Blood of Asaheim

Chapter Four



When the pack convened it was in their old staging chamber, the one they always used before leaving Fenris. The place was in the Jarlheim, tucked away behind a shaft that ran clear down into the Hould, linked to the rest of the Aett only by a single-span bridge of cold stone.

Gunnlaugur had found it, years ago. No one knew who had carved it out, nor what uses it had been put to over the thousands of years since the fortress had been delved. That wasn’t unusual. Millennia of constant war meant that the Fang was usually under-populated, and whole sections of it had collapsed, or were flooded, or were simply unexplored. Every so often, squads of kaerls would undertake expeditions into far-flung sections, hoping to open them up to habitation. Sometimes they would succeed and new chambers would be cleaned out and put to use. Sometimes they would return bearing artefacts from the forgotten past that none but the Wolf Priests knew what to make of. Sometimes they never came back. That too was not unusual; the Fang was not, and never had been, a safe place.

Gunnlaugur had never disclosed how he’d found the chamber. It was a long way from where he had his lodgings, and a long way from where the majority of Blackmane’s Great Company made their base. The room was old, that was clear. Stone carvings on the walls had been worn smooth by the whining wind and cracked by frost. Runes of a strange design were still visible near the arched ceiling, hacked into the granite by long-dead hands. More than fifty warriors could have been housed there comfortably, though why such a hall had been delved so far from the major transit shafts of the Jarlheim was a mystery.

A carcass lay along one wall: the skeletal remains of a sea-going drekkar. The longship’s planks had ossified generations ago, leaving a crusted, stony shell behind like the ribcage of a slain seawyrm. The metal drakk’s-head prow had survived somehow. It reared up into the roof of the chamber atop a sweep of smooth hull planks, gazing with empty eyes into the gloom.

It must have been a daunting task to have carried such a ship so high, right up into the heart of the old mountain, bracing it against the frost-sear wind and powdery dunes of snow. Perhaps the drekkar had been dismantled at sea level and reassembled inside the chamber, though Gunnlaugur preferred to believe that it hadn’t. He liked to imagine a torchlit procession of Sky Warriors hauling the ship up from the turbulent, iron-grey seas, dragging it into the high places and towing it on rollers into the heart of the Fang. There were tunnels big enough to accommodate it and hands strong enough to lift it.

That still left the question of why they had done it, and for that he had no answer. Perhaps it had been the whim of a timeworn Jarl, sentimental for his old life out on the open sea. Perhaps it had been brought there by the Priests as part of some obscure rite to placate the soul of the mountain. Perhaps it had lain there, slowly crumbling, since Russ had walked among them.

Whatever the truth of its origins, the drekkar and its strange tomb had fallen out of memory in the centuries since its entombment. Like so much else on Fenris, the place had become a relic, a half-lost fragment of a rapidly disappearing past. The Allfather alone knew how long it had been there, slowly mouldering and freezing and wasting away.

Now the ship’s tomb was Járnhamar’s place, the chamber they came to before embarking out into the sea of stars. It had come to seem appropriate, to make their final vows to one another under the shadow of the drakk’s head.

Hjortur had always enjoyed the conceit. He’d liked to leap up onto the fragile decking, crushing it beneath his boots, roaring out old sea-commands in a tribal dialect none of the others could understand. They’d laughed at that, watching him flail around amid snapping spars and planks and roaring impenetrable orders.

Gunnlaugur smiled at the memory. Hjortur had been good for a laugh. He’d led the pack with blood on his claws and a grin on his scarred face. He’d been a proper Son of Russ, that one, a bloody-minded hound, a reckless, startling monster of unrestraint.

‘Come on, then,’ said Váltyr, impatiently. ‘Let’s hear it.’

Gunnlaugur didn’t reply at once. He took a moment to study the pack before him, the remnants of one that had once been larger, the broken heart of what had fallen to his command.

He saw Váltyr looking back at him, with his pale, querulous face and penetrating gaze. He saw the pent-up energy in the blademaster’s limbs, the locked-in power that could explode without warning into a nerve-blinding whirl of steel. He saw the calculation, the coolly competent analytical mind, the strategeo’s sharpness. He saw the edge of insecurity, too, and saw the neediness.

His eyes moved to Olgeir. The big warrior stood at ease, his unruly beard spilling over his armour, his scarred cheeks creased in readiness for a toothy smile or saliva-flecked bellow. Gunnlaugur saw the wholeheartedness in that one, the generosity, the commitment. Olgeir was the rock, the foundation; he could never lead, but he could guide, and he could encourage. The Heavy-handed wanted for nothing more than he had. That was a weakness, a lack of ambition, but it made him invaluable.

Next was Jorundur, the Old Dog. He was sidelong, sideways, twisted and warped by age. Gunnlaugur saw the marrow-deep weariness in him, the pride, the cynic’s lip-curl. But he could fly. By Russ, he could fly. And for all his sourness, the Old Dog had seen plenty and done plenty. He knew where many bodies were buried, and what paths had been trodden to take them there, and where the shovels had been hidden and in what forges they had been made. When Morkai came for him at last, a thousand secrets would sink into the soil forever.

In Jorundur’s shadow was Baldr. That one was an enigma. So pleasant, so easy, so amenable. His voice was soft when he read the sagas, recounting old songs with perfect, plangent clarity. No one hated Baldr Fjolnir. He went through life like a sleek fish gliding through reeds, effortlessly, slipping into the path of least resistance. And yet, when he killed, there was something else there, something guarded, something clenched, something buried. Yes, Baldr was an enigma.

And then there was the new blood, the whelp, the stripling: Hafloí, standing apart, still strung between nervy bravado and sullen withdrawal. His red hair caught the firelight, stained vivid. He looked painfully young, as raw as a gash, lodged awkwardly out of his element. Gunnlaugur liked what he saw. Hafloí would learn. His fangs would grow, his pelt would grey, his spikiness would soften. Until then he would be good for them all. They would remember what it had been like when they had been the same way, stuffed smart with puerile bellicosity, vigour, petulance, enchantment – and with the galaxy laid supine before them, begging for glorious conquest.

‘So?’ pressed Váltyr.

Gunnlaugur looked back at the blademaster.

‘Not yet, sverdhjera,’ he said. ‘We are not all here.’

‘What?’ blurted Hafloí, speaking out of turn, not yet knowing his place in the order. ‘There’s more of you?’

Gunnlaugur looked up, over the heads of the assembled pack, back towards the low, arched entrance to the chamber. As his eyes fell on the armoured figure standing beneath it a brief tremor ran through him.

Fifty-seven years. Still, I would recognise that outline anywhere.

‘Just one more,’ Gunnlaugur said, his voice soft.

Baldr was the next to sense it. He whirled round, his eyes alive with joy.

‘Gyrfalkon!’ he cried, rushing over to greet the man under the arch.

Olgeir was next, shoving Baldr aside to envelop Ingvar in a crushing, armour-denting hug, dragging him into the chamber like a hunter hauling his prize.

Ingvar staggered out of Olgeir’s rib-cracking embrace, laughing, emerging into the firelight only for the crowd of bodies to obscure him again. Váltyr approached and gave him an awkward handclasp. Baldr clapped him on the back. Hafloí hung back.

Amid all of that Gunnlaugur caught a clear glimpse of Ingvar’s eye, just for an instant. It looked a little harder, a little greyer. Otherwise it was the same, the face he had spent mortal lifetimes in the company of.

‘Enough,’ he said eventually, stilling the noise and movement. Despite himself, a broad smile creased across his face.

Now that I see you, despite everything, it feels good to have you back.

Gunnlaugur walked up to Ingvar. For a moment, the two of them stared at one another, caught in the awkwardness of the moment. Gunnlaugur was the bigger, the broader, his armour more decorated with hunt-trophies and his pelts richer and more numerous. For all that, there was little to choose between them. There never had been.

‘Brother,’ said Gunnlaugur.

Ingvar inclined his head cautiously. ‘Vaerangi,’ he replied.

No one else spoke. Baldr stopped smiling and looked warily between the two of them. Váltyr watched carefully. The air in the chamber seemed to thicken, like the humid precursor to a fire-summer storm.

Then Gunnlaugur moved. He flung his arms wide, grabbing Ingvar and pulling him into a rough embrace.

‘We have not been whole without you,’ he said, low enough so that only Ingvar heard him.

Ingvar returned the embrace, and the ceramite of his armour grated against that of Gunnlaugur. His gesture spoke of relief, of appreciation.

‘That is good, brother,’ he said. ‘I yearned to hear it.’

Then he freed himself, stood back and regarded the pack before him. The hard lines of his face softened a little.

‘But who is this?’ he asked, smiling. ‘We take on children now?’

Gunnlaugur gestured for Hafloí to approach.

‘Careful,’ he warned. ‘The whelp has claws. Hafloí, this is the Gyrfalkon. He once served with us. Now he’s back.’

Hafloí bowed stiffly. ‘I know the name,’ he said. ‘You bear dausvjer.’

Ingvar inclined his head. ‘So I do.’

‘There is a wyrd on that blade.’

‘That’s what they say.’

‘Then it should not have left the Aett.’

Olgeir took a step fowards, ready to cuff Hafloí. Jorundur chuckled darkly as Ingvar raised his hand, halting Olgeir.

‘Perhaps,’ Ingvar said, fixing Hafloí with dead eyes. ‘But the sword goes where I go. If you have an issue with that, you may take it up with us both.’

Gunnlaugur rolled his eyes. ‘Blood of Russ,’ he said. ‘Just introduced and already spoiling for a fight.’ He shoved Hafloí away from Ingvar, sending the Blood Claw staggering. ‘You’ll fit in fine.’

Then he turned to the rest of the pack. Seven-strong, back to something like combat strength. They looked to him expectantly.

‘We are complete,’ said Gunnlaugur. ‘Just as we should be. Now listen: here’s what we’re going to do.’

Ingvar tried to concentrate on what Gunnlaugur was saying. He felt his palms grow slick under the lining of his gauntlets. Hearing the old voices again, the old smells, it had hit him harder than he’d expected.

They hadn’t judged him. None of them had the reproach in their eyes that he’d feared. Well, Váltyr perhaps, but he had always been a cold one.

It was hard not to watch them sidelong, to observe the way they related to one another, to examine them like he’d seen biologis adepts examine xenos corpses on dissection tables. They were relaxed in one another’s presence, just as he had been once. Onyx Squad, for all its combined killing power, had always felt like an artificial creation. Járnhamar had once been home; for those who had remained, it still was.

Ingvar’s wandering gaze flickered up to the head of the drekkar. That eyeless stare was as familiar to him as everything else. He remembered it watching over them before each mission, gazing coldly into empty space as objectives were outlined and timescales plotted. The drakk’s face had never been anything other than impassive to him then. Now, on his return, it seemed almost benevolent.

In the past it had been Hjortur’s voice that had rung around the chamber. Hearing Gunnlaugur’s growly tones in its place was odd. For a while, it felt like a violation. Only later, as Ingvar watched the others take it in their stride, did it come to seem natural.

Gunnlaugur spoke with a coarse, blunt authority. He had always been confident, but now it was different. A warrior spoke one way when his own life was at stake; when he had the whole pack to think about, his tone changed.

It suits you, brother, thought Ingvar. You have grown.

‘Ras Shakeh,’ said Gunnlaugur, flicking the switch on a palm-held device and sending a flame-red hololith spinning up into the air before him. ‘Shrineworld of the Ras subsector. It is under the Ecclesiarchy with distant support from the Adulators Chapter, though our brothers have declared themselves no longer able to contribute to its defence. They are stretched, I am told, to breaking point.’

Jorundur snorted, shook his head, but said nothing.

‘Before the Ras worlds were taken under the control of the Imperial Cult,’ continued Gunnlaugur, ‘it is said that an arrangement once existed between them and Fenris.’

‘By who?’ said Váltyr.

‘By Blackmane,’ replied Gunnlaugur, tersely. ‘And by Ulrik, and by Grimnar, and whoever else remembers what in Hel we were doing five thousand years ago.’

Gunnlaugur’s tone gave away what he thought of what he was being asked to convey. Ingvar felt his spirits sag. After the euphoria of his return, it looked like the task ahead of them would not be glory-filled. It sounded perilously close to routine garrison work.

‘This is not garrison work,’ said Gunnlaugur. ‘It is the beginning of an offensive, a multi-front assault into abandoned space covering three subsectors. We are to be part of it.’

Olgeir nodded in approval. ‘Good,’ he grunted.

Baldr looked thoughtful. ‘Under whose command?’ he asked.

‘A warmaster will be appointed,’ said Gunnlaugur. ‘Don’t get carried away: this will be years in the making. We are the advance wave, sent to secure worlds prior to major troop movements. For a while it’ll be just us.’

Jorundur chuckled. ‘That’s not garrison work?’

‘We won’t be sitting on our arses,’ Gunnlaugur insisted. ‘There’s enemy activity on the fringes, more coordinated then normal, more frequent. We’ll have hunting to do.’

Baldr’s expression hadn’t changed. He looked pensive.

Ingvar could sense the wariness in the room from the others. They weren’t stupid. They could tell when they were being shunted off to a nothing-mission.

‘Who governs this world?’ asked Baldr.

‘The Adepta Sororitas,’ said Gunnlaugur. ‘The Order of the Wounded Heart.’

The silence of the chamber was broken by a collection of low growls, noisy expectorations and bitter-edged laughs.

‘Enough,’ snapped Gunnlaugur. ‘They’re servants of the Allfather.’

‘They’re servants of the Inquisition,’ said Jorundur.

‘They’re crazy,’ grumbled Olgeir. ‘With no love for us.’

Baldr smiled softly.

‘When did you last care about being loved, great one?’

Olgeir grinned, and patted the battered casing of sigrún.

‘When I was given this,’ he said. ‘Not since.’

‘The Sisters,’ said Váltyr, acidly. ‘They know it’s us that’s coming? They asked for us?’

Gunnlaugur sighed. ‘They’d take anyone. They’re hard-pressed, just like everyone else. But, yes, they know it’s us. Grimnar’s sent word to the canoness. Get used to it, brothers. This is who we’ll be fighting with.’

Jorundur shook his shaggy head. ‘I can cope with Sisters,’ he said. ‘I can’t cope with garrison work.’

‘Hel’s teeth,’ hissed Gunnlaugur. ‘How many times? This is a combat mission.’

‘Against what?’

‘As yet unidentified. Possible cult incursions. We’re waiting for more detail.’

Jorundur spat on the ground.

‘Sounds terrifying,’ he said.

Gunnlaugur looked distastefully down at the pool of spittle on the stone.

‘We leave in less than thirty-six hours,’ he said. ‘Use the time well. Ensure your armour has been sanctified by the Priests and look to your weapons. Take the transit-time to reach combat fitness. That is all.’

An awkward silence followed. Ingvar remembered how it had been in the past, when Hjortur’s exhortations would have filled the chamber with echoing roars, and they would have raised their weapons as one, slavering for the coming blood-terror.

It was muted this time. Olgeir did his best, with a low, rattling snarl, but no one else took it up.

Gunnlaugur didn’t try to summon up more enthusiasm. His customary belligerence had a darker edge to it, something that Ingvar didn’t remember seeing in him before. As he turned to leave the chamber, his eye caught Ingvar’s.

‘Not what you’re used to,’ he said. ‘Work like this.’

It wasn’t.

I have seen hive-fleets block out the light of nebulae. I have seen the spawning fields where orks are born. I have seen metal legions rise silently from millennial tombs. I have seen living starships orbit the hearts of forgotten empires.

Ingvar shrugged.

‘There’ll be hunting,’ he said. ‘I’m used to that.’

Before leaving, each one of the pack came up to Ingvar. They were curious, asking about what he’d done while on duty with the others – they never called the Deathwatch by its name – how many kills he’d made, what sagas he’d recorded for inclusion in the annals of the Mountain. Váltyr asked him little, Olgeir a lot.

Jorundur enquired about the Onyx skull pendant he wore around his neck.

‘A record of service,’ said Ingvar, clasping it self-consciously. ‘That and the bolter – it’s all I kept.’

They seemed to understand that he couldn’t say much. They seemed pleased that he was back. As they spoke to him, probing for information, laughing at his stilted responses, some of the awkwardness between them faded.

‘You’ll have picked up bad habits,’ said Olgeir, his eyes sparkling. ‘We’ll have to beat them out of you.’

‘Try it,’ Ingvar replied.

Gunnlaugur left the chamber first, accompanied by Váltyr. Before he left, he clasped Ingvar firmly by the arm.

‘We’ll speak properly, brother,’ he said. ‘When time is less pressing, we’ll talk.’

Ingvar nodded. ‘We should,’ he said.

Jorundur was next, curtailing his questions to go and work on Vuokho, muttering as he left about the stupidity of taking it out so soon. He didn’t smile exactly, but his bitter face lifted and the bruise-coloured lines under his deep eyes smoothed out just a little.

‘He’s not looked this happy in a while,’ observed Olgeir.

‘It’s all relative,’ said Ingvar.

‘He’ll never admit it, but he missed you. Hel, I missed you.’

‘It’s good to see you too, great one.’

Then Olgeir departed as well, taking the Blood Claw with him for yet more intensive training. Hafloí didn’t say a word to Ingvar, but shot him a sullen look of challenge from over his shoulder.

That left Ingvar alone with Baldr. The heavy footfalls of the others faded into the darkness, and the chamber fell quiet.

Baldr smiled. It was a plain, easy smile.

‘You’ve made an enemy there,’ he said.

Ingvar spread his hands in a gesture of resignation.

‘A fearsome one,’ he agreed.

‘So, then. Tell me what you see.’

Ingvar hesitated. ‘What do you mean?’

‘Járnhamar,’ said Baldr. ‘Tell me how we’ve changed.’

‘Tínd is gone. Ulf and Svafnir are gone. I’ll be honest, I never liked Tínd, but I’m sorry for the others.’

Baldr raised a sceptical eyebrow. ‘Is that all?’

Ingvar sighed. ‘Fjolnir, do not do this. Not now.’

Baldr smiled. ‘Forgive me,’ he said. ‘You are newly returned. There will be time for questions later. But you do not deceive me: you see what I see.’

‘And what is that?’

Baldr looked serious again.

‘You see Váltyr hanging in Gunnlaugur’s shadow, unwilling to stay in it and unable to leave it. You see Jorundur turning in on himself, bitter at missed chances for glory. You see Heavy-hand’s laughter becoming thinner since he no longer has Ulf to spar with.’

Ingvar sighed. He had no appetite for hearing how the pack had been ravaged in his absence.

‘And what of you, Baldr?’ he asked. ‘I suppose nothing troubles you.’

For a moment, something flickered across Baldr’s face – a faint play of unease, whispering around his golden eyes.

‘There’s trouble for all of us,’ he said. Then he smiled again. ‘I knew you were coming back. Something told me you were. Why is that? It’s been decades, and I knew you were coming back.’

‘Lucky guess.’

‘There’s no luck. There’s fate, and there’s will. If the will is mightier, then you carve out a life for yourself. If fate is mightier, then you’re carried along, twisting like a spar on the flood.’

Baldr stopped talking, suddenly tense, as if he’d said more than he’d planned to.

‘I knew you were coming back,’ he said again. ‘Why is that?’

Ingvar tried to shrug off the question, though Baldr’s manner unnerved him. There was an intensity to him that he didn’t recognise.

‘You sound like a Priest,’ he said. ‘Stop it.’

Baldr reached for a pendant hanging around his belt then. He held it up: a bleached avian skull suspended on links of metal. Iron bearings had been hammered into the eye sockets, and a rough rune – sforja – scratched on the bone.

‘Do you remember this?’ Baldr asked, letting the hanging pendant turn slowly.

As Ingvar’s eyes rested on it, he felt a sudden pang of memory. He reached out for it, letting the fragile skull clink against the palm of his gauntlet.

‘I had forgotten,’ he said softly. ‘By Russ, I am sorry, brother. I had forgotten.’

Baldr lowered the pendant into Ingvar’s hand, letting the iron links coil around one another.

‘Don’t be sorry. Take it back. You were right – it has a wyrd on it. It has protected me, and a part of me lives in it. For all that, it knows you are the owner.’

Ingvar took it and held it up against the red light of the braziers. He remembered giving it to Baldr as a token of their friendship on the night he’d left Fenris. Back then he’d had no expectation of seeing it again. It had been a piece of his life in the Rout that he’d left behind, a splinter of his being that wouldn’t follow him into his new life.

A sálskjoldur; a soul-ward, a fragment, a remnant, something to cling on to against the coming of Morkai.

‘I had not felt myself,’ Ingvar said, gazing at the bone as it spun before him. ‘Not until now. This is the final piece of me, the presence that I left.’ He looked back at Baldr. ‘It was given freely. I have no right to take it back.’

Baldr nodded. ‘I know,’ he said. ‘But what are rights between brothers? It has been calling to you. It is yours.’

Ingvar regarded Baldr carefully.

‘You asked me what has changed,’ he said. ‘You have. You are more solemn, more serious.’

He collected the coiled pendant in his fist and placed it around his neck. It hung down across his breastplate, nestling next to the Onyx skull amid the crevasses of his embossed armour.

The two symbols occupied the same space uneasily: one a totem of Fenris’s strange and ancient magic, the other a symbol of clandestine Inquisitorial power.

‘But I thank you for this,’ Ingvar said, taking Baldr’s hand and clasping it firmly. ‘We have always been shield-brothers, you and I. We shall be again. Of all of them, I suffered your absence the most.’

Baldr returned the grip firmly, almost hungrily.

‘We have suffered without you, Gyrfalkon,’ he said. ‘We need you back. You will make us whole again.’

Ingvar released his grip. Talk like that made him uneasy; Gunnlaugur had used the same words.

‘We shall see,’ was all he said.