A Thousand Sons Page 11

  It was a rhetorical question, for Magnus knew everything about their secondments and legacies of honour. Uthizzar nodded.

  “Briefly, my lord,” he said. “It was not a pleasant experience.”

  “I imagine it was not. Fenris does not welcome visitors, nor is it a gracious host,” said Magnus with a hidden smile. “It is a world like no other, unforgiving and pernicious. The ice waits to kill those who travel its frozen seas and snow-locked cliffs at the first signs of complacency. A mortal man, even a well-prepared one, would freeze to death on Fenris within minutes of setting foot on its surface.”

  “Yet the tribes survive there well enough,” said Ahriman. “Apparently, they are little more than feral savages, endlessly waging war for the few scraps of land that survive the upheaval of the Great Year.”

  “That they are,” said Magnus. “But also so much more.”

  “What makes them so special?” asked Hathor Maat, unwilling to believe that such barbarous mortals could earn the primarchs’ approbation.

  “Were you not listening? Fenris is a death world, a planet so hostile it would test even your powers of bio-manipulation. Yet these mortals carve themselves land, home and families on a world most right-thinking men would avoid.”

  “So how do they do it?”

  Magnus smiled, and Ahriman saw he was enjoying the role of teacher once more.

  “First, tell me what you know of the Canis Helix?”

  “It’s a genetic primer,” said Hathor Maat, “a precursor gene that allows the remainder of the Space Wolf gene-seed to take root in an aspirant’s body.”

  Magnus shook his head. His great eye glittered with green and gold as he regarded his captains.

  “That is part of its function, yes, but it was never intended to be used so… obviously,” he said.

  “Then how was it supposed to be used?” asked Ahriman. He looked over at Skarssen, the warrior once more wearing his leather mask, and wondered if the Apothecaries of the Fang knew as much as Magnus. The Wolf Lord walked warily around Magnus, having tasted a measure of his power. Ahriman suspected his primarch’s boast that he could destroy the Space Wolf ships in orbit was a calculated bluff. Clearly Skarssen wasn’t so sure.

  “Imagine the time when mankind first discovered Fenris,” continued Magnus, “a world so utterly inimical to life that humans simply could not survive. Everything about Fenris was death, from the blood-freezing cold to the sinking lands to the howling winds that suck the life from your lungs. Back then, of course, geneticists saw impossibility as a challenge, and daily wrought new codes within the chromosomes of human and animal genomes as easily as the Mechanicum punch data-wafers for servitors.”

  “So you’re saying that these colonists brought gene-bred wolves with them to Fenris?” said Phosis T’kar.

  “Perhaps they did,” allowed Magnus, “but more likely they adapted, imperfectly at times and without thought to the consequences. Or perhaps there were other, older races living on Fenris.”

  Ahriman watched Magnus as he spoke, feeling that there was more to the origins of Fenris than he was telling. Magnus was a traveller who had ventured deeper into the hidden reaches of the Great Ocean than any living soul. Perhaps he had actually witnessed the earliest days of the Wolf King’s world.

  Magnus gave a studied shrug and said, “You look at those beasts and you see wolves, but is that only because it is what you expect to see?”

  “What else would we see?” asked Hathor Maat. “They are wolves.”

  “When you have travelled as far as I have, and seen as I have seen, you will learn that it is possible to look beyond the expected and into the true heart of a thing.”

  Magnus gestured towards a wolf loping alongside the column, its powerful muscles driving it uphill through the heat without pause.

  “I can look past the flesh and muscle of that beast, paring back the bone into the heart of its marrow to read every scar and twist in its genetic code. I can unravel the millennia of change back to the logos of its origins,” said Magnus. Ahriman was surprised to hear sadness in his voice, as though he had seen things he would rather not have seen. “The thing it is, what it wished to be, and all the stages of that long evolutionary road.”

  The wolf stopped beside Magnus and he nodded towards it. An unspoken discourse seemed to pass between them. Ahriman caught a knowing glance from Ohthere Wyrdmake. Despite his reservations, he felt the urge to nurture the nascent kinship between them.

  “Away with you!” shouted Phosis T’kar, shooing it. “Damned wolves.”

  Magnus smiled. “I told you, there are no wolves on Fenris.”

  THEY HAD MET the previous evening, after Ahriman returned to his corporeal body. Opening his eyes, he groaned as his flesh ached with the stress of his body of light’s reintegration. His leg flared painfully, his entire body a mass of discomfort.

  With careful slowness, Ahriman uncrossed his legs and used his heqa staff to push himself to his feet. His right thigh felt numb, like it belonged to someone else, and cold pain burned the muscles and sinews the length of his leg. He opened his robe gingerly, pressing his fingertips to the bulked musculature of his smooth torso and grimacing in pain.

  Repercussions covered his flesh where the void-hunters had wounded him, blackened patches of skin drained of their vitality. More completely than any wound dealt with blade or bullet, injuries to the subtle body damaged the very essence of a traveller’s flesh.

  An Astartes could rise above pain, his body designed to allow him to function without loss of effectiveness, but nothing save rest and meditation could undo the damage of repercussions.

  He saw his grimoire lying open on the ground of his pavilion and knelt to retrieve it, wincing as the dead areas of his body pulled tight. He felt like he had fought for a month without rest, his body pushed nearly to the limits of its endurance.

  Ahriman secreted his grimoire and changed from his robe into a hooded tunic of crimson, edged with ivory and sable. Though his body ached for sleep, he had one last meeting to attend, one he had not anticipated until his near-fatal flight into the Great Ocean.

  The flap at his pavilion’s entrance pushed open and Sobek entered, his face a mask of concern. Cooler night air gusted in with him.

  “My lord, is everything all right?”

  “Everything is fine, Sobek,” said Ahriman.

  “I heard you calling out.”

  “An interesting flight in the aether, Sobek, that is all,” said Ahriman, lifting the hood over his head. “Some predatory creatures thought to make me a morsel.”

  “And yet you are venturing out?” asked Sobek. “You should be resting, my lord.”

  Ahriman shook his head.

  “No,” he said, “there is someone I need to see.”

  THE LAIR OF the Wolves was on the edge of the mountain, in the shadow of the deadstones. Skarssen had set his warriors’ shelters in concentric rings, with his at its heart. Ahriman saw a great wolf-skull totem planted in the crystalline hardpan, hung with wolf tails as long as a mortal man’s leg and teeth like blades.

  As he drew near, shadows bled from the twilight, sleek killers that put Ahriman in mind of the predators that had almost ended him earlier. Six of them padded towards him, their forms indistinct against the darkness, their hackles raised.

  They halted and he saw the gleam of stars on their fangs. Their muscles were tensed and ready, like pistons ready to fire on the launch rails of an embarkation deck.

  “I have come to see Ohthere Wyrdmake,” said Ahriman, feeling foolish at addressing beasts. The largest of the wolves threw back its head and loosed an almighty howl that split the faded evening.

  Ahriman waited for the wolves to back away, but they remained where they were, barring him entry to their master’s domain. He stepped forward, and the wolf that had announced his presence bared its iron fangs with a threatening growl.

  Another shadow moved behind the wolves, a tall warrior in granite grey armour who walked with a tall
staff topped with an eagle of gold and silver. His beard was waxed, and he wore a plain leather skullcap over his shaven scalp. Ahriman recognised him immediately.

  “Ohthere Wyrdmake,” he said.

  “Aye,” replied the Space Wolf, tilting his head and regarding him carefully. “You are hurt, mistflesh hurt.”

  “I was careless,” he said, not knowing the word, but understanding the meaning.

  Wyrdmake nodded and said, “That you were. I watched you chase the wyrd, blind to the hunting packs gathering for the murder-make. How came you to miss them?”

  “As I said, I was careless,” repeated Ahriman. “How did you find me?”

  Wyrdmake laughed, the sound rich with genuine humour.

  “That took no great skill,” he said. “I am a son of the Storm and I know the ocean of souls like the seas around Asaheim. When the Wolf’s Eye swells in the sky, the world forge turns and the dowsers seek the silent places, those places that are still amid the turmoil. I looked for stillness, and I found you.”

  Much of what Wyrdmake said made no sense to Ahriman, the terms too archaic, the vocabulary expressing parochial understandings beyond one not of Fenris.

  “That begs the question, why were you looking for me?”

  “Come,” said Wyrdmake. “Walk with me.”

  The Rune Priest set off towards the deadstones without waiting to see if Ahriman obeyed. The wolves parted to allow him through their ranks. Keeping a wary eye on the beasts, Ahriman followed Wyrdmake towards the deadstones, the menhirs like black teeth growing up from the ground.

  The warrior walked the circumference of the stones, careful not to touch them as he passed. He turned as Ahriman approached.

  “Anchors in the world,” said Wyrdmake. “Places of stillness. The Storm rages across this world, but all is still here. Like Asaheim, immovable and unchanging.”

  “The Aghoru call them deadstones,” said Ahriman, as the wolves padded softly around the edge of the circle, each one with its eyes locked on him.

  “A fitting name.”

  “So, are you going to tell me why you were looking for me?”

  “To know you,” said Wyrdmake. “Amlodhi came with a summons for your master, but I came for you. Your name is known to the Rune Priests of the Space Wolves, Ahzek Ahriman. You are star-cunning. Like me, you are a Son of the Storm, and I know of your affinity with the wyrd.”

  “The wyrd? I don’t know that term,” said Ahriman.

  “You are not of Fenris,” said Wyrdmake, as though that explained everything.

  “Then enlighten me,” said Ahriman, losing patience.

  “You would have me share the secrets of my calling?”

  “We will have precious little else to talk about if you do not.”

  Wyrdmake smiled, exposing teeth honed to sharp points. “You cut to the heart of the meat, friend. Very well. At its simplest, wyrd is fate, destiny.”

  “The future,” said Ahriman.

  “At times,” agreed Wyrdmake. “On Fenris we ken it as the turning of the world forge that continually reshapes the face of the land. As one land rises, another sinks to its doom. Wyrd shows us how past and present shape the future, but also how the future affects the past. The storms of time flow, weave together and burst apart, forever entwined within the great saga of the universe.”

  Ahriman began to understand the words of the Rune Priest, hearing in them a debased echo of the teachings of the Corvidae.

  “Fate goes ever as she shall,” quoted Ahriman, and Wyrdmake laughed.

  “Aye, she does indeed. The Geatlander knew his business when he said that line.”

  Ahriman looked up at the Mountain, feeling his hostility to Wyrdmake easing in the face of their shared understanding of the mysteries. As different as his teachings were, the Space Wolf had an insight Ahriman found refreshing. That didn’t mean he trusted him, not by a long way, but it was a start.

  “So you have found me,” he said. “What do you intend now?”

  “You and I are brothers of the Storm,” said Wyrdmake, echoing Ahriman’s earlier thought. “Brothers should not be strangers. I know the saga of your Legion’s past, and I know that nothing gets men’s murder-urge pumping like fear of what they do not understand.”

  Ahriman hesitated before asking, “What is it you think you know?”

  Wyrdmake stepped towards him, saying, “I know that a flaw in your heritage almost destroyed your Legion, and that you have a terror of its return. I know, for my Legion is the same. The curse of the Wulfen haunts us, and we keep watch over our brothers for wolf-sign.”

  Wyrdmake reached up to touch the silver oakleaf worked into Ahriman’s shoulder guard.

  “Just as you watch your fellow legionaries for the flesh change.”

  Ahriman flinched as though struck, backing away from Wyrdmake.

  “Never touch that again,” he said, fighting to keep his voice even.

  “Ohrmuzd?” asked Wyrdmake. “That was his name, was it not?”

  Ahriman wanted to be angry, wanted to lash out at this unwarranted picking of an old wound. He forced his mind into the lower Enumerations, casting off the shed skin of grief and regret.

  “Yes,” he said at last. “That was his name. That was my twin brother’s name.”

  AHRIMAN FELT THE sickness from the valley long before they crossed the ridge where he had first seen its titanic guardians. Only when he felt the bitter, metallic taste in the back of his throat did he realise that he could feel the ripple of aetheric energies along his limbs. It was faint, barely more than a whisper, but it was there.

  How was that possible when it had been so conspicuously absent before?

  As the ridge of the valley came into sight he felt that sickness more strongly, like the taste of wind blowing over a mass grave. Something foul had taken root in the valley.

  Ahriman looked over at Magnus, seeing his enormous form as a haze of indistinct images, like a thousand pict negatives placed on top of one another: Magnus the giant, Magnus the man, Magnus the monster, a thousand permutations on the theme of Magnus.

  He blinked away the afterimages, feeling sick at the sight of them. The sensation was unknown to him and he shook off his momentary dizziness.

  “You feel it too, don’t you?” asked Phosis T’kar.

  “I do,” he said. “What is happening?”

  “The sleepers are waking,” hissed Uthizzar, one hand pressed to his temple.

  “Sleepers?” asked Hathor Maat. “What are you talking about?”

  “The sleeping souls, bound to crystal immortality, left behind to watch,” gasped Uthizzar, “trapped and corrupted, dragged to a slow doom that is worse than death.”

  “What in the Emperor’s name is he talking about?” demanded Khalophis.

  “The Aghoru call them Daiesthai,” said Magnus, “void beasts given form by the nightmares of mortals since the dawn of time. Men, in their ignorance, call them daemons.”

  Ahriman almost smiled. Daemons, indeed…

  “You will feel the call of the Great Ocean, my sons,” said Magnus, his eye red and angry. “It will be strong, but rise to the ninth Enumeration. Enter the sphere of inner determination and close your minds off from its power, for it will call to you like nothing you have ever known.”

  “My lord?” asked Ahriman. “What is going on?”

  “Do it, Ahzek!” snapped Magnus. “This is not power as you know it. It is stagnant and dead. It will try to force its way into your mind, but you must not let it, not for a moment.”

  It felt alien to Ahriman to close himself off from the power of the aether, but he did as his primarch ordered, focusing his will and lifting his consciousness to the essence of his higher self, where he became an observer in his own flesh.

  Magnus set off towards the mouth of the valley without another word, almost outpacing them all. The tempo of the march picked up, and Ahriman saw confusion in the Space Wolves at this sudden urgency. But the wolves… they understood. Ohthere Wyrdmake
spoke to Amlodhi Skarssen, and the masked warrior cast a furious glare towards Magnus the Red.

  In his objective state of being, he saw the familiar fear of the unknown, the hatred engendered by the strange and unfamiliar. The Space Wolves did not trust his Legion, but perhaps the tentatively established cooperation of Ohthere Wyrdmake might change that.

  The valley climbed towards the ridge, and Ahriman noticed a change in the very character of the landscape. The perfection he had seen in its flawless geometries had subtly altered, as though the world had been shifted a fraction of a degree. Angles that once complemented one another were now horribly dissonant, like a musical instrument a hair’s-breadth out of tune.

  Golden ratios were upset and the graceful dance of intersecting lines became a tangle of discordant shapes that violated the perfect order that had existed before. The valley was a place of threat, its every angle hostile. The throaty rumbles of the Land Raiders’ engines echoed strangely from the valley sides, thrown back as if from a hundred different sources.

  At last they came to the mouth of the valley, and Ahriman stared in detached horror at what had become of its mighty guardians.

  “I CAN HEAR them screaming,” hissed Uthizzar, and Ahriman saw why that should be so.

  The titanic constructs stood as they always had, towering and immense, but the smooth, clean lines of their limbs were no longer graceful and pristine. Once they had been the colour of sun-bleached bone, but a loathsome network of poisonous, greenish-black veins threaded their limbs, a necrotic plague that poured from the cave in thick, oily ropes and filled the colossal statues with sickness.

  Their splay-clawed feet were rank with the stuff, like rotted vegetable matter that heaved and writhed with foul growth. Blackened legs supported torsos webbed with thin lines of dark matter that absorbed any light that fell upon it. Their slender arms were slick with black veins, polluted conduits carrying the foulness of some nameless corruption. The graceful curve of their enormous heads remained pale and untouched, but even as Ahriman watched, the questing black tendrils oozed around the huge gems set in the surfaces.