Alone in the snowfield, Russ knew what he believed. Russ had seen too many supposedly unreal things that had proved to be all too real. He was wise enough to know that whether something was real or not was irrelevant The better question was, could it kill him?

Kva had said yes. Kva was rarely wrong.

The bums he had suffered at the door were gone His ritual leathers were missing, and he was dressed in a suit of skins from many wolves, inexpertly cut and stitched to fit his giant's body, their tails dangling from odd places. It was a mockery of a chieftain's garb. The sort the trickster wore in the saga tellings. He noted that well.

Not that it mattered. Nothing would, if he didn't get out of the cold.

Constellations of runes joined star to star. When he looked askance, he could see the lines between, drawn in starlight, but when he moved to better see they vanished back into the dark. One collection he recognised, a jumble of marks that, if looked at in a certain way, defined the outline of a Gloriana-class void ship. This too vanished when he looked too hard. His own, he wondered, or Horus'?

A single, drawn-out howl sounded to his left. Russ whirled, clouds of ice smoke issuing from his mouth as profusely as that from snow drake.

A lone wolf sat far away, close to the horizon. Its black pelt blended with the night sky behind it. Even with his primarch's eyes, Russ could barely see it. A flash of white teeth and yellow eyes, and it headed away.

Russ' face set. Without a second thought, he broke into a running pursuit. The arctic wastes went on for leagues. The wolf ran hard, and Russ pounded after, never falling behind yet never gaining either. The air burned his lungs. The back of his throat tasted of chilled copper. The insides of his nostrils crackled and stung, all the moisture frozen from them. He yanked a wolf tail from his motley suit and clamped it in his teeth. It tasted rank, stank of musk and was soon covered in ice from his breathing, but it stopped his lungs from turning into blocks of frozen meat.

On he ran, never faltering. His feet numbed in his boots. His gloveless hands cramped into claws. He did not stop. Ahead of him the wolf loped onwards. Glimmering crystals burst from its every footfall, but its feet did not sink into the snow and it left not a trace of its passing. Russ, in comparison, stumbled often, his feet swallowed by unseen dips. More than once he blundered into snow that came up to his chest. When it seemed the wolf would vanish ahead, the deeper snow would end, and Russ would stumble forwards, cursing the ways of all priests between ragged pants. For hours they ran. The light never changed. The sun did not rise.