In Hrondir’s Tomb

Mark Clapham

It was the smell he registered first, before the sight or the sound. It was a hot scent, hotter than the sparks coming off his chainblade as it cut through armour, or the warmth of the Tau commander’s blood as the blade dug through the battlesuit and into his flesh.

It was a static smell of air being agitated, of a very heavy weapon powering up, somewhere nearby. A mortal human, or even a Space Marine of a different Chapter, might not have picked the scent out from the many smells of battle.

Anvindr Godrichsson was a wolf brother, and his senses were more finely attuned. His nostrils twitched at the tang of it, catching the scent over the foul aroma of alien gore before him.

He glanced up, for little more than half a second. The sky was a grey blur of falling rain and rising smoke, but Anvindr could see a great, dark shape moving between buildings, a solid ring of light glowing through the mist.

A Tau gunship, its railgun powering up.

‘To shelter,’ Anvindr called to his squad, his voice ringing out through the ruins. He extracted his blood-slicked chainblade from the chest plate of the fallen commander, and dropped to the ground from his position astride the chest of the alien’s battlesuit.

A Space Wolf feared nothing; the Adeptus Astartes fled from no enemy, but there was no glory or honour in meekly allowing a weapon like that to reduce you to a paste. The Tau were notorious for their desire to kill from a distance rather than engage in close combat, and Anvindr would be damned if they would succeed with his pack.

Anvindr’s pack responded to his call without question, although Tormodr approached with bad grace as usual, a scowl across his face and a desultory huff of fire spurting from his flamer. Tormodr moved as fast as any of them, the heavy boots of his armour barely glancing off the rubble as he sprung over an incline into Anvindr’s field of vision, yet he still managed to seem like he was dragging his feet.

Then the rest, all Grey Hunters of the Fourth Company of the Vlka Fenryka, known commonly as Space Wolves: Sindri, eyes gleaming with youth in spite of all his decades, his hair a shock of blond curls, unusual for a Fenrisian; Liulfr, heavy even for a Space Marine, as much immovable object as unstoppable force; and finally Gulbrandr, his skin pale but his hair and beard raven black. They all wore the colours of their Chapter, blue-grey power armour edged with gold, augmented with honour markings and the fur of significant kills.

Although all of them had their eyes out for a safe place of cover, it was Gulbrandr, sharp-eyed as ever, who let out a high whistle, pointing ahead.

They ran as the railgun fired its first shots, the blasts tearing into a city that had already been devastated by ground-level warfare. As the large railgun fired upon the retreating Wolves, buildings already gutted by fire and ordnance were shook to their foundations, and began to crumble altogether.

The Wolves ran through a city that threatened to bury them alive.

Then, following Gulbrandr’s lead, they were on a steep, gravel-strewn slope at an angle to the city streets, sliding down towards a weathered stone archway some distance below ground level. Anvindr dug in his heels, controlling his descent as the weight of his armoured body dragged him downwards, throwing up scree in his wake.

Surrounding the archway were a few squat industrial vehicles and stacks of crates, as well as a series of crude arc lights, dull in the afternoon haze.

As the Wolves reached level ground, moving from a controlled slide to a run without a stumble or pause, a blast from the railgun impacted nearby, throwing Anvindr forward. Without his power armour he would have fallen. He wore no helmet, and so closed his eyes against the blazing light and heat that scorched his skin.

Still running, he opened his eyes, ears ringing, just in time to see another blast consume the archway they were running under. As they ran under the archway they did so through a rain of rubble; the arch itself collapsed over them, shaken to pieces by the hammering detonations.

The falling wall of shattered rock consumed them in darkness.

His ears still filled with the roar of the explosion, his field of vision obscured by rock dust, Anvindr found himself falling forward, struck in the right pauldron by some unseen chunk of rock. He controlled his fall enough to drop to one knee, steadying himself. He braced himself for further blows, but none came, just a gentle rain of fragments.

Then there was silence, or something like it. The rock fall had totally blocked the way they had come in, cutting off any noise from the surface, although Anvindr could still feel the periodic vibration from explosions above ground.

Anvindr checked himself. One pauldron dented, but otherwise just scrapes to his power armour, and light burns and scratches over his exposed face. He pulled himself to his feet, dust and small pieces of rock falling from his armour as he did so.

As the dust settled, he could make out a large chamber lit by a string of arc lights. The walls were polished stone, but featureless. Around Anvindr, his brothers were recovering themselves. Gulbrandr stood in front, entirely unscathed, and was looking ahead to the chamber’s one exit, a corridor leading downwards. Anvindr ignored him, and turned to see Tormodr rising from the ground, shaking chunks of rock from his pelts while brushing aside a mocking hand of assistance from Sindri. Both seemed battered but intact, although Tormodr’s arm hung limp at his side.

Of Liulfr, there was initially no sign. Where once the chamber led out to the daylight, a sloped wall of broken rock now blocked the way. There was no trace of Liulfr at all, just that wall of rock.

Anvindr approached the rockslide, ears and nose pricked, searching for the slightest sign. Within seconds he was on his knees, rolling away a stone as tall as himself. Sindri and Tormodr aided him in the work, while Gulbrandr hung back, keeping watch.

All this, they did wordlessly, united in a common objective. They uncovered a gloved hand, the fingers twitching at the air as the rocks holding it down were removed, then the rest of an armoured arm, and Liulfr’s head and shoulders. Liulfr’s helmet had buckled and split down one side of his face, and he blinked away dust and took a ragged breath as his face was exposed. His cheek was broken and his face bloodied, but he was alive.

‘Real darkness,’ said Liulfr with a cough of blood. ‘I’d forgotten what it was like. Shame to have it broken by faces such as yours.’ He laughed to himself, coughing blood again, then grunted.

‘We’d have left you in peace if those furs didn’t smell so much,’ said Anvindr, nodding at the torn strips of pelt around the shoulders of Liulfr’s battered armour. ‘A noseless hive dweller could catch the scent of those, rockslide or not.’

During this exchange, Anvindr had been looking at his fellow Wolf closely, and this last insult was delivered with relief. Liulfr was pinned, a giant slab of rock having crushed his lower body. Anvindr knew the look of a brother whose thread was at its end, and Liulfr did not have that look. He would live.

He would not, however, be moving anywhere, as the Wolves discovered when they cleared a space around Liulfr. The rock slab that held him down was huge, taller than the chamber they were in and half as wide. Even the collective strength of the four other Wolves would not be enough to shift it.

Anvindr’s mind was just teasing towards what exactly they might need to aid Liulfr when he heard the sound of someone approaching. The others had heard it too: Anvindr turned to see Gulbrandr already taking a firing position, his boltgun aimed down the tunnel. As footsteps drew closer, Anvindr saw Gulbrandr relax his grip and give a barely perceptible nod: friend, not foe.

The man who emerged up the incline of the tunnel was an Imperial Guardsman, wearing the uniform of the Lacusian Guard, dark green with silver trim. As he approached he looked first at Gulbrandr, towering over him, then at the rest of the Wolves, then at the collapsed archway.

‘My lords,’ said the Lacusian formally. He looked past the Wolves to see the extent of the rockslide that had sealed the entrance.

‘Who are you?’ asked Anvindr.

‘Could you come with me, lords?’ asked the Lacusian, having finished his inspection.

Anvindr bristled at the evasion. He had expected a straight answer. In his experience most Guardsmen, even the sternest veterans, were intimidated by the presence of the Adeptus Astartes, as well they should. Was this man not afraid to defy a Space Marine?

No, Anvindr thought, looking at the Guardsman before him. It wasn’t that the man wasn’t intimidated by Anvindr. It was that there was someone or something else that intimidated him more.

‘Very well,’ grunted Anvindr, nodding for the Lacusian to lead the way.

Leaving Liulfr, the Wolves followed their mortal guide further down the tunnel, which remained broad enough for two Space Marines to walk shoulder-to-shoulder. The Lacusian walked with a slight limp, the sound of grinding gears as his right foot touched the ground indicating an augmetic leg.

Curved corridors broke off from the tunnel as it levelled out, but the Guardsman led them straight ahead. As they passed these corridors, Anvindr could see hollows in the curved stone walls, facing inwards towards their destination. Some of the alcoves were lit with lamps or small fires, and he could hear and smell human life nearby. People were living down here. The war on Beltrasse had raged for months before the Wolves arrived to drive back the Tau, and these were the refugees.

They were led into a wide octagonal chamber, the ceiling of which rose to a high dome. Lights strung around the chamber all pointed to the centre, where a huge stone cube sat on a raised dais. Machinery of a kind Anvindr did not recognise was scattered around the chamber, connected by bundles of cable.

The Lacusian who led them there stepped aside as they entered, and Anvindr climbed the steps of the dais. Carved into one side of the cube was a representation, crude but instantly recognisable, of a Space Marine in Terminator armour, seated with his hands resting on his knees.

The rest of the chamber was as unadorned as the tunnel that had led them there, the polished stone unmarked by any text. However, one word was carved beneath the engraving of the Space Marine:

HRONDIR

Anvindr looked back at the carving. The markings on one shoulder could have been part of a horned skull motif, seen from the side.

‘His name was Hrondir, of the Exorcists Chapter of loyal Adeptus Astartes,’ pronounced a smooth, clipped voice, as a newcomer entered the chamber. It was a supremely confident voice and the appearance matched: the man who entered was tall, taller than virtually any mortal, but shorter than a Space Marine. He was dark-skinned with chiselled, sharp cheeked features and piercing eyes, beneath one of which was a tattoo of a stylised letter ‘I’ that glowed slightly in the firelight. He wore a plain black robe thrown back over the shoulders of heavy gold armour, the plates of which were inscribed with curved lettering and ornate patterns. A long-handled hammer hung from his belt.

Anvindr recognised the man for what he was: an inquisitor. To Anvindr, it was obvious from his armour, but knowledge of the Inquisition’s existence was privileged information, and few would recognise an inquisitor by sight.

The inquisitor was accompanied by another man, wearing black robes trimmed with silver. The second mortal was shorter, paler and seemed to almost disappear when stood beside his grandiosely clothed companion. He didn’t speak, but instead carried a data-slate which he periodically glanced at.

‘I am Montiyf, and this is Hrondir’s tomb,’ said the inquisitor, making a sweeping gesture. ‘He fell here some three centuries ago, in a battle to save Beltrasse, and the people built this tomb in his honour. As the decades wore on, the catacombs of the tomb were expanded to house the other dead from that battle, so that they might be closer to where Hrondir sits within his sarcophagus, as is the local tradition.’

‘Three centuries,’ repeated Anvindr, still examining the carving on the great cube, Hrondir’s sarcophagus. Had it been that long?

‘Yes,’ said the inquisitor redundantly, scrutinising Anvindr for a few seconds. He then turned to the Guardsman who had led the Wolves into Hrondir’s tomb. ‘Galvern, what is your report?’

‘My lord,’ the Lacusian nodded crisply, and Anvindr could see the hold that the inquisitor had over him. ‘The entrance has been completely sealed by a rockslide, but otherwise the integrity of the tomb is intact.’

‘Heavy fire from a Tau gunship brought down the archway,’ added Anvindr. ‘My brothers and I sought temporary shelter here. We will return to the surface once the threat has passed.’

‘If the entrance is blocked then that will not be possible,’ said the inquisitor. ‘This is a tomb; there is only one entrance, captain. Fortunately it is a very well built and deep tomb, and is unlikely to suffer any further damage from the Tau.’

Anvindr shrugged off the inquisitor’s acknowledgement of his rank, as it wasn’t difficult to read his shoulder markings.

‘If this is a tomb, why are you down here, inquisitor…?’ asked Anvindr.

‘Inquisitor Montiyf of the Ordo Malleus,’ finished the man, gesturing to his companion. ‘This is Interrogator Pranix, and we are here to learn what we can from Hrondir’s victory, to study the enemies he defeated here. As battle-brothers of the honoured Sixth Chapter, you will of course understand the need to learn from a defeated enemy.’

Anvindr did not understand how Montiyf expected to discover anything about a long-dead enemy by skulking around a featureless tomb, but presumably the banks of equipment served some purpose in this respect. It was none of Anvindr’s concern, regardless.

‘We are here to fight the Tau,’ said Anvindr. ‘Is there no way back to the surface?’

It would, he thought, be intolerable to rot away down in such a hole, immortal life steadily slipping away in the dark. A perilously dull end to a long life of glorious battle.

‘You will get to fight the xenos again soon enough,’ said Montiyf. ‘My retinue are following another lead, but they know our position and are due to liaise with me in nine days. Once they find the entrance has collapsed they will requisition whatever is needed to dig us out. Until then, the labyrinth of tunnels surrounding the main tomb is large, and there have been over a hundred civilians sheltering down here. They have water, air and food supplies, it should not be difficult to requisition whatever you need.’

Anvindr grunted again. He turned his attention back to the carving of Hrondir.

‘I knew him,’ said Anvindr.

‘You knew Captain Hrondir?’ asked Montiyf. The inquisitor, for all his pomp and threat, could not help but appear surprised.

Anvindr nodded. Although he was no skjald, he could tell what was expected of him, and cleared his throat to tell the tale.

They had fought side by side in the sinking city of Majohah, slaughtering heretic after heretic through flooded streets. Anvindr was a Blood Claw then, he and his young brothers meeting the fanatical savagery of the cultists with a youthful bloodlust of their own.

As the rising waters broke through crumbling walls in polluted torrents, so wave after wave of men and women, their souls bargained away to unspeakable forces, would burst out of buildings or from beneath the waters to assault the Wolves.

The Wolves cut their threads by the hundreds, and Anvindr was at the heart of it, slashing his chainblade back and forth through hordes of fanatics, slicing through corrupted flesh and chopping away at mutated limbs.

For Anvindr and the Wolves, Majohah was a slow, bloody matter of week after week of slaughtering a blighted population. Whether the Wolves hunted down their enemy, or the enemy attacked them, made no difference.

The Exorcists arrived with a different mission. While the Wolves were spread across the city, killing heretics wherever they were found, the red-armoured Exorcists cut through it in a straight line, moving in on the Great Cathedra at the heart of Majohah.

Anvindr was one of the Wolves drawn into the Exorcists’ assault on the Cathedra. They besieged the desecrated temple for three days, and it was there that Anvindr met Hrondir and the other Terminators of his squad.

The Exorcists were secretive and, compared to the hot-tempered Blood Claws, reserved in their mood, but Anvindr had found them to be determined and relentless warriors. Between his slow, incomprehensible chants and other rituals, Hrondir, looming over Anvindr in his Terminator armour, had spoken a little of his home world of Banish.

When one wall of the Cathedra fell, and the defences scattered, the Exorcists insisted on going in alone, leaving the Wolves to return to their primary mission. Anvindr watched Hrondir and the others cross the flooded square and charge through the breach, but within minutes Anvindr had an enemy by the throat and was preoccupied.

However, in the hours that followed the Exorcists entering the Cathedra, the air above that part of the city was disturbed, storm clouds turning in on themselves unnaturally. The Wolves, out in the streets, sniffed the air and knew something pivotal was going on at the city’s heart.

Then it was done. The sky settled. Their mission complete, the Exorcists departed.

The Wolves fought on, but without the presence of whatever the Exorcists had confronted in the Cathedra, the enemy’s will to fight was gone. The Wolves showed them no mercy, and the heretics fought for their lives as best they could, but within days they were all dead.

The city’s descent halted, the floodwaters left to grow stagnant without further replenishment. The Wolves left Majohah in peace of a sort, a part-flooded ruin devoid of life, its streets clogged with the bloated, tainted bodies of its former residents.

Anvindr left out some details: the chants, the lights in the sky. The mortal, Galvern, was still in earshot, and Anvindr had no desire to see him purged for hearing of matters the Inquisition would rather he did not know. But he kept much of the story intact, the valour of Hrondir and that the battle turned the tide.

As Anvindr had told his story, more mortals had entered the chamber, cautiously keeping their distance from both the inquisitor and the Wolves. By the time the retelling was complete, he had an audience; a few more Guardsmen, standing respectfully to attention in his presence, but mainly civilians, hovering nervously at the edge of the room, rapt to his speech.

‘To these people, Hrondir is a myth,’ explained Montiyf. ‘No official account was ever written down, and even this tomb was lost for over a hundred years. Hrondir’s name has been passed down by word of mouth, little more than a folk tale, and now you are here, talking of meeting Hrondir in your own lifetime. To them, you have stepped out of a legend.’

In the tomb, time passed painfully slowly for the Wolves. Unable to hunt or fight, without even space to properly train, they instead searched every inch of the catacombs to find something that might aid their escape, or help free Liulfr. The web of tunnels sprawling out from the central chamber where Hrondir lay at rest led to dozens of small chambers, and the Wolves searched every one.

Many were occupied by civilians who had descended into the tomb to shelter from the war above. Others had been turned into makeshift supply rooms, or housed water recycling equipment or generators. Some had been left as they had been found, containing nothing but funerary relics. The Beltrassens did not entomb their dead lying down, instead burying them seated, so that they might face the afterlife with dignity, and many of the rooms had square stone sarcophagi set into alcoves.

The Wolves found little of use. They found cracks or pores in the stone that allowed air or a trickle of water into the tomb, but no hidden tunnels, nor any heavy equipment that could help free Liulfr. In spite of this, they continued to prowl the corridors, searching for an advantage.

Even this endless pacing was impeded by the presence of so many mortals. The Wolves could see perfectly well in the low light of the darker tunnels, so carried no light source with them.

When a mortal came walking from the opposite direction, that mortal would walk straight into the towering Space Marines, if not given due warning. Most of the Wolves adopted a terse ‘make way’ to scatter any mortals in their path, with the exception of Sindri, who found it amusing to stay silent and watch the coming mortal bounce off his heavy armour.

For all his sport, even Sindri was not cruel, and he would catch any mortal who fell before they hurt themselves, his reflexes responding before the mortal had any real idea of what had happened.

While the Guardsmen at least had some military training and physical aptitude, the fragility and clumsiness of the civilian mortals retained a fascination for Anvindr. Even in the distant days of his childhood, before the Sky Warriors had made him one of their own, Anvindr had been made of stronger stuff than these city dwellers. Fenrisian young learned survival fast, and Anvindr had been a hunter from virtually the moment he took his first steps.

As a Grey Hunter, so far removed from those beginnings, these mortals with their fast breaths and heartbeats, so involved in the transient concerns of their short lives, were a mystery to him. They fluttered around him like moths, and he tried not to break them.

Blood and scraps of bone.

The chamber was one of many similar rooms, featureless except for three small podiums, each of which held a smooth-surfaced reliquary box. Two were in place, while one had been knocked to the floor. It remained intact, whatever bones or other remains it contained kept safely inside.

The mortals who had rested in this chamber were not so lucky. Blood splattered the walls and floor, and within the streaks of dried blood were scraps of bone, cloth and other, thicker, matter, the shredded remains of skin and organs.

The room was small, at least to Anvindr, and while the mortals walked in and out with ease, he had to duck to enter. Montiyf was standing, arms folded so that Anvindr could see the ruby-eyed skulls engraved on his gauntlets, while Pranix squatted closer to the floor, examining a streak of gore and tapping his data-slate.

‘I am not yours to summon,’ Anvindr growled to Montiyf. It had been three days since the Wolves had entered the tomb, and Montiyf had sent one of the Lacusians to request Anvindr’s presence.

Anvindr didn’t expect any response to this from the inquisitor, any acknowledgement that the Wolves were not a resource at the inquisitor’s disposal, and he didn’t get any beyond an impassive glare.

‘What happened here?’ Anvindr asked.

‘We do not know,’ said Montiyf. ‘Five people were in this room. This is all that is left of them.’

‘You are sure all five?’ asked Anvindr. ‘One didn’t turn on the others?’ Mortal men killed each other for foolish reasons, Anvindr knew this.

‘We have checked the entire tomb, lord,’ said Pranix, with soft formality. He had attached a brass rod to his data-slate with a line of copper wire, and embedded one end in a smear of gore on the ground. ‘This is all that remains of any of them.’

‘Then someone else?’ asked Anvindr, frustrated. ‘Grief, these petty crimes are no concern of mine, and I don’t see why the Inquisition cares either.’

‘If this were a normal crime,’ said Montiyf, running one gloved finger down the tattoo beneath his eye. ‘But look at the remains. Does this strike you as something a normal human could do? Fast enough that no one even heard a scream?’

Anvindr gave a non-committal grunt. There were plenty of things that could kill this fast, beasts and xenos that could rend flesh in a flurry of claws or weapons. Anvindr had seen it happen.

In the heat of battle, he had been that killer himself.

‘There are fears that some savage beast did this, although there is nowhere for such an animal to hide,’ said Montiyf. Anvindr could feel the inquisitor’s gaze on him. ‘Unless that beast lurked beneath a human skin, a hidden animal rage.’

‘You can reassure the mortals, this was not one of us,’ said Anvindr, not rising to the inquisitor’s coy insinuations. ‘We are not animals.’

Anvindr crossed the room, looked more closely at a streak of blood on the wall and opened up his senses. He could smell human blood and a touch of bile, but those fluids didn’t smell fresh, nor did they have the dead scent of stale, dried blood. He rubbed at one of the blood stains with his fingers. His fingers came away stained with powder, the dust leaving a hint of something in the air.

‘This blood was hot as it spilled,’ Anvindr said. ‘Very hot; these stains are burnt.’

‘We must be alert,’ said Inquisitor Montiyf, and with that he left the room. Pranix remained, and Anvindr lingered, thinking of the ways to kill a man, and what might cause such damage, shredding flesh and leaving blood stains burnt into the walls.

A weapon? Someone would have heard.

A psyker? Anvindr had seen mental powers tear an enemy to pieces, or burn them from the inside out. The Inquisition were known for their psychic powers.

Deep in thought, Anvindr picked up the fallen reliquary from the floor. It rattled slightly, the sound of bone fragments moving within. The box seemed tiny in Anvindr’s giant hand, the remains of a mortal life in his palm. He placed the featureless box back on its featureless podium.

‘No names,’ he said, largely to himself.

Pranix looked up from his data-slate. ‘Lord?’

‘There are no names, apart from Hrondir’s,’ said Anvindr. ‘The people who built this tomb made all this effort to lay their dead here, all these boxes and chambers, yet they didn’t mark down the names of the dead?’

Pranix didn’t say anything, but continued to watch Anvindr as he walked away.

‘He insults us!’ complained Gulbrandr, after Anvindr reported the deaths, and his conversation with the inquisitor. ‘As if we were beasts who needed to chew down on these tiny mortals.’

The four Wolves had taken one of the larger chambers in the tomb for themselves, a long room with a long stone altar in the centre. Gulbrandr prowled the room, whilst Tormodr sat in one corner and Sindri leaned nonchalantly against a wall.

‘He did not say he believed this,’ said Anvindr. ‘But I am sure some of the mortals do.’

‘Let them run scared of us,’ said Sindri. ‘Weak little things. Why should we care if a few of them die? This whole world is in ruins.’

‘That depends what killed them,’ said Anvindr. ‘And how we can kill it.’

‘If there is something worth hunting down here after all, then that changes everything,’ said Sindri, grinning widely.

A day later, another mortal died. This time, screams were heard, but by the time any witness arrived, the room from which the scream came was empty.

It was rapidly established that a young woman had gone missing, and a search was organised.

It was Gulbrandr who found the body, collapsed in an alcove at the opposite end of the catacombs. Skinned and gutted, an unnatural heat rose from the corpse.

Of the killer, they could find no sign.

‘He’s gone,’ said Sindri.

It was now four days since they had entered the tomb.

Liulfr would not be able to heal fully until his legs were freed, but his condition was stable, and he certainly didn’t need monitoring, his own remarkable physiology keeping him healthy and in minimal pain even while pinned.

Nonetheless, the Wolves chose to visit Liulfr regularly, recounting old war stories while making futile attempts to discover a way of freeing Liulfr without causing a larger rockslide.

It had been Sindri’s turn to visit Liulfr, but he returned within minutes of departing.

‘If this is one of your jests…’ Anvindr began, but he could see from Sindri’s expression that he wasn’t joking.

‘I must see this for myself,’ said Anvindr.

Liulfr was indeed gone, almost without a trace. Scree had rolled down to fill the gap where Liulfr had been pinned under the stone column, and in spite of digging through the gravel Anvindr couldn’t find even a fragment of ceramite. If Liulfr had somehow been dragged away, there would at least be some part of him left behind.

Instead, there was nothing to mark where Liulfr had been, except a scattering of blackened stones, scarred from exposure to a great and sudden heat.

‘Perhaps he freed himself,’ said Montiyf, when told the news of Liulfr’s disappearance. ‘The explosions above may have shaken the rock above him, allowing your brother to manoeuvre himself free.’

‘And walk away on broken legs?’ scoffed Anvindr. ‘Why even try to drag himself away, when Liulfr knew we would come to him in good time? No, if Liulfr had dragged himself loose, he would have waited for one of his pack to find him.’

‘Then what would you suggest happened?’ asked Montiyf.

The inquisitor and the Wolf circled each other slowly, stood before Hrondir’s sarcophagus. Montiyf’s hammer and Anvindr’s chainblade stayed hanging from their respective belts, but each had a hand free, ready to defend themselves.

‘There are ways to move flesh through walls, to pull that which is solid through matter,’ said Anvindr.

‘A sorcerer?’ asked Montiyf, an eyebrow raised. Matters of daemonic heresy were the business of the Ordo Malleus, and Anvindr was pushing into Montiyf’s territory by even discussing them.

‘Or a psyker,’ said Anvindr. ‘Such power can leave a tang in the air, and create a great excess of heat.’

Anvindr raised one hand in a closed fist, and then opened it to reveal blackened stones in his palm.

It was an accusation, albeit an indirect one. Many inquisitors were psykers, and those abilities could stretch from the reading of mortal minds to the manipulation of objects, and even greater distortions of reality. And the greater those powers, the more likely the psyker would succumb to the dark forces drawn to his unnatural talents.

Tension hung in the air between the two. They were not alone – while the chamber had been cleared so that Anvindr could speak about matters that the inquisitor would execute most subjects of the Imperium for even knowing about, the rest of Anvindr’s pack were present, as was Pranix. While the Wolves outnumbered the representatives of the Inquisition, and their Chapter was known for its defiance, to attack an inquisitor was nonetheless almost unthinkable, treasonous.

Unless that inquisitor had been corrupted by the very forces he was sworn to destroy.

Montiyf was about to speak when a mortal cry echoed from a nearby corridor. There was a momentary exchange of glances between Anvindr and Montiyf, then a nodding agreement to temporarily postpone their conversation.

As the Wolves ran from the chamber, the inquisitor and his interrogator close behind, there was no one to see an icy film develop on the surface of Hrondir’s sarcophagus, then evaporate into the air as quickly as it had formed.

The man whose cry they had heard stood, back pressed into the stone wall, shuddering in horror, his eyes locked on the smouldering mass on the floor before him.

‘It just appeared,’ the man said, then proceeded to repeat those three words again and again, staring at the bloody, burning mass. Steam filled the air, and in the dimly lit corridor it was hard to see what was actually there.

Anvindr had his bolter drawn as he approached the twitching shape on the ground, ready to confront whatever horror had materialised, but rapidly lowered his weapon.

‘Liulfr,’ he said. ‘It’s Liulfr.’

The Wolves gathered around their fallen comrade. His armour had been battered and burnt, and was still hot to the touch, dented all over and even cracked in places. The livery of his ceramite plate was blackened beyond recognition, and the pelts he wore around his shoulders were little more than crisped wisps of ashen matter.

From the waist down Liulfr’s legs were indeed crushed, mangled within flattened armour, and where the armour was most cracked burnt flesh was visible beneath.

Liulfr’s head was a scorched-red mass of bruised and burnt flesh, the hair entirely gone and the eyes and mouth reduced to crumpled slits.

As Anvindr leaned over to check Liulfr’s breathing, his mouth and eyes snapped open. His eyes were bloodshot but intact, and a bruised tongue wet burnt-dry lips.

‘Fought it,’ he said, with considerable effort. ‘It dragged me into the dark, but I fought it every step. I wouldn’t let it take me, tried to free him.’

This message delivered, Liulfr slumped back, eyes staring blankly.

Liulfr was dead.

The Wolves carried Liulfr to their chamber, and laid him out on the altar.

‘Tried to free who?’ asked Sindri, breaking the mournful silence that had fallen across them all. ‘He makes no sense.’

‘He was taken somewhere,’ said Anvindr. ‘Pulled away by magic to somewhere dark, then returned.’

‘This is work for a rune priest, not for us,’ rumbled Tormodr.

‘Well, there are no priests here,’ said Anvindr. ‘So it falls to us whether it pleases us or not.’

Anvindr was no inquisitor, nor one of the Adeptus Arbites: he did not sift for truth or search out secrets.

He was a Sky Warrior, a hunter, one of the Vlka Fenryka. His earliest memories were of the hunt, of the endless icy wastes of Fenris, tracking the distant shape of an animal as the cold winds tore through layers of furs. He knew how to seek out prey, to kill, to be aware of a predator’s eyes on you, and strike at them first.

As a young man he had become aware of being observed, and when he sought out his observers they took him away to the Aett, where he was elevated to the ranks of the Sky Warriors.

He had hunted and fought and killed ever since, it was his nature from birth and it would be with him until his death; an endless cycle.

The enemy he faced now seemed to break that simple cycle of his existence, to defy face-to-face confrontation, to leave no trail to follow. It was a riddle, and Anvindr had no use for riddles. It was for Montiyf to unpick such things, and Montiyf showed no sign of understanding any more than Anvindr.

Unless Anvindr was wrong to consider this different to any other threat. There was an enemy, one which ventured from its lair. If it could not be caught while it hunted, then it would need to be found in its den and struck at there.

Perhaps it was all that simple, and there was no mystery, just the hunt.

And if there was no mystery, perhaps there were no riddles to be resolved, and the one person who should have known what was happening, who had been strangely idle, had the knowledge that was expected of them. Perhaps everything was exactly as it should be, and all Anvindr needed to do was resolve the problem in the best way he knew.

‘Hrondir is at the heart of this,’ Anvindr called out to Montiyf as he entered the central chamber of the tomb. The inquisitor and his interrogator were alone, poring over readings on their equipment. ‘We have been looking for enemies in the shadows, but this place is no mystery, it is devoted to the memory of one man alone. Whatever is attacking us, it relates to Hrondir. I don’t know how, but I think you do.’

‘I do?’ asked Montiyf.

‘Why else would you be here?’ said Anvindr. ‘Research on a dead enemy, in the middle of a Tau invasion? No, the Exorcists have always been close to the Inquisition. If your Ordo didn’t send Hrondir here then they at least knew what he faced, and knew enough to come here the moment this tomb was uncovered.’

‘These are matters for the Inqui–’ Montiyf began.

‘Enough,’ Anvindr barked. ‘Keep your secrets from these mortals, but whatever stalks these halls cut the thread of Liulfr, a brother of the Vlka Fenryka. I will not waste time on protocol while a threat like that exists. So speak, so that we may kill this thing and be done with it.’

There was a long silence. Anvindr’s pack had followed him into the chamber, and stood quietly nearby.

Then Montiyf spoke, evenly and surely, as if Anvindr hadn’t needed to wring the truth out of him.

‘Hrondir came here alone,’ said Montiyf. ‘The forces of Chaos sought to break into this sector, and the Exorcists and my ordo were spread thin striking at the gravest heresies wherever they erupted. Hrondir was the last of his squad. By what accounts we have left from that time, he responded to reports of some daemonic emergence here on Beltrasse.’

Montiyf circled the dais at the centre of the room, and the great stone sarcophagus that dominated the chamber.

‘It took three decades to purify this sector, but we were thorough,’ Montiyf continued. ‘No report was left unchecked, no matter how long it took, so decades after Hrondir was sent to Beltrasse the planet was revisited, to see what became of him. This world was clean of heresy, and all that could be gleaned were stories of a single Space Marine destroying a great evil.’

Montiyf gestured to the chamber they were in. ‘This tomb was already buried and forgotten by then, so there was little to be done to follow up the stories. But concerns lingered still, that Beltrasse had too neatly forgotten what occurred here. So when the tomb was uncovered in a Tau attack, we returned. And the events of recent days show that we were right to do so.’

‘Hrondir’s mission remains incomplete,’ said Anvindr. ‘The daemon still lives.’

‘Not necessarily,’ said Montiyf. ‘Hrondir may have dealt with the enemy as best he could. If the evil could not be killed, there are other ways to win such battles.’

‘Witchcraft,’ Anvindr said.

‘There are rituals,’ said Montiyf. ‘But these are many, and we do not know which one. But I am certain that whatever lives here in the tomb, it is not fully manifest. It is restrained, or else it would have killed us all days ago and unleashed itself upon the world above.’

Restrained. Something about the word itched at Anvindr’s brain. What had Liulfr said, about being trapped in the darkness? As if the daemon had been drawn back to some cell, and took its victims there with it before reaching out once more to deposit the remains back where it found them. Only Liulfr had fought, and been released with a last breath left in him.

‘There are no hidden rooms or spaces here?’ asked Anvindr, already knowing the answer.

It was Interrogator Pranix who answered, rather than his master.

‘None,’ said Pranix. ‘We have scanned every bit of wall, floor and ceiling. This tomb is buried deep in stony ground.’

‘Then where could this beast be hiding… except in there?’ Anvindr pointed to the sarcophagus. ‘Why else would you be watching that box so closely if the daemon were not in there? The Beltrassens must have known the daemon lay with Hrondir, that’s why this tomb bears not a single word or image or name apart from his, so that the daemon could take no hold of them. So why haven’t you opened the sarcophagus yet?’

‘Because we do not know enough. We have not gathered enough information on this creature,’ said Montiyf. ‘To act prematurely would be foolhardy.’

‘Is that why you have been scouring the scene after every attack, so that you can gather more data while this thing wreaks havoc?’ said Anvindr, turning to Pranix.

‘An unfortunate necessity,’ said Pranix. He barely raised his voice but there was steel behind his words, an absolute self-possession. ‘We could not afford to act prematurely, until we knew exactly–’

‘So you kept your silence while one of us died?’ snarled Anvindr in exasperation, his rage barely contained.

Pranix didn’t respond, but neither did he flinch in the face of Anvindr’s anger.

Anvindr looked between inquisitor and interrogator, both absolutely certain in their authority. He ground his teeth, fangs digging into the inside of his mouth. Then, with a snarl of released anger, he turned to his pack.

‘Well, if caution is the word of the day,’ said Anvindr. ‘We know what we must do, brothers?’

Montiyf and Pranix made no move to stop the Wolves as they surrounded the stone sarcophagus and searched for a way to open it, instead stepping back and preparing themselves for whatever came next. In his peripheral vision Anvindr could see Montiyf detaching the gold hammer from where it hung from his belt, adjusting his grip on its ornate handle.

It was Sindri who found that the front panel of the sarcophagus, the one bearing Hrondir’s likeness and name, could be slowly eased out. Tormodr and Gulbrandr did the heavy lifting, while Anvindr and Sindri stepped back, weapons raised.

Tormodr and Gulbrandr moved the slab aside, resting it against the side of the sarcophagus. Dead air seeped out of the interior, a musty smell but with something else, a more recent stink of burnt flesh and hot blood.

There was a moment of absolute stillness, as the Wolves waited for something to emerge. But nothing did.

Anvindr approached the sarcophagus, bolter raised.

As opposed to the spartan stone of the rest of the tomb, the interior of the sarcophagus was covered with writing, some in languages Anvindr didn’t understand, scratched on every surface. The text was accompanied by arcane signs and symbols, many of which Anvindr did recognise, as marks of warding to hold back evil.

Hold back, or hold in?

The stone interior was blackened by scorch marks, but the set of Terminator armour that occupied the sarcophagus still bore its fierce red livery, the horned skull still displayed on one shoulder.

Matching the engraving on the front of the sarcophagus, Hrondir had been laid to rest seated, his fully armoured body sat on a stone throne strong enough to hold the armour’s vast weight. The helmet was down over Hrondir’s face, and his hands rested, palms down, in his lap.

‘Stay back,’ said Anvindr, stepping towards Hrondir. He reached around the armour’s helmet, finding the release clasps. There was a hiss of released air as the helmet lifted away.

The exposed head was well-preserved. Pallid, dried skin had shrunk over the skull, the eyelids sunken. The emaciated features were recognisably Hrondir’s, and even in death his wide jaw was set in a caricature of stoic determination.

Anvindr’s eyes narrowed, his ears pricked, checking for any sign of life. There was not the murmur of even the slowest heartbeat or breath, no movement at all, but there was still something there. Hrondir was not alive, but neither was he quite dead, in a way that Anvindr could not understand.

‘He is dead… but not dead?’ said Anvindr, realising how absurd this was while standing in Hrondir’s tomb.

‘A tiny spark of his life essence still holds on,’ said Montiyf. ‘His body is long dead, but some part of his soul lingers.’

As Anvindr stepped away from Hrondir’s body, determined to ask Montiyf to explain himself, his heavy boot knocked something aside, a chip of hard material that bounced off the interior wall of the sarcophagus and spun at Anvindr’s feet.

He looked down to see it was a chip of ceramite spinning to a halt. A curved piece of armour plate, painted in the colour of his own Chapter.

A piece of Liulfr’s armour.

And then Anvindr was hit by an incredible rush of force, a surge of heat and violence in the air strong enough to throw even a fully armoured Space Marine off his feet and across the chamber.

Anvindr hit the wall hard, falling to the floor in a shower of stone fragments. He landed on his feet, bolter already raised.

He could see it now, a blur in the air coalescing before the body of Hrondir. It made his eyes itch to look at it, an amorphous blob of fiery, semi-transparent matter, straining to pull itself into existence, the shadows of teeth and claws slashing the air around it.

‘For Russ!’ shouted Anvindr, squeezing the trigger of his bolter to unleash a storm of explosive bolts. Sindri and Gulbrandr fired too, and the daemonic presence squirmed under fire.

Then, it was gone.

‘Too easy?’ asked Sindri, keeping his bolter raised.

‘Far too easy,’ agreed Anvindr. ‘Inquisitor?’

‘Agreed,’ said Montiyf. ‘It will return.’

‘It’s anchored,’ said Pranix.

‘Speak sense,’ snapped Anvindr.

‘The inquisitor said some of Hrondir’s soul remained,’ said Pranix. ‘Hrondir must have been unable to kill the daemon outright, so instead he bound it to his own soul. Even in death that bond still holds, Hrondir’s soul is bound to his body, pulling the daemon back to its cell.’

The inquisitor pointed to Hrondir’s body. ‘You can see it, the force holding it here.’

Anvindr looked. Hrondir’s armour seemed lit with a light blue, flickering glow, traces of psychic energy rippling across the surfaces of the ancient armour. The light crackled, as if responding to some opposing force.

‘Pranix is right,’ said Montiyf. ‘That’s the daemon’s anchor.’

The blue light burst forth with a wave of cold air, a brief frost forming around the edges of the sarcophagus, and the daemonic presence reappeared. It was not alone: Anvindr could see Galvern, the first Guardsman they had encountered in the tomb, twisting in the air before Hrondir’s seated figure. Galvern was in agony, his body covered in flames, cuts appearing on his skin as the very air around him attacked with daemonic force.

Anvindr felt rising anger. This must have been what happened to Liulfr and the others, warped to the inside of Hrondir’s sarcophagus to be mauled by this daemon, the remains then returned to where they had come from once its foul work was done.

Anvindr had had enough.

‘Gulbrandr,’ he called to the best shot in the pack. ‘Mercy kill.’

Gulbrandr nodded, fired his bolter once and Galvern’s head exploded. Galvern’s body went limp, and there was a high screech as the daemon tore the body limb from limb, frustrated at having its game cut short.

The daemon itself seemed unaffected by the bolt having penetrated its body to reach Galvern. Instead it dropped to the floor, and disappeared once again, only to emerge at Gulbrandr’s feet, consuming him in a wave of heat.

Gulbrandr struggled against the semi-visible creature that clawed at him with burning, translucent limbs, but it was like wrestling a liquid. Tormodr and Sindri rushed to help, the latter revving his chainblade, which he brought down on to the creature.

Sindri swore as the creature flowed around the blade and it bounced off the chest plate of Gulbrandr’s armour.

‘Great Russ,’ said Sindri. ‘We’re more likely to kill him than it.’

‘Stand back,’ shouted Montiyf, stepping forward. His eyes were faintly glowing with energy, which crackled around the hammer in his grip. He swung the hammer just short of Gulbrandr so that it swept through the creature’s mass without hitting the Space Marine, and the creature recoiled from the psychic charge, disappearing into the floor once again.

It reappeared back in Hrondir’s sarcophagus. Gulbrandr dropped to one knee, his flesh steaming from contact with the thing, his face a mass of bloody cuts.

‘It doesn’t seem scratched,’ said Anvindr bitterly. ‘How do we even hurt this thing?’

‘We need to cut it loose,’ said Pranix. Anvindr registered that he, too, had a flicker of psychic energy running through him. ‘Destroy the anchor, release Hrondir’s spirit and the daemon will manifest fully in our world. The body is untouched, so the daemon must have been unable to set itself free, but that rite won’t prevent anyone else from doing it. Once unleashed, the creature will be far more dangerous than it is now, but it will be vulnerable to attack. Together, we may be able to defeat it.’

It was Anvindr’s turn to swear, uttering under his breath a very old, very obscure Fenrisian curse from his youth about bearing the children from a rival tribe. Montiyf and Pranix had let Liulfr die while they kept their secrets, but the Ordo Malleus knew more about fighting daemons than anyone. The Wolves would need them to destroy the monster that killed Liulfr.

‘Very well,’ said Anvindr. ‘Tormodr, I want you to give my old friend Hrondir a long overdue cremation. The rest of you, draw that thing out.’

Anvindr, Gulbrandr and Sindri opened fire on the creature, which flowed away from the sarcophagus to avoid their shots, slipping in and out of existence as it rolled around the chamber. The Wolves maintained fire, driving it back.

With the creature distracted, Tormodr ran up the steps into the sarcophagus. Hrondir’s helmet sat loosely on his shoulders, as Anvindr hadn’t locked it back into place, so it came off easily as Tormodr pulled it away, revealing the Exorcist’s withered head.

‘Apologies, brother,’ said Tormodr, aiming his flamer and letting loose a gout of flame that consumed Hrondir’s head. The ancient flesh was dry as paper, and the fire not only burned away the skin from his head, but descended down the collar into the armour, burning away the rest of his body.

The Terminator armour fell forward, thick black smoke pouring out of the neck. It crashed to the ground spilling dark cindered fragments across the floor. Anvindr thought he saw a mist of blue energy rise from the ashes, and then dissipate altogether.

The daemon roared, and what had been a ghostly shape in the air began to coalesce into something solid but unstable, a rippling mass of horribly real, pustulant flesh. Pores expanded on the repellent flesh, exhaling foetid air as tubular masses became limbs, razor-edged tips scratching the stone floor as it found purpose. Other limbs expanded and thrashed, while a mass of glassy eyes burst from the centre of the daemon’s body like pustules.

The daemon’s eyes held Anvindr’s gaze and he felt a hot sensation behind his eyes, the touch of Chaos trying to find purchase on his mind.

It would take no hold of him.

‘Now!’ bellowed Anvindr, opening fire on the thing, the cacophony of gunfire rising as the rest of the pack opened fire too.

Anvindr concentrated his fire on that mass of eyes, and boiling ichor sprayed from the wounds as the foul eyeballs were destroyed. However the creature was still in flux, still expanding, and other eyes opened up over its body just as extra limbs flailed around the chamber. Each limb rippled with spines and teeth, the flesh flowing like liquid, so it was hard to tell where the flesh ended and the slime that dripped from it began.

One such limb slashed at Gulbrandr, and a razor-edged claw scythed through the ceramite of his chest plate as if it were old vellum, drawing blood and throwing him backwards. Where the daemon’s claw had cut flesh, the edge of the wound began to blacken with decay.

The creature shifted forward, its flailing limbs dragging it across the chamber at terrifying speed in spite of its bulk, raising a mass of claws to deliver a killing blow to Gulbrandr. The daemon seemed unperturbed by the bolts still exploding all over its body, but was driven back as Montiyf and Pranix stepped into the fray, unleashing a blast of psychic energy that drove back the monster.

The daemon swerved to find another victim to satiate its bloodlust, but found Tormodr and his flamer instead. While previously the creature had coursed with the unnatural heat of its incursion upon reality, now it was a thing of vulnerable flesh, and it howled as Tormodr set it alight.

Anvindr seized Gulbrandr’s arm to prevent him from falling. Steam was rising from his infected wound, and there was a lost, unfocussed look in his eyes.

‘Look at me, brother,’ Anvindr said, and Gulbrandr’s eyes locked on to his. ‘Do not let it take a hold of you, fight it.’

Gulbrandr nodded, focus returning to his eyes, and shook off Anvindr’s supporting arm, raising his bolter to open fire once more.

The daemon was still trying to expand its mass, but the hail of bolter fire was tearing its flesh apart as it did so. The Wolves, along with the inquisitor, attacked the daemon while evading its thrashing limbs, but they were merely holding it in check, not destroying it.

‘We must take it apart,’ said Montiyf, raising his hammer. Anvindr nodded, raising his own chainblade in reply, and they moved in on the creature.

The creature lashed out at them as they closed, but Anvindr jumped over a low-swiping limb to land close to the creature’s torso, while Montiyf smacked aside a claw with his hammer. Anvindr drove his chainblade into the creature’s eyes while Montiyf brought his hammer down on the creature’s head, each blow accompanied by a release of psychic power.

Pranix moved in with a psychic blast of his own, while Tormodr had his own chainblade free, and even Gulbrandr staggered over with a long knife drawn, his other arm held across his bleeding chest.

As Sindri approached a flailing claw caught him behind the knee, a claw that shifted into a tendril and dragged him to the floor, pulling him towards a mouth that opened up in the daemon’s side. As he was dragged towards the daemon, Sindri kept his bolter level, firing ahead as the tendril crushed the power armour and began to dig into his flesh.

Anvindr could feel the malign presence as his chainsword rose and fell, hacking and smashing at vile flesh. Doubts and heresies began to sprout in his mind, bursting forth like an infection. That Hrondir had sold his soul to this daemon to sustain it, that it was a god, the only true god, that it was life, that it could not die.

Lies and heresies from a desperate entity. Anvindr drove his chainsword deeper into the amorphous flesh, and a howl rang out. Beside him, Montiyf brought his hammer down again with another psychic flash. The vile flesh of the thing began to bubble and disintegrate, mouths forming to let out a piteous, monstrous whine.

The creature’s screams rang out through the catacombs. In the sub-chambers of the tomb, mortals sat in the darkness, trickles of blood dripping from their ears at the sound of a daemon being dispatched back to hell.

Anvindr and his pack barely spoke to Montiyf and Pranix in the days that followed, nor when the blockade of the tomb entrance was cleared and they stepped out into the light. While they had come together to destroy the daemon, Anvindr knew that Pranix could have done more to confront the creature earlier, rather than allowing Liulfr to die as part of his strategy.

Anvindr and Tormodr would rejoin the battle against the Tau immediately, but Gulbrandr and Sindri would be out of action for a while. It left a bad taste in Anvindr’s mouth, but he held his tongue. The Inquisition was a dangerous enemy to make, and Anvindr had a war of his own to fight. He decided to redirect his anger at the Tau.

Before they left the tomb, Anvindr removed the pieces of Hrondir’s armour from his sarcophagus. He did not know how, but he would find a way to return them to Banish, so that they might be worn once more by a brother of the Exorcists Chapter.

‘They resent us,’ said Pranix, watching the Wolves walk away. ‘They believe we could have acted sooner, and that our reticence let their brother die.’

Montiyf raised an eyebrow.

‘You were right to counsel caution,’ he said. ‘An excellent strategy, Pranix, and your suggestion to destroy the anchor turned the course of battle. I fear you will be leaving my retinue soon.’

‘Leaving?’ asked Interrogator Pranix.

‘Of course,’ replied Montiyf. ‘I will be recommending your raising to the role of inquisitor, Pranix. You have demonstrated the correct qualities.’

‘Thank you,’ said Pranix. He didn’t meet Montiyf’s eye.

Inquisitor Montiyf felt a slight sense of disquiet at the coolness of his interrogator’s thanks, the slight suspicion that he expected no less than to be raised to the Inquisition. That this was Pranix’s decision, not Montiyf’s.

Then he dismissed the thought. He could hear Tau heavy ordnance not far away. The daemon was dead and it was time for them to withdraw.

Soon, they would depart the planet altogether, and leave Beltrasse to the Wolves.

About the Author

Mark Clapham is the author of the Warhammer 40,000 novel Iron Guard and the short stories ‘The Siege of Fellguard’, ‘The Hour of Hell’, ‘In Hrondir’s Tomb’ and ‘Sanctified’, which appeared in the anthology Fear the Alien. He lives and works in Exeter, Devon.

From the Horus Heresy to the 41st millennium, the Space Wolves battle alien horrors and the dread creatures of Chaos across eight tales of action and honour.

A BLACK LIBRARY PUBLICATION

First published in Hammer and Bolter Issue 20 (2012).
This eBook edition published in 2015 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd, Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK.

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