In Hrondir's Tomb Read online

  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 Lacusi
an 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.<
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  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.