Brothers of the Snake Read online

  As the line of brothers milled the foe with their lances, the boy slaves and armourers rushed in at their heels, ducking to dodge stray missiles and wild shots that penetrated the line. Bolters, hot and smoking, were gathered up from the dust and reloaded, and fresh sea-lances planted in the shadow of the human wall.

  For each Iron Snake, there was no sense of general battle. The combat was so close that the only concern was the space immediately in front of him, a space permanently filled with screaming, wriggling hostiles. No man could see further than his own arm's length. It was like fighting alone, except for the arm plates and shields on either side.

  An almost tropical heat gathered in the close quarters of the front line, generated by bodies and blood and explosives. The line of dispute, the slender bloody thread where the killing was focused, sweltered like a butcher's shop in summer. The fronts of the Iron Snakes' armour were slippery with alien gore.

  The veterans accepted this tight, frenzied combat. Their breathing and pulses slowed as they closed focus, concentrating only on the next jab and the next, expertly determining the vital order of priority with which the raving targets needed to be addressed. Not simply the closest, but the ones with the longest reach. Orks with firearms or pikes took precedence over frontrunners with cleavers. Their visor displays selected and prioritised targets, flickering and switching.

  The newcomers fought to remember the tenets of their training. Nothing could prepare a man for this claustrophobic fury. Some began to sing to concentrate their minds, and fend off the whirling blur of violence that could entrance the unwary with its chaos. Their voices crackled tinnily from their helmet speakers.

  Shields deformed as blows rained upon them. Hatchet blades broke and remained stuck in place. Impacts glanced off chest plates and shoulder guards, leaving great dents and gouges. The first lances began to break and crack.

  Priad felt his lance shaft give, and he stabbed out with the broken end to make a last impale before letting the weapon go. Raising his scored shield higher, he began to lash and strike with his lightning claw, spilling greenskins onto the soaking earth, slicing them asunder and causing them to spasm and contort with the searing charge. One huge beast, unarmed, lurched at him, biting, and Priad brought his shield up. The ork bit into its lower rim with its huge tusks, and Priad ripped his claws through the meat and gristle of its neck, unleashing a cascade of arterial fluid. A chain-axe mowed at his head, and he raised his power claw to block it, splintering the weapon out of the air.

  He wondered how much longer the enemy could maintain the pressure. He was waiting for the ebb, the slight relaxation. He knew Petrok was waiting too. It would come, as surely as the tides of the sea came and went.

  He felt it. The weight against his front relaxed. The greenskin charge had finally lost momentum and was leaking backwards like a spent breaker. The enemy was not fleeing or even turning, but it was recoiling as a mass to renew its fury. Corpses held upright by the pressure keeled over or slithered to the earth. Steam rose. A mangled pile of bodies sprawled at the feet of the Ithakan warriors. A moment's hiatus, part of the natural punctuation of warfare.

  'Arms!' Petrok shouted, knowing they had to capitalise on this break at once.

  The Snakes turned, those still bearing twisted and bent lances tossing them aside, and accepted their reloaded bolters from the waiting slaves. They swung back into place, freeing breech blocks with a staccato clatter. The greenskins were already surging back, their voices rising again.

  Petrok didn't need to give the order to fire. The phratry, even the newcomers, knew precisely when to commence. Muzzle flashes lit up like starbursts down the gore-drenched rank, punching heavy shots into the returning mob. A second shooting blitz began, mowing down the greenskin numbers like corn before the scythe.

  Munitions spent once more, the Snakes threw down their bolters where the armourers could recover them, and drew up their second lances. The Painted Ones were coming into reach again, stomping and sliding over the mounds of the slain.

  'Address!' Petrok commanded, and the fresh sea-lances rattled up over shoulder plates, razor-tips aimed forward in the stabbing grip.

  'Step!' Petrok ordered, and the line took a step forward on the left foot, meeting the crush head on and smashing their lances into the face of it.

  'Step!' Petrok echoed, and the line took another step, left foot again, bringing the right up to meet it. Another flurry of stabbing lances, another shiver of impacts on their shields.

  'Step!' Again they moved, shoving forward into the mass, puncturing faces and throats, elbowing bodies off their shield guards. By sheer force of arms and backs, they had carried the line forward well beyond the original clash point, leaving the heaps of cadavers behind them.

  'Step!' Fifty sea-lances smote down, stabbing high and over, spearing through chests and disembowelling bellies. 'Step! Step! Step!'

  The second batch of sea-lances was reaching the end of its usability. Blade tips were blunting, breaking or twisting out of true, and hafts began to snap and fracture. The weight on the brothers' shields was immense. They were no longer standing to resist, they were forcing back.

  'Hold the line! Blades at will!'

  The necessary order, before all advantage was spent. The Ithakan line, like a dam in a river, locked up tight again, shoulder to shoulder, and the brothers finished their lance work, discarding their broken spears as it became necessary and switching to their fighting blades, squealing the swords out of their scabbards, metal against metal.

  The sound of combat altered, another natural sea-change in the flow of war. Predominant now was the ragged, arrhythmic noise of swords hacking, of blades hammering and chopping into bodies, each brother slicing and tearing with his short combat sword.

  The murderous, chopping effort lasted for twenty minutes, the Snakes bludgeoning into the foe wall like woodcutters assaulting a thicket, severing and decapitating, shearing trunks and splitting shoulders. The edges of their swords began to dull and chip.

  And then it was done. The host of the Painted Ones dwindled, and then disintegrated.

  The greenskins had not broken, at least not en masse. Such practice was as alien to their mindset as they were alien to the humans. A few stragglers capered and limped away, some dragging bodies, most dragging pilfered weapons of value from the slain.

  The Iron Snakes had cut their way through the entire mob of them, chewing the ranks apart from front to back, consigning to death every monster that dared to face them. Each wave thrown at the peerless wall of human warriors had suffered, their numbers eroding down further and further until their tidal force was all spent and their strength expended. The greenskin host that had chanced upon Pyridon had been exterminated in one solid, brutal clash.

  The Snakes came to a standstill, gasping and sore, flushing ichor out of their helmets' valves, clearing optic slits of blood and shreds of meat. Slowly, they realised what they had accomplished. Behind them, for a distance of about three acres, the earth was piled six or seven deep with the enemy dead, stinking slopes and mounds of carrion, gurgling as waste and fluid leaked out and turned the ground beneath to a quagmire.

  They heard distant cheering. The armourers and slaves were yelling and rejoicing, brandishing lances in the air, banging plate hammers on fresh shields. One by one, the brothers of the Snakes raised their fists, raised their blood-smeared, nicked short swords. Helmets were unlocked and cast onto the ground, exposing faces ruddy and sweaty with effort and confinement, hair plastered to scalps, fierce bright eyes.

  The brothers raised a howl of their own, their first of the battle and the end note of victory.

  Priad, alternately whooping, and spitting stale phlegm from his mouth, looking up and down the disjointed line. There were wounds, torn armour cases, shields splintered down to the boss nubs, red blood mingling with the moss-green cake of ichor on everything and everyone.

  But not a single man in the five squads had fallen.

  He raised his tatt
ered shield, shaking it aloft in triumph, and felt it heavy and unbalanced. The severed head of the biting ork was still attached to the rim, its tusks and peg teeth locking to the shield in the rictus of death.

  He prised the great jaws free with effort, and tossed the mangled mass onto the dirt.

  Then, unbidden, he thought of a black dog in a meadow and turned to find Petrok.

  XI

  'It was over a decade ago. In my first year of induction.' 'That's over twelve years ago, brother.’ Petrok corrected.

  Your memory is more precise than mine, master,' Priad replied. 'However long ago, it was my first year. To test my individual skills, Raphon sent me on an undertaking to a world called Baal Solock. There had been a visitation of primuls, a downed ship, actually. I purged the place.'

  They walked side by side across the smouldering battlefield to the makeshift camp set up by the armourers. Behind them, those brothers with flamers had begun the chore of heaping up the swinekin corpses and making a cleansing pyre. The rest of the company was assembling around the campsite. There was an air of jubilation, especially from the newcomers. Priad and Petrok passed Brother-Sergeant Seuthis, and Priad clasped the man's hand tightly.

  'Ridates lives again.’ Priad said.

  'Long may it.’ replied Seuthis, clearly proud of his virgins' performance.

  'They'll be Notables yet.’ Petrok said, clapping the man's shoulder. Seuthis laughed and moved on to muster his men.

  In the camp, the Apothecaries were mending wounds while the armourers serviced weapons and set to the repair of damaged plate. All around, brothers were being stripped down by the slaves, damaged segments of case unbolted and handed to the warsmiths to be hammered true again, or patched and heated back into form with fusion lamps. A smell of hot metal filled the air.

  Attendants hurried to Priad and the Librarian as they came in, removing their weapons and fussing over their suits. Bellus was carried away to be washed and anointed. Priad's lightning claw was decoupled and unlatched. An armourer tugged at Priad's right vambrace, which was buckled and punctured. Priad hadn't even noticed that damage.

  'Sit.’ said Petrok, and the pair sat down on a raised hillock of earth as the attendants worked around them. 'You purged this place?'

  Priad nodded. 'It was a minor thing, over in a day or so. But there was a dog, as I now remember. A black dog.'

  Slaves were sponging the blood and sweat off Petrok's face with dishes of watered vinegar. The armourer had now removed Priad's vambrace and gauntlet. The shorn teeth of a chain axe or some similar weapon had torn entirely through it and punctured the flesh of his forearm. Clotted blood drained out of the armour segment as it came away.

  'Apothecary!' the armourer yelled, as he turned to set the damaged vambrace on his mobile forge to beat out the deformations.

  Khiron was busy patching a deep gash in Pindor's side, but Laetes of Pelleas came over at once, and took his beak-nose pliers to the axe shards in Priad's flesh. He offered Priad a leather strop to bite on.

  'I'm too busy talking.’ Priad said, and resumed his tale to Petrok, oblivious to the Apothecary's digging. 'A black dog.'

  'Was the dog significant?'

  'No. It had had all but gone from my memory. But here's the thing. The primuls were guarding a trophy of some sort. A set of huge jaws with blunt teeth.'

  Petrok's eyes narrowed. A slave was attempting to apply skin wrap to a laceration on Petrok's cheek, but the Librarian brushed him away. 'That'll heal by itself.’ he said. He stared at Priad. 'A set of jaws?'

  Priad nodded. 'A massive set. With blunt teeth. The jaws of some greenskin, I'm sure of that now. Now I've seen them in the flesh. Like the bite of the things we've slain here. But bigger. Bigger than any beast we met today.’

  Petrok was silent for a moment. 'It pains me to ask, Priad, but why do you only remember this now? I told you of my dream weeks ago.’

  'Because.’ said Priad, 'I never saw the jaws in question. I was told about them by a witness present at the time.’

  'Reliable?'

  'Completely, I believe. The jaws themselves were destroyed before I saw them. But they were evidently of importance to the primuls. Significant in some way.’

  'They were destroyed? You're sure of that?'

  'Incinerated by a grenade.’

  'Humour me, brother. Can you be certain of their nature and scale if you didn't actually see them? Witnesses, even reliable ones, are prone to exaggeration.’

  Laetes had finished his work, and had sprayed skin wrap on Priad's torn and bruised forearm to assist the natural healing process. The jagged saw-teeth lay bloody in a steel bowl beside Priad. Laetes had been trying desperately not to overhear the conversation.

  Priad flexed his arm. 'Fine work.’ he said.

  'Rest it a few hours, if you can.’ Laetes said, wiping his tools and packing them away. Other voices were calling for the attention of the Apothecaries. 'The shards were dirty, so you may experience sweat fever as your body cleans out poison. If that happens, go steady and let it run its course.’

  Priad nodded, and Laetes withdrew, accepting a grateful nod from the mighty Librarian.

  'Two teeth survived.’ Priad said. He held up his bare right hand and splayed the fingers to suggest size. 'Just two teeth, but enough for me to know that there was no exaggeration.’

  What did you do with the teeth?' Petrok asked.

  'I left them on Baal Solock, as trophies for the locals. They seemed unimportant at the time. I was young. It was an age ago.’

  Petrok got up. The slaves still washing his armour stepped back hastily, some spilling their murky dishes. Priad rose quickly. Petrok smiled at the brother-sergeant, then clasped him by the shoulder plates. 'It makes no sense yet, Priad, but what you've told me makes some pieces fit together. I will consider this further, now I have details to contemplate. The spirits want me to know about this, and, though it took some time for them to guide you too, you've given me the key. I'm sure of it.’

  'I hope so, master.’ Priad said.

  'Petrok.’ Petrok reminded him.

  Priad walked across to where the brothers of Damocles were assembled. Their armour had been scrubbed clean of the worst filth, and they were already refitting and checking weapons. Rules was waiting while an armourer worked a fusion lamp over his left shoulder plate on an anvil. The shoulder plate had been almost torn in two by some monumental blow. Attendants were approaching, bearing fresh combat shields to replace those ruined in the battle. Others collected up the brothers' short swords to take them to the squealing whetstones grinding at the edge of the camp.

  Priad greeted each brother in turn, clasping his hand and speaking private words of congratulation. When he took Aekon's hand, Priad drew the youngster close.

  'Proper combat, eh? Better than Iorgu?'

  'Yes, brother-sergeant. My heart is full.’

  'You acquitted yourself well, Notable.’ Priad said. 'And proved everything the trench couldn't.’

  Aekon blushed.

  'Khiron told me all about it.’ Priad whispered.

  'I wish he hadn't.’ Aekon said. 'He told me he would not.’

  'There should be no secrets between the men of Damocles.’ Priad said. 'But to be fair to Khiron, he would have respected your confidence had things not turned out the way they did. No more diving for glory, all right? Prove yourself to me and the God-Emperor, not the sea.’

  'Yes, sir.’

  'Damocles!' Priad called, and the men roused and got to their feet, looking at him. He turned a full circle, catching each man's gaze, one by one, nodding in satisfaction. 'More where that came from.’ he said.

  The brothers roared their approval.

  Brother-Sergeant Lektas hurried by, nodding to Priad. 'Gather in, brother.’ he urged. 'Petrok wants us. The vox has found our Chapter Master at last.’

  XII

  The information was threadbare. Somehow, the greenskins, possibly by means of crude devices in their orbiting hulks, were jam
ming general transmissions across most of the vox bandwidth.

  But contact with Seydon and the twenty-five squads had been established. Scratchy, broken voices crawled out of the relief force's vox-caster, like phantoms searching for release.

  Petrok gathered the five sergeants and their Apothecaries. As was the custom, each sergeant nominated one of his squad to accompany him to the briefing, as a safeguard should he fall in battle. Priad brought Xander as his second.

  The men of Damocles nodded quiet approval to this selection. Since Priad's elevation to sergeant, there had been no talk of succession. But Xander, hothead though he might be at times, was the obvious choice. Only Priad, by feat of arms, and Pindor, by dint of age, held finer battle records. Pindor showed no bitterness. As a true veteran, the chances were that at some point he, like the similarly venerable Seuthis, would be drawn out of Damocles to whip into shape another squad of virgin pups. The bloody tally of Ganahedarak made that all the more likely. Once this war was done, whole squads would need to be rebuilt from the ground up.

  Petrok had brought no lexicanium nor any servant Chapter serf with him on this undertaking. He prepared the hololithic display himself, ordering two of the slaves to split open a fresh white chiton and hold it out like a banner so that the machine could project upon it.

  The afternoon light was fading, and a blank grey dusk was falling on the fields without Pyridon. Light was further choked off by the immense black smog lifting from the funeral pyre of the enemy dead. There was a harsh stink of burned roots and gristle on the slack wind.

  Petrok showed them the coloured display against the flapping chiton, a patchwork chart composed of the interlocked unitary scans made by their descender ships on the passage down. The sergeants and their seconds saw plain land, hills with graphic contour overlays, the white threads of rivers and water courses.

  'What is the blackness there?' asked Ryys. A forest?'

  Petrok shook his head. 'The enemy, brother-sergeant.’

  Even the veterans present made a sharp intake of breath. The mass of the ork swarms made a stain like pooling blood across the majority of the chart. The Iron Snakes dealt in superhuman magnitudes: of strength, of speed, of endurance, of commitment. This superfluity was beyond even their minds to accommodate.