Prospero Burns Read online

  ‘What are you doing?’ Hawser asked the rune priest. It was a blunt question, but he asked it anyway. Though he had spent more time with Tra than with any other portion of the Sixth Legion Astartes, he had exchanged almost nothing with the saturnine priest. Longfang had never given him a story to keep safe, nor offered comment on any account Hawser had delivered in his capacity as skjald. Longfang was also far less approachable than Wyrdmake, though even Wyrdmake was a chilling prospect.

  Seeing Longfang alone for a moment, Hawser had taken his chance. Longfang had not needed to look around to know Hawser was behind him or, it seemed, what expression was on Hawser’s face.

  The repeater screen showed the Quietude home world from high above: the hard clarity of space, the brilliance of direct sunlight. The world looked like an orange that had had a red-hot poker rammed into its upper hemisphere.

  No, it looked like a radapple, one of the late crop, fat and russet pink, but marred with a huge, rusty blemish of rot.

  Longfang continued to stare at the screen.

  ‘I’m listening,’ he said.

  ‘To?’

  ‘The snapping of threads. The shaping of wyrd.’

  ‘You’re not watching, then?’

  ‘Only the reflection of your face in the screen,’ said Longfang.

  Hawser snorted a small laugh at his own foolishness. The Wolves liked to wrap themselves in a cloak of mystery and solemn, supernatural power, but such nonsense was the superstitious talk of barbarians, inherited from the Fenrisians they drew their strength from. The truly abnormal thing about the Wolves was the sharpness of their perception. They had taught themselves to notice everything about their surroundings, and to use every scrap of information at their disposal. Their reputation helped. No one expected brutes who looked like ritual-obsessed, bestial clansmen to be underpinned by peerless combat intelligence.

  It was what made them such efficient weapons.

  ‘So why is there unhappiness in your visage?’ Longfang asked.

  ‘I am still uncertain of my place among you. Of my purpose.’

  Longfang tutted.

  ‘First, it is every man’s lot to wonder at his own nature. That is life. To wonder at your own wyrd, that is the eternal state of contemplation for most men. You’re not alone.’

  ‘And second?’ asked Hawser.

  ‘It puzzles me, Kasper-Ansbach-Hawser-who-is-Ahmad-Ibn-Rustah-who-is-skjald-of-Tra, that you do not know yourself when, quite plainly, there are so many of you to know. It puzzles me that you chose to come to the Allwinter World, yet cannot account for that choice. Why did you come to Fenris?’

  ‘I’d spent my whole life learning,’ said Hawser. ‘Gathering data, collecting it, preserving it. Always my motive had been the betterment of mankind. I reached a place where I felt that my life of effort was being… squandered. Passed over as insignificant.’

  ‘Your pride was wounded?’

  ‘No! No, nothing like that. It wasn’t personal. The things I had cared enough about to conserve were just being forgotten. They weren’t being put to use.’

  Heoroth Longfang made a small movement deep inside his etched, bead-draped carapace that may or may not have been a shrug.

  ‘Whatever the truth of that, it still does not explain Fenris.’

  ‘When my life’s work seemed to be stagnated,’ said Hawser, ‘I felt I should make one last voyage, broader and bolder than any I had made before, and close with some truth, some reality, greater than any I experienced in my career. Instead of probing mysteries of the distant past, I fancied to investigate curiosities of a more modern vintage. The Legions Astartes. Each one bound up in its own coat of mysteries, each one wrapped in its own trappings of ritual and lore. Mankind trusts his future to the diligent service of the Legions, yet does not know them. I thought I would choose a Legion, and go to them, and learn of them.’

  ‘An ambitious thought.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ Hawser admitted.

  ‘A dangerous one. No Legion makes its stronghold a welcoming place.’

  ‘True.’

  ‘So there was an element of bravado? Of risk taking? You would end your career with one last, bold flourish that would seal your reputation as an academic and repair your damaged pride?’

  ‘That’s not what I meant,’ said Hawser sourly.

  ‘No?’

  ‘No.’

  Longfang fixed his eyes on Hawser. The vox-feed built into the helmet seal of his collar warbled and chittered. Longfang ignored it.

  ‘I see anger in your face, though,’ the priest said. ‘I think I’ve come closer to the truth than you have so far. You still haven’t really answered. Why Fenris? Why not another Legion-world? Why not a safer one?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Don’t you?’

  Hawser couldn’t answer, but he had a nagging feeling he should have been able to.

  He said, ‘I was told it was good to face your fears. I have always been afraid of wolves. Always. Since childhood.’

  ‘But there are no wolves on Fenris,’ Longfang replied.

  The priest moved to rise from his kneeling position. He seemed to struggle, like a weary, arthritic old man. Forgetting himself, Hawser stuck out his hand to offer support.

  Longfang looked at the proffered hand as if it was a stick that had been used to scrape a midden hole. Hawser feared the priest might lunge forwards and snap it off with a single, furious bite, but he was too frozen to withdraw the offer.

  Instead, grinning, Longfang closed his massive, plasteel gauntlet around Hawser’s hand and accepted the support. He rose. Hawser meshed his teeth and let out a little squeak of effort as he fought not to collapse beneath the weight the huge rune priest leant on him.

  Upright, Longfang towered over him. He let go of the skjald’s hand and looked down at him.

  ‘I’m grateful. My joints are old, and my bones are as cold as dead fish trapped in lake ice.’

  He shuffled away towards the waiting packs, his wild, thin hair catching the light of the deck lamps like thistledown. Hawser rubbed his numb hand.

  ‘You’re leading a drop now?’ Hawser called out after him. ‘To the surface? A combat drop?’

  ‘Yes. You should come.’

  Hawser blinked.

  ‘I’m allowed to come?’

  ‘Go where you like,’ said Longfang.

  ‘Three weeks I’ve been on this ship, getting accounts of this war second-hand,’ said Hawser, trying not to sound peevish. ‘I thought I had to ask permission. I thought I had to wait until I was permitted or invited.’

  ‘No, go where you like,’ said Longfang. ‘You’re a skjald. That’s the one great privilege and right of being what you are. No one in the Rout can bar you, or keep you at bay, or stop you from sticking your nose in.’

  ‘I thought I had to be protected.’

  ‘We’ll protect you.’

  ‘I thought I’d get in the way,’ said Hawser.

  ‘We’ll worry about that.’

  ‘So I can go anywhere? I can choose what I see?’

  ‘Yes, yes.’

  ‘Why did no one think to tell me that?’ Hawser asked.

  ‘Did you think to ask?’ replied the priest.

  ‘This is the logic of the Vlka Fenryka?’ Hawser said.

  ‘Yes. Catches in your flesh like a fish-hook, doesn’t it?’ replied the priest.

  The packs Longfang was leading down were not familiar to Hawser. He knew just a few of the warriors by name and reputation.

  Their blood was up, but they seemed subdued. There had been a tone of this in the air for days. As the Stormbirds made their long, silent dive from the strike ship, Hawser strapped in beside Longfang.

  ‘You said I looked discomforted, but there is a grim look in these eyes,’ Hawser said.

  ‘All of Tra wants to be away from here,’ said Longfang. ‘The glory’s gone from this war.’

  ‘Gone to Ullanor,’ said a Wolf strapped into the row of arrestor cradles fac
ing them. Svessl. Hawser attached a name.

  ‘What’s Ullanor?’ Hawser asked.

  ‘Where, you mean,’ replied another Wolf, Emrah.

  ‘Where is it?’

  ‘A mighty victory,’ said Svessl. ‘Ten months ago, but word has just reached us. The Allfather made a mighty slaughter of the greenskins, laid them out on the red ground. Then he sank his sword tip into the soil and announced he was done.’

  ‘Done?’ asked Hawser. ‘What do you mean? Are you talking about the Emperor?’

  ‘He’s done with the Crusade,’ said Emrah. ‘He’s returning to Terra. He’s left His anointed successor to continue the war in His absence.’

  Longfang turned to look at Hawser. His eyes were hooded and dark, like lightless pools.

  ‘Horus is chosen as Warmaster. We enter a new age. Perhaps the Crusade is nearing an end, and we will be put aside to let our teeth grow blunt.’

  ‘I doubt that,’ said Hawser.

  ‘Ullanor was a great war,’ said Longfang. ‘The greatest of all, the culmination of decades of campaigning against the greenskins. The Rout had heard of it, and hoped that we would be able to stand with the Allfather when the culmination of the struggle came. But we were denied that honour. The Wolves of Fenris were too busy on other errands, fighting dirty fights no one else wanted to fight in other corners of the galaxy.’

  ‘Fights like this one?’ asked Hawser.

  The Wolves nodded. There were several growls.

  ‘No thanks we’ll get for this,’ said Longfang.

  The bitter truth had emerged later, after Ogvai had been granted theatre command, after the commander of the Expedition had agreed to let the iron priests blast the graving dock out of orbit, after it had impacted. The Instrument cradled within the graving dock’s girderwork embrace was not the kill vehicle feared by the expedition’s threat assessors.

  After Tra had seized the facility, the Mechanicum had begun to examine it, especially the control centre area so scrupulously spared by Fultag’s assault. The implications of that examination only became clear once the graving dock, at the Expedition commander’s pleasure, had been used as a giant wrecking ball.

  The Instrument was a data conveyor. The Olamic Quietude had been in the process of loading it with the sum total of its thinking, its artistry, its knowledge and its secrets. The intention was presumably to launch it, either as a bottle upon the ocean in the hope of some salvation, or towards some distant, unknown and unknowable outpost of the Quietude network.

  Knowing what had been lost and, perhaps, understanding how that would reflect upon him in the eyes of men even more senior than himself, the commander of the Expedition Fleet flew into a recriminatory rage. He blamed poor intelligence. He blamed the slow function of the Mechanicum. He blamed factionalism in the Imperial Army. Most of all, he blamed the Astartes.

  Ogvai was on the surface by that time, leading things, at the bloody end of the matter. When he heard of the commander’s wrath, he transmitted a brief vox-statement, reminding the commander and the senior fleet officers that they had insisted he solve their problem and break the deadlock, and had approved his use of all resources. They had given him theatre command. As was ever the case, the Astartes had not made a mistake. They had simply done what was asked of them.

  Once the message was transmitted, Ogvai vented the spirit of his real responses on the warriors of the Quietude.

  The Stormbird fell as a bad star falls.

  Hawser had dropped to the surface with Tra before, but this time it was the suicidal plunge of a combat run. Inertially locked straps and an arrestor cage kept him stuck to the seating rig. The graduated compression provided by the tight bodyglove he was wearing as a base for his lightweight environment armour kept the lymphatic and venous systems of his limbs functioning. His heart banged like an x-ray star. His teeth chattered.

  ‘What story will you tell about this?’ Svessl asked, seeing his fear and enjoying it.

  ‘Not many hearth stories to tell about soiling yourself,’ said Emrah. Wolves laughed.

  ‘What angered you the most?’ Hawser asked, as loudly as he could, to any who would listen.

  ‘What?’ asked Emrah. Others turned to look his way. Full helms and knotwork leather masks glared at him.

  ‘I said what pissed you off the most, Wolves of Tra?’ Hawser asked, raising his voice above the howl of the engines and the judder of the airframe. ‘Was it that you missed the fight at Ullanor? The glory? Or was it that our Allfather chose Horus as Warmaster, not the Wolf King?’

  They may kill me, thought Hawser, but at least the process will take my mind off this hellish descent. Besides, what better time to ask a pack of Wolves an awkward question than when they are all lashed into arrestor cages?

  ‘Neither,’ said Emrah.

  ‘Neither,’ agreed another Wolf, a red-haired monster called Horune.

  ‘We would have liked a taste of the glory,’ said Svessl, ‘to stand up in a great war and be counted.’

  ‘Ullanor was no greater than a hundred campaigns of the last decade,’ Longfang reminded the warrior.

  ‘But it’s the one where the Allfather laid down His sword and said His Crusade was done,’ Svessl replied. ‘It’s the one that will be remembered.’

  And that’s what counts to you, thought Hawser.

  ‘And the Wolf King would never have been named Warmaster,’ said Emrah.

  ‘Why?’ asked Hawser.

  ‘Because that was never his wyrd,’ said Longfang. ‘The Wolf King was not made to be Warmaster. It’s not a slight. He hasn’t been passed over. The Allfather has not played favourite with Horus Lupercal.’

  ‘Explain,’ said Hawser.

  ‘When the Allfather sired His pups,’ said the priest, ‘He gave each one of them a different wyrd. Each one has a different life to make. One to be the heir to the Emperor’s throne. One to fortify the defences of the Imperium. One to guard the hearth. One to watch the distant perimeter. One to command the armies. One to control intelligences. You see, skjald? You see how simple it is?’

  Hawser tried to make his nodded reply obvious through the vibration shaking him.

  ‘So what is the Wolf King’s wyrd, Heoroth Longfang?’ he asked. ‘What life did the Allfather choose for him?’

  ‘Executioner,’ replied the old Wolf.

  The Wolves were quiet for a moment. The Stormbird continued to shiver with intense violence. The engines had reached a strangled pitch that Hawser hadn’t believed possible.

  ‘What pisses us off,’ said Emrah suddenly, ‘is that we weren’t present at the Great Triumph.’

  ‘They say it was a fine sight,’ said Horune, ‘a whole world laid bare to salute Horus’s ascendancy.’

  ‘We would have liked to gather there,’ said Longfang, ‘shoulder to shoulder with brother Astartes, in numbers not seen since the start of the Crusade.’

  ‘Shoulder to shoulder with Wolf companies we haven’t seen for decades,’ added Svessl.

  ‘We would have liked to raise our voices and join the roar,’ said Emrah. ‘We would have liked to shake our fists at the sky, and show our proud allegiance to the new Warmaster.’

  ‘That’s what’s pissing us off,’ said Svessl.

  ‘That, and you reminding us about it,’ said Horune.

  The Stormbirds punched through the dense impact pall, poisonous vapour slipstreaming off their sleek wings and spiralling in the thunderclaps of their wakes like ink in fast water. Under the clouds, a nightmare rim of firestorms burned around the titanic entry wound. It was a kill-shot that had taken out a planet. The depth of the wound was astonishing. It did not look geological to Hawser. It looked as anatomical as the analogies filling his imagination. An exposed, surgical void of pulverised organs, muscles and bones, all tinted orange, all partially blackened as if blown out by a penetrating incendiary round.

  Slower-moving Imperial Army dropships, vessels of much mightier draughts, were descending into the scalding pit. The Stormbirds s
treaked past them, and outpaced their Thunderhawk and gun-cutter escorts. The Astartes craft, in tight formation, passed below the level of the pit’s burning lip and knifed into the sub-glacial void, down through smoke, through burning air, through the shattered ruins of the Quietude cities.

  The cities ran deep. Hawser was astonished to glimpse the complex, interlocking layers of them, rising up like cyclopean towers from profound geological foundations. He was also stunned by the degree of destruction. Upper levels had all been vaporised, and below that, the municipal stages and sections had been crushed down into one another. Tower structures had collapsed and pancaked into themselves, held in place only by the remaining mantle of super-thick ice that acted like a setting resin around the delicate, shattered wreckage. Hawser was reminded of the way Rector Uwe had always folded almonds and pecan nuts in a white napkin after supper, before striking the parcel with the back of a spoon. The debris would have flown everywhere but for that enveloping medium.

  The ship’s thrusters were suddenly making an entirely different type of anguished scream.

  ‘Ten more seconds!’ Longfang yelled. The Wolves began to beat their swords and axes against their storm shields.

  A savage change of momentum hammered Hawser’s innards. The bird had just used the bottom of its powerdive and ferocious upturn to dump colossal amounts of speed. Before he could adjust, the most violent impact of all occurred. They just fell. They fell hard into something with a noise like the steel gates of the Imperial Palace falling off their hinges.

  They’d landed. They had landed, hadn’t they? Hawser couldn’t be sure. They looked to be moving still, but that could simply have been his head and his bewildered senses. There was a shrieking noise from outside, metal-on-metal. The Wolves were slamming aside their arrestor cages and leaping up.