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The Price of Morkai – Extract

A Black Library Publication

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The Price of Morkai

Marc Collins

From out of the depths came they,

Greatest of the Allfather’s challenges.

Set beneath the ice and salt

To test us again and forever.

Vast is the kraken, great its wrath.

And we? We fight on regardless.

Till we die in shame

Or are chosen by those who wait.

– Hunters of Beasts and Men, The Fenrisian Eddas

It is too late for the dead warrior by the time they bear him into what passes for Ivar Krakenblood’s kingdom.

Ivar knows this, just as they know it. The pale skin of their faces is streaked with mourning tears, with ashes, with all the detritus of war and all the scars that Fenris etches upon its sons and daughters.

Four of the Vlka Fenryka bear their fallen brother into the halls of the slain, carrying him upon shields like a fallen chieftain of the ice. Fjolnir, proclaimed proudly by his armour as Fjolnir the war-wise, mjod-soaked and battle-drunk, lies cold and dead, never to rise again for feast or conflict.

They are called, he knows, Wolf King’s Call and they have served Fenris and the Imperium with honour and glory. Fjolnir was their leader, a fine one at that, and now he has fallen.

Ivar looks upon him through the lenses of his wolf-skull helm and moves closer. In the cold of the apothecarion, deep in the bowels of the Aett, he knows that he looms like the very shadow of Morkai. Black-armoured, fur-wreathed, glaring at them from a mask of bone and cold iron. Such is duty of the Wolf Priest – to judge and to test. To inspire fear and loyalty.

‘Your brother has been taken from us,’ Ivar intones simply. ‘Upon the world of Winter and War, at the very hearth. Who will speak the saga of his passing?’

Silence reigns for but a moment, then all their eagerness crowds in. The restrained violence unleashes like a tidal surge and their voices rise, one above the other, clamouring for the honour.

Vili pushes forwards, so determined to be first, buoyed up by the impetuousness of youth. Ivar remembers what it was to be so keen, flush with all the freshness of near-death and after. The Blood Claw slaps his fist against his breastplate as though it were a tribal feast, and he were issuing a challenge.

Jolfr, by contrast, is a tightly wound knot with all his feelings locked within his heart. His scarred face is stony, as true and sure as Asaheim’s soil. The only sign of his agitation is the flexing of his gauntleted fingers, still smeared with Fjolnir’s blood. Ivar notes the trails that wind down his arm, from his shoulder, where he bore Fjolnir up as they left the field of battle. The warrior’s own wounds are forgotten. Unimportant. There is only this final, onerous duty.

Orwandil and Hrungnir wait in mournful silence. Older warriors, more measured and surer. Theirs is the ice-grief, shared by all the tribes of Fenris, for a warrior taken too soon into the underverse.

‘We will all speak his saga,’ Vili says at last, and the others cheer with him. ‘He was our brother and we all stood with him at the end.’ Vili shakes with the effort of his words and fine grains of sand weep from his armour.

‘As is proper,’ Ivar says. There is no judgement in his words. He stands as a symbol of the Rout itself, as solid as the great iron ribs above them, rune-marked and potent. The marks of aversion are cut deep here, the better to ward the wounded and the dead from maleficarum. ‘You have all shared in his passing. You have carried him one last time into our halls. Now you will carry his saga down the ages, that the Rout might learn from it.’

The Fang of Morkai clicks at his wrist, blades stirring hungrily as Ivar pulls back the armour plates and exposes the wounds that ended Fjolnir’s life. Great cuts and gouges have worked their way through the metal and into flesh, as inexorable as Fenris itself.

This is a killing world. They forget this absolute truth at their peril.

The blades bite, plunging like a seafarer’s harpoons, prying and cutting at the bounty beneath. Ivar’s other hand braces against Fjolnir’s chest as he gouges through flesh and works at bone. The reductor element plunges inwards, and a crack echoes through the chamber as it finds its mark.

Ivar draws the first progenoid up and examines it, tilting it in the lights of the apothecarion, scrutinising it for any damage or defect. He reaches for the cryogenic canister, sliding the organ into the chill receptacle with exaggerated care. A small sensor flickers from crimson to green. Ivar nods to himself, lifts the canister, and lays it in a small chest of dark wood worked with silver and iron runes.

They watch as he turns back to Fjolnir and begins to work at his neck, seeking the second gland. The wolf-skull helm remains impassive, unjudging, seemingly unfazed by the dire work Ivar does. Congealed blood has stained his armour now, fingers and wrists slick with it, dappled across the black of his plate. In other Chapters, Ivar knows, those who tend to the body wear purest white – as though their souls could not be sullied by the duty. Those who are called to the Chaplaincy wear sacred black. It is not so amongst the Vlka Fenryka. The Wolf Priests of Fenris understand the weight of duty and feel Morkai’s breath at their necks.

They are made death, judges of the slain and salvation of the living.

The second organ follows, and each warrior of the pack watches Ivar’s respectful motions as he seals the casket and lifts it reverently.

‘This is the legacy of our brother, Fjolnir. Tell me of him. Speak his saga that the Rout may know it. Let it carry through the hearth.’

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