Editing Story:ROAD TRIP! (Warhammer High)/Part Four (section)

===Lunch and a Lecture===


She emerged moments later with a bundle of food in hand and spread it out on a tarpaulin.  “Hope you guys are hungry, I maaaaaay have packed a bit much,” she said.

As the others sat down to eat, a small rustle in the nearby ground cover drew Freya’s ear.  She glanced over at the source of the sound as one of her two ersatz tour guides appeared.  He immediately knelt at her side and whispered.

“Sister, the message has come through for elements of Seventh to depart to reinforce the pack,” he said under his breath in Juvjk.

“Then do so, you don’t need my permission,” she said in the same volume.  He nodded and walked up the ramp to speak to the pilot.

“So, I thought I would tell you guys a bit more about the tribes of the region if you’re interested,” Freya said as she sliced open a pack of salted ribs.

“Cool.  What were the two he mentioned before?” Alex asked, gesturing after the Claw speaking to the pilot.

“Oh, the Walking Waves are a nomadic tribe of raiders and seamen who trawl the waters along the coasts.  Every so often they land to cut down trees and build new ships, or trade their plunder in the larger townships.  The rest of the time they’re sailing, exploring, fighting, fishing,” Freya said.  “The Krennir are hunters, rangers, cartographers.  Closest thing this part of the planet has to actual academics, really.  They’re generally the only tribe around here that stays put long enough to actually research metallurgy or cartography.  If they’re hitting the Waves, the Waves must have done something really precipitous,” she said.

“Like what?” Venus asked.

“Burn down a trading post or plunder a fishing fleet, something like that,” Freya said.  “Nearly all the game animals around here are fish, so if you take out another tribe’s fishing boats, they’re beyond fucked.  They guard the trees near the major settlements with whole armies.”

“I hadn’t even thought of that,” Venus said.  She bit into a thin bread and ripped off a chunk.  “How many tribes are there?”

“Dozens on this continent, it’s by far the most heavily populated.  About thirteen each on the other two.  They range in size from a few hundred people to fifty thousand.  The really huge one on the southern continent has almost a tenth of a million people in it,” Freya said.

“How do the little ones not get annexed by the huge ones?” Jake asked.

Freya cross her legs and picked up a flatbread of her own.  “The little ones are bare bones, really.  All warriors and survivalists.  The huge ones are only huge because they won some land in previous wars and had the chance to get big.  Big families, internal politics.  Eventually, the big ones splinter or get overconfident and attack enemies who have lots of allies, and they get cut up by the other tribes.  It’s been like this for eleven thousand years,” she said.

“And they never learned any sort of advanced technologies or anything in all that time?” Remilia asked.

“They never felt like they needed it,” Freya said.  “I’m sure that they’d take it if it were given, but they’ve survived alien invasions, the coming of the Emperor, and who knows what else without real science.  Even the Rout doesn’t use technology if they don’t need it,” she pointed out.

“Don’t they have lower standards of living because of that?” Jake pointed out.

Freya shrugged.  “Lower than whom?  The other planets of the Imperium that they don’t know exist?”

“Fair enough.”  Jake started assembling a sandwich.  “So do you think you’ll go and see some of them in your time here?”

“Oh hell yes!  I’ve been waiting for that.  Probably in some of the larger settlements on the northern continent, they tend to be busy.  Land is the only real commodity on Fenris.  The summers around here are caused by volcanic eruptions, not seasonal axis drift, so the amount of available farm and hunting land changes literally every year.  The only permanent cities are the ones that are built on top of stable tectonic plates,” Freya said.

“Sounds a lot like Nocturne,” Venus said.

Freya paused to think.  “It does, doesn’t it?  Not really the same.  The Nocturneans are a part of the greater Imperium, and they’re proud of that.  My people are proud that they aren’t.  Inasmuch as they know about it at all.”  She bit off some salted meat and chewed.  “They think my father’s men are warrior-gods, who descend from on high to take fallen soldiers and sailors off to ascend to godhood in the Fang.  Let’s not disabuse them, all right?” she said.

“Of course not.”  Venus nodded solemnly.  “We probably won’t interact with the natives much anyway, right?”

“Nope.”  Freya paused to sip at her water.  “I will, though.  If you guys don’t mind.”

Alex frowned.  “What do you mean?”

“I mean I want to put on some makeup and disappear for a few days.  Go and explore the tribes a bit from a distance.”

“Well, you just said you would do that,” he pointed out.

Freya shrugged uncomfortably.  “No, I mean actually go into the cities in disguise and just explore a bit.  It wasn’t really safe to do so alone before, I was ten.  But, well…now I want to go see what my people are like when they don’t know I’m me.”

Venus smiled knowingly.  “It gets to you, doesn’t it?”

“It does.  On Nocturne you did it, but they all knew who you were by sight.  If I hide my teeth and eyes, nobody on this planet will know me,” Freya said.  “I want to take advantage of that.”

“You don’t need our approval, do you?” Alex asked.  “Go.”

“You’ll be on your own for a while, though,” Freya pressed.  “And you may have noticed that some of the Wolves don’t like visitors.  I would feel awful if I left you alone for a week and all you guys did was sit around your rooms playing cards.”

The Claw returned from the hold of the gunship and knelt by her side again.  “The pack leaves for the greenskin hunt, Sister,” he whispered.

“Good.”  She spoke up, a bit louder, and in Gothic.  “Tell me, Brother, what do you think my comrades should do in their time here?”

The Claw paused.  “I do not understand.”

“Their journey is as much an opportunity to learn our ways and see our world as it is a holiday.  What do you recommend?” Freya asked.

The Claw slowly sat back down, clearly surprised.  Bits of sand flaked off of his well-worn combat boots as he sank onto his haunches.  “Well…we so rarely support visitors…I would ask what they hope to do,” he said, glancing at the teenaged vacationers.

Jake shrugged.  “Personally?  I want to see real weather.  Fly a gunship over a storm cell and look at it from above.  That would be amazing.”
“That can certainly be arranged,” the Claw said.

“You know what I haven’t done in a million years?” Remilia asked.  “I haven’t gone mountain climbing.  I would love that.  If I even remember how,” she said with a snort.

“Also a possibility.”  The Claw looked to be less than thirty years old, to Venus’ careful eye.  He had a thick line of muscle growth along his upper back that said ‘ex-cavalry’ to her.  Carrying the axe or lance on horseback and sweeping them at knee height would account for it.  His eyes were even more bestial than Freya’s were.  The edges of his irises were a bit blurred from hundreds of capillaries crossing the whites into the red-brown discs.  His canines looked only a tiny bit larger than Freya’s.  But then, he had probably only been implanted a few years before.

“I’m looking to see the mountains, too,” Venus said.

“The chance to go fishing in a body of water with actual fish sounds good,” Alex joked.  “Nothing but reservoirs on Terra.”

The Claw finally smiled.  It was nothing more than a faint curl of the lips, but it was there.  Freya noticed and spoke up.  “Sit, Brother, have some food.”

“Thank you, Sister, but I would rejoin Brother Arj on the hunt.”  He stood and bowed slightly to his guests, slapping a fist across his plastron.  “I will return in a while to carry you all back to the Fang.”

The Claw melted into the loose undergrowth and trees once more.  As soon as he was out of earshot – keeping in mind that that was a fair distance with a Wolf – Jake asked the obvious question.

“What hunt?”

“He’s probably off getting lunch,” Freya said.  “There’s decent game around here.”

“In an hour?  What if he can’t find anything, it all got scared off by the gunship or something?” Alex asked in confusion.

“Then he’ll be hungry.”  Freya lifted a fruit and sliced it in her hand.  “It happens.”

Alex thought that worldview over.  “You know, on Terra, someone once told me that parts of the planet were so agrarian at one point that hunting actually became necessary, because they had to keep animals away from the crops.”

“Not a whole lot of cropland on Fenris.  We just eat whatever’s at hand, even if we have to go kill it,” Freya said sagely.

“‘We’ again.”  Jake looked over at her.  “You really do think of yourself as a Marine?”

“No, not…well.  A Vlka Fenryka?  Absolutely.  An actual warrior?  Not until I earn it.”  Freya grinned at Jake just wide enough for him to get a good look at her fangs.  “Do you not think of me as a Wolf?”

He smiled back, unperturbed by her display.  “No, you are.  It’s just not a side we see at school, much.”

She nodded, satisfied.  Jake continued.  “Do you know how we can send messages home?  If there were Astropaths in the Fang, I didn’t see a way to contact them.”

“Eh, Astropaths aren’t too popular around here,” Freya said uneasily.  “I’m sure there is one, though, we get messages from somewhere.”