Few mountains like the Fang existed in the galaxy. Geography proclaimed it part of a chain of mountains, the Volda Hammarki, the World Spine, whose uplift raised the continent of Asaheim out of the world's crust so far it was beyond remaking. But the Fang was more than simply another peak.

Seven mountains made up the World Spine massif. Sprawling foothills piled up to the ring of six surrounding the Fang. They were giants in their own right that scraped the underside of space with their summits. Any one would have been crowned the king of mountains on another world, but the Fang was of a different order, a conical mass of black granite as tall as the heavens. The summit broke through the planet's atmospheric envelope sure as a sword thrust. The smaller mountains guarded it, like Legion veterans protecting their lord. In the same way the Legiones Astartes could not compare to their primarchs, so was the Fang immeasurably greater than the other peaks of Asaheim. The others were linked to it by ridges and treacherous snow bridges, but all their efforts to embrace the Fang ceased halfway to the peak.

Bjorn was on the bridge with his betters, trying to stay out of the way. To his disquiet Kva had taken to following him about watching him.

'We return home when Fenris is at its most violent temper,' Bjorn said, for the sake of something to say.

'It is glorious. A time of power,' said Kva. Conversation made his scrutiny no easier to bear. Bjorn issued a noise by way of reply.

Fenris was a hard place that bred hard men and hard women. It was famous across the Imperium for its winters. The short summer was lesser known, but just as bad, if not worse. The Wolfs Eye shone at its largest in the sky. The northern dawn filled the horizon from side to side with white fire. Imperial astronomers opined that if Fenris' solar apsis were a few hundred thousand kilometres closer, or if its orbital pass were a few days longer, the world would have been uninhabitable. The sun's furnace beat against the rock of the planet, melting the sea ice, and stirring the atmosphere into cataclysmic storms. While the heat of the Wolfs Eye burned the surface, its gravity tugged at Fenris' heart. Volcanoes awoke and spat their molten blood in broad rivers. As night's terminator cut over them, they glowed in the dark as orange patches and lines that picked out the sutures in the planet's crust. The sky boiled with clouds of soot and ash that flickered with lightning. Higher still, the planet was encased in dazzling aurorae brought forth by the merciless force of the solar wind.