He sensed that running would be no good. Running over broken ground in uncertain light would be sure to lead to an accident, one that would most likely prove fatal if he were then attacked. Ragnar knew it would be best to make camp, to build a fire using his pouch full of dried leaves, twigs and sticks and try to rest. Perhaps the flames would frighten off whatever it was that watched him. Perhaps not. It might be worth a try.
Somewhere deep within him he felt the presence of the beast. It watched and waited and in it a furious anger was building up. It did not like being hunted. It did not appreciate being prey rather than predator. It wanted to turn at bay and confront whatever followed it with tooth and nail. Ragnar was strangely reassured by that, and found himself in agreement. Running through the dark was not going to help, neither was worry or fear. They would only paralyse him and sap his energy. With a fierce grunt, Ragnar realised that he had come to a decision of sorts. Nearby stood several huge boulders, enormous shadows in the gloom.
In their lee would be some shelter from the wind and the elements. He moved in their direction, determined that he would build a fire. And wait.
The flames flickered. The smell of woodsmoke reached Ragnar’s nostrils. He munched on the nuts and berries he had collected earlier and wished that he had some water to moisten his mouth. Tomorrow he would find a stream, he told himself. If he still lived.
He avoided looking directly at the flames so as not to ruin his much enhanced night vision. He was still keenly aware of that sense of presence. Ragnar listened keenly to the sounds of the night, and sniffed at the cold air. The hairs on the back of his neck rose now as he heard the sound of pebbles rolling down the scree, disturbed by the approach of something heavy, something that moved with furtive care. Ragnar reached for his spear and rose to a crouch, placing his back to the largest of the boulders, a stone half again as tall as he. At least in this way he would not be taken by surprise from behind. Whatever it was would have to face his wrath. And if he had to, Ragnar knew he would die with his wounds to the fore, as his father had taught him. He licked his lips, his hands clenching and unclenching on the rough shaft of his spear.
The stink he had smelled earlier became stronger. In it was a hint of something human, and of something animal. There was a smell like that of a wolfs fur. Now he could hear a faint snuffling sound, as of a large beast sniffing the air. His fingers tightened even harder around the spear shaft, his body tensed like a coiled spring as he made himself ready to strike at the unseen enemy.
Fear boiled in the pit of his stomach. The small hairs of his body rose. He recognised the outline of the thing that appeared in the firelight. It was tall and heavy and manlike. Its torso was covered in the remains of a ripped grey tunic that now appeared far too small for its massive muscular form. Its hands ended in long talon-like claws. Its head was still human but covered in thick, matted fur, and its snarling mouth revealed massive fangs. In its eyes burned hunger, rage and a startling intelligence. It opened its mouth and gave a low feral growl. An answering growl was torn unbidden from Ragnar’s lips.
It was wulfen. Ragnar knew now what had been stalking him, knew that he had suspected it all along and this had been the source of his fear and his unease. The beast within him had recognised the wulfen. That the thing intended to kill him and feast on his flesh he had absolutely no doubt. It was going to be a matter of kill or be killed. He knew he would have to strike quickly and without mercy if he were to have any chance to live. He brought his improvised spear up and braced for the killing stroke. Within himself the beast stood ready to strike.
And in that moment his hand was stayed. He found that he could not bring himself to make the cast. This wulfen had once been a man just like him. It had been an aspirant. It had drunk from the cup. It had undergone the same changes and torments that he had. In Russ’s name it could so easily have been him, if the beast had gained control. Indeed, it was all too possible that this creature was someone he knew. It might be Kjel or Sven or even Strybjorn. Could he really just kill it out of hand?
It appeared the creature felt something like the same emotion. It halted for a moment. Its eyes moved from Ragnar to the fire and then back to Ragnar again. It growled once more. Ragnar could see its muscles tensing. He could see now that a bracelet similar to the one on his own arm glittered on the thing’s wrist, and knew with a thrill of horror that it was most likely one of his own former companions. But which one, he asked himself. Was it a friend or foe?
In a moment all such considerations became moot. The wulfen sprang. By instinctive reflex action Ragnar sent the spear hurtling into its chest. The long blade pierced its ribs and buried itself in the monster’s heart. The shaft bent and then broke under the creature’s weight and the force of its leap. Ragnar was slammed back into the boulder and for a moment found himself gazing into the creature’s eyes. Human intelligence seemed to flood back into them.
The twisted lips formed a single word, “Ragnar” then the wulfen died.
Ragnar looked down on the slumped form, filled with both horror and triumph by what he had done. He had killed a wulfen. Alone. But he had also known it as a man, a good friend. Ragnar bent down to inspect the bracelet on the creature’s arm to find out who it had been, hoping against hope that it was Strybjorn.
In the flickering light the rune etched onto the metal was clearly visible. It showed the sign of the hawk. Ragnar vented a long howl of rage and grief into the cold, uncaring night, knowing that he had just killed Kjel, his only true friend.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Acceptance
Ragnar lay on the surgical altar once more. He looked up to see the masked faces of the Iron Priests. He could hear the dim thrum of their machinery, the odd soul-chilling music of their ritual chants, the occasional scream or howl of a warrior in pain as the razorsaw circular knives of the priests bit into their flesh.
The table beneath him was sticky with his own coagulated blood, the smell of it and of various chemicals assaulted his nostrils. His fingers bunched around the metal grips on the side of the altar. He took a deep breath and willed himself to be calm.
Since he got back to the Fang there had been many strange medical rituals performed over him. He had been put in various technical engines and scanned. Iron Priests had prodded him with sensor wands, encased his head in scanner helmets, clipped monitoring filaments to his limbs. He had been fed a diet of meat and ale containing the chemical taint of many strange drugs. His enhanced senses had told him of their presence, but he assumed that they had been put there for his own good so he had not worried. Not that worrying would have done much good anyway, since he was entirely at the mercy of the Iron Priests.
At least he was still alive. Not all of the other aspirants were. Sven had returned. So had Strybjorn. So had many of the others but not all. At least five, including Kjel, had not come back from the ultimate test. A full month had passed and it seemed unlikely now that they ever would.
Ragnar forced the thought of Kjel to the back of his mind. He did not like to think about it. Kjel had been the closest thing to a friend he had possessed among the aspirants, and now Kjel was gone. Many times recently Ragnar had lain awake wondering what it must have been like for the Falconer, wandering alone through the great wilderness while his body altered into something other than human, and the beast within devoured his mind and his soul. Had he been aware of what was happening the whole time? Or had he fallen early into merciful oblivion? Ragnar realised that he would never know.
The Iron Priests assured him that the changes wrought by the Cup of Wulfen were complete, that his body had now fully integrated the magical thing they called the canis helix, and that he was ready to move on to the next part of the process that would turn him into one of the Wolves. He was ready to have the thing they called the geneseed implanted.
Ragnar took another deep breath and strove to remain calm. The beast, the animal side of his nature, did not like this. It hated being strapped down, caged, subject t
o the will of others. It did not like this business at all. There was nothing he could do. He turned his head fractionally and saw that one of the high Iron Priests was approaching. He held a glass chalice reverently in both hands. In it was a pulpy fleshy thing from which emerged various nodules and tubes of tissue. The chanting of the priests around Ragnar’s altar grew louder and more rhythmical as the warrior approached.
This was the geneseed, Ragnar knew, remembering the things he had been taught over the past few weeks. This was the master component that controlled all the others and would enable his transformation into a full Space Wolf. It would enable his body to adapt and it would control the host of other implants the Iron Priests were going to place within his flesh. It did not look like much, but it was a sacred thing. This scrap of bloody flesh had been borne by many Wolves before Ragnar, had originally been taken from the flesh and blood of Russ himself. It was a direct link with the ancient times and with the god of his people. It was a staggering thought to Ragnar that soon within his own body would be part of his god. However, it was something that all the other Space Wolves possessed, and went a long way towards explaining the superhuman attributes they possessed. In a very real sense they were kin to the gods. And soon, Ragnar thought, if all went well, so too would he be!
The Iron Priest came ever closer. Ragnar felt a needle spike going into his arm. In his hyper-sensitised conditioned it felt like a stab from a sword. There was brief flash of agony and then coolness flowed through his veins, spreading from the point where the needle went in. In moments he was relaxed and numbed and aware of his body as a remote and distant thing. It was as if his soul floated on a cloud of ice and looked down upon the things that happened to his flesh.
He felt his skin shake and a soft pressure on his chest as one of the Iron Priests reached forward and cut him with a ripsaw. Flesh parted. Blood flowed. Ragnar doubted that more damage could have been inflicted with a blow from an axe and yet he was aware of it only as a passing discomfort. He saw the high Iron Priest make a complex gesture over the vessel in which the geneseed rested before reaching in with one gauntleted hand and pulling the fleshy thing out. He heard an odd sucking sound as the geneseed was placed within his ribcage and began the task of grafting itself to his nerves and veins and sinews. It was an odd sensation the like of which he had never endured before. It was as if a living thing were crawling about inside his chest cavity. He imagined tentacles of flesh emerging from the thing’s carapace, of veins sprouting from it like roots from a seed, of bits of nerve binding themselves to his own. The image filled his mind as another needle was driven home. Molten pain flashed through him, dispersing the coolness, and his spirit toppled forward into a black abyss.
Ragnar knelt in the meditation chamber. He felt better now. His chest no longer felt swollen and constricted by the presence of the geneseed. The scars of the ceremony were already fading even though only days had passed. He was aware only of a slight sensitivity around the whole area where it was tender to the touch. He had found himself poking at it daily like a man touching a cavity in his tooth with his tongue. It seemed inconceivable to him at this moment that the scars and the tenderness both were marks of the favour of Russ, yet he knew it must be so. The things he had learned over the past few days made that all too clear.
He forced the thoughts from his mind and concentrated on Ranek. The Wolf Priest stood before the aspirants once more and bade them begin the ritual. Ragnar cleared his mind as he had been taught and began to intone the strange prayer. He felt himself relax as he reached forward and picked up the crown of knowledge. It was a mysterious and age-old thing of brass and iron, connected to the engines of knowledge by pulsing cables of copper and glass. Ranek had told them the crowns were connected to great knowledge machines where all the history of the Chapter was stored, and much ancient lore. By donning the crowns, that lore could be pumped directly into his head at a rate far beyond that at which a person could normally memorise it. Ragnar found the whole process a frightening and magical one. Once the crown was in place, and the correct litanies intoned by the priests, then the knowledge came. Not only in the forms of words and memories, but also of sounds and pictures and emotions. Ragnar knew his own feelings were being subtly altered by the machines, but he did not care: the possession of the lore was worth the price. He had learned so much in only a few days. It was an enlightening experience in its own way. The more he learned, the more he understood the Space Wolves, and the more he understood the Chapter the more he longed to serve them and be a part of them.
He knew now that the world was a far greater and more complex place than ever he had believed. Indeed there was not just one world but many. Fenris was an orb that circled the Eye of Russ. It was merely one of many such worlds that floated in the space around that huge sun. And in turn the Eye of Russ was just one of millions of suns that made up the galaxy and around many of which orbited other inhabited worlds. Strangest of all, not all of these worlds were inhabited by humans. Some were ruled by greenskinned monsters called orks. Some were the homes of a tall beautiful yet utterly alien people called the eldar. One whole sector of the galaxy was the home of daemons and those who served them.
The vast bulk of the human worlds were ruled by the Imperium, which the Space Wolves served. The Imperium was ruled by the Emperor, the All Father, the crippled god who had given life to Russ and his brothers and whose shattered shell now existed in a great machine on the ancestral world of Terra. The Emperor was served by an enormous corps of priests and magistrates and rulers and tax collectors. In his name massive armies moved across the galaxy carried by huge ships capable of sailing between the stars. All the other races and nations and kingdoms Ragnar had learned of were the enemies of the Emperor and of humanity, and would do anything to undermine the All Father’s rule and destroy his realm. Across the galaxy, savage wars raged between the Emperor’s legions and those of his foes, and in the forefront of many of these wars were the Wolves.
He saw the founding of the Wolves all those long ages ago when the All Father was young and walked among men. He saw the coming of Russ to Fenris, and then the arrival of the All Father seeking his lost son. He saw Russ recruit his honour guard of warriors and name them the Wolves of Space. He saw too that the All Father had many strong sons, called primarchs, who founded their own Chapters, just as Russ had done. He learned that these warriors, who all shared the geneseed of their primarchs, were known collectively as Space Marines.
Ragnar saw the founding of the Imperium, and then the terrible war with the arch-heretic and traitor Horus which tore the new-born empire apart and resulted in the crippling of the All Father and the death of Horus. He saw that many of the Space Marines and their primarchs followed Horus in his folly and betrayed their oaths to the Emperor. He saw them depart for the strange warped area of the galaxy known as the Eye of Terror and watched them devolve into things less than human. Ragnar knew now that he was being made privy to knowledge kept secret from the vast majority of people, and that he must never divulge this lore to anyone who did not already know of it. He shuddered when he found out about the four great powers of Chaos, the ultimate arch-daemons who were forever at work to undermine the empire of humanity.
There was Khorne, the Blood God, lord of slaughter, whose followers went laughing into battle filled with an unslakable thirst for carnage. There was Tzeentch, the Great Mutator, who transformed his worshippers and made them privy to the darkest secrets of sorcery. There was Nurgle, the Plague Lord, whose followers spread blight and disease to the furthest reaches of the cosmos. There was Slaanesh, depraved god of unspeakable pleasures. He knew enough now to recognise some of their worshippers as the beings he had encountered in his visions beyond the Gate of Morkai. Ragnar prayed most earnestly that he need never learn more.
He learned of Russ’s disappearance on his great quest to find the seeds of the tree of life which would cure his Emperor. He learned of the long and honourable history of the Wolves unto the present age
. More and more knowledge poured into his willing brain and he soaked it up like a sponge.
He saw how vast and terrible the enemies of mankind were, and how great was the need for mighty warriors to oppose them. He understood now why the testing of the aspirants had been so savage and brutal. In these dark times no flaw could be allowed in those who were to stand between humanity and its enemies.
Chants and litanies and prayers filled his mind. He understood many of them now. They were to focus a warrior’s mind, to keep his faith as strong as his arm. He knew that others were to help him use the new abilities he was gaining daily as the Iron Priests did their work.
He understood the changes that were being wrought in his body better now. He was being given the knowledge to help him do so. He knew that he had been given a second heart, and augmented muscles and glands that would enable him to breathe poisoned air and eat poisoned food without coming to harm. His senses had been made even keener and his body far more resilient. He knew that he could now recover from almost any wound that did not kill him outright, even without medical care, given time. He learned the basics of field medicine for cauterising amputations.
Most of his body was enclosed in a flexible black metallic carapace. He knew that the various plasteel nodes protruding from it were contact points that would enable his body to interface with the armour that all Space Marines wore like a second skin. He was astonished that he now possessed the vocabulary and the knowledge to understand these concepts. Truly the power of these ancient engines was great.
More and more knowledge flowed into his mind. He learned of weapons and their use. He learned of tactics and organisational structures. He learned the ten basic offensive manoeuvres and the four strong defences. And he smiled as he did so, the pleasure centres of his brain stimulated by the awesome intricate subtle mechanisms of the old machines.