'No, no, my friend,' said Bror. 'I was commanded by my king to join Malcador's private army, and there I will remain until told otherwise. My loyalty is to the regent now. He is my jarl,' he said, the foreign word a wet, guttural growl in his throat. 'But Leman of the Russ will forever be my primarch. He is my father. I visit with him to renew bonds of kinship and fealty, and to discuss the coming attack upon the Warmaster. I will return to Malcador's side soon enough. We shall fight together again, you and I, I swear it.'

Loken suspected Bror had returned to report on his new master to his old. Russ had a hunger for intelligence that matched Malcador's. He refrained from saying so.

'Why are you dressed in that way?'

'Ha!' Bror slapped the leather panels covering his iron-hard stomach. 'Like a member of the Vlka Fenryka you mean?'

'This is what Space Wolves wear?'

'When we are among our own, aye.' Tyrfingr glanced up. 'My friend, I advise you, only those not of Fenris use the term 'Space Wolf'.'

'I apologise if I disrespect you,' said Loken.

There had always been bonds of brotherhood between the different Legions. The Space Wolves defied them in their oddness. They were a breed apart, as isolated as the Khan's White Scars, and more savage. They were made of the same raw matter, Loken and Tyrfingr, but the mould they were stamped from was so very different.

'If I took offence at that,' said Bror, 'I would have to commit to feud with the entire galaxy. Just try not to say 'Space Wolf' aboard this ship. You will seem ignorant. The Rout does not take kindly to ignorance, and they will not take you seriously.'

They left the embarkation deck by a set of large doors and headed upwards into the ship. Loken had been aboard many Gloriana-class vessels. They were all of a pattern, but the Space Wolves had made the ship their own as much as they possibly could, tearing it bloodily from the grasp of reason and refashioning it in their own, superstitious tribal image. Other Legions favoured polished stone, gleaming metal and glass to line their halls. The Space Wolves covered the metal walls with carved wood and bone sheets so large they could only have been harvested from monsters. The greater halls had elaborate interiors of wolf-headed posts and panelling decorated with entwined beasts whose contortions inevitably ended in the fanged mouths of their fellows. Even lesser ways too unimportant for wholesale decoration acknowledged the character of the Legion: mossy rocks in bubbling pools of water, bunches of dried herbs tied up in bundles hanging from the ceiling, primitive weapons chained to the walls, as if imprisoned.