Prospero Burns Read online

  In the afternoons, the rector gave the children instruction. He taught lessons in language, history and Catheric lore in the long room of the commune, or out under the trees of the tent fields, or even out in the actual open, in fair weather. The children learned their letters and their numbers, and the basic elements of salvation. They learned about the world as well: the name of the desert highlands, and the long valley, and the site chosen for Ur. They learned the names of all the other communes, just like their own, where other rectors looked after other student bodies, all part of the greater community. Rector Uwe had no staff, except for Niina the nurse-cook, so as the older children learned, they took charge of the younger ones’ instruction. The rector let the brightest of all use the half-dozen teaching desks in the annex beside the commune’s library.

  Kas was only a little boy, four or five, but he was already one of the brightest. Like a lot of the children in the rector’s care, Kas was an orphan as far as the rector could determine. One of the Architect’s surveyor troops had found him in the cot-box of an overturned trackwagon out on the radland flats, a year back. The wagon had tipped on a salt depression, with no hope of righting. Its cells were flat dead, and there was no sign of any adults, except for a few bones and hanks of clothing about a kilometre further on.

  ‘Figure predators got them,’ said the surveyor troop leader when he brought Kas in. ‘The ride went over, so they walked to find water and help, and preds found them first. The boy’s lucky.’

  Rector Uwe nodded, and touched the little gold crux around his neck. It was an odd definition of the word.

  ‘Lucky we found him,’ the leader clarified. ‘Lucky the predators didn’t.’

  ‘You see any preds?’ the rector asked.

  ‘The usual meat birds,’ the leader replied. ‘Plus dog tracks. A lot of dog tracks. Big, maybe even wolves. They’re getting bolder. Coming closer, every year.’

  ‘They know we’re here,’ replied the rector, meaning mankind, back to his old tricks, with all the bonus scraps and left-overs that entails.

  There were a lot of orphans in the commune, because building a city was hard, but most came with names. The boy didn’t have one, so Rector Uwe chose one for him. A suitable name. The troops had found a little toy horse made of wood, like the Horse of Ilios, in the trackwagon with the child, so that made the choice easier.

  He called them in at moonrise. After work and lessons, they had run out into the open woods and the meadow beyond the stream that moved their wheel. The meadow grass was the last, long straw from summer, bleached by sun and rads. The sky was wort-blue. Stars prickled the early evening. The children chased along the avenues of trees, under the tunnels of their rad-blacked leaves. They swung and played shouting games. Thunder warriors was popular with the boys. They made guns from fingers and death noises with their mouths, and came back in for supper with skinned knees.

  There were always stragglers at supper call. Niina used the threat of wolves to bring the laggards in.

  ‘The wolves are out there! The wolves will get you, now the moon’s up!’ she’d call from the back door of the kitchen.

  When he came in that night, red-faced and out of breath, Kas looked at Rector Uwe.

  ‘Are the wolves here?’ he asked.

  The boy was flushed and sweating. He’d probably been playing thunder warriors with the older boys, running to keep up and shout as loud. But he also appeared scared.

  ‘Wolves? No, that’s just what Niina says,’ Rector Uwe replied. ‘There are preds, so we must be careful. Dogs, most likely. A lot of wild dogs, living in packs. They’re scavengers. Sometimes they come down off the high desert and raid our midden. But only if they’re bold, only if the winter’s been bleak. They’re more scared of us than we are of them.’

  ‘Dogs?’ Kas asked.

  ‘Just dogs. Dogs used to live with men, as their companions. Some communes still keep them as guards and to mind livestock.’

  ‘I don’t like dogs,’ the boy replied, ‘and I am afraid of wolves.’

  He ran off to join the end of the noisy game. He ran with a little boy’s acceleration, from nothing to maximum speed in a blink. Rector Uwe smiled, but his heart was heavy. He wondered what it had been like in the cabin of that overturned trackwagon. He wondered how much a three year-old could remember. He wondered how close the preds had got, how close they had got to breaking into the wagon body, how terrifying they would have been.

  The clement weather stayed with them for several weeks. Autumn was late. In the evenings, the light spun out, long and golden, and stretched the shadows of the raddled trees. The sky was like the glass of a blue bottle. Occasional little clouds dotted the horizon, cotton-white, like smoke signals lost for words. The children played out late. It was good to get open air into them, not recyc.

  After supper, most nights, Rector Uwe liked to take out his regicide set and play a game or three with the smartest kids. He liked to teach them (he even had a few old books of instruction that he was prepared to lend) but he also enjoyed the challenge of a live player, however unschooled they might be, because it was an improvement over the programmed opposition provided by the teaching desks.

  The rector’s regicide set was very old and very worn. The case was something he called shagreen, framed with discoloured ivory and lined with blue velvet. The board, unfolded, was made of inlaid walnut (it was slightly warped), and the pieces were made of bone and stained hoganny.

  Kas was a quick learner, quicker even than some of the older clever boys. He had the wit for it. Uwe taught him what he could, knowing it would take a long time to season him and show him a decent range of opening schemes and ending-outs.

  As they played that night, a game that Rector Uwe easily won, Kas mentioned the name of one of the other boys, and said that the boy had heard dogs barking earlier that day.

  ‘Dogs? Where?’

  ‘Up on the western slopes,’ Kas replied, considering his next move with his chin on his fist, the way he had seen the rector do it.

  ‘Probably crows cawing,’ said the rector.

  ‘No, it was dogs. Did you know that all dogs, everywhere in our world, all of them descended from a pack of wolves tamed on the shores of the Youngsea River?’

  ‘I did not know that.’

  ‘It was fifty-five thousand years ago.’

  ‘Where did you learn this?’

  ‘I asked the teaching desks about dogs and wolves.’

  ‘You are properly afraid of them, aren’t you?’

  Kas nodded. ‘It is sensible. They are predators and they devour.’

  ‘Are you afraid of meat-birds?’

  Kas shook his head. ‘Not really, though they are ugly and they can hurt you.’

  ‘What about eater-pigs and wild swine?’

  ‘They are dangerous,’ the boy nodded.

  ‘But you’re not afraid of them?’

  ‘I would be careful if I saw one.’

  ‘Are you afraid of snakes?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Of bears?’

  ‘What is a bear?’

  Rector Uwe smiled. ‘Make your move.’

  ‘They are all animals besides,’ the boy said, moving his piece.

  ‘What are?’

  ‘The things you’re asking me about, the snakes and the pigs. Are bears animals? I think they are all animals, and some of them are dangerous. I don’t like spiders. Or scorpions. Or big scorpions, the red ones, but I am not afraid of them.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘Yaena has a red scorpion in a jar in his foot locker, and when he shows it to us, I am not afraid of it.’

  ‘I will be talking to Yaena about that.’

  ‘I am not afraid of it, though. Not like Simial and the others. But I am afraid of wolves, because they are not animals.’

  ‘Oh? What are they then?’

  The boy scrunched up his face, as if determining the best way of explaining it.

  ‘They are… well, they are like ghosts. Th
ey are devils, like scripture tells us about.’

  ‘They are supernatural, you mean?’

  ‘Yes. They come to destroy and devour, because that is their nature, their only nature. And they can be wolves, that is dog-shape, or they can walk about in the shape of men.’

  ‘How do you know this, Kasper?’

  ‘Everyone knows it. It is common knowledge.’

  ‘It may not be correct. Wolves are just dogs. They are canine animals.’

  The boy shook his head fiercely. He leaned forwards and dropped his voice very low.

  ‘I have seen them,’ he whispered. ‘I have seen them walk about on two feet.’

  He was given some food, a basic nutrient broth and some dry biscuits, and then he was left on his own in a draughty room near the kitchen-morgue. The room was panelled in white bone, and it had a small firepit and a bench cot. It also had a lamp, a small metal-bodied biolumin unit of the type stamped out in their millions for the Imperial Army. Light from the lamp let him see the room around him with both eyes. He was getting used to the discrepancy between vision types.

  The food had come on a brushed metal tray. It made a poor hand mirror, but a mirror nonetheless. He looked at his new eye in its rubbed surface.

  His new eye had extraordinary night and low-light response. He had spent a great deal of his time, since waking, moving around in pitch darkness without even realising it. That was why his real eye had seemed blind. It was also why the world looked spectral green, and why actual light sources flared to white blooms of painful radiance. The Wolves of Fenris lived in darkness most of the time. They hadn’t much need for artificial light.

  His new eye lacked good, defined distance vision. Everything became slightly unfocussed at distances of more than thirty metres, like looking through an extremely wide-angle optical lens, the sort he had often used on good quality picter units for architectural recording. But the peripheral vision and the sensitivity to movement were astonishing.

  Exactly what you’d expect from a predator’s eye.

  He held the tray up in front of his face, and closed one eye, then the other, back and forth. When he switched back to his wolf eye for the fifth time, he noticed, in the battered reflection, the half-shadow in the doorway behind him.

  ‘You’d better come in,’ he said, without looking around.

  The Astartes came into the room.

  The Upplander put the tray down, and turned to look at him. The Astartes was as big as all his kind, wrapped in a slate-grey pelt. His fur and his armour looked wet, as if he had been outside. He had removed his leather mask, to show his face, weathered and tattooed. The Upplander knew the face.

  ‘Bear,’ he said.

  The Astartes grunted.

  ‘You’re Bear,’ the Upplander said.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Yes. I don’t know many Astartes, I don’t know many Space Wolves—’

  He saw the Astartes’s lip curl at the use of the term.

  ‘But I know your face. I remember your face. You’re Bear.’

  ‘No,’ the warrior said. ‘But you might remember my face. I’m known as Godsmote now, of Tra. But nineteen winters ago I was called Fith.’

  The Upplander blinked.

  ‘Fith? You’re Fith? The Ascommani?’

  The Astartes nodded. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Your name was Fith?’

  ‘My name’s still Fith. They call me Godsmote or Godsmack in the Rout, because I’ve got a good swing on me, a swing like an angry god, and I once buried the smile of a blade in the forehead of a warboss…’

  His voice trailed off.

  ‘That’s another story. Why are you looking at me like that?’

  ‘They… they made you into a Wolf,’ said the Upplander.

  ‘I wanted it. I wanted them to take me. My aett was gone, and my folk. I barely had my thread left. I wanted them to take me.’

  ‘I told them. I told Bear to take you. You and the other one.’

  ‘Brom.’

  ‘Brom, yes. I told Bear to take the both of you. I told him to make bloody sure he took the both of you, after all you did for me.’

  Fith nodded. ‘They changed you too. They changed us both. Made us both sons of Fenris. It’s what Fenris always does. Changes things.’

  The Upplander shook his head in slow disbelief. ‘I can’t believe it’s you. I’m glad it is. I’m happy to see you alive. But I can’t believe… look at you!’

  He glanced down at the brushed steel tray.

  ‘Come to that, look at me. I can’t believe this is me either.’

  He stood up and held out his hand to the Astartes.

  ‘I want to thank you,’ he said.

  Fith Godsmote shook his head. ‘No need to thank me.’

  ‘Yes, there is. You saved my life, and it cost you everything.’

  ‘I don’t see it like that.’

  The Upplander shrugged, and lowered his hand.

  ‘And you don’t look too happy I saved your life,’ the Astartes added.

  ‘I was then,’ the Upplander replied. ‘Nineteen winters ago. Now, well, everything’s a little strange to me. I’m adjusting.’

  ‘We all adjust,’ said Fith. ‘It’s part of changing.’

  ‘Bear, he’s still alive, is he?’ the Upplander asked.

  ‘Yes. Bear’s running a thread still.’

  ‘Good. He didn’t think to come and see me now I’m awake?’

  ‘I don’t see he’s got much reason to,’ replied the Astartes. ‘I mean, his debt to you is long since done. He made an error, and he atoned for it.’

  ‘Yes, about that,’ the Upplander said, sitting down again and leaning back. ‘What was his error? His oversight, that he had to make amends for?’

  ‘It was his fault you were out there. It was his fault you fell as a bad star.’

  ‘Was it?’

  Fith nodded.

  ‘Was it really?’

  Fith nodded again. ‘You’ll see Bear, I should think, when Ogvai calls you to Tra. You’ll probably see him then.’

  ‘So why’s Ogvai going to call me to Tra?’

  ‘He’ll decide what we should do with you.’

  ‘Ah,’ said the Upplander.

  Fith reached under his pelt and produced a limp plastek sack, tied shut. It was a miserable bundle, and the skin of the bag was wet with droplets of ice mush and meltwater.

  ‘When I heard you had come back awake, I fetched this. It’s the bits you were carrying with you when you came to Fenris. All that I could find, anyway. I thought you might want them.’

  The Upplander took the cold, wet sack and began to unpick the knot.

  ‘So where is Brom?’ he asked.

  ‘Brom never made it,’ Fith replied.

  The Upplander stopped picking at the knot and looked at the Astartes.

  ‘Oh. I’m sorry.’

  ‘No need to be. There is a place for all things, and Brom is in Uppland now.’

  ‘That word,’ the Upplander said, ‘I remember that word. When I got here, when the Ascommani pulled me from the crash site, that’s what you called me. An Upplander.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘It meant heaven, didn’t it? It meant the places up there, above the world?’ The Upplander pointed at the chamber’s ceiling. ‘Upplander is someone who comes down to the land, to the mortal Verse. The stars, other planets, heaven, they’re all the same thing, aren’t they? You thought I was some sort of god, fallen out of heaven.’

  ‘Or a daemon,’ Fith suggested.

  ‘I suppose. Anyway, my point is… you know about space and the stars now. You know about other planets. You must have been to some. Now you’ve become an Astartes, you’ve learned about the universe and your place in it.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But you still use a word like Uppland. You said Brom is in Uppland. Heaven and hell are primitive concepts, aren’t they? Is it just the reassurance of old names?’

  Fith didn’t reply for a moment. Then he said
, ‘There’s still an Uppland, as far as I’m concerned. Just like there’s a Verse and an Underverse. And as for Hel, I know there’s a Hel. I’ve seen it several times.’

  When they came to take him to see the Jarl of Tra, he was in fear for his life. This was an unnecessary fear, he reasoned, because the Wolves had put significant effort into preserving and maintaining his existence. It seemed unlikely that they would expend that effort only to dispose of him.

  But the fear clawed him and would not go away. It hung around him like a pelt. Whatever they were, the Wolves showed absolutely not a scrap of sentiment. They arbitrated decisions, right or wrong, on what seemed like whims, though were probably the blink-fast instincts of accelerated warriors. He was, to them, a curiosity at best. The work they had put into saving his life must have been a considerable effort. To them, with their halfway-immortal lives, it might just have been a way of fending off boredom through a long winter.

  Fith Godsmote came to fetch him, along with others from Tra whose names the Upplander would only learn later. Fith was junior to them all, and from a different company. They were hulking, longtooth monsters with shadowed eyes. The Upplander realised that Fith’s inclusion in the honour guard was a mark of respect shown to a novitiate by his elders. Fith had saved the Upplander and brought him to the Aett, so it was only right that he should be part of an escort, even if the escort duty would normally fall to the company veterans.

  That made logical sense. It made logical sense when they first came to his white bone room and summoned him with a gesture. By the time they had ascended to the Hall of Tra, a climb that had taken an hour, and had woven up deep staircases and rock chutes and one, stomach-wrenching ascent on the wind itself, fear had mutated the logic, and the only sense the Upplander could see was that Fith Godsmote had to be present at his death as some form of punishment duty.

  The Hall of Tra was cold and lightless. His wolf-eye caught the ghost radiation of barely smouldering firepits. In terms of heat and light, the Wolves were making no allowances for human tolerances of comfort. They had given him a pelt and an eye to see through the dark with. What more could he want?