Brothers of the Snake Read online

  They had come, not swift and vicious in the night as was the way of the malign primuls, but bold and loud and slow. Their ships, if such cumbersome machine monstrosities deserved the name ships, had arrived like lost moons, slowly tacking in through the outer magnetic fields and taking up low orbits like wayward, lumpen meteors, visible to the naked eye.

  They made no effort to conceal themselves, or even to effect a fast deployment. Surface batteries around some of the northern cities began firing on the menacing objects, but though hits were recorded, no damage seemed to result. The greenskins didn't much seem to care if a few fresh pits and craters were scored into the hulls of their lumbering craft.

  It had been a long time since the greenskins had let slip their particular brand of horror on the worlds of the Reef Stars. For thirty centuries, their kind had not been seen, and the memory of them had dulled.

  Ganahedarak had its memory refreshed on the sixteenth day after the new moons arrived in its skies. The greenskins began to descend to the planet's surface, their transports dropping like heavy comets. They did not fall upon the cities, but deposited themselves on the wide northern plains, forming up great hordes upon the flats there, hiding their numbers in the dust they kicked up. Then, raucous and loud, their braying and roaring audible from fifty kilometres away, they began to move.

  One fifth of Ganahedarak's eighty cities burned on the first night.

  Three principal battles took place. The first, at Aarple's Plain, lasted a day. Thirty thousand men, led by the glittering, armoured warriors of the King's Legion, marched out to meet one of the dust clouds. None returned.

  Three days later, eight thousand men massed on the lowlands outside Kubrisa City, a fortress town in the Lower Cates. Supported by regiments of pike and musket, and retinues of the militia, the vanguard of the human army was composed of the Cates Dragoons, riding their great, crested lizards, and the Immortals of the Queen's Summoners. Their pinions were gold and blue and green. Their swords shone like mirrors in the sun.

  The enemy arrived, a droaning wall of dust and noise, clashing their weapons against their shields, roaring into the sky. They advanced as slowly as a lava tide. A smell came off them, putrid and rank, like vegetation rotting in the bottom of a sump. As they came into view, they didn't seem very green at all. Body paint, black and red and white, caked the massive, shambling figures, and they were shrouded in animal skins and cloaks of chainmail.

  The Summoners broke in fear, and were cut down as they attempted to flee across the brook at Litem. Such butchery was done, and witnessed by the remaining ranks, that fear spread. The smell of blood was in the air, like heated copper.

  The Dragoons engaged then, driving their lizards into the lines of the foe. Lance-tips and lizard beaks became wet and glistening with ichor. Trumpets sounded. For a brief moment, victory seemed to taste stronger than inhuman blood.

  Then the greenskins – or the Painted Ones, as they had become known by that time – rallied. In fact, they didn't even seem to rally as such. The line of them, thirty deep, towering monsters twice as tall as a man and thrice as broad, just seemed to flex, like a muscular arm, and throw back the Dragoon files. By the time the city fell, witnesses reported seeing lizard mounts, some weighing half a tonne, carried forward as trophies, skewered on the pikes of the foe.

  Routed, the human soldiers fell back to Chesselly, where they were reinforced by twenty companies of rifle and some two hundred cannon sent up, in haste, from the trading towns around the Gulf of Loomis. There, in the shallow valley of the Quibas River, the third battle took place.

  The cannon teams barraged the Painted Ones for three hours after daybreak, then the rifleman infantry pressed forward into an enemy line punctured by the force of the artillery. For two hours, a running fight played out amongst the valley woods.

  By sunset, there was no human left alive in the valley, or at least none that would still be alive come the following daybreak. The woodlands burned. The Painted Ones, so it was said, feasted through the night on human flesh torn from corpses that had been cooked simply by hanging them from the boughs of the burning trees.

  Two days after that, Chapter Master Seydon led his Snakes down onto the surface. By then, the Northern Hemisphere was lost to humanity, reduced to a trampled, ashen waste of scorched bones and fire-stripped cities.

  The kings of the south had prepared the way for the Iron Snakes. They were fearful men, their armies traditionally weaker than those of the north, those that had already been vanquished. The kings of the south were relieved to see the bold warriors of Ithaka arrive.

  In the grassy wind-blown uplands, great roundhouse halls had been erected to shelter the Iron Snakes. Stone-built, with roofs of peat, they had been built out of respect and gratitude, the kings of the south expecting the Snakes to require bastions in which to sleep and feast prior to the war.

  It had taken Seydon some time to persuade the kings that his warriors needed no such comforts. In their cases of armour, polished to a steel-glass finish, the Iron Snakes seemed like gods to the local men. Their voices and manners were strange, their weapons and wargear frightening. They smelled curiously of oils and unguents, and each one of them was twice the size of a regular human.

  They assembled to begin their war-making. The greenskins approached: a vast, rowdy horde that covered the land. Sighting the Ithakan phratry, the enemy began to chant and mock, goading a response.

  Seydon gave none immediately. The greenskins were numerically superior, five to one. Seydon formed his Snakes into a battle line around the ramparts of the uplands, and waited. He had reduced planets into cinders in his time. He would choose his moment. Such was the luxury of an assured commander in formal war.

  After three days of bellowed mockery, the greenskins began an assault. Most of their charging front echelon died, pulped and split like over-ripe pumpkins under the steady bolter fire. Bruised, and thwarted for the first time since making planet fall, the greenskins set up a keening lament long into the night.

  The next day, they tried again. Captain Phobor, hero of Ithaka, led the line to deny. In the space of fifteen minutes, the squads under his command, including two of the Notables – Parthus and Thebes – took the lives of eight hundred orks. The low-lying heather was rendered flat and wet with ichor for many acres. Huge, misshapen corpses littered the slopes.

  The greenskins renewed their attack. Veii met the brunt of it, around a stand of tall trees known as Hessman's Copse beforehand and the Glory Hill ever after. Ork bodies were piled five deep in the heather, and virtually all the trees in the stand were shorn off at hip height by gunfire. Five Space Marines perished, including Lexicanium Nocis and veteran-hero Rubicus, champion of Syrakuse. The latter was found, decapitated, at the top of an earthwork bank after the battered enemy lines had retreated. The cadavers of sixty orks littered the bank beneath him, tumbled and torn in the undergrowth.

  Phobor took the news hard. Rubicus, he said, deserved a better end than this. He advocated a revenge assault into the command lines of the enemy. Seydon refused, until he saw how deeply Phobor grieved and how lack-lustre the men of Veii had become without their most famous champion.

  He approved the assault. It fell to lots, as was the practice at such times, and Parthus squad won the honour of avenging the loss of their noble brothers in Veii.

  Brother-Sergeant Xeron of Parthus led the attack. Moving more rapidly and directly than the greenskins expected, he sliced into their command group at the summit of a low hill west of the copse, and made great slaughter. Xeron personally took the head of a swinekin chieftain, and raised up the grisly mass on his lance. Over four hundred greenskins died in the attack.

  But that didn't seem to matter. Across the plain, the numbers of the enemy seemed without end. As the wind changed, Seydon saw in dismay that a second horde had appeared from the west, unannounced. More extraordinarily, this new force went to war with the existing mass of greenskins. Ork fought ork, two screaming, rampaging tides that c
lashed and locked into one another. This onslaught lacked all sense or reason. Seydon was forced to pull his forces back before they were overwhelmed between the twin opposing tides of shrieking monsters.

  Parthus squad, extended and alone, was cut off. On the low hill, they were caught up in the internecine bloodshed as the greenskins murdered one other. Locked as on an island, they fought to the last, slaying huge numbers in the thundering chaos.

  One by one, they fell, consumed in the sheer tumult, fighting off greenskins from every side. They were ground to atoms between the clashing fronts of the rival ork armies.

  He saw it all.

  He saw Xeron, last to fall. Xeron, his old squad commander, his trainer, his mentor, staggering from multiple wounds, slashing and stabbing with a broken sword, his bolter spent, his polished armour wet and gleaming with ichor.

  He felt the blow land. An axe, sharp-toothed, cleaving through the back of Xeron's helmet, caving in the skull and spilling out all that made Xeron Xeron in an inglorious spatter.

  He saw the lenses of Xeron's helm fill up with blood, saw the trampled heather rush up to meet his face through the wine-dark fluid.

  He felt the chopping blows rain down on his unguarded back, breaking plate, breaking shoulder blades, breaking spine.

  His legs went numb, without feeling. He saw the world through blood, and saw only blood.

  And woke up.

  Petrok was chilled with sweat. His limbs quivered. He had to touch his own face, bare and helmet-free, to believe there was no blood upon it. The Chapter House was silent.

  'Rodos!' he called, hoarse.

  Rousing, the lexicanium came to him.

  'Find Priad.’ Petrok told him. 'Tell him to make Damocles ready, ready or not. The Chapter Master needs us.'

  'Select from the others,' Priad said simply.

  'I have and I will.’ said Petrok. 'But I want Damocles. I want at least one squad of Notables in my phalanx, and Seydon has all the rest.'

  'With respect-' Priad began.

  'Then show me some!' Petrok snapped, rising to his feet. His private chamber was dark and cold, lit only by a few tapers and sour with the reek of burned herbs. He had been making offerings to the spirits of war and guidance. Bronze bowls full of pungent ash sat along the ledges of his wall shrine.

  'I apologise.’ Petrok said quietly. 'My friend, I was too sharp just then. My mind is troubled.'

  'I can tell.’ said Priad.

  'Seydon is in danger. The undertaking is in danger.’

  Priad tensed. 'I have heard nothing-'

  'No word has yet come, Priad. But a dream I have had, a bloody dream. There was warning in it, faster and surer than any despatch. I aim to raise a force of at least five squads and journey to his aid.’

  'But Damocles is-'

  'If you say Damocles is not battle-ready, Priad, I swear I'll strike you down! I don't care! I admire your strength of command, and your duty. Perhaps your men do need stern punishment. That's your rule to lay down. But these new concerns outweigh them. I require Damocles to form the heart of my force, whether you deem them ready or not.’

  'I see.’ said Priad. 'If you command, sir.’

  'Back to sir again, are we? Fair enough. I spoke harshly. But I'm not Phobor. I won't command you and then give you no good reasons. I want Damocles along for two very good ones.’

  'Which are?'

  'I trust you. I believe Damocles is just about the best combat squad the Chapter has to offer. Your presence will help keep some of the less experienced units in line. Secondly, and far more important, I dreamed about you, Priad. Remember?'

  'I do.’

  'What do you know of Fate?' Petrok asked, fixing himself a cup of wine. He offered the jug to Priad, who shook his head.

  'Fate, sir? It's the will of the Emperor. It's the marrow of our lives.’

  'Spoken like a true petitioner.’ Petrok smiled. 'Consider this, my friend. You prevented Damocles from accompanying the Chapter Master, though they would most surely have been chosen if you'd put them forward. Because they disgraced themselves in your eyes? Perhaps. But perhaps, instead, it was Fate's purpose. Perhaps Damocles had to disgrace itself so they would still be here at Karybdis for me to call upon now.’

  'Your mind works in wonderful ways, master.’ Priad smiled. 'Truly. I see no such sense myself. My men broke phratry rules, and I have confined them for it until they know better. I see no great scheme of Fate. lust warriors who must toil until they understand discipline.’

  Petrok nodded. 'For argument's sake, let's pretend I'm right. In the name of the Golden Throne, Priad, I've never met any soul as pragmatic as you. I believe that's why Raphon chose you as his successor.’

  'Do you question Raphon's choice?' Priad asked.

  'Not at all. Raphon and Memnes, Emperor love them, were quite right about you. Now summon your squad for me.’

  'I will, sir. If that's an order.’

  'Consider it so. Fate is expecting us.’

  VIII

  There was a meadow, sunlit. A bright blue sky. Summer heat in the air. Something moving in the corn.

  A meadow, golden in the sun. Blue sky. There, in the stirring corn, something black.

  Meadow. Sky. Something.

  Meadow again. The sky as blue as the waters of a certain bay on the Cydides Isthmus. The moving something brushed through the yellow corn.

  A meadow. A something.

  A black dog. Trotting through the corn, jumping in sport at passing corn flies.

  His heart began to beat.

  Priad woke.

  The iron vault was so cold, wet frost had coated the walls. The lumen strips had been turned down to their lowest setting, and the vault was full of green shadows. A deep, slow rumble came from behind the bulkheads.

  Stiff and slow, Priad got up from his brass cot. His mind felt as numb and pinched as his body. He flexed his bare hands in front of his face, saw the vapour of his breath break around them. Sense was slowly returning. He'd been dreaming.

  Something about a meadow, over and over again.

  He took a look back down the rows of brass cots filling the vault, and then padded, barefoot, to the chamber door, pushed it open, and went through.

  Sensing his movement, lights in the adjacent compartment flickered on. It was warmer here, a dull, dry artificial heat. He took one of the chitons hanging from a line of pegs and pulled it on, then walked across the rush matting to the shrine.

  The shrine was a simple alcove in the metal wall. The motifs of the phratry were inscribed around the arched recess. Within, taper pots and offering dishes sat on the ledge, along with other charms: figurines, shells, fish scales. In the centre of the ledge sat six copper flasks, banded with zinc.

  Priad knelt down before the shrine, lit two of the tapers, and then bowed his head, his hands planted against the rim of the ledge. He murmured his devotions, his thanks and his blessings, his requests for good fortune in war, guidance, and success.

  'Brother?'

  Priad looked up. Khiron stood nearby, holding a bowl of steaming broth.

  'When did you wake?' Priad asked, rising to his feet and accepting the proffered bowl with a nod of thanks.

  'Two hours ago.'

  Priad sipped. The broth, invigoratingly warm, was a revitalising fluid, concocted from herbs and plant extracts to ease the distemper of animation. Apothecaries were always woken first, to prepare such draughts for their silent comrades.

  'How far out are we?' Priad asked.

  'A day, perhaps a day and half. I sensed you were close to animation, so I prepared the draught. The others will wake in an hour or so. There's food too, if you desire it.'

  Priad shook his head. He was still muzzy.

  'Anything to report?' Priad asked, sipping again.

  'I did not ask and have not been told.’ Khiron replied. 'Simple matters require attention first. But I can tell you Petrok is awake, and the armourers too. The embarkation hall sounds like a smithy'

&
nbsp; 'Petrok's awake?'

  In truth, I don't believe he's slept this voyage.'

  'It wouldn't surprise me.’ said Priad. 'How long?'

  'Nineteen days.'

  'A good time.’

  'The barge captain saw the look in Petrok's eyes when we boarded.’ smiled Khiron.

  Petrok had ordered the squads to deanimate for the duration of the voyage. It wasn't standard practice, except for long hauls, but he'd told them he wanted them sharp for the moment they arrived. Priad knew the real reason was more complex. Of the five squads selected by Petrok, two – Laomon and Ridates -were composed of recent inductees, most of them without any real battle experience. It was a technique Petrok favoured, mixing veteran warriors – in this case, the men of Nophon, Pelleas and the Notable Damocles – in the line with newcomers. The inductees would receive invaluable experience as a result, and the veterans would overcome any complacency by compensating for the fact that some of the men around them were relatively inexperienced. It was an alloy that often brought out the best in a fighting company.

  But Petrok had ordered them to deanimate to keep the newcomers fresh. A voyage of undertaking, especially one such as this where combat was inevitable, could fatigue the spirits of the inductees, and encourage them to over-train and overstretch themselves as they battled the twin menaces of tedium and anticipation. Better they should sleep and awake on the eve of war than spend nineteen days pacing and fretting and impatient. Such worn-out souls were no use in war.

  'Is your heart clear?' Khiron asked.

  'My head isn't.’ replied Priad. 'I dreamed.’

  'You dreamed? Of what?'

  'I'm not sure. The same thing, over and again, like a pict transmission on loop play. I don't usually dream. In fact, I can't remember the last time I did.’

  'And you can't remember the content?'

  Priad shrugged. 'A dog in a meadow.'

  'A dog in a meadow? What colour was the dog?'

  'Does it matter?'

  'I hardly think so. I have always held that there are dreams and dreams. Some are like the ones our master Petrok has, true dreams, carried to him by the spirits of beyond, full of potent meaning and profound significance. They are the dreams that count. The rest of us, with our poor blunt minds, if we dream at all, we dream of nothing and no one that matters. What colour was the dog?'