Brothers of the Snake Read online

  'Our beloved master is embattled here.’ Petrok explained, indicating a cluster of white pimples on the display. His gauntlet moved through the coloured light like a hand through sunlit water. 'They have fortified themselves in a group of roundhouses on this hillside.’

  Petrok looked up. 'Yes, ironic, I know. The very roundhouses these southern dogs raised for us. Pointless halls of convenience, ignorantly constructed by the locals. Now fundamental to the survival of our twenty-five squads. As I understand it from Phobor, with whom I spoke earlier, the situation is grave. Greenskin hosts of incalculable strength are swarming around them, waging war upon themselves. From the writings of our illustrious brethren the Ultramarines, experienced as they are in the habits of the orks, we know our enemy to be miserably internecine. They wage war upon themselves, and apparently delight in that mindlessness. Now our home, our Reef Stars, is churned underfoot by that calamity.'

  'Is not the word "waaagh", or somesuch?' Laetes asked.

  'That, my friend, is how we understand their term for holy war, for jihad,' Petrok relied. This is not "waaagh".' He spoke the word, not like Laetes, faltering and human, but full throated and fluent, as if conversant with the elocution of the Painted Ones. 'This is mob on mob, horde on horde. This is a species committing suicide by war. And taking us with it.'

  He looked at the officers. 'We won't win here. Seydon knows that. Phobor too. I know it. Perhaps not even with the entire phratry could we begin to make a dent in their numbers, though we slaughter a thousand each. We must find victory in some other manner.'

  'What other manner?' asked Goront, sergeant of Pelleas.

  Petrok glanced at Priad. 'I have plans in mind. Strategies that are too fledgling and weak to be revealed here. But we will win. We have undertaken this, and we will see it to victorious conclusion.'

  'But surely!' Ryys exclaimed. 'With all the Notables here, with twenty-five squads plus our numbers-'

  'There are no twenty-five squads.’ said Petrok, his voice stiff and bleak. 'Parthus is gone, entirely. Proud Veii at half numbers. Across the units in Seydon's command, more than fifty of our brothers have been sent on to the next world. Virtually all that remain are wounded to some degree. The fighting has been ferocious.'

  'Fifty...' Lektas murmured.

  'At sunrise tomorrow.’ Petrok said, 'Seydon intends to lead his squads in a break out along this valley. If our brothers can reach this table land here, we can effect an extraction. We can salvage our numbers, and compose ourselves for another effort.’

  'Here?' asked Priad.

  'Probably not.’ Petrok replied frankly. 'I have sent to Karybdis and to the Sector Governor to raise fleet strengths. This nightmare might be finished in the void, ship to ship... or ship to hulk... if we're lucky.’

  Petrok turned back to his chart. 'We have to safeguard the breakout. Overnight, we'll go cross country to the valley head here, and begin an assault before first light, aiming to sting the greenskin hordes into confusion. Then we hold that valley head until the Chapter Master's forces have come through.’

  He glanced round at them. 'Make no mistake. This will be bloody. This will be hard. This will be overwhelming. If we fail, if we let the line falter, the greenskins will mass in and our twenty-five squads will be as nought.’

  XIII

  Through their locked visors, the pre-dawn read as luminous green. Ahead stood the crags of the valley mouth, registering cold and black to their sensors. Beyond, a sea of heat showed up as lime green warmth, interspersed with hot points of white. The ork hosts, filling the land from horizon to horizon, spread out around their pit fires.

  Above, in a black-green heaven, the stars stood out painfully bright like static tracer shells. Every now and then, the sharpest stars would be eclipsed as another hulk silhouetted by, tracking on its own, ponderous orbit.

  The relief company scaled the head of the valley in single file, following the thin track. They had sent the armourers, slaves and all the other attendants back to the landing site at midnight. Now they continued alone, Petrok at the head of the fifty men. They carried double munition loads, explosives, fresh shields, and two lances apiece.

  Sunrise was a suggestion warming the clouds to the south. Petrok struggled to find a suitable territory to compose a decent fighting field out of. The chart scans had been imprecise. The valley terrain was sheer and formidable, hard crags dropping away three thousand metres sheer into the valley base. They shouldered on, trudging the narrow path, boltguns armed.

  The path began to descend. They came out onto a plateau overlooking a vast camp of greenskins, so close they could smell the cookfires and rank stink when they opened their helmet filters.

  Petrok waved them down to a crouch on the lip of the plateau. In less than thirty minutes, mayhem would explode ten kilometres to the north-west as Seydon began his exodus. There was no doubting that, whatever the outcome, the day would witness one of the Chapter's most brutal and infamous combats.

  'This is a good enough place.’ Petrok told them. 'This is our fallback point. We sow from here, and take them as they sleep on foot.'

  The instruction was understood.

  Petrok drew Bellus and tested the weight of it in his hands. The blade was impatient for the killing to begin. He soothed it softly.

  There was no fear in the fifty. They knew no fear, for that was part of their conditioning. But there was anxiety, frustration, eagerness, anticipation.

  Petrok walked his line and squatted down beside Priad.

  "When we're done.’ he said, 'I'll need you and Damocles to escort me to Baal Solock.’

  Priad turned his helmet's face to look at Petrok. As usual, the Librarian was bare-headed. His psychic hood had been implanted into his crown by the armourers before their hasty departure. A strange light seemed to suffuse the Librarian's eyes.

  'To Baal Solock?' asked Priad, his voice a quiet crackle through his mouthpiece.

  'I dreamed again last night.’ Petrok said. 'A waking dream as we marched into these deathlands. I have seen the truth of this. The spirits were kind enough to unveil it for me. Baal Solock is the answer to our prayers.’

  'Then let's hope we're alive to get you there.’ said Priad.

  Petrok smiled. 'Let's hope.’

  Petrok rose to his feet. He lifted his warblade, the edges of it smoking like coals in the cold night air. 'Time to sting them.’ he said aloud, pitching his voice just enough for his five squads to hear him. 'Lance, bolt, blade, then as you will. No quarter, if that needs to be said. Order to withdraw will be the name of Parthus. Hear that, and break... if you can. The ships await. Seydon needs us. The Emperor protects. And I...' He paused, grinning like a bull wyrm about to strike. 'I... expect.’

  XIV

  What followed then was a dream, the sort of dream that every man of the phratry experiences once or twice in his life. A tumult, but unreal. A frenzy, but somehow divorced from life and blood and the solid matter of being.

  Most of the fifty had known war before, and even the newcomers had been baptised by the splendid brawl outside the walls of Pyridon.

  This was something else. A chaos, an adventure into catastrophe. A dream, worse than all the bad dreams they had ever woken from. Solid, yet phantom, stunning the senses by the sheer clangour of it.

  A nightmare of battle. And one they could not simply rouse from and laugh away as the monstrous fantasy of their denied fears.

  Combat shields up, lances across their shoulders, the fifty brothers of the relief force chose a shallow incline and came down upon a foe that outnumbered them one hundred to one. For the first two or three minutes, the killing was easy. Surprise was with them. They picked up speed, running like gods, and charged through the picket line, thrusting lance heads into meat and bone. Ork sentries pitched and fell. In full frenzy, the striking Snakes overran the outer skirts of the enemy sprawl and launched into the mass of the greenskin camp. Lance tips started to draw blunt as they stabbed and smote.

  The Pain
ted Ones began to rouse, throwing up a disjointed holler of dismay. Even alert, the hulking beasts discovered that it was no small thing to face a full-fledged warrior of the Adeptus Astartes when he was travelling at a charging sprint, fully cased, lance in hand. Orks were smashed aside by the charge, knocked flat, skewered, trampled underfoot. The brothers utilised shield skills as much as lance tactics in this initial phase, slamming away those beasts that rose up to confront them, cracking tusks and faces with glancing blows of their shield-bosses, breaking necks with their shield rims. All the while, they were finding fatal targets with the slicing heads of their sea-lances too.

  And then they were in the thick of it. Petrok led the way, reaping down the Painted Ones with his famous sword. Bodies began to pile up in his wake, split and severed. Ichor gushed out onto the ground and transformed it into a pungent marsh. Psyker light strobed and crackled around Petrok's hood, screwed down tight as it was into the bones of his skull. Every few steps, he convulsed and expelled a sizzling bolt of power from his left hand, decimating the enemy, frying them to charred bones.

  As each gout of power left his fingertips, it was pure and bright and white. As it lanced into the greenskins, it was hot and yellow, and it set them ablaze, shrieking like pigs.

  The fifty rushed in as a V around him, breaking collarbones with their shields, stabbing faces with their lances. Every brother carried his second lance in the grip of his left hand, and his weapon -bolter, flamer or plasma gun – anchored to his chest plate by magnetic couplers.

  The momentum of the Iron Snakes' charge began to ebb, as the momentum of the orks had done the previous day outside Pyridon. A wall of monsters rose up to block them, blasting with firearms and swinging blades. The first man fell. Braccus, of Pelleas, his head exploded by an enemy missile. He fell on his front, down in the slick mud, still and dead.

  'Cast!' Petrok bellowed, taking off the head of a whooping war-boss with his blade.

  The brothers broke step and hurled their lances, and thirty or more greenskins toppled, transfixed and split through. Each Snake, running forward again, then snatched his second lance from his left fist into his right and smote on with the fresh blades.

  A terrible steam billowed up in the pre-dawn air, the steam from entrails and blood and ichor, hissing hot and fresh into the cold atmosphere. It rose like a mist.

  Priad struck an ork down with his shield, then drove his lance into the skull of another. He ripped it free, but the tip was bent over and cracked. He made his second cast, plunging the lance deep into the belly of a gargantuan greenskin, that rolled over, spitting ichor.

  Priad snapped his boltgun off its magnetic couplers and began to fire. His first shots made sure the gargantuan ork was dead. Then he dispensed head shots, a flurry of blasts, walloping ogres over onto their backs.

  Heat gushed. Bearing the Damocles standard, Andromak raked the ground with his plasma weapon, turning orks into dust, into vapour, into stinking piles of cooked meat.

  Pindor vaulted two mortally wounded orks, and cast his second lance into the chest of a raging chieftain. The thing died messily, yowling as it tried to scoop up its own spilled entrails. Bolter freed, Pindor fired two blasts into the oncoming rush of orks, splattering meat and fluid. He began to laugh at the glorious insanity of their act.

  Khiron kept his second lance up. He loved the sea-lance more than any other weapon. He drove the tip of it into the left eye socket of a particularly massive brute, and cursed as he had to let go of the shaft. The weapon was wedged fast in the monster's head-bones. He grabbed his bolter and blew apart a gaggle of smaller ork-things that were menacing him with pikes and catcher-poles.

  Scyllon, lance master, cast his second spear long and hard. It whistled over the heads of the nearest rising rank, and struck clean through the body of a towering creature that had reared up, a chain sword in each fist. Scyllon watched in dismay as the creature got back onto its feet, and dragged the lance out of its chest. By then, Scyllon had his bolter freed, and he blew the thing's head off.

  A swinging cleaver took away Xander's boltgun before he'd even expended his first magazine. He drew his blade instead, and lacerated the ork who had denied him firepower. Then he began to hack, merciless and unforgiving.

  A thrown axe brought Aekon down, knocking his legs out from under him. He rolled in the mud, frantic to rise. Blasting one handed with his bolter, Rules dragged Aekon upright, and covered him against the onrushing greenskins until Aekon had drawn his own bolter.

  Smoke wept around them. Ork gunfire sliced the air.

  Dyognes cast his second lance, then found himself grappling with the enemy as he tried to bring his bolter to bear. He broke heads open with his shield, but the swinekin were mobbing all over him.

  'Brother!' Natus cried out, firing as he ran in close, pulling limp bodies off Dyognes. 'Get up! Get up!'

  Dyognes rose, bolter in his hands. An explosive round streaked in and blew Natus's bionic arm away at the bicep. Natus yelled out, and staggered aside, sparks kicking out from the shorn-off wires and useless armature.

  He turned, firing with his good hand, and quickly took two more rounds in the breast plate.

  Stumbling backwards, blood seeping from the blackened craters in his chest, Natus kept shooting, kept screaming 'No! No! Nooo!' A massive ork, fully three times the mass of a Space Marine, pounced on Natus, mashing him back, flat, into the mud. Pinning his remaining arm, the ork bit down with its gigantic jaws, crushing Natus's helmet with such awful force that the visor lenses shattered.

  Screaming, Dyognes blasted ten rounds into the ork's torso and smashed its corpse off Natus. Natus's helmet came away with it, clamped in the ork's mouth. Revealed, Natus's face was bruised and torn, the cheek and brow bones shattered and malformed. He had lost both eyes. 'Get up! Dyognes yelled. 'Get up!' 'Where? Where are you, lad?' Natus asked. Dyognes reached for him, grabbing his gauntlet and hauling him up out of the muck. 'Come on, old man!' Dyognes shouted.

  His voice cut off. An ork pike suddenly transfixed him from behind. The tip of it had splintered out through his chest plate and his blood was now gushing out around the shaft.

  'Dyognes? Dyognes?' Natus yelled, blind and frantic, aware that something was wrong simply by the stink of human blood.

  Dyognes sank sadly to his knees, snapping off bolts at the orks enclosing them. He found Natus's remaining hand and forced the smoking bolter into it. 'Keep shooting!' he gurgled. 'Keep shooting!' Sightless, Natus began firing wildly. Dyognes held onto his waist and aimed him as best he could. Slowly, inexorably, Dyognes sagged, slumping to the ground, awkwardly propped up by the pike that had been pushed through him.

  Still calling his brother's name, Natus continued to fire until his clip was out.

  XV

  Half-heard, the signal came through. To the north-west, Seydon and the twenty-five had begun their breakout. Fighting there was savage, but the greenskin host had been properly misdirected by Petrok's daring assault. The sun was rising, back-lighting the smoke-filled air above the valley and turning it blood-red.

  Spreading wide in a fan formation, the five squads cut a deeper and yet deeper wound into the flank of the greenskin host. Petrok skilfully kept the spread as wide as possible to maximise the Iron Snakes' attack, yet tight enough so that each squad formation could overlap and cover its neighbours. As befitted their status as Notables, Damocles was placed at the most demanding section of the formation, at the left-hand edge of the fan, furthest from the valley slope, where the numerical strength of the rallying orks was at its strongest.

  The fighting was too thick, too intense, for any comprehensive grasp of the flow to be perceived, but Priad quickly became aware that his squad was in trouble. He was missing men. Had brothers fallen, unnoticed, in the rage of combat?

  'Anchor us here!' he yelled to Xander. 'Follow Petrok's lead!'

  'I will!'

  Priad broke formation, gunning his way through the seething mobs of greenskins, his bolter pumping. The
enemy host, goaded into fury by the dawn attack, was congregating on that small patch of hillside, and it seemed as if the entire world around him was made of orks. As far as he could see, the howling host stretched away, surging towards them. Amongst the waves of foot troops came war machines, steaming armoured transports, clattering gun-platforms, wagons wrapped in spikes and chains, smoke-stacks belching.

  Struggling forward, he found the ominous fault in his squad line. A breach, through which the greenskins were piling forward like a flash flood, threatening to cut the composition of Damocles in two.

  Ahead, through the chaos, he caught sight of Natus, bare-headed, his face a blind mask of gore, his bionic arm torn off. The worthy brother was firing off his last shots, wild and hopeless, as the baying greenskins encircled him, jabbing with their spears and pole-hooks.

  'Ithaka!' Priad bellowed, and launched into the mass of it. His boltgun hammered on auto, shredding ork-flesh out of his path.

  Weapons crashed at him, crunching off his armour. Explosive rounds detonated against his back and shoulder plates. One caught his combat shield, disintegrating it, and spinning the wreckage of it clean off his arm.

  Clenching his bolter in his right fist, Priad blasted onward, tearing at the foe with his lightning claw, adding a new catalogue of glory to its ancient martial history. He cut his way through to Natus, and saw to his dismay that Dyognes was with him, face down at Natus's feet, his body half-raised by the pike transfixing it.

  'Natus! Natus!' Priad called. Natus jerked his mutilated head around at the sound of the voice.

  'Brother-sergeant?'

  Priad reached his side, fending off the brutal assaults from all quarters.

  'Help Dyognes!'

  'I can't see him?' Natus shouted. 'I can't see!'