Brothers of the Snake Read online

  Natus was in better spirits. There was something eternally vital about Natus, a wellspring of vigour that had seen him through many wounds in the past, including the loss of his original arm. No augmetic refit had been made yet, but a skull cap of grey iron had been cased around his head, surgically screwed to the bones, to preserve the integrity of his healing skull. Before scar tissue could cover the ruptured nerves of his ruined eyes, Khiron began a preliminary round of reconstructive surgery during the first few days of the voyage, installing the neural plugs and socket brackets for augmetic implants. The eyes themselves would be connected on Natus's return to Karybdis, once the initial work had healed favourably. For the rest of the voyage, Natus wore a blindfold of bandages around his eye sockets. But Khiron had run relay leads from the nerve meshes inside the sockets and connected them to a simple ocular scanner, providing Natus with basic monochrome vision and depth perception.

  Natus wore the scanner on his forehead, attached to his skull cap by a magnetic coupler. He looked for all the world like a cyclops of old myth.

  With Petrok withdrawn to his quarters for meditation and further probing of the spirit domain for answers, Priad took charge of preparing Damocles. There was a body of armourers and fitters aboard the fast cruiser, and they set to work on the squad's wargear, so much of it mangled or ruined. The brothers themselves put the strength of their arms into the repairs, under the supervision of the master armourers. Weapons were stripped down entirely and every part of them cleaned and blessed. Blades were re-edged, or in some cases replaced. The damaged functions of power armour were repaired.

  Andromak had been brought an old but functioning flamer from the ship's magazine stores to replace his lost plasma weapon. Priad hoped that on their return to the fortress moon, Andromak might be granted custodianship of another heirloom plasma gun, and thus restore Damocles's heavy bite. Andromak spent many days of the voyage sitting apart from the others in the corner of the martial deck. Like all of Damocles, he wore a simple chiton or himation, for the plate cases were undergoing their refurbishment.

  Andromak was working on the squad's precious standard, the emblem he always carried between his shoulder blades. It had come through the two battles on Ganahedarak the worst for wear. Andromak was patiently repairing it, patching it back together with pieces of chiton and storm cloaks, using tough fishing twine, silver thread, and long sailcloth needles.

  Great Autolochus roamed the hold decks and empty hallways of the fast cruiser, brooding and unsettled. It was as though once roused from his mechanical dormancy, he could not abide being still. Often, as the brothers of Damocles took their exercise runs around the ship's corridors, they would encounter his trudging, clunking form.

  On the eighth day of the voyage, when Priad was on the martial deck observing the industry of the armour smiths, Autolochus appeared and called to him. Priad withdrew with the dreadnought to a far corner of the deck.

  'Tell me about your undertaking to Baal Solock.’ Autolochus said.

  Priad recounted the venture, as best as his memory would serve. He spoke of the ruined land, the downed primul war party, the cruelty inflicted upon the people of Baal Solock. He spoke too of primary clerk Antoni and the purging he had dealt out.

  Autolochus listened, then questioned Priad repeatedly, closing in on certain points of the story and urging Priad to recall more and more of the specific detail.

  Priad found that the careful interrogation prompted him to remember tiny fragments that he was surprised he could dredge up after twelve years. He remembered aspects of the countryside, his munition tally, even the name of the black dog that had run through his dreams.

  'Princeps,' he said. 'The dog was called Princeps.'

  Priad wondered why Autolochus was so concerned with the details, presuming the ancient warrior intended to build the most complete tactical picture possible in his mind. But before he could ask, they were interrupted.

  Scyllon appeared, with an agitated look on his slender face.

  'Khiron needs you.’ he said.

  A gaggle of boy slaves and attendants were waiting around the entrance to Petrok's quarters, and they scurried away as Scyllon brought Priad and the lumbering war machine to the place.

  Within the lamp-lit chamber, Khiron was kneeling beside a cot on which Petrok lay, so pale and still, Priad feared he had been carried off to the other world.

  'The attendants found him,' Khiron said quietly. 'Our Brother-Librarian has neglected treatment for the injuries he took on Ganahedarak, and that neglect has caught up with him.' Khiron lifted the blanket he had placed across Petrok's torso, and revealed the ghastly wounds the greenskin warboss had handed out. They were deep, much deeper and more significant than Petrok had pretended. Despite the superhuman resilience of his body, septic corruption had set in. Petrok was in a feverish stupor.

  'Infection, perhaps even poison, raked into the wounds by the filthy ork.’ Khiron said. 'Is he dying?' asked Priad.

  'Yes.’ replied the Apothecary. 'Yet he may live. At this time his life hangs in the balance. If his body and my salves can fight the infection, he will recover. But if they can't...'

  Khiron glanced at Priad. 'His survival is in Fate's hands.' Priad thought about that, and didn't like the sound of it very much.

  'This means you have command.’ Priad said to Autolochus.

  Autolochus's voice rumbled out of his hull-casing. 'By dint of age and experience, yes. But I'm no squad commander, not any more. You should have seniority here, Priad. Consider me your ally, but don't expect me to lead.'

  Priad stared at the huge machine, at the graven images of war and the purity seals that decorated the front of his hull. There was no arguing with a thing like that.

  In the subsequent days, Petrok's condition grew steadily worse. He did not wake or become lucid, but was given to fits of raving and convulsion, accompanied by a dripping fever. Khiron began to fear that there was more at work than simple wound infection. Some evil influence seemed to have Petrok in its grip, and would not let him go. Rites were performed, of cleansing and purification, to banish evil spirits and daemons from the echoing halls of the Bullwyrm. To no avail.

  * * *

  On the seventeenth day of the voyage, with Baal Solock within reach, and Petrok relapsed into a profound coma, Priad had a dream.

  It was as strange to him as the last, for dreams visited his pragmatic mind so seldom. Stranger in fact, for from the start of it, he knew he was dreaming.

  He was standing in the sunlit meadow, under a wide blue sky, surrounded by golden corn. He could feel the breeze on his skin, though he was clad in his full power armour. He felt weightless, as if he could take off and, with one bound, touch the harvest moon.

  Looking down, he saw his armour was as new, polished like a mirror. He took off his war helm, and realised with some mystification that it had the laurels of a captain marked around the crown.

  'Why am I dreaming?' he asked. The corn stooks hissed. Familiar hills rose white and clear above the far edge of the meadow. He looked around for the black dog, and it appeared, as if on cue, trotting through the corn, snapping playfully at spiralling corn flies.

  It came up to him, tongue lolling from a grinning snout, and cocked its head.

  'Princeps?' Priad said, remembering the name from his conversation with Autolochus.

  The dog barked, twice, then turned away and took off into the corn, running from him on a zig-zag path, slowly disappearing from view in the nodding gold. Three times, it stopped and looked back at him, barking again on the final occasion, until he responded and began to follow it.

  The black dog led him up through the meadow, through the hissing corn.

  'Slow down!' he called out once or twice as its lead on him increased.

  It was a pleasant enough dream, he thought, engaged by the rarity and reality of it, and especially by his lucid participation. He knew it was a special dream, and wondered if it was like the true dreams Petrok and his kind experience
d.

  By the time he had followed the dog to the far end of the meadow, clouds had run into the sky, and the sun went in, hidden behind them. The light became grey, the corn white rather than gold. It grew colder. The black dog, still black, barked again. Shadows were forming in the edges of the meadow, beneath the stands of olive trees and under the mountain woods.

  He realised each footstep he took made a crunching sound. He looked down again, and saw that he was walking on a crust of ice. The corn stalks were frozen and brittle. The dog's breath made little clouds in the frosty air.

  Priad realised he was stepping out onto the great glacier Kraretyer, that giant of Ithaka's southern pole. He looked behind him and saw the overcast meadows of the Pythoan Cantons, and ahead, the blue ice and air fronts of the polar glacier. Dream logic, he supposed, laughing aloud and half-enjoying the impossible segue between landscapes, between worlds.

  He stepped out onto the ice. The black dog had gone. Mean winds shrilled along the glacial crags, and surface snow, wind-carried, smoked off the cusps of the drifts. There was a storm coming.

  He walked onwards, anticipating something, but only sure of the fact he should anticipate. He wondered if he could wake up if he willed himself, but dared not try. This was a true dream, and he was loath to break its spell.

  The great snow bear waited on the ice shelf ahead of him. He could not say where it had come from, for it had not been there a moment before. Instinctively, he reached for a weapon, but there was nothing in the loops of his harness except a golden figurine of Parthus. Priad looked at it in surprise for a second, and the figure became ice and melted in his hand.

  The snow bear came closer. Priad realised it wasn't a snow bear at all. It was a man, swathed in white fur pelts. It was Petrok.

  'Fit for war?' Petrok asked. The great Librarian smiled, but his face was as white as a death mask, and his bright eyes sunken in dark circles like bruises.

  'If war awaits.’ Priad replied. Why are you in my dream?' he asked.

  'I'm not.’ said Petrok. He was limping, and his arms were pulled tight around his body, as if for warmth. 'You're in mine.’

  I don't understand.’ said Priad. 'How can I be in your dream?'

  'Because I sent for you. It was the only way to make contact.’

  'You sent for me?'

  'I sent a psychopomp.’

  'A what?'

  Petrok sighed, as if the explanations were a struggle. 'I sent a guide to bring you to this other place. It probably took the shape of that black dog of yours.’

  Priad nodded. Then he frowned. 'I still don't understand...'

  'And I don't have time to explain.’ Petrok said. He glanced at the skies behind him, the cold black vault of the polar night. 'There's a storm coming. It's been chasing me for days. You can't be here when it comes.’

  'Come with me, then.’ Priad said. 'There's a sunlit meadow just a few steps behind me.’

  Petrok shook his head. 'Not for me, there isn't. That's your dream, the one I summoned you from. This is mine, and I'm stuck here. Do you know where I am?'

  'Kraretyer.’ said Priad.

  'No, my oh so literal friend. I am on my cot, in my quarters aboard the Bullwyrm, dying and insensible. I fashioned this polar dream so you would recognise it as a meeting place particular to us.’

  'I still don't understand this.’ Priad said.

  Then just listen to me.’

  'But this could all be my dream, and you a part of it, and I'd just be listening to myself, wouldn't I?' Priad asked.

  'I can't convince you otherwise. But that's no reason not to listen anyway, is it? I need to tell you things. My consultations with the darker places have brought me answers that I must convey, and cannot in the waking world.’

  'Because of the wounds you suffered?'

  Petrok chuckled, and opened his furs away from his naked chest. The mortal gashes were there, but he bled not human blood but ork ichor. 'This is not the greenskin's doing. Those injuries just weakened me, made me susceptible.’

  'To what?'

  To our enemies. Listen to me, brother. Listen. Hear the things I would speak to you in life, if I could only return there, sensible and awake. This effort I've gone to is the only way I can make myself heard.’

  'I'm listening.'

  The pitch of the wind rose, and crystal ice danced in swirls around them, carried up off the blue-glass face of the glacier.

  'The greenskins cannot be defeated in formal war. Not even if our Chapter was multiplied a thousandfold. This bloody truth the spirits have revealed to me. But there is a way to drive them from the Reef Stars. They are at war with each other, tribe upon tribe, mob on mob, host on host. And this war has been engineered.'

  'Engineered?' Priad echoed. 'By what means? By whom?'

  Who is so cruel and malicious they would use the carnage of others for their own ends? The primuls have done this. Unable to muster enough force to take the Reef Stars out from under our protection themselves, they have fanned the flames of hatred in the greenskins. They have triggered the orks' fury, setting the swinekin loose to do their dirty work for them, and achieve what they could not.'

  'How does anyone, even a primul fiend, force an ork to do anything?' Priad asked, almost amused at the notion.

  'By stealing that which is precious to them. An ancestral trophy, a relic of great consequence. The jaw-bones of an ancient and revered warboss, a champion leader sacred to their species.'

  'The jaw bone...' Priad said, beginning to shape the truth in his mind.

  'The primuls you purged on Baal Solock, twelve years past, had accomplished the theft, but their damaged craft was forced to set down on that world. Their intention was to carry the relic into human space, and leave enough provenance behind that the orks would blame mankind for the crime.'

  'But it was destroyed!' Priad said.

  'That only aided them, in the long run. Their traces were covered.'

  'No wonder that bastard laughed before I killed him.’ Priad said, remembering at last the one detail that had previously escaped him.

  Petrok shrugged, and took another anxious look back at the encroaching storm. The horizon at his heels had lost definition as the distant blizzards fogged the air. Above their heads, the bright stars were fading from view.

  'For over a decade.’ Petrok said, his words slower and more halting, as if pain was wracking his innards, 'the warp-witches and carrion lords of the primuls have been casting suggestions into the minds of the greenskin tribes, goading them in dreams and visions, showing them lies about where their prize has been taken to. It has caused mob-wars, faction fighting. Whole worlds in the swine territories have burned out in the heat of hate-inspired violence. Now that frenzy has spilled into our protectorate. Needled by the mystic urgings of the primuls, the orks are pursuing their relic into the Reef Stars, slaughtering each other for the honour of recovering it.'

  'What do we do?'

  We give it back to them.’

  Priad roared out a bark of incredulous laughter. 'But it is lost! Destroyed!'

  'Not all of it.’

  'But-'

  'Any true scrap will contain enough genetic trace.’ Petrok cried, having to raise his voice now against the moaning of the wind. 'Enough to prove its truth to the greenskins. Ask Khiron. Such work is not beyond our flesh smiths. We-'

  The glacier shuddered. Pelting ice whipped across them in a brutal flurry, driving from the darkening south. They were forced to shield their eyes against the deluge.

  'Time's up!' Petrok yelled. 'The storm's found me again! You must go!'

  'But-'

  'Get out of here, friend! Get back to the meadow and the waking world!'

  Petrok turned, huddled in his furs, and began to trudge away into the teeth of the storm.

  'Wait!' Priad shouted. 'I need more!'

  'Go!'

  'I can't leave you here!'

  'You must!' Petrok bellowed, turning back for a moment. 'Go! Don't you understan
d, brother, the primuls have become aware of my probings! They have touched me through the warp and know my purpose and intention! They mean to silence me forever before I can undo their scheme!'

  'Petrok!'

  'Get gone from here before all my efforts are wasted! Priad, please! Go!'

  The lethal blizzard rushed in around them, and Priad lost sight of his beloved Librarian almost at once.

  'What did you mean? About Khiron? What did you mean?'

  Petrok had gone. In dismay, alarmed at the dream that had appeared so pleasant to begin with and now seemed beyond his means to control, Priad stumbled backwards. The raging ice ripped around him, seeking, as it seemed, to cast him off his feet. He understood now why Petrok had cased him in his armour plate.

  There were dark shapes inside the storm, fluid black things with sharp edges that whipped and coiled around him, spectres in the gale.

  He turned, hoping to see some shaft of daylight that might lead him back into the meadow. There was none. Only the desolate landscape of the nocturnal glacier, spread out endlessly before him. He heard a sound like slicing blades behind him. He heard feral cries in the storm. Ice shards pelted past him, the splinters wet with human blood. He heard laughter.

  The black dog was at his side, looking up at him, frost upon its glossy pelt.

  'Lead me!' Priad cried.

  The dog trotted away, and Priad followed, crunching over the blue ice, fighting against the force of the wind.

  He stepped into cold daylight. He stepped into the meadow. The sun had drained away and left a grey sky and a field of hissing, ash-white corn. The dark shadows under the trees at the limits of the meadow had pooled blacker, like ink. The dog ran off ahead of him. A few stray snowflakes fluttered in the air around him.

  He began to walk down the meadow, through the nodding corn. A strong wind blew, and the corn hissed louder. The distant valleys and mountains were obscured by low cloud and the fog of rain. Great sections of the corn field had been reaped down, the stalks sliced flat by scythes or other harvesting blades. The dead corn lay piled beside the cut stubble.