Brothers of the Snake

by Dan Abnett

  'Primary clerk, we have learned from experience it's better to say yes than to refuse and have someone like you tail us. I need to know where you are so I can keep you safe. There are basic conditions, however. You will do as I say at all times, without comment or question. You will accompany me only so far. Once we reach the tactical edge of the operational area, you will stay put and allow me to continue alone.’

  'Now wait, I-'

  'These conditions are non-negotiable, primary clerk. You may come with me to the edge of the fighting area, and then wait for me. I am very capable, but I cannot guarantee your safety once we are in a shooting zone. You will wait for me at the tactical edge. Once I'm done, I will return for you and allow you to review the scene and assure yourself that I have been thorough. Do you agree to these terms?'

  'I suppose so.’

  'You do or you don't. If you don't believe you can abide by them, then you're staying here.’

  'Very well.’

  'Are you armed?' the giant asked.

  'Can't you tell?' she asked.

  He looked at her, and there was another click as he blinked. 'Battery source, upper left hand pocket. A communicator or a recording device. Pict recorder, hip pocket. Battery source, collar and spine of overcoat... a heating element, I'm guessing. Charge pistol, lower coat pocket. Las?'

  'Yes?'

  'Show me.’

  Antoni took out the small laspistol she'd checked out of the palace armoury that morning. She handed it to him. He looked at it for a moment. It seemed like a child's toy in his massive gauntlets. Then he tossed it away to the nearest sentry, who caught it neatly.

  'No firearms, primary clerk. I must have absolute say over weapons discharge. Apart from the enemy, of course. I can't permit you to carry a handgun. In an emergency, it could confuse things far too much.’ He paused. 'I smell black powder, and trace fyceline from ignition caps.’

  'The sentries here are armed with solid-slug side arms.’

  'That's not it. Please.’

  Antoni sighed, and removed the percussion pistol from her trouser pocket. He took it, disarmed it, and threw it to the sentries.

  'Nice try, though.’ the giant said.

  'How am I supposed to protect myself?' Antoni asked.

  Vou're not. That's my job. That's the point. Anything else? Speak now.’

  'I have a blade. A sheath knife.’

  'Show me.’

  She pulled up the cuff of her right trouser leg. The blade was strapped in a scabbard to her calf.

  'I'll allow that. But hook it to your waistband where I can see it and you can reach it.’

  Shaking her head, she did as he told her.

  'Anything else?' he asked.

  'No.’

  'I can still smell black powder.’

  'Spare cartridges, in my case. It will take me a moment to unpack them.’

  'Never mind. We ought to be going.’ He turned away, then swung back. 'I want your word, dam, as a servant of the Imperium of Man, that you will obey my instructions at all times. I say this only because I want you to remain alive. Disobedience will likely result in your death.'

  'Is that a threat?' she asked candidly.

  'Not at all. But I know what I'm doing and you don't. As I said, I want you to remain alive. Disobeying me will likely cause an accident. Are we clear?'

  'Perfectly'

  'I have your agreement?'

  'You do.’

  'Then let's go.’ The giant walked away across the yard and began to disappear into the mist. Antoni looked at the waiting sentries standing nearby. She shrugged.

  'Emperor protect you, dam.’ one said nervously

  'As I understand it, he already is.’ she replied. Then she picked up her case and hurried after the giant.

  The giant's twin-seated vehicle was parked outside the gate in the lingering mist. Antoni approached it, and found the palace attack dogs sitting in an obedient line beside it. The giant was bending down, ruffling their ears and talking to them in a low voice.

  They growled as she approached, case in hand.

  'Be still!' the giant said, and they were.

  Antoni stared at the travelling machine. It emanated a stink of lubricant oil and heat. The thickness of its sturdy armour and the power of its mounted weapons was self-evident. The giant had strapped further equipment onto its rear cargo cage. Antoni blinked and looked at the vehicle again.

  'What?' the giant asked.

  'Why...' she began.

  'Why what?'

  'It has no legs or wheels, but it doesn't touch the ground.’

  'Skimmer technology. It's a speeder. Anti-grav.’

  'It floats?'

  'Yes.’ He walked over to her until he was towering above her, face to face. 'Look, primary clerk, I think it would be best if you stayed here at the palace after all.’

  'No.’

  'I can't...' he trailed away and corrected himself. 'I won't have unnecessary distractions. You're unsettled even by my machinery. Culture shock, it's perfectly understandable. Stay here.’

  'No.’ she insisted.

  'If the sight of my land speeder alarms you then, Throne knows what-'

  'I'm fine.’ she said. 'I was merely... impressed. Skimmy technology. A marvel.’

  'It's skimmer. Skimmer technology.’

  'I'll be fine. I am primary clerk to the High Legislator of Fuce. I can take this in my stride. I will be fine, and I will be no hindrance to you. Now, sir, how do you get into this thing?'

  'Just climb up. Like a boat. No, the other side. That's the driving position.’

  'I knew that.’

  'You were going to drive?'

  'I was just looking. Here? Like this? Will it... sink under my weight?'

  The giant shook his head. 'No, dam. It won't sink.’

  'Because it's skimmer technology.’ she announced confidently. She sat down in the seat and folded her arms. 'See? I'm utterly fine. Look at me, sitting here in your land speeder.’

  'All right, then...'

  'I forgot my case.’ she said suddenly, trying to dismount.

  'I've got it.’ he said, picking up her case and securing it in the rear cage.

  'Thank you.’

  He came across to her side of the floating vehicle. 'Now do up the harness.’

  'Yes.’ Antoni hesitated. 'The what?'

  'The harness. The straps here. Secure them across your body, and your waist. The metal tongue fits into the buckle mech like so. See?'

  'I can do it. What are these for, precisely? Prisoners?'

  'No, safety. It's a land speeder.’ he said, laying emphasis on the final word.

  Very well. I see.’

  The giant walked round to the other side of the speeder, where the dogs were waiting. He said something, and they all looked up, eager, wagging their tail stumps. 'You.’ said the giant, and Princeps leaped up onto the bodywork of the speeder.

  'You intend to bring a dog?' Antoni asked.

  'In my experience, it could be useful. Where primuls are concerned.'

  'I see. I will be led by your experience. Is the dog to ride up there?'

  'No, he'll have to travel in the cargo cage, seeing as you've taken his seat.' The giant led the tail-stump wiggling Princeps back down the bodywork of the speeder and got him to sit down in the cargo area.

  The giant clambered his huge bulk up into the driving seat. The floating speeder actually wobbled like a rowing boat in slack water as he got into it. He secured his harness, and threw some switches on the dash. The drive system began to whine as it powered up, the same engine note Antoni had heard earlier.

  'Ready primary clerk?' he asked.

  'When you are.’ she nodded.

  The speeder began to pull forward through the grey dawn. Antoni stifled a sob.

  'Are you afraid, primary clerk?' the giant called out over the engine roar.

  'A little.'

  'I assure you I can deal with these primuls.’

  'I wasn't t
hinking about them.’ Antoni admitted. 'I was merely owning up to fear about this form of unearthly locomotion.’

  'You'll get used to it.’

  'Never in a million years!' she squealed as they began to increase speed.

  They were leaving the palace gardens and the park behind them. The three attack dogs left behind galloped after them, yowling and yapping, like hounds following the hunt. Princeps stood up in the cargo space and began to bark back at them, leaning his snout out of the cage, letting his tongue and ears flap in the slipstream.

  Increasingly, they left the chasing dogs behind.

  'One thing, primary clerk.’ the giant called out above the roar. 'Your arms are supposed to go outside of the harness.’

  'Really.’ Antoni replied, her teeth gritted into the wind, trussed up like an escapologist, 'I'm fine as I am.’

  VI

  In just a few hours, they undertook a journey that would have taken a week, even in a fleet coach. Roadways and country tracts flashed by so rapidly, Antoni thought she might be sick, and she hated being sick. They passed through villages and hamlets, orchards and roadside groves, in the passing of a moment. They flew up-country, into the sunlight. The late season land around them baked under the hot sky. Dry fields were harvested and bare. There was a smell of chaff and burned stubble in the racing air.

  Princeps seemed to enjoy the rush. He laid down in the corner of the cargo cage and stuck his head out of the mesh, trailing his tongue like a bannerole in the rushing wind.

  Antoni gagged and choked, coughing. She spat.

  'All right?' the giant asked.

  'Bug.’

  'Keep your mouth closed.’

  Up through Tiermont, Rakespur, Dionsys. Little, flitting hamlets in the sunlight that were gone before they were there. Peros, beside the tumbling headwater of the Pythoa, was empty, the thatch cotts burnt to the ground.

  They stopped and got out. A smell of dead fire hung in the air. The cotts and outbuildings had been terribly reduced by flame. Just black stumps and twisted clay, deformed by a furnace heat.

  Antoni surveyed the scene. The giant strode away into the wilted undergrowth in search of something. Princeps ran off from the parked speeder, rootling in the ashes.

  Crickets and lacuna bugs ticked in the sun-cooked thickets. Antoni put her hand on the warm handle of her knife. She saw a basket of eggs that had been dropped and left in some commotion. The sun heat had half-cooked the broken whites. Flies buzzed around.

  Princeps began to woof. He was busy with something in the ashes, caking his black pelt with grey dust.

  Antoni wandered over to the busy dog. Pinbills called from the trees across the road. White larksfoot blossom shone in the hedgerows, nodding in the breeze. A dragonfly, arched and immaculate, swooped by her face, hovered and zipped away.

  'What are you doing?' she asked the dog. It ignored her, and rootled some more.

  'Stop that.’

  Princeps carried on with his rummaging. Antoni bent down and shoved the dog aside. She scooped down into the piled dust. She touched something smooth and hard and warm.

  She dug deeper, smoothed the dusty earth and ash aside, and exposed it.

  It was a jaw bone, a human jaw bone. It had been burned clean of meat and fat by some infernal fury.

  'Oh.’ she said.

  Princeps, with whom she had never knowingly understood any connection before, looked at her, eyes wide, tongue out, blinking away flies.

  'I think we might have found something awful.’ she told the dog. Princeps turned and began to dig again, chuffing dust out under its paws.

  What have you found?' she asked. 'Princeps, what have you found?'

  She reached her hand into the dirt pile the dig was exposing, and then drew it back immediately, in pain, Something had sliced the ball of her thumb, so deep, so sharp, black-ruby blood came up out of an invisible slit.

  She licked it, and took out her knife, using the tongue of the blade to excavate instead. In less than a minute, she'd dug up a sharp, shiny object, angular and no bigger than a coin.

  'Did you cut yourself on that?' the giant asked suddenly, looming behind her.

  'No, no. I'm fine.’

  'You sure?'

  'Yes. What is it?'

  The giant bent down and picked up the sharp, shiny object. He examined it.

  'What is it?'

  'Barb from a splinter rifle.’

  'That doesn't mean much to me.’

  'It means an awful lot to me, primary clerk. Eldar. Dark eldar.’

  'Who?'

  'Primuls. It's proof.’

  'Proof I wasn't lying?'

  'I never thought you were, primary clerk, but I had to know what I was up against. Did you cut yourself on this?'

  'No, it's all right-'

  'Did you cut yourself on this?' the giant demanded. His voice was suddenly intimidating. Antoni recoiled. Princeps quailed back. She held out her hand. 'On my thumb. It's nothing.’

  He studied her dirty hand. The deep, invisible slit was still weeping blood. 'It's something. They can smell it.’

  'Who?'

  'Who do you think?'

  The giant went over to the travel machine, opened a pannier, and took out a small metal flask. He came back over to her.

  'Hold your thumb out.’

  'Like this?'

  'Yes.’

  He squirted a spray of filmy lacquer from the flask which coated her thumb.

  'Skin-wrap, in aerosol form. Let it dry.’

  'To stop me bleeding to death?'

  'No, to stop them scenting you.’

  'Oh.’

  He helped her to her feet. 'I think more than sixty people were murdered here.’

  Why...? Why do you think that?'

  'I've done a tactical scan around the site. I read hot bones in the ground. This place is a riot of colour to me: weapons discharge, heat-spill, burned bones.’

  'Heat-spill. You mean blood?'

  Yes, primary clerk. Come on.’

  They got back aboard the speeder. The giant clapped his hands, and Princeps came bounding over and leapt up into the cage.

  'Secure your harne-'

  'Already done.’ she said.

  They passed up through the hills, into Timmaes and then Gellyn, both dead and empty.

  'It was from about here.’ Antoni said, reading off her sensor paddle, 'that the Receiver of Wreck went missing. First Legislator Hanfire too.'

  The giant nodded. 'I think we're coming up on the tactical edge of the operational area now. It's probably time you got out, primary clerk. Let me drop you here.' He began to slow the speeder down. 'Walk back to the nearest township and let me do this.'

  'Alone?'

  'I'll send the dog to watch you.'

  I'd rather stay with you.'

  'I'd rather you didn't. My orders, remember.'

  'Frankly, I don't trust that dog.'

  'He's fine.'

  'He's a bastard.'

  'When it comes to anything, I'm a bastard too.’ the giant said. He smiled, but there was no warmth in it. 'Time for you to go, primary clerk. Please. From here on, it gets interesting.’

  I'm interested.’

  All right, that wasn't the right word. Please, dam. Get out here and go back to-'

  The giant was interrupted by a whine from the back. Princeps was up on his feet, his hackles rising. With a final, woeful bark, he jumped out of the slow-moving speeder and ran away down the track.

  'Damn.’ said the giant. He slammed the speeder forward in a rapid acceleration. 'What's happening?' she asked in some alarm. 'Duck down, stay close to me, and do exactly what I say.’

  VII

  What happened next happened rather faster than Antoni could follow, but it was probably a blessing she didn't quite appreciate what was going on. By the time she did, it was too late to scream. The speeder accelerated so rapidly that she was thrown back into her seat, the harness pulling tight. Hot sunlight, strobed by the overhanging tr
ees, flashed across her. The giant's left hand shot out and adjusted a control box on the console, and a loud, clattering machine noise rattled out of the vehicle's nose right ahead of her.

  Then came an even louder noise, a series of violent, booming reports that drowned out both the clattering and the pitch of the straining engines. The sounds slapped her like solid punches, and hot smoke stung her eyes. The speeder seemed to stumble and chug, as if its advancing speed was being arrested by a series of hammer blows.

  A line of trees on the bend of the road ahead shredded in a huge, splintering concussion.

  The giant slammed the speeder to a rough halt that threw Antoni forward against her restraints, and then rotated the vehicle through ninety degrees on its vertical axis until it was facing the trees and scrub on the left-hand side of the track. The speeder's prow-mounted cannons unloosed again, and blitzed the roadside to tatters. The gunfire's roar was extraordinary.

  As soon as it ceased, there was a buzzing sound, as if a swarm of bees was billowing past them. The giant put his hand behind her shoulder-blades and forced her down as low as she could get. She heard scraping, pinging impacts, sharp metal on metal, the sound of split-peas flicked at tin. Some of the impacts gave off curious, screeching notes. The speeder was moving again, the vents of the racing ramjets vectored so wide that it was virtually advancing sideways up the road, the giant keeping his side of the vehicle facing the storm of impacts. To shield her, she realised.

  Abruptly, he swung the speeder face on again, and unloaded a third, withering salvo from his cannon. Antoni glimpsed a line of dusty impacts stitch away up the track, and then she winced as a stand of old maple and furze dead ahead disintegrated in a spray of fire and dirt and smoke.

  She thought she saw a figure on the sunlit road. A man, but not a man. Too tall, too thin, too glossy-black, running with a long, almost capering gait that no human could have mimicked.

  Then it was gone.

  The speeder lurched again. The violent changes in velocity over the previous few seconds had made Antoni deeply nauseous and served only to baffle her senses. She swallowed back the nausea. She so hated being sick.

  They seemed to be racing directly towards the roadside, towards the undergrowth of thorny hedge and bracken.

  The speeder tore through that barrier without hesitation, ripping the undergrowth aside. Antoni heard thorns and tough twigs squeal and scrape off the bodywork, and heard branches and tendrils twang and crack as they snapped.