“I saw him eating a bunch of twigs earlier,” Strybjorn said.
“There was a nice fat slug on one of them,” Nils said with a look of relish on his face. Ragnar was not sure whether he really had done this or was just making it up to disgust the rest of the Blood Claws. “Anyway, I don’t know why Sven is always going on about what I eat. I’ve never seen anybody put away as much food as he does.”
Sven grinned. “Yes, but that’s real food. Venison and bread and cheese and ale. Not this stuff.”
“I would kill for a bit of cheese right now,” Lars said. Ragnar agreed with him. Just talking about real food made his mouth water. The food paste suddenly tasted even worse than usual.
“Get some sleep,” Sergeant Hengist said. “Who knows — you might well get a chance to kill something soon.”
Ragnar watched the dawn break over the mountains. It was the end of his watch and he was not even slightly tired. The beauty of the thing was breathtaking in its own way. At first the mountains were only slightly more than invisible. Their outlines were like a jagged hole cut in the fabric of the night As the sky lightened they began to come into view but yet appearing flat, like painted scenes on a stone wall. As the light intensified, they acquired more substance, more depth, more detail until they suddenly sparkled, as if newly made, in the sun.
Mist rose like smoke from the trees below them. It was as if the mountains were giving birth to clouds in the morning light. Or as if some wizard had used a spell to set the forest alight with some arcane trickery which created smoke but not flame. Ragnar knew that such was not the case, that soon the mist would evaporate like a ghost in sunlight. Still he enjoyed looking at the reborn world and listening to the chorus of birds greeting the sun.
In the distance he heard Sven and Nils begin to bicker over food once more. Sven was accusing the other Blood Claw of stealing his food tubes in the night.
They paced down the slope towards a strange warped area of the forest. All of them were silent now, and all of them were wary.
As they picked their way down the trail they had seen the area below them. The forest looked deeper and darker and more tangled. The trees looked blotched and sickly. Sergeant Hengist studied them through magnoculars before speaking. “This is different,” he said. “This was not in Urlek’s report.”
“Looks like those trees have got the plague,” Ragnar said.
“Don’t say that,” Sven said. “Nils will want to eat them.”
It really did look as if the trees had caught some sort of plague, Ragnar thought. They were stunted and hunched over like sick men. They all looked as if they were rotting and dying. Strange luminescent fungus clung to their sides, its faint glow visible even in the watery daylight that broke through the forest canopy. Ragnar had never seen anything even remotely like this. He looked around. Lars’s face was again twisted in a grimace. Ragnar could understand why. He too had a very bad feeling about this. Something smelled wrong. The whole area gave off an odour of corruption or decay, and there was a very slight yet disturbing tang to the scent in the air which made the hairs on the back of his neck rise. It was obvious that Sergeant Hengist felt the same way. He opened a broad band channel to the Fang and began to speak his report. There was a crackle of static. Some phenomenon was interfering with his comm-signal. For a moment Ragnar had the eerie premonition that the sickness of the trees had something to do with the interference, but he dismissed the thought as ludicrous. How could that be? Somewhere deep within his brain, the ancient engines had placed the knowledge that far stranger things had been known to happen.
Ragnar wondered what the sergeant would do. He could order them back to the high ground and hope to get beyond the range of the interference, or he could order them to push on. For a moment it seemed like Hengist himself was undecided, but then he gave the signal for them to move out. It looked as if they were going to carry on.
They stood now at the last recorded position of the missing pack. This was the final reference point where the Fang’s sophisticated location systems had been able to detect them. Ragnar now understood why. The trail through the tainted woods ended in a sheer rock face. The only way forward was through a cave mouth which gaped in the mountain side.
Sergeant Hengist gave a hand signal that told Ragnar to advance and investigate. Holding his weapons ready he loped forward cautiously, as if the cave were some dragon’s mouth that might snap shut and devour him. As he moved closer the odd stink became somewhat stronger and Ragnar’s unease intensified. Somehow, he sensed that there was something in the inky darkness of the cave that he really did not trust or like, a hint of rottenness far greater than anything in the corrupt forest that surrounded them.
Carefully, Ragnar picked his way up to the cave mouth and peered into the gloom. He saw nothing except a long trail leading down into the darkness below the mountain. He felt as if he were looking down the gullet of some vast beast.
+ See anything?+ Hengist was using the comm-net.
“Only a tunnel,” Ragnar replied. “What now?”
+We go in.+ Hengist said.
Ragnar had been afraid Hengist was going to say that.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
In the Dark
Ragnar glanced around into the gloom. The shoulder lamp on his armour sent a bright finger of light out to pierce the stygian darkness. At the moment it revealed only the clammy wall of the cavern, but Ragnar had a distinct feeling that was likely to change soon. The walls glittered, pearlescent in the torch beam. Something just wasn’t right. Every augmented and super-trained sense which Ragnar possessed screamed this fact at him. On edge, he listened on the assigned communicator channel, but all he could hear was the crackle of static. Some force, perhaps background radiation from the surrounding rocks, interfered with the comm-net. That was not good. All the training missions Ragnar had been part of had stressed how much good communication was essential to a unit’s effectiveness.
“What’s that?” Sven asked. Ragnar could see that Sven, who was on point, had stopped moving and was bending down to inspect something in the wet sand of the tunnel floor. Ragnar kept his eyes focused on the area beyond his comrade just in case something unexpected and doubtless threatening should emerge out of the darkness. He kept moving, until he had passed Sven and took up a position where he could cover the rough cut corridor. As he did so he caught a quick glance of the thing Sven was studying. Ceramite glinted up from the sand in reflection of the blue-white gleam from Sven’s shoulder lamp. It appeared to be a piece of Space Marine armour, half covered by sand. Perhaps a chunk of chest plate. An isolated part of Ragnar’s mind almost absently noted that the fragment of insignia visible could easily be extrapolated to complete the Wolf Head rune.
Mentally filing this fact away, Ragnar stared down the tunnel, staying on the balls of his feet, doing his best to keep alert while his mind wrestled with this information. This new development was not good. Very few natural forces could fracture ceramite armour. Ragnar assessed that it probably wasn’t a rock slide or an animal which had killed the armour’s wearer. If indeed the bearer was killed, and not simply lying injured or imprisoned somewhere within these seemingly endless passages.
All of which led to another disturbing thought. Ragnar wondered if he had known the person who had worn that armour? Had it belonged to one of the older Blood Claws who had been accepted into the chapter ahead of him? He had seen many of them within the Fang. Ragnar began to silently recite one of the old litanies in his mind, as he had been trained. Turning the words over in his mind, they felt like old friends, reminding him to stay in the moment, to focus on his surroundings, and not to let memories distract him. In this dark place all of these well-learnt instructions things seemed like very good advice.
Ragnar tried to estimate how far they had come. It seemed like they had wandered for leagues through these tunnels following the faintest hint of a trail. According to the pedometer built into his armour they had covered exactly five point zero six I
mperial kilometres, but that still did not give him any idea how deep they were underground. The corridors had wound and twisted like a drunken serpent. They might be deep within the bowels of Fenris, or they might only be a hundred strides from where they started. It was impossible to tell.
He was certain of one thing. He did not like the smell of this place. There was a taint of something like corruption in the cool, clammy air, and the hint of a scent that made him want to bare his fangs and strike at the first thing that came within range. It was something unnatural, and the beast within him instinctively revolted at its presence. Only the presence of his battle-brothers gave Ragnar any assurance.
“Ceramite armour,” he heard Hengist say in his gravelly, matter-of-fact voice. “Clean fracture too. Looks like someone used a magsteel blade judging by the break. Very interesting.” Hengist could have been describing the salient features of one of the automated combat drones in the training pits of the fang for all the emotion in his voice.
“I never knew the Outlanders had magsteel forges,” Sven said.
“Maybe they don’t,” Hengist replied.
“What do you mean?”
“We’ll see. Let’s push on. Ragnar, you seem to have taken over point. Might as well stay there.”
“Yes, sergeant.”
Ragnar pushed on, deeper into the all-enclosing darkness.
“Looks like some sort of storage place,” Ragnar said, staring around the vast cavern. Roughly hewn walls of a grey-green hue arched away above them, rearing up into complete darkness overhead. Rust marks from mineral ores stained the walls like old blood. Ragnar doubted that this cave was entirely of natural origin. The ruddy sand beneath their booted feet was dryer here, and crunched as they walked. Bat-winged creatures flickered away from their lights like torn scraps of shadow. Search beams flickered out inquisitively from a dozen or so shoulder lights, casting long shadows in the gloom. The faint whine of armour-servos and the flapping of the bat-creatures was the only sound. All around the walls were clay urns. Ragnar walked over to the nearest one, wondering whether he should lift off the lid. Hengist strode past and smashed it with his fist. A stale odour of old grain and mould immediately assaulted Ragnar’s nostrils.
“Looks like you’re right,” Hengist said. Ragnar gazed around as the rest of the pack moved into the cavern. There was something very strange about this place, he realised. Parts of the cavern were natural and parts definitely did look somewhat man-made. Ragnar would have sworn that he could see a part of a plasteel girder almost entirely enclosed in rock. He pointed this out to the sergeant.
“Take a look,” Hengist said. Ragnar looked for handholds in the wall and began to pull himself up. As he did so, a foul smell of excrement wafted into his nostrils. This was obviously where the bat-like creatures made their lair. Soon he had climbed far up the walls, past many niches that looked like nests. The rest of the pack was a long way below him, illuminated by the flickering finger of his shoulder light.
Then he reached the cavern roof, and was not entirely surprised to find that his initial supposition was correct. These were girders of plasteel, partially corroded. The knowledge the Fang’s teaching machines had placed in his head told him that they must be immeasurably ancient. It took millennia for plasteel to begin to corrode. He lowered himself back down to the ground and reported his findings to Hengist.
“It looks like we’ve found one of the Ancients’ sites then,” the sergeant said. “And obviously we’re not the first.”
Ragnar looked at him questioningly.
“Mankind is old on Fenris. People were here long before Russ and the Imperium. The original settlers were supposed to have sheltered from the elements in these caverns, and hid here during the Age of Catastrophe.”
Ragnar nodded. That made sense. These caves were the perfect place to hide from the cold, the storms, the meteor showers. And this part of Asaheim was stable. No quakes. Of course, that only begged the question of why they had been abandoned. Ragnar asked Hengist. The sergeant grimaced and shook his head.
“There are only legends now but it is said there was some ancient force present in the rocks which caused mutation and made the inhabitants susceptible to the influence of Chaos. Some say that this was a natural thing, others that it was the result of ancient forbidden weapons being unleashed. No one knows now. All that is known is that the cavern cities were abandoned, and that Russ himself forbade any to make their homes there.”
“It looks like Russ’s edict had been disobeyed,” Ragnar said.
“Yes,” Hengist agreed. “There are always those who will do forbidden things, simply because they are forbidden. It is part of the folly of mankind.”
Ragnar was surprised to find himself at least partly sympathetic to the views of those who would inhabit the caves. After all, they made a perfect shelter from the wild storms of Asaheim. He knew that present necessity was often stronger than ancient taboo. While these thoughts flickered through his mind, he held his tongue. Briefly suspicion flared that such self-questioning thoughts might not have been his own, but the product of some outside influence insidiously playing on his mind, but Ragnar dismissed the idea as irrational.
“We’d best push on, if we’re going to find any trace of our missing brethren,” said Hengist.
Ahead of him Ragnar could hear the constant drip-drip-drip of moisture condensing on a cavern ceiling and then dropping into some deep underground pool. He was surprised to round a corner and see a faint pale yellow glow ahead of him. He dimmed his shoulder lamp, made a hand signal for the Blood Claws behind him to hold their position, crouched down and advanced slowly towards the source of the illumination.
The tunnel narrowed and the floor of the passage rose slightly as he moved. He was forced to use one hand to balance himself as he moved up the slope. He held his bolt pistol ready in his right hand. As his head rose above the level of the passage, a strange vista came into view.
He saw that he was looking down from an opening high in the side of another vast cavern, and that far below him, cupped in the bowl made by the floor of the cave, was a huge body of water. Phosphorescent algae swirled like trapped nebula in the water’s black and oily surface. It was this that gave off the greenish-yellow glow. Ripples expanded from the places where moisture beads, like saliva dripping from the giant stalactite fangs of the ceiling, disturbed the surface. It almost seemed to Ragnar that he and his fellow Blood Claws were being consumed alive by some huge beast. It was as if the mountain were alive and he was being dragged ever deeper into its stomach for digestion. The sensation made him shiver. A ramp of collapsed rock and sand led steeply down to the pool.
Ragnar turned and gestured for Sven and Strybjorn to advance. His two comrades moved up and past him. While he covered them from his perch, they scuttled crab-like down the slope towards the surface of the water. Ragnar waited tensely, half expecting some monstrous head to emerge from the pool and snap at them, but nothing happened. The only sound was the faint dripping of the water and the scuff of the two Blood Claws’ feet on the slippery rock surface, punctuated by the occasional hiss or whirr of a compensator struggling to adjust as rocks slid away under the weight of Space Marine armour.
Sven and Strybjorn stood for long moments waiting, heads cocked to one side as they tested the air, then they gave the all clear signal. One by one, the remainder of the Blood Claws advanced into the chamber, to be joined by Sergeant Hengist. Once they were all within, Ragnar moved down the slope to join them.
“This is hopeless,” he heard Sven mutter. “We’ll never find them.” He emphatically spat a gob of phlegm into the lake. “That is, if they were ever here.”
Hengist’s keen ears caught even these faint words. “We will continue until we have established the fate of our Wolfbrothers,” the old sergeant growled. “That is our duty and our way.”
“Aye,” Sven said. “Fair enough.” He kicked absently at a rock with his booted foot. It arced into the pool, disappearing with a du
ll splash. “Still, this is a fell-looking place right enough. I half expect to see a den of trolls any minute.”
For himself, Ragnar would almost have welcomed the presence of such monstrous creatures. It would have helped dispel the strange tension he was starting to feel, and would have helped him forget the weird sensation of being watched by hostile eyes, a sensation that was starting to make the flesh between his shoulder blades crawl. Maybe this was just his overactive imagination playing tricks. Somehow, this time, he doubted that.
“It’s like a bloody sea,” Sven said with a trace of ironic humour. “Maybe we can catch some fish for our supper.”
“I would not dine on the flesh of anything plucked from those foul waters,” said Lars. “Nor would I drink of them.”
Ragnar was forced to agree. There was something deeply disquieting to him about this huge underground lake and its glowing surface. He could not see the far shore from where he stood. His fear of it had not in the slightest decreased. Nor did the suspicion that at any moment a monstrous head was going to break the surface Ragnar wondered if the great sea dragons perhaps had kin which dwelt beneath the waters in these deep caverns? Every few heartbeats he caught himself shooting swift nervous glances at the water’s surface before glancing back to make sure nothing was sneaking up behind him. Something about the other Blood Claws’ scent and stances told him that they felt the same way, despite all their efforts to conceal their nervousness.
None of them could forget that another pack of their brethren had become lost and had perhaps died down here. Every now and again he felt sure that he heard the faint padding of feet behind him, but when he glanced back he could discern nothing in the dim, boulder-strewn immenseness of the cavern. It surprised him when Sergeant Hengist began to move back down the line, pausing occasionally to mutter instructions to each Blood Claw. When he got back to Ragnar he moved alongside him and whispered.