but it would be her own strength that would see her pass the tests of the upplanders. If she could do that, she would live.
His lessons had fed her fear rather than allayed it, and with each stride she knew she could call out and ask for protection, or tell Ullr that she had changed her mind, she would not go with the upplanders.
But she could not face her family like that, just as Gaius had not been able to return to his aett. It would be a no-life of misery and doubt. She had brought him back to face his geldfut and now her wyrd had to be faced. If what the upplanders said was true, if she was a danger because of her gift, it was better to be away from here, from the Sky Warriors and her people.
‘Ready?’ asked Ullr, standing by the gate, his hand clasping a long lever beside it.
Gaius waited at the foot of the boarding ramp, a new squad of Tempestus Scions to guard him – those whose companions he had slain had returned to the Dawn of Fire. Even their famous discipline would have been tested by the handover. The dock doors opened with a flash of red lights, revealing two figures that tore his mood in opposite directions.
Gytha. She had saved his life but brought a different damnation upon herself. She smiled as she saw him and hurried forward.
Ullr. Also responsible for the twists in wyrd that had brought them all here, but with him came the taste of bitter memories. The pack leader stayed back, allowing Gaius and Gytha a moment of reunification.
Gaius looked at Gytha’s face and saw the doubt flow away as she came closer, replaced by the resolution he had seen so often in the past weeks. She was as stern as the stone of the mountains and as relentless as the waves that had brought them north. Fenrisian to the core. Everything that Ullr had said Gaius was not. She said nothing and Gaius found himself likewise without words on his breath. They shared a long look, recounting their exploits, their warnings, the weaknesses they had seen in each other. But it was strength that flowed into Gaius more than anything, pushing away regret. Her inspiring example, her utter implacability to do what had to be done. A gift he would keep for as long as he lived.
Seconds passed that felt like hours.
‘Stay strong,’ she whispered, and stepped past him, followed by the clump of boots as the Scions flanked her up the boarding ramp.
Gaius did not turn around to watch her embark. His gaze moved to Ullr, who had been prowling by the door. Now he came forward and Gaius met him halfway to the drop-ship, the two stopping a few yards apart.
This time Gaius knew what to say; he had rehearsed it many times in the hours since his return to the Aett.
‘This is yours,’ he said, handing over the dagger-fang pendant by its cord. ‘It’s tasted more blood since you last saw it and through it I owe you my life.’
‘No ur-gelt in the Aett,’ said Ullr, taking the talisman. ‘Seems you put it to good use so the favour is paid.’
Gaius nodded but said nothing.
‘I have something for you as well,’ said Ullr. ‘Hold out your wrist.’
Gaius had been expecting this moment, though had hoped they would not have taken him in chains. It was a statement more than a physical precaution. His word was worthless, so no oath he could swear would bind him. He held his hands out, ready for the manacles.
‘Just one,’ said Ullr, presenting a metal torque inscribed with a single repeated symbol, the Fenrisian runes for ‘oath’. The pack leader slid it over Gaius’ hand and squeezed it around his wrist.
‘I don’t understand,’ said the Primaris Marine, looking at the band of metal. ‘Is this some kind of badge of shame?’
‘No, it is a reminder,’ said Ullr. ‘A totem of your name.’
‘My name?’
‘Yes.’ Ullr stepped back. ‘Word has already spread of what you did for Gytha, how you bent wyrd to come back to us and conquered the elements doing it. I spoke with your pack and Krom, and we have a name for you.’
‘I still don’t understand.’
‘You are not Gaius,’ he said. ‘That is an old name, of a warrior that no longer exists, an upplander name. He was a fool that leapt from a gunship and is no more. A warrior the Imperials would see punished for doing what he was created to do. We thought “Kjarg” would suit, but you can choose another.’
Kjarg. Gaius knew the name from his book. The largest wolf of legend, said to have faced down Morkai herself.
‘And this?’ said Gaius, lifting his metal-bound wrist.
‘Iron-Oath. You said you would return to the Aett, and you did.’
A name for a Sky Warrior. A son of the Wolf King. A child of Fenris.
Chapter Twenty-seven
RETURN TO THE GOTTROK
FRESH BLOOD
CHOSEN OF THE SLAYER
In his centuries of fighting as a Wolf of Fenris, Ullr could think of no experience that compared to the exhilaration of a gunship assault. He stood fully armoured at the starboard hatch of the Thunderhawk as it swept low over the jagged surface of the ‘eastern’ sector of the Gottrok. The gunship slipped sideways to roar past the broken remains of a command tower that jutted at an angle from fractured ferrocrete and warped plasteel dock gates. In the hard vacuum it was difficult to get any sense of speed, but he knew that the grey-and-black mass was rushing past at three hundred miles an hour as the gunship slowed to attack velocity.
He leaned out, no gale of wind to tear him from his perch, looking ahead to the blocks of the engine housings four miles away, approaching fast. There were lights coming from within, proof that the orks’ settlement reached this far out.
Their orders were clear: seize the engines and protect the Iron Priests and tech-adepts while they reactivated the systems.
Beyond the dormant engines swirled the maw of the Everdusk, sickly yellow and purple at the moment, both incredibly distant and yet vivid enough that Ullr thought he might reach out and pull it down from the sky like a ribbon. It almost filled the view, tentacle-like fronds streaming out towards the vastness of the hulk that lay beyond the remains of the bulk hauler. The engines were perfectly placed to push the hulk’s trajectory away from the warp rift but time was short. Within a day, maybe less, the lip of the rift would engulf this ship and the chance would pass. Anybody aboard would experience the warp unshielded. This was the first and last opportunity to avoid that fate.
The thought made Ullr shudder. He was incapable of feeling mortal fear, but the prospect of spending his last moments in the mouth of Hel was something beyond physical dread.
‘Thirty seconds,’ announced Krom Dragongaze from inside the compartment. Ullr pushed himself back from the hatch.
The rest of the squad were there with Krom and Kraki, as well as twenty others from across the Firstborn of the Great Company. It was strange to see Dethar, Garnr, Forskad and the others with their new markings – they still bore the weregost of the Drakeslayers but in place of pack markings each now bore personal runes, as befitted Krom’s latest vaerangi. Ullr’s own shoulder plate bore a picture of a skull with a jagged red slash across its forehead. He was quite proud of it.
‘On your feet,’ Krom snapped, standing up. He gave a signal to one of the other Wolf Guard and the front ramp opened. It was strange to feel no wind, to hear no rush of air into the troop compartment.
At the same time, gunships opened fire on the strike zone.
Lascannon beams punched down through the hull of the bulk hauler, opening rents hit by machine-spirit-guided missiles just seconds later. Blossoms of silent fire and shredded metal ballooned outward to birth silver-and-grey dust clouds across the smear of the Everdusk. More fire followed, cannons and rockets pounding at the tortured hull, smashing through from deck to deck as the gunship wave pitched steeply for their final landing run. Plasma shots flared past, igniting escaping gas in a great ball of blue flame that disappeared as quickly as it birthed.
The thrust of retros made artificial gravity for a few seconds, but Ullr barely felt the pressure. He checked his bolter one last time and took position at the front of his squad.
‘Down in five,’ Sáthor told them from the cockpit.
Krom, always competitive, did not want to be second onto the hulk and sprinted forward. His Wolf Guard followed, leaping the last few yards after him, falling slowly before the Thunderhawk pushed away amid jets of fire and glittering dust-fog.
For a second, Ullr could see nothing, the particles obscuring both normal and auto-senses. He blindly ran forward, the silhouette of Krom appearing a few strides later as they burst from the debris cloud. The gaping wound in the hulk’s skin was just a few dozen yards ahead. Ullr glanced back to witness the full spectacle of the assault.
Beyond the Wolf Lord’s rising Thunderhawk two more were landing, spewing their occupants like blue-grey fire from a wyrm’s maw. The last of Krom’s Firstborn. Past them the massive shapes of the Overlords slammed down, their turrets panning for targets as they disgorged hundreds more battle-brothers, all clad in freshly painted Mark X armour. A thousand more were breaching from below with Ragnar Blackmane’s company. The rest, many thousands of them, were with the Great Wolf’s attack.
Beyond the gunships was the fleet, their engines like great cyan stars above the horizon of the hulk’s surface. Transports and warships in numbers the Chapter had not seen for an age.
Primaris Marines.
Unnumbered Sons of Russ no more.
Wolves of Fenris.
‘The lazy bastards haven’t tidied up, I see,’ said Daggerfist, proving the accuracy of his name by spearing his lightning claws through the face of an onrushing ork. He twisted wrist and body, slashing the claws out of the falling corpse and into the chest of another greenskin.
Arjac stepped forward, smashing his hammer into the chest of the next foe. Skor pounded past, taking down the next with his power fist. As keen as a blade edge cuts skin, the squad hewed into the mob of orks that had spilled from a side gate of the Gottrok stronghold.
This time the Great Wolf had struck directly for the ork fortress-city. Three Rune Priests accompanied Logan at the forefront of the attack, the glow of their ward-shields illuminating the armour of the surrounding vaerangi. Bjorn advanced with the other Dreadnoughts on the far side, Logan’s right, while Arjac’s koenigsgard charged on the left, supported by other squads moving in from the flanks and long-range fire from Primaris battle-brothers that had entered the battle from the upper decks.
This was a full attack, not a probing strike. It took barely two minutes to break through the walls and reach the gaping pit to the undercity. The orks counter-attacked as before, but now there were far more bolters, flamers and frag missiles to meet them, as well as the new guns of Cawl, wielded by the Primaris. Howling their battle cries, Fenrisian squads leapt forward boosted by their jump packs, dropping into the depths of the shaft to take the fight to the enemy.
Arjac fought without concern, rockets glancing from the face of his shield, his hammer smashing green bodies from his path with relentless ferocity. There was no need to look back – more battle-brothers followed the assault force, clearing out any surviving orks and protecting against encirclement.
A break in the melee as they came before the towering ork idol gave Arjac a few seconds to look at his lord. The Axe Morkai was a flash of light and blood red, weaving effortlessly around the Great Wolf. Fenrir and Tyrnak leapt and snarled around him, tearing out throats and ripping apart ork bodies.
