The peaks closest to the Fang had entered the legends of the Vlka Fenrika, etched on their communal consciousness since the Allfather had led them there in the half-remembered twilight of the founding. To the south was Asfryk, white-sided and blunt, the Cloudtearer. To the East were soaring Friemiaki and Tror, the brothers of thunder. To the west was bleak Krakgard, the dark peak where heroes were burned, and to the north were Broddja and Ammagrimgul, the guardians of the Hunter's Gate through which aspirants passed to take the trials of passage.
 |
| Battle Of The Fang Artwork |
The way between the peaks were treacherous and known only to those who'd trodden the paths as aspirants. All were scarred with precipitous drops and deep crevasses. Some hunt-ways were built on solid stone, whereas others were on bridges of ice that would crumble to nothing with the first application of weight. Some led true, taking the hunter from the clefts in the shadow of the summits down to the plains where the prey dwelt; others led nowhere but into darkness, to the caves that riddled the bowels of the ancient landscape, full of nothing but ice-gnawed bones and despair.
For all its majesty and terror, there were islands of stability in that savage land, places where gigantic outcrops of rock created broad plateaux amid the plunging cliffs. These were the sites where the Wolves came to commune with the savage soul of the mountain country. In the Summers of Fire, when the ice was broken across the planet and war came to the mortal tribesmen, great fires were lit in such places and sagas declaimed by the skjalds. Then would the warriors of Russ put aside the demands of battle for a short time and remember those who had fallen in the Long War, and the Rune Priests would delve far into mysteries of the wyrd, attempting to discern the Chapter's path into the unknown landscape of the future.
It was at such a gathering that a younger Ironhelm has announced the first of the many hunts for Magnus. Further back into past, the same locations had played host to the decision to form the Wolf Brothers, the Space Wolves' ill-fated successor Chapter, now disbanded and a source of hidden shame.
Extract from 'Battle Of The Fang' by Chris Wraight
