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Let the fire burn low.

The time for feasting is done. You have all had your fill. Yes, even you Blood Claws, you young and violent pups who revel as hard as you fight! Even you. By day I am a mere thrall, my task to fix your wargear, maintain the Fang, labour in your forges and armouries, and do the drudge work that lets the Space Wolves focus entirely on war. But now, as the suns of Fenris drift us into twilight, as the shadows of the Great Hall gather like palls of night sky above us, now I am the voice that all must heed. Did not Leman Russ himself tell tales such as these, of the Emperor and the Great Crusade? Did he not command to heed the tellers of stories, be they mighty Wolf Lord or humble serf? So stoke not the fire until I am done, and let words take flight in the glow of its embers.

My tale this night is of Arjac Rockfist.

Yes, well might you cheer. Arjac, the mightiest of us all! A giant even among the Space Marines, the Anvil and the Hammer of Fenris! Many kegs of ale have been drained in toast to him. Even you Long Fangs, you who grumble and shake your heads at the antics of the Blood Claws, even you Grey Hunters who call yourself the backbone of our Chapter, even you will celebrate his name. Yes, Arjac Rockfist, Grimnar’s Champion! Many are the foes of the Allfather who curse his name in hel.

But this is not a tale of the crushing of the unrighteous at the far ends of the galaxy. No, this tale takes place here, on Fenris, the cold and heartless mother that gave birth to us all, home to the tribes which whelped each one of you. It unfolds in this very place, at the Fang, throne of Leman Russ, fortress of the Space Wolves. My words will take us even to this spot, the Great Hall.

Who will pour me a mug? I have much to say and my throat becomes dry. Thank you, Brother Hef. Now, let me see.

Yes, Arjac! Arjac was strong before he ever became a Space Wolf, before the Wolf Priests ever singled him out for elevation to your number. He was a child of prodigious strength and size, and the fathers of his people told him he would be a warrior. And indeed he was a terror on the battlefield. But truly his home was not there, but in the forge. There his great strength could bend the shafts of fangtree wood into yokes for the Fenrisian drakes that pulled his chieftain’s chariot.

His hammer blows could tame blades of titansteel into shape, and only with his sternness and strength of arm could the steeds of the mountain valleys be shoed for the cavalry of his people. Though many enemies fell to his hand in his youth, it was by his labour in the forges that his people were victorious and thrived.

Barely had Arjac returned from his Blooding when the Iron Priests near demanded he be apprenticed to them, to work hammer and anvil in the Forge Hills that form the lower slopes of the Fang.

His master then was Hengis Blackhand, High Iron Priest, and Arjac learned quickly. While his fellow Blood Claws, like all you raucous whelps, feasted and tested their strength, and the Wolf Priests were pressed to keep them from putting one another in the apothecarion, Arjac read the treatises on weapon-craft he hoped would make him worthy of the greatest relics in the Chapter armoury. He spent his time on Mars, that world of forges, as all who aspire to forge and repair the machines of war must do. Even among their strange rituals and inhuman Magi he was a prodigy of the anvil!

The Magi of the Red World claimed he had in him the potential to himself be High Iron Priest one day, though that would be centuries of labour and learning in the future. Many are the tales I could tell of his time at Mars, but for now I will speak of a time after he returned, apprentice to the High Iron Priest.

Everyone will be tested. This is the lesson that Fenris teaches us. We are tested first when we are born squealing and naked into her clutches, when she challenges us merely to survive. As we approach manhood we must pass her thousand tests of resolve and strength, of valour, intelligence, temperance and fury.

A Space Wolf is tested in another thousand trials, the greatest of which is the Blooding. You passed that test – I did not, as is evidenced by the limp with which I walk and the humble trappings of a thrall I wear instead of the carapace and armour of a Space Marine. And so it was that Arjac was tested, too. Hengis Blackhand summoned Arjac to the Heart Forge, that lava-fed pit of fire, the only place where Fenris’s fury can be kindled sufficient to forge the hardest and sharpest frost blade. Arjac attended his master there above the lava pit, ringed as it still is by its hundred anvils, on the lower slope of the Fang.

‘Arjac,’ said Lord Hengis. ‘Long have you laboured here, remaking the torn armour and broken blades of our Chapter. Your work is fine and long-serving. Your blades are honed sharp, and folded strong. But this is work for thralls. You may do the work of twenty men at the forge, but a Space Marine is worth a hundred men in battle. It is no great shame for a Space Wolf to labour at the anvil – indeed, each Iron Priest must do so for a year and a day before he is granted his servo-harness – but you, Arjac, are wasted on mundane wargear when the forge thralls could do that work.’

‘I value the service I can do to my Chapter,’ said Arjac, ‘and the honour that is done to me when my battle-brothers trust in the arms I have worked. But if you command that I withdraw from the forges and join my brothers in their revelry and brawling, then I shall, though I will miss the heat of the fires and the ringing of the anvil.’

‘No, Arjac, I do not ask that of you.’

Some of you knew High Iron Priest Hengis, those older among you. He was broad of girth and full of beard, which was red-brown and worn in braids. His face was ruddy and his voice as deep as the mountain’s own rumble. He clapped Arjac on the back heartily, as was his way. ‘I ask that you take on the task of remaking the ancient relics of the Chapter, those that have lain broken for centuries now. Though we yearn to return such relics to the battlefield, the reverence in which we hold them bids us to leave them be and not disturb their spirits with an imperfect remaking. But you, Arjac, have such a fineness of touch, such an understanding of steel, that perhaps you might be the first of us to take on this task. But to be sure, you must be tested.’

‘I will submit to any test, and may the Allfather guide me and the wolves of the night sky look with favour on it,’ said Arjac, for he was humble and would not say that he relished such a task or the opportunity to prove himself. How many of you, when given such a task, would celebrate that you had been chosen, or would cry out with words unsoft that no man might perform it better than you, or that the obstacle before you is as nothing? Most of you, I have no doubt. Not Arjac.

Hengis bade the forge thralls forth, carrying between them a suit of armour. It was Terminator armour, such as is granted to the most honoured of Wolf Guard.

Blessed are you who have earned the right to wear it! You are champions among champions. The armour was ancient, its grey ceramite plates inlaid with the most intricate knot work in brass and silver. Wolves hunted their prey through the spiralling pattern, battleships did war upon Fenris’s oceans, and the stars in the sky formed the constellations under which we were all born. Such was the workmanship of the armour presented to Arjac Rockfist.

‘This is the armour of Wolf Lord Torjek Granitebrow,’ said Hengis. ‘He was lost in the assault on Brehan IV, and though his body was recovered his armour never functioned again. See, how the servos are charred and useless! Alas, none have been able to repair them, for their riddles elude us. And these ceramite plates, on the shoulder and the greave. See how they are split and torn! Yet to repair it seamlessly is beyond any of us, for the work is so fine and intricate. To you, Arjac Rockfist, I give this task. Repair the armour of Torjek Granitebrow, and return it to our armouries that it might be granted to a hero of our future. This is the test I set before you.’

Arjac knelt and bowed in thanks, and took the armour and laid it on the anvil beside him. Without a word more he set about his work.

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First published in Great Britain in 2014.
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