The first he knew of the frag grenade was a gentle tink-tink-tink as it bounced down the corridor.
If his senses hadn’t been crushed, he’d have spotted it sooner. If his muscles hadn’t been ripped apart, he’d have been able to leap clear in time. If his armour hadn’t been carved open, he’d have withstood the blast.
It exploded. The blast-wave hurled him backwards, throwing him onto his back and sending him skidding into the far wall of the junction.
Hjortur’s head bounced back savagely, prompting fresh spikes of pain from his twisted neck. He felt more sharp pops from within, the hot flush of fluids sluicing across his organs. A wave of sickly dizziness swept over him, and his hands went cold. He felt his bolter drop from numb fingers.
Blinded, reeling, he tried to push himself up. He dimly made out the silhouettes of more figures standing above him. He swung his fist clumsily at the nearest. A blade shot out from over to his left, severing his arm at the wrist. Hjortur felt the metal slide under his splintered forearm-guard, slicing agonisingly through what remained of his claw-hand.
More blades flashed in the gloom, plunging into his body, pinioning him to the metal deck. His back arched as they stabbed him, and a ragged, throaty gurgle of pain escaped his mouth.
The hunters kept up the assault. They worked as a team, moving sword-edges quickly, as if panicked by the thought that he might – still – get up. They locked his ankles down. They ran gouges along his torso, exposing glistening viscera. They threw chains across his legs and throat, yanking his head back against the floor.
By the time they had finished, Hjortur Ageir Hvat Bloodfang, Wolf Guard of Fenris, vaerangi of Berek Thunderfist, lay impaled on the lower decks of the Arjute-class heavy troop conveyer like an insect pinned to a collector’s card. Twelve short swords held him in place, six adamantium-link chain-lengths held him down, seven barbed gouges were lodged in his chest, each one standing at the head of the gushing fountain of thick, semi-clotted blood.
That was what it took to subdue him. Hjortur coughed up a wet, grim snort of satisfaction. He’d extracted his tally of pain.
How many hunters had he killed? Maybe a hundred. This had been a serious operation. They had come prepared.
The blurred black-clad figures withdrew. Hjortur tried to raise his head, but the chains pulled tight. His breath came in tight, short gasps. He could feel his armour systems gutter and fizz out. He could feel his body getting colder, shutting down, giving up the ghost.
Giving up the ghost. Hjortur felt delirious. Giving up the ghost.
A single hunter remained, hanging over his face like a vision in smoke. He could make out the fuzzy outline of a closed-face helm. He saw a cherubic device printed on the forehead – golden, spike-crowned against a sable ground. He saw plates of armour glinting, matt-black and rimmed with silver. He smelled the sooty aroma of a cooling weapon muzzle, and heard the faint whine of a power-pack winding down.
The world around him began to melt away. He concentrated, determined to look at his killer, right up to the end.
Fenrys.
The thought swam into his mind unbidden. He saw an image of the peaks of Asaheim, vast and snow-streaked, picked out in hard lines of frosty clarity. He knew then that he would never go back to them, never feel their knife-sharp air sting on his tongue. That knowledge pained him more than his hundred wounds.
The blurred figure swung closer, kneeling beside Hjortur and peering down at him. Hjortur saw his own face reflected darkly in a glassy visor, and barely recognised himself.
They will replace me, he thought. The pack needs a leader.
The hunter withdrew a tapered gun. It was a strange-looking thing – curved and sweeping and sculptural. Hjortur struggled to maintain focus.
I should have appointed a successor. Gyrfalkon? Gunnlaugur?
The hunter placed the muzzle’s tip at Hjortur’s fractured temple and pressed it through the flesh. Amid his cacophony of serried pain, Hjortur barely winced.
‘Do you know who we are?’
The voice was heavily altered, filtered through a crackling vox-distorter. It might have been human; it might not.
Hjortur tried to answer, but the blood in his throat and mouth made him gag. He shook his head fractionally, making the needle in his temple tear at the flesh.
The hunter reached up with his free hand and depressed a switch at the side of his helm. His visor snapped up, revealing a