Lukas the Trickster Read online

  Grimblood lunged and caught Lukas by his beard. He jerked the Blood Claw forward and drove a punch into his face. Lukas flopped back onto his backside with a strangled yelp. Several of the wolves heaved themselves upright, snarling. Grimblood snarled back, silencing the beasts.

  ‘I am your jarl. You will respect me, fool.’

  The chamber had fallen silent. Lukas laughed thickly. ‘You are easier to provoke than Krakendoom, jarl. That bodes well for one of us.’ The blood from his shattered nose had already ceased its flow, and as he sat up he twisted his snout back into place in a flurry of popping cartilage. He grinned up at the Wolf Lord, and Grimblood’s hands curled into fists, ready to strike again.

  Lukas rose smoothly and dragged the back of his hand across his face, smearing more blood than he removed. Idly, he reached out and wiped his hand on Grimblood’s furs, never taking his eyes from their owner’s face. ‘Respect,’ he said finally. ‘Respect is only earned, jarl. Never given. Now come. There is a tradition to be upheld. Let us get it over with.’

  For a moment, he thought Grimblood would strike him again. Instead, the jarl turned away. ‘You are not here to give orders, Strifeson,’ he growled dismissively. ‘You are here to follow them.’

  ‘Then command me, oh seer.’ Lukas bowed low, eliciting a chuckle from several of the Wolf Lords and the gathered huscarls. Krakendoom silenced them all with a sharp gesture.

  ‘Bare your throat and be silent until asked to speak, Laughing One.’ Lukas inclined his head, not quite respectfully, and waited. Kraken­doom cleared his throat. Around the chamber, huscarls and thegns began to strike the tables with their flagons, setting the rhythm of the saga to come. ‘Before us stands the accused. I shall speak his list of crimes.’

  And so it began, another tradition. A slow recitation of his every misdeed committed during his time with the Krakendoom, accompanied by the crashing of flagons and the stamping of feet. There was some laughter, for even the most humourless of jarls could see the comical joy of rerouting waste pipes into private chambers, or shearing the locks of a sleeping warrior so that his proud mane was reduced to stubble. Fewer laughed at the hiding of hard-won battle trophies, or the vulgar altering of the deep-scored runes on a boastful warrior’s battle-plate. None voiced any support of the dousing of an unlucky Long Fang in troll pheromones and the unfortunate occurrences that followed.

  Through it all, Lukas smiled. He bared his fangs in a joyous grin. A challenging grin. It was always the same, this ceremony. A mock court, condemnation without punishment. It was up to his jarl to punish him, when and if he saw fit. Krakendoom had once tied him hand and foot to a length of tow cable and kicked him out the back of a Stormfang gunship. He had been left to dangle above storm-tossed seas as the ship completed its patrol of the skies around Asaheim. Others had done worse. Some didn’t bother.

  When Krakendoom had finished his recitation, he said, ‘You have heard the list of your crimes. What say you?’

  ‘Only that I am sorry I couldn’t do more with the time allotted to me.’ At Krakendoom’s snarl of rage, Lukas threw back his head and gave a howl of laughter. Huscarls stomped and clapped, or jeered mockingly. Their jarls roared for silence. Lukas raised his voice to be heard over the clamour. ‘But our time will come again, my jarl. Like Fenris itself, my orbit is set, and endless.’

  ‘Keep laughing and it won’t be,’ Redmaw growled. ‘Perhaps we should end this useless farce once and for all, and you with it.’ He looked around, seeking support from the others. ‘I cannot be the only one wondering why we must endure this madness. He should have been dealt with long ago, and we all know it.’

  Lukas laughed harder. ‘And what will you do, Redmaw? Gobble me up?’ He clapped his hands and whistled. ‘I’d like to see you try, Cursed One. I’d cut my way out of your overstretched gullet before the next cycle.’

  Redmaw started to reach for Lukas, but the sharp sound of an iron ferrule striking stone stopped him. Lukas’ laughter trailed off as the sound was repeated. His hackles stiffened and he glanced at the doors, knowing what he would see even before he did so.

  A tall figure stood at the end of the hall, and the fires there dimmed as if something had drawn the strength from them. A murmur ran along the tables. The Rune Priest was clad in full battle-plate, as if for war. Runes had been hammered into the grey ceramite, and savage totems hung from the recesses of his armour. He held a staff topped with a wolf’s skull, its surface marked with twisting sigils. His beard was like frost, spilling down his chest-plate, and his face sagged with ritual scars where it wasn’t hidden beneath faded tribal tattoos. ‘Has the choice been made, jarls?’

  Grimblood cleared his throat. ‘You honour us with your presence, Hrek Galerunner.’ Lukas could smell the magic clinging to the newcomer. It caused the air to twist and stalk itself in confusing ways, the firepits dimming as the Rune Priest passed them and flaring anew in his wake.

  ‘Has a choice been made?’ Galerunner growled again.

  Grimblood nodded. ‘Aye, for better or worse.’ He shot a glance at Lukas. ‘He is my burden this season. My responsibility.’

  ‘Good. All is well, then.’ The Rune Priest thumped the floor with the ferrule of his heavy staff once more, and the stones rang like bells. The air stank of ozone. He drove the staff down a final time, hard enough to crack the stone beneath. ‘The thread is spun. The runes cast. And this farce is ended. I come to escort him to his new pack, as tradition dictates.’

  Grimblood bowed his head. ‘As it has always been, so will it be.’ He turned to Lukas. ‘Go. And if you are wise, I will not see your face until the next Helwinter.’

  Chapter Two

  BLOOD CLAWS

  640.M41

  Lukas sang something bawdy and inappropriate as Galerunner led him through the corridors of the Aett. The Rune Priest remained determinedly silent for much of the journey, no matter Lukas’ provocation. Lukas didn’t mind. He was used to it.

  Galerunner didn’t approve of him, for reasons of his own. Then, Rune Priests weren’t known for approving of much. They were a stern lot, with no appetite for jokes. Even the Stormcaller, mightiest of them all, went out of his way to stay as far as possible from Lukas.

  He grinned. He knew it had been old Njal’s suggestion to pass him from one company to the next, so that none might have to bear the burden of his presence for longer than a few seasons. The Lord of Runes obviously thought him a necessary evil. ‘And what can I say to that, save thank you?’

  ‘What was that?’ Galerunner asked.

  ‘I said, are we almost there?’

  Galerunner grunted. Lukas laughed and resumed his singing. Kaerls and thralls scrambled from their path, seeking other places to be. Whether that was due to his singing or Galerunner’s glowering, Lukas didn’t know.

  Every Great Company maintained its own halls and armouries in the mountain, and the Grimbloods were no different. The communal chambers of the company’s Blood Claws were as far from those of the rest of the company as possible. They clung to the outer edge of the Aett, on the borderland between Jarlheim and the Hould, lost in a maze of long transit corridors and access passages crudely hacked out of bare rock.

  Galerunner tugged on his beard, now visibly trying to tune out the noise of Lukas’ singing. Lukas began to sing louder, so that his voice carried along the corridor, its echoes racing ahead of them. Galerunner sighed. ‘Cease, Lukas. Please.’

  Lukas did. He was getting bored, anyway. He grinned at the Rune Priest. ‘A timely intervention, by the way. I think Redmaw might have taken my head off if you hadn’t arrived when you did.’

  ‘He wouldn’t have. Even Redmaw has more respect for tradition than that.’ Galerunner looked at him. ‘But you should not provoke them. They do not truly hate you, however it might seem. It is the Helwinter, gnawing at the roots of their composure. As it gnaws at us all.’

  ‘But there i
s truth in the thunder,’ Lukas said. ‘And I don’t mind bearing the brunt of their hate.’ He chuckled. ‘That is my wyrd, after all. And better me than another, eh? Isn’t that what the Lord of Runes decided in his wisdom? That I am to play scapegoat for their frustrations?’

  Galerunner snorted. ‘Are you truly that content in yourself, brother?’

  Lukas shrugged. ‘What warrior knows contentment, save on the field of battle?’

  ‘An artful dodge, brother, especially coming from you. But you cannot avoid my blows forever.’ Galerunner glanced at him, his eyes dark with the shadow of hard-won knowledge. ‘Morkai stalks your trail, as he does us all. He pads after you, inevitable and inexorable. What will you do when you meet him at last? Will you make him a meal worthy of memory? Or will he gulp you down as he has countless others?’

  Lukas grinned. ‘He will do as he wills, I imagine.’

  ‘And what do you will?’

  ‘I will that I do only as I will.’

  ‘Your path is a crooked one. And few dare follow you down it.’ Galerunner looked away. ‘I have often wondered what would happen if we did. Once, we might have walked it gladly. Now, we are too far along the path laid out for us by Ironhelm and Grimhammer, and by Russ. The path that stretches straight until it winds back on itself.’ He gestured, and his finger traced a knotwork of electricity in the cold air. It faded, and he said, ‘That path is both our salvation and our doom. Grimblood isn’t the only one who can see portents in the fire.’

  Lukas shrugged. ‘Time is a saga, and its ending is one no man can predict.’

  The Rune Priest smiled. ‘There is a quick mind inside that head. You will need it in days to come.’

  ‘Is that what your runes tell you?’

  ‘No. Merely common sense.’ Galerunner sighed. ‘Do not pretend that your wyrd was thrust upon you. You chose it, as much as any warrior can. If you are a scapegoat, you are a willing one, demanding that more troubles be added to your burden.’

  Lukas grunted and looked away. He brushed aside a thick tangle of power cables descending like loops of vine from the corridor’s sub-structure. Lumens flickered dimly along the corridor walls, casting skewed shadows. Cold air whipped through unseen shafts, carrying with it the bite of icy rain and the sound of thunder.

  Vast as it was, the Aett was in a constant state of repair, and had been for centuries. Its size was such that it required almost constant maintenance by successive generations of thralls. And with each generation, the knowledge required for such maintenance became rote and ritualised. Whole sections of it had collapsed, or had been flooded during the savage seasons, and would remain so for centuries to come.

  The descendants of those first thralls brought in to complete construction of the great fortress still toiled in its depths, their efforts bent to the same tasks their forefathers had begun. There was a crushing sense of monotony to the whole thing.

  The thought of such tedium extending across the centuries made him itch. But maybe that was just the sense of confinement getting to him. He had been in the Aett too long. Too many cycles since he had loosed the kill-urge and let the beast inside him have its way.

  The corridor shook slightly and the lumens dimmed. Ice pattered across his shoulders. Asaheim was the only constant on Fenris, but it endured its share of upheaval even so. In his youth, he had been told of the Time of Making, and how the Allfather had cast Fenris into the Sea of Stars. He had listened in awe as the skjalds spoke of how Fenris felt the cold of the great darkness and fled back to the warmth of the Wolf’s Eye.

  But soon, the gaze of the sun grew overly warm, and the world faded into the cool of the dark. So it was, over the course of the seasons, that Fenris flung itself from heat to chill and back again, and in the process came the savage season – the Helwinter, when the seas rose wild, the ice shifted and the mountains crumbled. A part of him was still that boy, crouching against the coarse wood of his mother’s longship, listening to the others singing to hide the sound of something great and terrible passing beneath the hull.

  The storm made his skin itch and his teeth ache. Beneath its growl, he could feel the echoes of the forges ringing upwards from the ­Hammerhold and the heat of the great geothermal reactors that fed every part of the Aett, from the lowest holds to the sub-orbital docking platforms high above. Nothing would be leaving those platforms for the foreseeable future. Not until the weather cleared. Fenris was never more isolated than in this season.

  He shook his head, pushing the thought aside. They had come to an access corridor more damaged than most. The thralls had marked the walls around it with warning runes. Lukas studied them. ‘They like pranks, these pups.’

  ‘What Blood Claw doesn’t?’

  Lukas could feel Galerunner’s eyes on him. ‘The corridor is booby-trapped.’

  ‘Almost certainly.’

  ‘How many Blood Claw packs are there under Grimblood’s command?’

  ‘Six at the moment,’ Galerunner said. ‘They have probably already heard that you are coming. You know how fast news travels in the Aett.’

  ‘Do you suppose they might throw me a welcome feast?’ Lukas flexed his hands, his knuckles popping like bolt-rounds. Every Blood Claw – save himself – longed to rise in stature among the packs. Headstrong and wilful, most sought to do so in the heat of battle. But others were either more cunning or more determined, and they were quick to take advantage of whatever opportunities came their way. Like, say, attempting to claim the scalp of that most reviled of beasts, the Jackalwolf.

  ‘Do not kill any of them,’ Galerunner said.

  Lukas looked at him. ‘What do you take me for?’

  ‘Answering that would require more time than I care to waste. I know you, Strifeson. And I know what hides behind that smile. Leave them in one piece – or just don’t touch them.’

  Lukas snorted. ‘I give you my oath, priest. Does that satisfy you?’

  ‘It might, if I thought you had any honour.’

  Lukas laughed. ‘Wise. Still, I will not kill any of them. I cannot make such promises in regard to maiming, however. They are Blood Claws, after all, and lacking in common sense.’

  ‘Which you would know all about, of course.’

  ‘Of course. And who better to teach them than me?’ Lukas rubbed his hands together. ‘It will be a gentle lesson, never fear. So soft they will think their mothers have come off the ice to visit.’

  ‘No one would ever confuse you with their mother, Lukas.’

  ‘And thank Russ for that.’ Lukas clapped. ‘Probably best I go alone from here. Think of what it would do to my reputation to have a nursemaid with me when I arrive.’ He smiled, but there was no mockery in it. ‘Thank you, brother.’

  ‘I did nothing, Lukas.’ Galerunner turned away. ‘For good or ill, your wyrd is your own.’ Lukas watched the Rune Priest stride away. Then, shaking his head, he stepped into the access corridor. He stopped almost immediately.

  A post had been thrust into the floor ahead of him. Mounted atop it was a skull. Human, but brown with grime and age. On the dome of the cranium, a single rune had been carved – Hloja. ‘Laugh’.

  A warning, perhaps. Or simply a joke. It was hard to tell with Blood Claws. Lukas stepped past the skull, his eyes sweeping the walls and floor for any sign of tampering. He paused, stooped and scooped up a handful of dust from the drifts that gathered where walls met floor. He took a deep breath and blew the dust ahead of him.

  A web of photon beams was revealed. He grinned and stripped off his doppelgangrel pelt. He stepped forward, whirling it about him. Something clicked, and he felt an impact against the folds of his cloak as he was struck by some reeking mass hurled from an unseen launcher. By its smell, he thought it must be the carcass of some small animal. The mass came apart at the point of impact. He heard the hum of many hard little bodies, and caught a whiff of a familiar, acrid odo
ur.

  ‘Bloodlice.’ He laughed, quickly containing the swarm in his cloak and flinging the carcass away. When he was sure it and they were gone, he gave his cloak a flap and swung it back over his shoulders. ‘Clever, pups. Very clever.’ The creatures usually nested in the corpses of vermin. They would crawl into a ball of twitching bodies, waiting for something to disturb them. Then they would swarm, sting their prey to death, and make a new nest. While the toxins produced by their sting could be dangerous to a mortal, it was merely an irritant to a Space Marine’s enhanced physiology.

  At the end of the corridor, a pair of great double doors sagged on their hinges, busted open with too much exuberance one too many times. Lukas carefully forced them aside, with much groaning of abused mechanisms.

  The chamber beyond was a large communal space, crowded with furs and racks of armour and weaponry. Great fireplaces had been gouged into the walls, and unseen flues sucked the smoke up through the porous body of the Aett. Everything was a wash of red and gold, and the smells of cooked meat and spilled mjod mingled with the more pungent odour of excitement.

  There were nearly thirty Blood Claws in residence, in various states of drunkenness. The various packs intermingled with little regard for ­seniority. Some wrestled with one another, sliding and struggling across the stone floor, while others sang loudly and off-key. A few tended to their weapons, or devoured the meat that piled the serving platters lining the great tables of granite and wood. Machine-thralls trundled soundlessly among them, dispensing mjod or removing empty platters.

  The noise of their revelry assaulted Lukas’ ears. The Blood Claws were wild with youth and strength. Most didn’t yet fully understand the changes that even now surged through them. They would grow in might and cunning, if they survived long enough. Most wouldn’t. That was the way of it. Death could not be avoided, only postponed.

  Silence fell as the more sober Blood Claws registered his presence at last. Whispers raced from one side of the hall to the next as the more observant among them recognised him, their yellow eyes fixed on him.