ASHES OF PROSPERO Page 9

  ‘I have a concern,’ continued the Great Wolf, dropping the skull back to the desk with a heavy thud. ‘The presence inside Njal’s thoughts, it may become more malignant. Njal’s judgement is affected, directly or indirectly. This sorcerer has an agenda, and we cannot assume the Stormcaller will act against it.’

  ‘You want me to watch for deviancy?’

  ‘If it looks as though Njal has succumbed, you must take action. We seek allies, not more foes. It seems to me this is as likely a trap as an opportunity but the risk must be taken. You are my axe if need be.’

  ‘I’ll remind the Stormcaller of his oaths and duties,’ said Arjac. ‘If he turns against the Chapter, or loses control, I shall end him.’

  Logan nodded and turned away, uncomfortable with the conversation.

  ‘Anything else?’ asked Arjac.

  The Great Wolf shook his head, dismissing Rockfist with his silence. The Wolf Guard was almost at the door before Logan spoke again.

  ‘Go with honour.’

  ‘I will,’ replied Arjac, but as he stepped outside and Baldin pulled the door closed, Arjac thought that honour would be in short supply in the coming days.

  He smelt the blood before he saw the tell-tale crimson flecks in the snow. Padding softly through the drifts, his bare feet sinking into the welcoming chill of the packed whiteness, he knelt beside the droplets. The wind bit at his naked flesh, coming in fast and fresh from the hills to the north. Its gusts swayed the pines that clustered about the frozen river not far ahead.

  The trail of the blood spatter continued in the direction of the forest. Turning his head, he saw the remains of indentations in the snow where the struggle had happened – covered by fresh fall but visible to his keen sight.

  Lukas reached out his hands, taking a moment to examine his claw-like fingernails, and scooped up blood-spattered snow. He sniffed again, savouring the scent. Fire elk. Inhaling deeply, he crushed the ice into his face, relishing the coldness, his enhanced body inuring him to any threat of frostbite. He scraped his fingers through his hair, standing it in spikes like trapped flames, and rubbed handfuls across his scarred, tattooed body.

  Standing, ice and water falling from him like a mountain giant of legend, Lukas turned his gaze towards the dark beneath the trees. He could track the prints now, the line of red molten droplets left for him to follow.

  He set off in a loping run that crossed the snow-covered ground with ease. His breath made fog banks behind him, a miasma that caught the dying light of the sun and set the air sparkling red and orange.

  Reaching the treeline, he slowed.

  Tree limbs creaked with the weight of snow, broken occasionally by the thud of a drift dropping to the ground and the drip of rivulets running down the cracks of craggy silver bark. The trail snaked around several boles and disappeared into the gloom. The scent of blood was fresher now. He could hear the sluggish gurgle of the near-frozen river and the hiss of wind through reeds on the bank.

  His enhanced sense of smell warned of something else.

  A strong odour, of flesh and bad breath, of wet fur and urine. A Thunderwolf.

  Picking his way carefully, stepping past fallen branches and jutting rocks, Lukas crept towards the river, the shadows enveloping him. He heard jaws working on bone, the tear of skin and rip of muscle. Its heavy panting infected him with energy, even more invigorating than the snowstorm.

  He fell to all fours – his belly close to the ground, and muscles taut beneath his augmented skin. His head craned to catch sight and scent of his prey. Rounding a pine trunk, he came upon the riverside. A game trail wound between the rocks and patches of tall ice-grass. He crawled a little further, slinking along from downwind, over a rock close to the frozen water’s edge.

  Two yellow eyes stared at him from the hollow beyond, above rows of fangs inside a curled lip. With ears flat and hackles raised, the Thunderwolf did not blink as Lukas eased himself even closer, dropping quietly to the ground just a short distance away.

  The hollow was littered with body parts from the stag. Blood and guts lay strewn alongside hide and antler on the trail and ice. The muzzle of the Thunderwolf was red with the labour, but he could see that its stomach was wasted thin, and recognised the hungry glare in its eyes.

  Varg-ulf.

  Wyrd-tainted, driven mad by the need to feed and its inability to do so, spurred on by insatiable appetite to wantonly kill. Hounded from its pack for attacking others, left to die a miserable, frenzied death.

  Lukas crept closer, keeping his eyes firmly on the Thunderwolf. Its bulk was even greater than his – its shoulder at head height. The pelt was silver-black, streaked around muzzle, mane and tail with white hairs.

  ‘You’re an old one to get the blood madness, aren’t you?’ Lukas whispered, calm and reassuring, his movements a study in non-threatening behaviour. ‘I can help you with that. Yes, I can help the madness go away.’

  The Thunderwolf paced back and forth, not sure what to make of the stranger in its presence. Lukas understood its uncertainty. He never really knew how to act around others. Too rebellious for the pack, too gregarious to be a lone wolf.

  Except that here, naked under the sky and snow, he was himself. The blood that coursed through his veins was the fluid of Fenris. The spirit that animated his mortal shell was the same that had brought the Wolf King here as an infant to be nurtured by the wolves. It was Lukas’ favourite saga of Russ – his childhood among the pack, before he learnt to walk like a man.

  Lukas picked up a haunch that the wolf had torn from the body and discarded. A loose flap of skin flicked blood as he lifted the meat to his lips. Lukas’ fangs sank into the raw flesh, spilling blood down his bearded chin and auburn-haired chest. He chewed briefly and swallowed a large piece before biting again, gulping the next hunk with barely a pause.

  He let the bloodied meat fall from his fingers.

  The Thunderwolf whined, seeing the beast that was inside Lukas, recognising the kindred varg-ulf. Two such monsters would usually fight but the approach of Lukas confused the animal. There was no challenge to answer, leaving the Thunderwolf at odds with itself.

  Lukas’ fingers wrapped around a splintered piece of antler as he moved in a crouch. His eyes remained on the beast but his head turned slightly to one side, low and subservient.

  A growl, a bass rumble from deep in the Thunderwolf’s throat, warned of doubts becoming defensiveness. Lukas halted, two metres from the creature, feet and shins coated with blood from the viscera through which he had shuffled. The monster inside of Lukas, the curse of the Canis Helix that lurked in the breast of all Space Wolves, howled silently in his head. It gnawed at his remaining heart, and yowled to be free of the human flesh that had been wrapped about it.

  Lukas sprang forward.

  The broken end of the antler slashed easily into the Thunderwolf’s throat, ripping out gullet and windpipe with a single strike. Hot blood coursed from the wound as Lukas’ momentum took him forward. He crashed into the falling monster, lifting its bulk sideways with the impact.

  They fell into the snow amidst a plume of ice and ruddy life fluid. Lukas dragged free his makeshift weapon and plunged it again, penetrating ribs and heart.

  Releasing the antler, Lukas slithered back, eyes searching the Thunderwolf for any sign of vitality. His throat felt dry, filled with thirsting for the blood that gushed from the wounds and ran down the slope between Lukas’ legs.

  He bowed his head and lapped once, then twice.

  With a snarl, he pulled himself away. Turning, he slipped down the bank onto the hard ice of the river’s edge. Padding across the unforgiving coldness brought some measure of clarity. Shaking his head, he pounded his fists against the ice. It cracked and he punched again, and again, slamming his knuckles until he broke through into the chill waters beneath.

  Lukas plunged head and chest into the broken hole, the sensation like running full speed into a wall. It numbed the senses, flushing out the unreasoning animism of his
genetics. In the void, the human resurfaced through the cloying desire of blood hunger.

  Gasping, Lukas flopped upon the ice, blood drying across his flesh while fresh snow fell. He stared up at the red creeping into the blue of failing night, a handful of stars still bright through gaps in the snow clouds.

  ‘Allfather…’ he whispered.

  Lukas slept.

  High above Asaheim, the polar region of Fenris, dusk was a strange time. Njal stood alone upon a jutting rock, eyes closed, the last warmth of the sun on his face. The sky shimmered with deep blue, the stars obscured by the dance of aurora. For a brief time, sunlight bathed the upper towers of the Fang, raw and harsh. Soon the rotation of Fenris would take the sun below the clouds again and the twilight would begin anew, fading to utter darkness.

  Dawn and dusk were measured at the moments of unblemished sunlight falling upon the sigil of the Wolf King that topped the highest pinnacle of the citadel. At these times it seemed as though the fortress was a ship on a sea of fire, the billow of vapour like the swell of waves across the bow streaming past.

  Sometimes warriors of the Chapter would lounge outside, the melanchromatic augmentation of their skin darkening quickly under the intense radiation while they drank ale and paid homage to the Skyfire. Not today, for Njal watched the dusk alone, sensing that he was about to be plunged into his own long night.

  He remembered the Seasons of Fire, when volcanoes and earthquakes rent the lands and seas, birthing new valleys and mountains and swallowing the old. A time of destruction but also creation.

  In the minds of the Fenrisians, there was little difference. Birth was but the start of the journey to death, to be savoured and celebrated every moment. The volatile world bred a people that believed only the reality of the instant, and recognised their own physical impermanence. Only honour, only legacy remained unchanged.

  Njal was aware more than most of the proud history of his Chapter, the sagas etched into his memory as surely as the runes were carved into his staff. Great heroes, from the Wolf King himself down the ages to Logan Grimnar, lauded for their skill in battle and their wisdom in counsel.

  Alone on that promontory, Njal knew himself a fraud. Nothing had been said to the Stormriders of his predicament, only of the attempt to rescue Bulveye’s Old Guard. He wondered which of the sagas he could recite by heart had similarly inauspicious catalysts.

  But he could not dwell on his foolishness. The same culture that valued the moment also created opportunists. Njal’s mistake was something he would have to bear, but the chance to break into the Portal Maze turned encumbrance to advantage.

  The vox-bead in his ear buzzed, disturbing his thoughts. He opened his eyes in time to see the cloudfire at its peak, the passing from night to day. For several seconds, he stood alone upon an ocean of burning mists.

  The bead buzzed again, like the attention of a marsh gnat, insistent and irritating.

  ‘Yes?’ he replied, the pick-up activating at the sound of his voice.

  ‘Our Navigator has arrived, Stormcaller,’ Valgarthr told him.

  ‘Good.’ Njal was not sure this news was sufficiently urgent for the sergeant to have contacted him. Something was amiss. ‘Is there anything else?’

  ‘You had better come to the launch port,’ the pack leader continued, his tone conveying that all was not well.

  Njal suppressed a sigh, wondering what fresh travails had beset the expedition.

  ‘I’m coming,’ he replied as the light began to dim.

  When Lukas awoke, he sat up, tearing skin and hair that had frozen to the ice. He crouched over the pool he had made and dipped his hands into the water. Frost particles had already started to creep in from the edges to close the wound in the ice. He clawed off the gobbets of elk flesh and scraped at the Thunderwolf’s blood, scouring his skin of all trace of his indulgence. When he was clean, he stood up and waited for the disturbed waters to settle.

  His reflection was that of a man.

  A man moulded by the hand of an ancient, half-dead demigod, but a man all the same. Tall and lean, or judged as such beside his immense brethren, a puckered scar upon his breast was prominent among the many battle wounds and Fenrisian tattoos that marked his skin.

  Lukas lifted a hand to the old injury, feeling the hard edges of the device implanted within.

  ‘Not this time, wolf brother,’ he said to his reflection. ‘Sleep still.’

  He studied his own face, trying to find a sign of the monster that hid behind his eyes. There was nothing, and his customary amused smirk returned.

  CHAPTER 6

  THE OTHERSEA

  The hall of embarkation was quiet, feeling empty after the activity of the previous days. Hurrying into the bay, Njal’s eye was drawn to a lone tech-priest marshalling a band of loading servitors up the ramp of a waiting drop-ship. The hiss of pistons and clank of feet reverberated across the metal-decked floor, almost lost in the grumble from the orbital launch’s idling engines.

  Valgarthr waited nearby with five fellow Space Wolves, their left shoulder guards gleaming with fresh paint, a wolf’s head against crossed bolts of lightning – the symbol of the Stormriders. The same had been made into iron badges for the thralls, worn as talismans over their half-armour, and painted onto the few vehicles and gunships the armoury had been able to spare for the rough-and-ready company.

  The pack leader’s dressings had been replaced by a moulded ceramite plate so that it seemed that half his face and head was a skull. The eye socket shone green with a simple bionic, giving his strange appearance an even more unearthly aura.

  Beside them stood a squad of the Navigator guard in two ranks. Dorria waited slightly to one side with a short figure draped in a dark red robe and voluminous hood. In the shadow of the cowl, Njal saw the face of a young woman, perhaps no more than eight Fenrisian Long Years – sixteen as was reckoned on Terra. Her eyes were bright in her dark skin, ringed with colour the same as her robe, copied also on the lips. The rune of House Belisarius was burned into her left cheek, the scar laced through with silvery thread from which hung tiny ruby droplets like blood. The silver band across her forehead confirmed what his othersenses told him – a Navigator. Her powers were suppressed, the fabled third eye hidden behind the protective sleeve, but still it seemed to him that she gave off multicoloured vapours of curling energy.

  One nostril was pierced with a silver stud. Njal glimpsed earrings as an occasional flicker of gold in the gloom of the hood when the Navigator looked around the launch deck, hanging from oddly small ears. The Navigators were heavily gene-spliced and inbred, and he wondered what other physical oddities were concealed beneath the robe.

  ‘You are not Remeo,’ said the Stormcaller, his frown directed equally between Valgarthr and the adolescent.

  ‘I am the Navigator-elect Majula. I shall steer you across the undervoid on this voyage.’

  Njal ground his teeth as he absorbed this announcement, and cocked his gaze towards Dorria with an eyebrow raised.

  ‘You may address me directly, Lord of the Runes,’ Majula said primly. Beside her, Dorria visibly winced behind her visor.

  ‘I wasn’t seeking permission,’ said Njal. ‘Why is Remeo not here?’

  ‘I have volunteered for this task, Lord of the Runes,’ Majula replied.

  ‘Volunteered?’

  A crack appeared in the young lady’s facade of indifferent superiority, revealing agitation.

  ‘The Navigator Remeo thought to forbid me from attending to the pact between House Belisarius and the Space Wolves. Nevertheless, I persisted.’

  ‘You are only Navigator-elect. Have you steered a ship before?’

  ‘Of course, Lord of the Runes.’ She spoke the truth but Njal detected uncertainty and pressed further.

  ‘Alone?’

  Her hesitation was all the answer the Stormcaller needed, and he spoke again before Majula could reply.

  ‘No, only as part of a Navis cabal,’ Njal answered for her.

&nb
sp; ‘I draw lineage direct from the most puissant members of House Belisarius,’ the Navigator-elect insisted, hands forming fists within the broad sleeves of her robe. She matched Njal’s doubtful look with a defiant stare and he felt a burst of psychic power like a drumbeat in the back of his skull. Had she removed her headband, he would have been sorely tested to resist the crippling power of her third eye.

  He nodded with a lopsided smile.

  ‘Very well, Navigator Majula. You will be our ship-guide.’

  A brief smile was quickly replaced by the measured veneer Majula had portrayed earlier. With assumed imperiousness, she turned and walked to the waiting shuttle. Dorria barked a command to her squad and they turned to follow.

  ‘What is this?’ Njal called out to the officer. She turned back, waving for the Navis Guard to continue after their mistress.

  ‘Majula might be only Navigator-elect, but she is an interanovus of the Celestarch, by direct bloodline no less.’

  ‘So she outranks Remeo?’

  ‘It’s complicated,’ replied Dorria. ‘In Household matters, she does. Majula has reached her age of parting, an adult in the law of the House, though she has yet to solo pilot her first ship and assume the role of full Navigator. That is why she is so eager, I think. We will protect her, as we are pledged, there are others that will guard Remeo.’

  A thudding tread interrupted any reply, drawing the attention of Dorria, Njal and the other Space Wolves to the bulk conveyor at the far end of the boarding hall. The gate slid aside to reveal the broad form of a Dreadnought. Emerging into the light of the bay, it revealed a multi-barrelled assault cannon mounted from one arm and a long battle-claw upon the other – the unmistakable war machine of Bjorn the Fell-Handed.

  He advanced with crashing step across the reinforced decking, and behind him from the conveyor came two more of the armoured walkers, sporting immense fists and heavy weapons.

  ‘I changed my mind, Stormcaller,’ announced Bjorn. His armoured torso twisted at the waist pivot and the massive claw rose to indicate the two other war engines. ‘I brought old companions. Grímr Fellfist and Olaf the Thrice-Slain.’