Blood of Asaheim

III

The Blighted





Chapter Seventeen



Gunnlaugur lowered Baldr’s torso onto the metal-slab operating table. Olgeir swung the Hunter’s legs over the far end, arranging them on the stainless steel surface with painstaking care.

A man in a white tabard hurried up to the table, his hands stuffed with a thick bundle of cutting equipment.

‘Leave him!’ snarled Gunnlaugur, twisting round and shoving the man away. The mortal fell heavily, upending a metal container full of empty syringe cases. ‘This does not concern you, human.’

His mood was black still, fuelled by shame. The long trek across the plains had been hellish – a limping, straggling race in the dark, every jarring step risking more damage to Baldr’s battered body. As the night had waned the lights had started to follow them: a few at first, then hundreds more, always a long way behind, but growing like a canker across the horizon.

He’d longed to turn then, to bare his fangs and charge straight back into the pursuing horde, losing himself in the pure exertion that would help him forget.

Instead he’d set his jaw and staggered onwards, his arms hooked under Baldr’s shoulders, the dead weight of his battle-brother dragging him down.

None of them had spoken during the journey back. Olgeir’s harsh breathing had become more and more strained as he’d struggled to haul Baldr’s bulk on top of sigrún’s. Váltyr had had his own hands full keeping Hafloí on his feet. Between them they had cut a sorry sight, limping back to the safety of the city with the pursuing stench of the enemy curling at their heels.

Now, back in the Halicon, they were surrounded by fussing, useless mortals, stumbling over one another to offer their fussing, useless assistance.

The apothecarion was cramped and cluttered with equipment. It had six operating bays, each one designed for human dimensions, all reinforced for power-armoured occupants thanks to the Sisters’ presence. Baldr lay on one, Hafloí on another. Pristine white tiles reflected the glare of overhead lumen-bars, pitilessly picking out the damage on their battle-plate. Hafloí’s armour was the colour of bleached bone. Baldr’s was mottled and streaked with dark green growths, as if lichen had sprouted from the joints.

‘Get out,’ ordered Olgeir, gesturing to the remaining mortal staff. All four of them, including the functionary Gunnlaugur had knocked to the floor, scurried to comply. The apothecarion was then occupied solely by Wolves – Gunnlaugur, Váltyr, Olgeir and the two invalids.

Váltyr twisted his helm off, hurried over to Baldr and began to work. He was no Priest, but of all of them he had the deftest hands and greatest knowledge of the Apothecary’s art.

‘He lives still,’ he said, gently prizing the vacuum seals from Baldr’s helm and unlocking the catches. ‘I can feel his primary heart beating.’

Gunnlaugur started to prowl back and forth, unable to stay still. He felt like a caged bear, bursting with energy but unable to do anything. He removed his helm and shut off the comm-line to de Chatelaine. He yearned for answers, but knew asking for them would be futile: Váltyr needed to work at his own pace, undisturbed and unhindered.

Olgeir remained unmoving, his huge arms crossed, brooding. For once he had no words of encouragement to offer.

Hafloí, left alone on the next slab along, pushed himself up onto his elbows and peered over at Váltyr’s work. The whelp was still weak but had already regained some measure of control. He could speak again, and his strength was gradually returning.

Gunnlaugur no longer worried for him; Baldr was the concern.

‘This… stuff is resistant,’ said Váltyr, grimacing as he tried to clear the residue of slime from Baldr’s facemask. ‘It has some life of its own. It’s got under the seals somehow, I think he’s absorbed a lot of it.’

He withdrew a steel cylinder from his armour, unclasped it and took out a long scalpel. Working quickly, he cleared the algae-like filth from the gorget-join of Baldr’s armour, where the torso met the helm. The lumpy substance clung to the armour, stringing out viscously against the blade edge.

‘He was not himself,’ croaked Hafloí, still sounding disorientated. ‘He was screaming, Gunnlaugur. Did you not hear it?’

Gunnlaugur said nothing. He remembered how Baldr had been during their last conversation. He remembered how he had been on the warp-transit.

Should I have probed more, asked more questions?

If so, it was too late now. The knot of guilt in his stomach tightened.

So many errors, one after the other.

‘I’m removing the helm now,’ said Váltyr. ‘We can’t leave it on him, the airways are all but clogged fast.’

Gunnlaugur stopped pacing. He came over to the slab and rested his knuckles on the metal. Olgeir stayed where he was, silent, watching intently.

Váltyr pulled gently, releasing the helm’s locking mechanism. It came free with a dry hiss of escaping air.

Gunnlaugur felt his hearts sink. Baldr’s face was the colour of his armour – pearl-grey, sinking to black under his open eyes. His mouth was open, revealing a dark tongue lolling loosely amid gaping fangs. His breath was sulphurous, making Váltyr gag as he withdrew the diseased helm. Sores had broken out around Baldr’s white lips, tight with pus and ringed with angry red inflammation. His cheeks had sunken, and his clammy skin had a greenish tinge to it.

‘That is not the Red Dream,’ said Olgeir slowly.

Váltyr said nothing. He looked even paler than usual.

Gunnlaugur sniffed, flaring his nostrils and drawing in the noxious stench. Corruption was generally easy to detect – it was over-sweet, layered with the subtle flavour of the warp.

He couldn’t be sure. Baldr looked much like any of the plague-bearers he’d killed in the city. That thought alone made his stomach tighten.

‘Speak to me, Váltyr,’ he said.

The blademaster ran his hands through his hair, smoothing down the sweat-matted mass of grey. His movements were stiff; like all of them, he was tired.

‘I don’t know,’ he said eventually. He looked up at Gunnlaugur. ‘If he were mortal, then… But he’s one of us. I don’t know.’

Olgeir growled in frustration and uncrossed his arms, balling his great fists impotently.

‘Skítja,’ he snarled. ‘I’ve seen filth like that on men I’ve killed, and–’

Hafloí tried to get to his feet, and failed.

‘He was screaming, Gunnlaugur. Something was wrong. He was–’

‘You don’t know–’ started Olgeir.

‘Enough.’

Gunnlaugur’s stare swept around the apothecarion, cutting them short. Silence fell, broken only by the soft workings of the chamber’s equipment.

Gunnlaugur’s chin fell to his chest. It was hard to clear his head, to think what to do – emotions boiled away within him, still too raw to dismiss.

‘No one enters this room but us,’ he said at last, his voice deliberate. ‘One of us remains here at all times, watching over him. We say nothing of this to the canoness. As far as she is concerned, we are tending to a fallen brother’s wounds.’

He looked up, fixing each of them in the eye.

‘For now, we do nothing. We watch, we wait, we hope. But if he is taken by plague, if his spirit turns…’

He hesitated, then drew in a deep breath.

‘If he turns, I will do it. I began this, I will end it. That is my judgement.’

He continued to stare at the others, as if daring them to disagree. Hafloí was too weak to object; he seemed to go limp again, resting his head on the slab. Váltyr looked gaunt, but nodded.

Olgeir held out the longest. His scarred, ugly face remained twisted by unhappiness. He looked down at Baldr’s diseased features, then up at Gunnlaugur, then back to Baldr again.

Then even his mighty shoulders sagged. He nodded resignedly.

Then the door to the chamber slammed open. They snapped round as one. Váltyr drew holdbítr; Gunnlaugur seized the hilt of his hammer.

Ingvar halted where he was, framed in the doorway, shocked by the reaction.

‘What’s this?’ he asked.

‘Close the door,’ hissed Gunnlaugur. Váltyr sheathed his blade.

Olgeir pushed past Ingvar and Jorundur, shutting them in. Only then did Ingvar catch sight of Baldr’s body on the slab.

‘Allfather,’ he swore, rushing over to the table.

‘Don’t touch him!’ warned Váltyr.

Gunnlaugur interposed himself between Ingvar and Baldr’s body, grasping the Gyrfalkon’s forearm.

‘He is in the Red Dream, brother. Be careful.’

Ingvar’s eyes went wide as he saw Baldr’s face.

‘That is no Red Dream,’ he said. ‘What happened?’

Gunnlaugur maintained his grip.

‘They had a sorcerer,’ he said. ‘Baldr bore the brunt. He may yet recover.’

Ingvar angrily shook off Gunnlaugur’s grasp and shoved his way to the slab-edge.

‘Recover? Blood of Russ, he’s infected!’

‘We don’t know that,’ said Váltyr.

Ingvar rounded on him.

‘What more evidence do you need, blademaster?’ he asked, his voice wild. ‘Look at him!’

‘We will wait,’ said Gunnlaugur, watching Ingvar carefully. ‘He may yet–’

‘What did you do?’ demanded Ingvar. ‘Why was he taking on a witch unaided?’

Gunnlaugur suppressed a flare of anger. Ingvar’s face was lurid with accusation; it provoked him, but he knew the cause of that.

‘Watch yourself,’ he warned, pinning the words on a low, growling note. ‘You weren’t there.’

Ingvar laughed out loud, though the sound was bitter.

‘No, I was not! You saw to that. Why was that, vaerangi? What did you fear from my being there? That I’d show you up again?’

The room burst into movement. Olgeir came over, hands spread, trying to calm the others. Váltyr muttered something inaudible, glaring darkly at Ingvar. Hafloí tried to speak, but his dry throat betrayed him.

Gunnlaugur rounded on Ingvar, keeping his temper in check by a hair’s breadth. He could feel his heart-rate picking up, his blood pumping angrily.

‘Say no more, Gyrfalkon,’ he ordered, glowering menacingly. ‘If you value your hide, say no more.’

‘Not this time!’ cried Ingvar, eyes staring. ‘I held my peace before, I walked away twice – not again.’

He shrugged off Olgeir’s restraining hands and squared up to Gunnlaugur.

‘You knew there was something hidden in that column,’ he said, his eyes blazing. ‘You knew it! But still you went after it, hungry for the glory you needed.’

Gunnlaugur felt his restraint slipping. Ingvar’s mood was febrile and his words pricked at him like dagger-tips.

‘Damn you to Hel, Skullhewer,’ Ingvar raged. ‘You killed him. Are you proud now? Has that sated your need for bloodshed?’

Ingvar swung in close, so close that the spittle from his invective flew into Gunnlaugur’s eyes.

‘You killed him, you fool.’

The dam broke.

Gunnlaugur launched himself at Ingvar, barely even feeling Váltyr’s futile attempt to rein him in, throwing himself forwards and butting him viciously on the forehead.

‘You want this?’ Gunnlaugur roared, throwing a punch with his left fist. It connected brutally, hurling Ingvar back and sending him reeling. ‘You want me to destroy you?’

Ingvar crashed into a trolley full of medical instruments. They spun and clattered to the floor as he careered on backwards. Gunnlaugur went after him, fists swinging, aiming for the head.

Ingvar pushed back, shoulders down and arms wide, crunching into Gunnlaugur’s waist. Ingvar wrapped his arms around him and heaved, arresting the Wolf Guard’s momentum and nearly upending him.

They rocked back, locked together, smashing machines and sending them skidding into the walls. Gunnlaugur twisted out of Ingvar’s embrace and hurled him aside. Ingvar slammed heavily into the apothecarion’s far wall, cracking the stone and spitting blood onto the floor.

Before Gunnlaugur could close, Ingvar came back at him, fists whirling. The two of them traded a flurry of bludgeoning punches, each one landing with the force of jackhammers. Ingvar was quicker, cracking two ferocious blows against Gunnlaugur’s right side, but Gunnlaugur fought as if possessed, his eyes blazing with a dark, enraged energy.

He crunched a deadening strike into Ingvar’s face, hurling him back against the wall. Then he piled in, lunging madly, roaring curses as his arms flailed.

By the time Olgeir and Váltyr finally dragged them apart both of them were panting hard and covered in blood. Gunnlaugur’s forehead carried a long gash and streaks of deep red coursed freely over his beard. Ingvar’s face was swollen and purple, his lips split and one eye half closed.

For a moment they both stared at one another, breathing heavily. Gunnlaugur felt his whole system blazing with energy, urging him back into the fight. The veins at his throat throbbed. His fists were still tight-clenched, aching to fly again.

Hafloí’s jaw hung open, as if he couldn’t quite believe what he’d seen. Váltyr looked weary of it all; Olgeir concerned.

Only Jorundur was unmoved. His sour laughter broke the heavy silence.

‘It happens at last,’ he said dryly. ‘Better now than when the walls are on fire. So is that it? Can we move on now?’

No one had any appetite to answer. Gunnlaugur remained poised, his fists raised and blood pumping. The discharge of fury had felt good while it had lasted. It had been building up for days, poisoning him, polluting everything he did.

Ingvar glared back at him. He’d taken a battering; brawling had never been his strong point. He was still angry, but something else lurked behind those stony features.

Shame, perhaps. Or maybe sorrow.

He glanced momentarily towards Baldr’s unmoving body, and something seemed to snap within him.

His shoulders slumped.

‘Brother, I–’ he started.

‘Say nothing,’ ordered Gunnlaugur, still primed, still snarling. He pulled himself to his full height, ignoring the slowing trickle of blood that ran down his cheek. ‘Say nothing.’

He turned his gaze to Hafloí, who still wore an expression of shock. No doubt he was used to Blood Claws settling things in such a way, but Hunters were another matter.

‘Can you walk yet, whelp?’ demanded Gunnlaugur.

Hafloí seemed briefly uncertain, but nodded.

‘Good,’ said Gunnlaugur. His senses were returning. He felt clarified. ‘The canoness will be wondering where we are. We need to go.’ He shot a savage look at Ingvar. ‘We’ll settle this later. For now, survival.’

The pack looked back at him. They listened. In a strange, primitive kind of way he’d established his authority again.

Is that the best we can do? he thought to himself, not knowing how he would answer that, if pushed. Is that really – still – how these things are done?

‘Stay with Fjolnir,’ Gunnlaugur ordered Ingvar. ‘Let your blood cool while you’re in here. He needs guarding, and I’ll not have the Sisters discovering this.’

Ingvar nodded curtly, his expression torn between residual belligerence and the sullen acceptance of defeat.

Then Gunnlaugur swung round to the rest of the pack. The flow of blood raging around his system banished the weariness of the night’s work. There would be time to reflect on his choices later; for now, battle called again.

‘The rest of you, with me,’ he said, reaching for his helm. ‘We have a war to fight.’

With the departure of the pack, the apothecarion fell into near-silence. Baldr remained prone on the slab, his face grey and pallid. Unseeing eyes stared up at the ceiling, their pupils shrunk into mere specks of black. Even the golden irises, normally so vivid and reflective, looked washed out.

After a while Ingvar came over to stand beside him. His own face, a criss-crossed mass of bruises and lacerations, scarcely looked healthier than Baldr’s. He stooped, resting his hands on the edge of the table and bringing his head down closer to his brother’s.

Grief marked his severe features. He felt suddenly older, as if the cares of centuries had only then chosen to etch themselves on his genhanced flesh.

‘Brother,’ he whispered, as if speaking to him could bring Baldr out of the grip of his deep coma.

If he died there, it would be a terrible death, one every Son of Russ would shudder to hear of. No glorious last charge, no defiant stand, just slow capitulation to corrupting poisons within the walls of a mortal fortress.

Ingvar’s body ached. He could feel the blood on his skin thickening into scabs. Already the brawl seemed like a trivial, stupid thing; something born out of grief and guilt, something to be put aside and forgotten.

Some things, though, were more important.

‘Brother,’ said Ingvar again. He reached for the soul-ward at his breast. Despite Gunnlaugur’s furious assault it remained intact, as did the Onyx skull beside it. ‘You should not have given me this. It was yours, and I should not have taken it back.’ His eyes lowered. ‘But it was freely given. Is that not the way of our kind? To seal blood-debts with trinkets? I thought it was a way back for me. That was why I took it.’

Ingvar’s eyes flickered out of focus, their gaze uncertain.

‘I believed I could come back. I truly believed it. I wear them both now – my two lives, intertwined, interdependent. I thought I could keep them in balance.’

He looked around him then, as if suddenly nervous others might be listening. The apothecarion gazed back at him, deserted, echoing with antiseptic emptiness. Baldr’s blank expression registered no change.

Ingvar lowered his head further, keeping his voice to little more than a hiss.

‘I have to tell someone,’ he said. ‘If we are both to die here, far from the ice and unmourned, I have to tell someone. You will not remember. No vow is broken.’

Baldr’s face was unmoved, locked in the rigid grip of paralysis. His sickly features seemed carved from granite.

Ingvar paused, poised over what felt like a precipice. Heartbeats passed; his own strongly, Baldr’s almost undetectably.

‘I no longer believe, brother.’

Ingvar’s voice almost broke as he spoke those words. His hands gripped the side of the table. Horror filled his heart, horror that he had spoken such a thing out loud. Until then he had never done so, not even in the privacy of his cell’s solitude. The psycho-conditioning of the Adeptus Astartes was so ferociously strong.

But not unbreakable.

‘I no longer believe,’ he said again, more firmly.

It was less terrible the second time. Like unlocking a door into a hidden chamber of forbidden secrets, more thoughts spilled out, tumbling after the first one. He had broken the taboo; the totem had been cracked. After that, anything was possible.

‘We were seven,’ he said, no longer staring at Baldr’s static features but seeing things far away. ‘Just like Járnhamar, we were seven. Callimachus of the Ultramarines, Leonides of the Blood Angels, Jocelyn of the Dark Angels, Prion of the Angels Puissant, Xatasch of the Iron Shades, Vhorr of the Executioners, Ingvar of the Space Wolves. We were Onyx Squad.’

Ingvar smiled softly.

‘We did not call ourselves that. Halliafiore gave us the name. He gave us our missions. He gave us plenty.’

As he spoke he heard the faint noises of the apothecarion machinery working around them – the hum of rebreathers, the drip of saline valves, the slow click of medicae-cogitators. The chamber itself seemed to be listening to him.

‘For a while I held on to the past. I kept to the old ways, I walked the path of the ice. I learned to doubt slowly. Callimachus was patient. I think he liked me, for all the pain I gave him. He believed I would see the virtue of the Codex if I could be shown how it worked. He was right about that, at least at first. It was painful to see myths unravelled. Do you remember when we used to laugh at other Chapters? Of course, we were different. Nothing so hard, so cold, as the soul forged on Fenris.’

Ingvar bowed his head lower. He stared at his own clenched fists.

‘To do what we do, we have to believe. We have to believe there is no alternative, that our destiny is sacred, set apart from the start. That is what we are told in every saga and forced to learn by every Priest.’

Ingvar reached up for the soul-ward again, clutching it tight and straining the chain around his neck.

‘But what if the myths are broken?’

He remembered Bajola’s contempt.

Myths.

‘I have seen things, brother. I have seen star systems burning. I have heard the screaming of a billion souls. All of them, screaming. We couldn’t shut it out. I still hear them.’

Ingvar’s right hand started to shake. He let go of the soul-ward and clamped his gauntlet firmly against the steel.

‘There are weapons, Fjolnir, things you would not believe. There are devices so powerful that even to speak of them outside the Deathwatch is to earn execution. Only Callimachus could have been trusted to give the order to use them. He would have done his duty even if it meant tearing out the heart of his own primarch. Could I have done it? I do not know. But he did. He gave the order, and we used those things on our own kind, burning them into atoms so that the Great Devourer would not be able to feed on their corpses.’

The cogitators ticked gently. Baldr’s chest rose and fell. The rebreathers hummed.

‘Then we had to watch it come. The Shadow, so vast it might have been another star system in motion. We had to watch it move over us, blind to our presence, day after day, huddled away from its wrath, watching its living ships ply across the void, watching them crawl into the warm heart at the centre of the galaxy.’

Ingvar shuddered at the memory.

‘Endless,’ he whispered in horror. ‘Endless.’

Baldr’s ashen face showed no tremor of recognition. He lay limply, locked in a sealed world of pain.

‘After that, after seeing that, I no longer believe,’ Ingvar said again. The third time, it was almost easy.

He straightened slowly, pushing himself away from the slab.

‘If there is to be victory, brother, I cannot see it. I cannot remember how it feels to keep my blade in hand, glorying in my service to the Allfather. All I see is the living ships. All I see is what they made us do.’

His voice cracked again.

‘I thought I could come back. I thought I would remember again once I was among you. I do not blame Gunnlaugur for pushing back, he is as lost as the rest of us. I blame myself for hoping.’

He smiled again, a pinched, wistful narrowing of the lips.

‘And I blame you, Baldr. You fed my hope. As long as you remained as you were in my mind’s eye – so calm, clear, so noble – coming back did not seem impossible. But it is. I understand that now.’

He wiped a thickening trail of blood from his upper lip. He could feel his broken skin beginning to swell.

‘You must fight this. You still have a place here. If I fight for anything now, it is for that. I would see you restored before the end.’

Ingvar leaned down again for a final time, bringing his lips close to Baldr’s ear, ignoring the stink of putrescence.

‘Remember how you were. Remember the way you smoothed the way between quarrelling brothers. You always commanded your animal spirits so much better than we did. Remember that strength. Do not die here, brother. Remember yourself.’

Baldr made no response. His open eyes stared sightlessly at the ceiling, their lustre gone.

‘Remember yourself,’ he said again, his voice a quiet urging. ‘I no longer believe, but you must do. For the sake of what is left of this pack, you must believe.’

As Ingvar spoke, he felt the first spike of tears at the corner of his eyes.

It might have been fatigue. It might have been shame, or frustration. It was weak, out of character; but then so much of what he had done had been out of character, and for as long as he could remember.

Ingvar bowed his head.

‘For the sake of us all,’ he said, his voice soft and pressing. ‘Come back.’