Blood of Asaheim Read online

Early, for a summons.

  ‘Bajola,’ she acknowledged, moving away from the balcony and slapping the railing’s dust from her hands.

  ‘Sister Palatine,’ came the response. It was Callia, one of de Chatelaine’s aides. ‘The canoness demands your presence. Hall of the Halicon, twenty minutes.’

  Bajola smiled. Typically terse.

  ‘On my way,’ she said. ‘Did the canoness say what it was about?’

  The link cut dead. Either Callia was being rude, or she was ferociously busy. The latter was more likely.

  Bajola walked back into her cell. Not much to look at – a narrow bed with no covers, a devotional pict of Saint Alexia, a metal-bound chest containing her robes, a bolter hung on the wall from iron brackets and draped in embroidered benedictions.

  Her eyes lighted on the weapon. It had an ugly, blunt aspect. Even though she’d long since left the Order Famulous behind and embraced the way of the Wounded Heart, she’d never learned to love the core tool of her adopted trade.

  Get over it, she thought to herself, pulling the shift over her head and starting to dress. You’ll be using it again soon.

  When she arrived at the Hall of the Halicon, the place was in a frenzy of preparation. That was unusual. Ever since fighting had broken out, the grand ceremonial space had been virtually unused, its marble surfaces surrendered to the drifting, gritty air.

  Now hundreds of labourers were at work, polishing statuary, rolling out long crimson carpets, hanging banners with the bloody symbols of the Wounded Heart sewn in crimson and gold thread.

  As soon as she saw that work, Bajola’s spirits rose a little. She knew who had been summoned. So perhaps they had made it. Perhaps it would be a whole battle company of them. That would be something worth seeing; it might even turn the tide.

  She couldn’t see the canoness. She walked up the wide stairway, feeling the first pricks of sweat at her neck, trying to catch a glimpse of de Chatelaine in the milling crowds.

  The Hall was an obscene place, a vulgar display of power and indulgence that sat uneasily with Ras Shakeh’s windswept emptiness. Bajola hated it, the canoness hated it, everyone who worked in it hated it. Unlike the white-walled structures in the rest of the city, the Hall had been constructed from a dark-veined stone that sucked in the sunlight during the day and made the interior shimmer with close, sweaty heat.

  Its bulk was out of all proportion to the older buildings around it. Rings of corded pillars supported an ornate panelled ceiling of stuccoed cherubs and milk-faced saints. Incense burners swung from the vaults above, staining the patterned floors with saccharine aromas. Golden statues of heroes stood in ranks down the echoing aisles, their melancholy, smug faces turned to the starry heavens for inspiration.

  The Order had not been responsible for the Hall’s construction. Cardinal Tomojo-Kech had built it seven hundred years ago, demolishing a more suitably austere priory that had stood on the site since the Order had first come to Ras Shakeh in the 37th millennium. No one knew how much it had cost to ship such huge quantities of precious commodities to such an isolated place. Perhaps the extravagance had been what had cost Tomojo-Kech his head during the Jericar Purges; perhaps not. It was always hard to know.

  His legacy had lasted, though. The Halicon citadel, of which the Hall was the major part, dominated the mountain city of Hjec Aleja, squatting atop the rocky outcrop at its heart and gazing out across the plains with overblown grandeur. All roads in the city led there, sooner or later, snaking up the narrow causeways and switchbacks until they emerged at the Plaza of Triumph, two hundred metres above the ochre plains and baking under the sun.

  Bajola preferred the cathedral, her own demesne, set outside the inner walls of the city and placed within the teeming outer hab-districts. It was where it ought to be, close to those who needed it, allowing the priests to minister to the faithful rather than sweat away in Tomojo-Kech’s folly up on the mountain.

  Bajola pushed her way through the crowds, smelling their odour of sweat and incense, before catching sight of the canoness at last.

  Alexis de Chatelaine saw her coming and nodded sharply in what passed for acknowledgement with her.

  ‘You’re late,’ she said.

  ‘Forgive me,’ said Bajola, bowing. ‘The streets were clogged.’

  De Chatelaine pursed her lips. ‘Word has got out already. I don’t know how. The masses will always find a way. If we could tap that, turn their ferreting curiosity into something useful, I would not fear losing this war.’

  The canoness was a clipped, severe figure. Her silver hair, cut into a sheer razor-bob, framed a hard-edged face made old by a lifetime of devotion. Her lips were thin and her flesh was roughened from both the sun and age. De Chatelaine scorned cosmetic treatment and so looked every year of her one hundred and forty-two winters. For all that, her movements gave away her essential vigour. She could still fight, and Bajola knew her will was as starkly unbending as ever. She dominated the space around her, tall and spear-lean in night-black armour-plate, trimmed with pale ermine and decorated by the crimson cracked heart device in pearl and ruby.

  ‘They heard more than I did,’ admitted Bajola.

  ‘Then I shall enlighten you, child,’ said de Chatelaine. ‘Emperor be praised, our summons have been answered. I could almost have given up, but that would have been a failure of faith, would it not? The Wolves of Fenris have sent their forces, just as their Great Wolf promised. The timing is propitious. They have already given battle to the enemy and have emerged victorious. Now we are tracking them. They will be here within hours.’

  Bajola placed her hands together and bowed her head. A mix of emotions surged through her – she had begun to insulate herself against the possibility that they might not come.

  ‘How many?’ she asked.

  ‘I do not know. I fear not many. But recall this: a single warrior of the Adeptus Astartes is worth a hundred Guardsmen. In the cause of morale, his value is even higher. They will kill at a rate that even our Celestians cannot match.’

  ‘So I have heard. Let us hope the stories are true.’

  ‘Of course they’re true,’ she snapped. ‘I’ve fought with them before. Watch your thoughts, Palatine.’

  Bajola bowed in apology. It was something she’d become used to, when speaking to the canoness.

  ‘I mean no disrespect,’ she said. ‘But our service has been with the Adulators, who are steeped in our ways and are on close terms with the holy orders of the Ecclesiarchy. These are the Wolves. I have heard… things.’

  De Chatelaine’s expression softened a little.

  ‘So have I,’ she said. ‘Who has not? But these are the instruments the Emperor chooses to make available to us, and so, by necessity, they are the right ones.’

  Bajola sometimes found de Chatelaine’s ramrod faith touching, almost juvenile. To admit that, though, even to herself, was dangerous.

  ‘That is so,’ she said. ‘I look forward to meeting them.’

  ‘You will do more than that. I wish you to work with them. You will be our conduit. I trust that meets with your approval.’

  Bajola felt a brief twinge of surprise. ‘Of course,’ she said. ‘But, I–’

  ‘You were of the Famulous before you joined us,’ said de Chatelaine. ‘The diplomats. I take it you have retained some of those skills. We will need them.’

  The canoness lowered her voice, moving her head closer to Bajola’s.

  ‘Matters have not always gone well between the Church and the Wolves,’ she said. ‘You know this, and they will not have forgotten it. I am not a fool, Palatine: I am aware of the potential for strife, and I wish to limit it. We will have to find some way of working together if we are not to end our days on this dust-blown rock.’

  She placed her gauntlet over Bajola’s hand. It was a strangely protective gesture from a battle-hardened woman.


  ‘Do not let me down, Uwe,’ she said. ‘You will be the voice of calm that smooths the way between us.’

  Bajola swallowed her discomfort. Working with the Wolves directly had not been something she’d considered. Unlike the canoness, she had long since got used to the idea that they weren’t coming. It was a complication, though maybe one she should have forseen.

  She bowed. ‘By His will,’ she said.

  When she raised her head again, de Chatelaine was no longer looking at her. The commotion in the hall was growing. From the Plaza outside came the noise of Shakeh Guardsmen shouting something in Haljeha, something about an incoming ship on the horizon.

  ‘Earlier than I expected,’ said de Chatelaine, fixing her green eyes on the ornate entrance gates as if she could peer through them. ‘Perhaps I should not be surprised.’

  She took a deep breath, and released Bajola’s hand.

  ‘Prepare yourself, Palatine,’ she said. ‘The Wolves approach.’

  They were, and they weren’t, what she’d imagined.

  Seven of them strode through the Hall gates, shaking the dust from their armour as they came. De Chatelaine had used what little time remained to her well, and the audience chamber was as clean and well-ordered as could have been hoped for. Lines of Guardsmen stood to attention along either aisle, their uniforms scrubbed clear of the worst of the grit and bloodstains.

  Squads of Battle Sisters stood beside them, far more imposing in their pristine black power armour. Bajola felt a swell of pride just looking at them. Some of her sisters had returned from the front mere days ago, carrying stories of horror with them. They stood to attention in neat ranks, eyes gazing straight ahead, betraying nothing but rigid, silent resolve.

  De Chatelaine waited for the Wolves at the far end of the chamber. A marble dais of wide steps led up to a blood-red leather-upholstered throne surmounted by a gaudy tableau of angels and writhing serpents. The canoness had chosen not to make use of that, but stood at the base of the stairs, clad in her regulation battle-plate. A small coterie of aides, including Callia and Bajola, clustered around her.

  Bajola watched the Wolves approach. She surprised herself by feeling a faint tremor of unease. Not fear, exactly; more like tension, as if an attack were imminent. The warriors in grey exuded a palpable atmosphere of intimidation. It rose from them as they moved, flowing from their limbs like musk, hanging in the air behind them.

  She studied them as they neared, moving her eyes from each one to the next, soaking in as much information as she could and storing it away, just as she had been trained to.

  Observe. Retain. Scan for weakness; watch for strength.

  Their leader was obvious. He walked with a fighter’s rolling gait. He wore his full armour minus the helm, and it made him massive. His head was bald and marked with tribal tattoos. A matted grey beard tumbled across his breastplate. The hair looked filthy, as if it had been dipped in a bucket of boiling lard and the slops had been left to dry.

  They were all dirty. They stank of rotten meat. Their chipped battle-plate was smeared with blood and grease and grime. They were hirsute and grim-faced, save for one: a younger-looking warrior with flame-red hair and a raw weal running crossways the length of his face. That one could almost have passed for human.

  She had expected them to look savage. She had expected the grinding whine of power armour, the clanking bone-totems, the back-slung weapons with runes carved finely on the blades.

  She hadn’t expected the stench. She hadn’t expected the sheer aura of belligerence, the thick expressions of surly violence in their amber eyes.

  They were beasts. They were beasts clad in the rags of humanity, given a veneer of civilisation to mask the deep animal within.

  As she was wont to, as she always did, she found herself wondering why the blessed Emperor would have created and given sanction to such things.

  The answer came to mind almost immediately.

  Because they are needed.

  Bajola noticed that one of them carried himself differently to the others. His eyes were grey, not golden. His exposed face was equally marked by scarification and tribe-marks, but he walked taller, with less swagger. He was contained, wrapped up in himself. The others let their souls spill out in front of them, betraying their essential core of menace, glorying in the dominance they so casually projected.

  The grey-eyed one did not.

  Once, a very long time ago while serving with her old Order, Bajola had witnessed a squad of Ultramarines accompanying an Inquisitorial retinue. She’d been awe-struck by them – their discipline, their confidence, their reserve. The grey-eyed warrior carried himself a little like they had done. That was strange. She wondered whether anyone else had noticed. She even wondered whether the rest of his pack had noticed – such subtle signals were hard to read and easy to miss.

  The leader drew up before de Chatelaine. At close quarters he was immense, a mountain of brutal energy encased in dirty ceramite.

  ‘I am called Wolf Guard Gunnlaugur,’ he announced. ‘Of the Great Company of Ragnar Blackmane, of the Rout of Fenris.’

  His voice was harsh, a grating thrum of pit-deep hazard.

  ‘You are welcome, Son of Fenris,’ replied de Chatelaine. Her voice was dry and clear. If the canoness felt any uneasiness in his presence, she didn’t show it. ‘We are grateful to the Great Wolf for sending you. We are grateful to you for coming.’

  Gunnlaugur grunted. ‘Glad you’re pleased to see us. That ship up there wasn’t.’

  ‘You destroyed it,’ said de Chatelaine. ‘That was your first great service to us. We shall not forget it, it was a mighty deed.’

  ‘Mighty? I lost my own. That is a great shame to have hanging on my shoulders. We were not expecting to have to fight our way down.’

  The canoness gave him an apologetic look.

  ‘Yes, I am aware of that,’ she said. ‘If there had been any way of warning you–’

  ‘There wasn’t?’

  ‘If we had been able to reach you, to help you, do you not think we would have done it?’

  Bajola appreciated de Chatelaine’s skill. The canoness spoke evenly, matching the Wolf’s blunt challenges with calmness. It was not easy to quarrel with one who would not rise to it.

  Gunnlaugur fixed her with his black-pinned gaze for a long time, assessing, appraising. Bajola half expected him to start sniffing.

  ‘Tell me what has happened here,’ he said at last.

  ‘I fear you will not like it,’ said de Chatelaine. ‘You have landed in the middle of a war, Wolf Guard. Until you had arrived, I would have said it was one we could not win. Even now, I am not sure how long we have left.’

  Gunnlaugur didn’t look troubled by that. If anything, Bajola thought she caught the gleam of something like excitement in his eyes.

  ‘We are here now,’ he said. ‘Anything is possible.’

  After that, the conversation moved to the canoness’s private chambers. The troops in the Hall dispersed, sent back to their barracks and bunkers where they could exchange wild theories about what they had just seen. Only de Chatelaine and her entourage – a dozen officers and officials – and the seven members of Gunnlaugur’s pack took their places in the heavily shielded room behind the dais.

  The ornamentation was less elaborate there, though the chairs had gilded backs and the polished table was formed of a priceless darkwood that didn’t grow natively on Ras Shakeh. The walls were scrubbed plain and the floor was bare stone. Sunlight angled in from rows of half-blinded windows. Even with screens in place, the glare added to an already uncomfortably hot space.

  The two parties took up places on either side of the table. The chamber had been fitted out with the largest, most sturdy set of furniture they had been able to find, but still the Wolves looked almost comically ill at ease when seated. Bajola guessed that they would have preferred
to stand, but they didn’t insist.

  In their own way, they were making an effort. That was encouraging.

  ‘So, the situation,’ said de Chatelaine, pressing her hands together on the tabletop. ‘The Adulators withdrew their defensive presence from here six months ago. By that time the cover they offered us was little more than token. We frequently went for months with no significant strike force within range. I was unhappy with the situation, as was the Chapter Master, but it became apparent that no easy resolution existed. The Ras subsector contains over thirty-nine inhabited worlds and has a population in excess of ninety billion souls, so merits more than cursory attention. But the Adulators have many concerns, and I believe that garrison work does not greatly appeal to them. Perhaps that is true of other Chapters too.’

  Gunnlaugur listened intently. Bajola watched him drink the information in. She’d heard that Space Marines possessed eidetic recall. Then again, she’d heard many things about them, not all of which could possibly be true.

  ‘You will be aware of plans to use this subsector as a staging post for a new crusade into lost space,’ she went on. ‘When I first learned of the proposals, I knew the process of organising such an undertaking would last decades. Nonetheless, the idea put us on the stellar cartograph, so to speak, and gave me leverage in my quest for more permanent defensive arrangements. Ancient pacts between the Ras subsector and the Fenrisian zone of protection were uncovered. I was informed by my scholiasts that the treaties had no current validity. I responded that anything was worth a try.’

  Despite himself, Gunnlaugur smiled. It was a curious gesture. The Wolf Guard had an elongated jawline, crammed with overdeveloped dentition, especially the canines. His smile was more like a dog’s growl, with the lips pulling back and the fangs jutting forwards.

  Even their expressions of amusement, it seemed, served as a challenge.

  ‘My motives were sound,’ said de Chatelaine. ‘We are not immune to the blights of heresy and sedition here. The problem has been growing, and my sisters have been fully occupied over the past few years. We destroy one nest, another emerges. These heretics worship sickness. I have witnessed men expose themselves to crippling disease, revelling in their decay. The appeal of that eludes me, but then we do live, do we not, in a fallen galaxy?’