Russ looked over the planetary violence with an approving eye. 'This is a hard world. This is our world,' he said.

'As it is in body, so it is in spirit,' said Kva. 'If it were not so hardened, we would not survive this undertaking.' He shook his staff. The wolfs teeth and bone fetishes rattled. 'Downwards,' he said, 'to the Krakgard.'

From anywhere but the Fang, attaining the summit of the Krakgard would have meant an arduous ascent. But from the mountain housing the Aett every direction was down. The party moved in single file along the killing lanes of the Sunrising approach. As the group descended, the peaks of the Fang's brothers grew, from modest seeming crests to gargantuan masses of stone. That is, until Bjorn looked behind, and beheld the endless majesty of the Fang itself, its great pyramidal form puncturing cloud and air. Through the clouds banking up against its eastern flank and the aurorae rippling over the summit, the lights of the fleet shone.

They left the main causeway soon after, heading down steps hewn from stone. Cairns of skulls - wolf and human - guarded the entries to the many landings. Niches carved into rock held small ivory figurines of past warriors. The path went into the deep valley dividing the Krakgard from the Fang. By way of a single stone arch without walls they crossed a river foamed with summer's flood two hundred metres below. For a while they walked in humid shade. Mosses and ferns grew everywhere, expending last year's hoarded energy to put forth shoots and seeds and hoard again before the ice returned. It was hot, and the air so wet from the river's vapour the Vlka's weapons beaded with condensation.

Thereafter the path turned upwards again, zig-zagging skywards through black crags.

The Krakgard was the Vlka Fenryka's funeral mount, and possessed by a brooding spirit whose voice whispered just below the breath of the hot summer winds. Not long after beginning their climb, the first of the paths leading to the tombs of mighty heroes broke away from the main road, and after that they appeared with regularity.

The party came presently to a hollow in the mountain, where the dirty tongue of a glacier pressed down from higher vales to lap at a tam. Blue icebergs floated in the water. Black scree paved the ground with sword-blade shards. By the lakeshore was a ritual space demarcated by poles of wood bleached grey and festooned with threads of Space Marine skulls. In the middle was set a pointed menhir as tall as Russ, crudely hewn to resemble the Fang.