Two Wolves
The ship was oddly silent as Katla moved through the darkness. Occasionally tremors would seize it, and all would be motion and the creaking of its vast iron skeleton, but between the storm silence reigned. Emergency lumens and sirens had triggered, and then died. Even the groaning background ague of an ageing hull seemed muted. A system had failed somewhere, or damage had found its way into the vessel. Either way, it was dark, and it was still.
Katla owned the darkness, as surely as the ship was becoming hers. Her huscarls, true and trusted souls, all. Sworn swords. They bore the marks of crossed spears and rearing wolves. They wore inked hunting masks, in imitation of her own flesh-brands. And now they swarmed through the ship in their hunting packs, to take it piece by piece. To tear out the throat. To pierce the heart. To bind the limbs. It was a hunt – perhaps not a worthy one, but a hunt.
‘All things are hunts,’ she breathed. She drove herself on, down through the recesses of a generatorium trench. She was in the bowels of the ship, below the waterline. She should be the tip of a spear, primed and ready to transfix the bridge. Instead, she hunted.
Katla tapped the unpowered blade of her spear against the engine-shells of the generators. They idled, lacking even a grumble of activation. They loomed, judgemental as menhirs, with ritual disdain.
To walk in the underholds of the great vessels was to walk the cavernous cathedrals of slumbering gods. The understanding of such hollow sanctity was something she had carried with her from Fenris. The iron god-spirits of starships were not the world-spirits of sea and sky and storm. Such caged and directed lightning was where her passion lay. Those quirks and magicks of the enginarium had ever been the domain of cold-blooded savants such as the Norastye, but she was a quick student.
The Norastye. She spat to one side at even the thought of the name. When this was done, she would see Absalom’s head upon a spike. Whatever fellowship there had once been between them, he had sullied it.
‘That my only allies should be the Radrexxus and the Lamertines,’ she muttered aloud. The thought itself was alien. It echoed strangely in the vaulted chamber, dancing under the ribbed ceiling, to return mangled and unfamiliar. She was alone, save for her own reverberated voice. It brought with it a calmness, a peace and a comfort that enveloped her even in the heart of an enemy’s domain.
She was used to the primal electricity of such places. Fighting across chitin plates that were practically tectonic, watching blood erupt into the void as magma bursts from worlds. She had brought ruin to greenskin scrap-hulks, hewing them apart with graceful fury. Close or at a distance, she had taken lives. She had won battles, and been lauded for it.
She drew the blade of the spear along the next generator with a squeal. Machines were, so the Iron Priests said, beyond pain. Not beyond insult, of course, but that was another matter. This was not battle. Not any more. Not truly. Not with victory so near, and the soul of the ship within her talons.
It was not insult, or defilement. She had not clawed her way to the stars to be a puling heretek.
‘You are proud,’ she whispered. She reached out and traced her hand along the sides of the trench, fingers dancing across barely understood machinery. It remained silent, and she laughed. ‘I know pride. I have borne it out a hundred times. Jarl, I call myself! Some have called me the Winter’s Queen, or the Mother of Hunters. Fine titles, aye, for those who enjoy collecting such things.’
The ship rumbled again, gently. The shudder of a ship on a choppy sea, not that of a starfarer under fire. Around her the systems began to wake, almost as though roused by her admissions.
‘Ah, yes. There you are,’ she purred. ‘There is fire in your soul. I have that same fire. We are very different, you and I, but we have both done our duty. Come what may.’
‘My jarl, we are advancing on the bridge. Skitja! They are fierce in defiance, but we have the measu–’
‘Gunnery decks breached, O Queen of Winter! We fight and die for the honour of Helvintr! Commend us to the halls of our ancestors, should we–’
‘In the name of Russ, and the Allfather of Man!’
She ignored them, one after another. Her men knew their craft, just as she did. They had fought and bled together across so many battlefields. Too many. She clenched her hand into a fist, and rapped it against the generator. It thrummed, started, and there was light and heat about her now.
If there were any helots, serfs or adepts, then they kept to the shadows.
‘You are the Gracious Light,’ she said with a soft smile. ‘A fine name. Not a warrior’s name, but you have a warrior’s heart. All ships, in their way, are ships of war. Cast to the void by His hand, to serve, and to fight.’ Katla nodded. ‘That is why you were made, just as it is why I was made. To fight and endure, with all that we have to hand.’
She could feel the metal straining, pulsing as more of its systems engaged. It built into a roar, a scream of activation. A howl.
‘You have been ill used. I know that. Slaved to blind and blinkered masters who care only for profit, and their own advancement.’ She stalked along the trench and up into the ship proper. The lights followed her, winking on in a sea of captive stars. ‘I will give you a new life. A new purpose. You will be sleek, and swift, and glorious.’ Her divided visage split into a savage grin. She drew up her spear, like a light to guide her way. Up, towards the ship’s bridge, and the victory that awaited.
‘I will make you a huntress, and you shall shine.’
Astrid fought her way through the Forsworn Blade, mercifully alone now. She chafed at being set as a watchdog for Erastus. He did not trust her, not truly, and her mother clearly did not trust him. She was a token. A shield, and a sword in equal measure.
Now, though, she ran free. She was fighting along one of the ship’s main arterials. It was not a sprawling colonnade as might be found upon a true ship of war such as the Queen or the Soul; instead it was a cramped and overgrown approximation of those greater vessels. It had narrowed over the decades and centuries, crowded with additional layers of machinery and repair work. Scar tissue, bracing a wound.
She smiled grimly at the thought, as she swung her axe through another of the ineffectual armsmen. The ship teemed with would-be defenders, yet there had been none to pose a threat. She wondered if her mother was finding it any more of a challenge, or if Maximillian and his men were struggling. Astrid hooked the blade of her axe behind the head of another armsman and then slammed their helmeted skull into a bulkhead.
Such sport. If this was all the joy to be taken from the place then so be it, she would take it.
‘Astrid?’ whispered a voice in her ear. Erastus, calling for her as a master summons a hound. She scoffed aloud, gritted her teeth, and lazily ducked another swipe of an enemy’s blade. She went under their guard, and cut a swift pattern of wounds across their chest. She kicked them back, and they tumbled to the ground – rolling end over end, through the grime and oil of the corridor.
She laughed. It was the laughter of her mother as she laid low another beast of the void, the laughter of everyone who had ever spat into the face of the storm and made their enemies sleep upon red snow. The mirth of Fenris was boisterous and brash, and it lingered long upon the tongue as it did within the soul.
‘Astrid, what is your status? We’re advancing on the bridge.’ The signal broke up, before she heard Erastus speak again. This time it was not to her. ‘Does anyone have eyes on Helvintr? Throne of Terra – bring that weapons station down!’
She contemplated whether or not to respond. She was not shirking her duty. She was serving. Simply not at his side, or at his whim. Control of this arterial would allow swift movement from the gunnery decks to the bridge, and complete command of the underdecks and holds.
Las-fire impacted around them, and she staggered back. She looked down at the burn mark seared into her armour, and let loose a feral growl.
‘Do you know who I am?’ she snarled. ‘Do you know who you threaten and toy with? I am a daughter of Helvintr. I am the spear of the Huntress Queen!’
The shots fell away, as though cowed by her words. She stalked forward, brandishing her axes. She passed by two shadowed alcoves, and did not see the figures move until it was too late. They hurled themselves from the darkness, armour smudged with oil and muck. Heavy hands took hold of her, wrapping around and trying to restrain her arms. She threw her body back, slamming one of them into the wall, but the other cracked the side of a rifle into her head. Once. Twice. She spat blood, struggling all the while. The final blow sent her head snapping back, and she fell to the deck. Darkness took her, and she felt the first bonds close around her limbs before unconsciousness followed.