Brothers of the Snake

by Dan Abnett

  Andromak and Scyllon laid in with their poles, breaking shields and forearm guards. Natus smashed a baton from one man's hand and then caught him neatly on the chin with the head of his whirling pole. Xander, Kules and Pindor were wrestling with opponents of their own. One of Phocis cracked Natus hard across the clavicle with his baton and was about to do so again when Dyognes dropped him with a cnokoi-flat to the forehead.

  Priad's attention was entirely on Skander. The captain expertly kicked away Priad's footing, and they crashed together over the edge of the platform and into the practice area occupied by Manes squad. Priad could hear voices – Strabo's amongst them – shouting for them all to desist. Men from Manes put down their flamers and ran to try and break up the fight. Several found themselves drawn into it.

  Priad would not desist. Struggling hand-to-hand with Skander, he was almost suffocating in the warp stink oozing from the man.

  Skander threw Priad over onto his back and heaved in with his oukae. The short hardwood pole shattered against Priad's cnokoi, but Skander followed in with a savage kick that broke two of Priad's fingers and sent the pole skidding away across the decking.

  Priad ducked back and threw a punch that cracked Skander's head sideways. Pain flared up Priad's arm from his broken fingers. Skander undercut and punched Priad in the throat and then broke the edge of his buckler across Priad's reeling head.

  'Enough! In the name of the primarch, enough!' Strabo screamed.

  Breathing hard, Priad paused. For a moment, he wondered if he had indeed gone mad. Rage was pounding in his head. He glared at the bloody-faced Skander.

  If this was all madness, then he would lose his command. Lose his place in the Chapter most likely.

  Skander was raving at him, oaths and abuse. Priad couldn't smell the warp any more. He had made a fool of himself and disgraced the squad. He had-

  He looked into Skander's eyes. There was something there. An after glow. A shadow. A corona of darkness around the pupils.

  Like a fool, I used a gun instead of flames. It's moved on, into another host.

  Priad stepped back and bumped into Strabo. His old friend was trying to hold him back and pin his arms. Priad wrenched free, and tore the flamer unit from Strabo's shoulder.

  He swung back. Thumbed the toggle.

  A cone of flame engulfed Captain Skander. He twisted and screamed as he was engulfed.

  Alarms started ringing.

  All the fighting had stopped. Damocles, Phocis and Manes alike, all the petitioners, the lexicanium, the paidotribae, stood in utter shock, staring at the collapsed human fireball.

  And at the man who had burned him.

  'What... what in the God-Emperor's name have you done...?' Strabo stammered.

  'Look.’ said Priad weakly. 'Look.'

  Something disengaged itself from Skander's burning corpse. A small thing, leathery, flapping smouldering bat wings as if it hoped to fly away. It shimmered, as if it was made of smoke. Its fingers were tendrils of articulated bone and it had nothing but a hundred blinking eyes for a face.

  The sound it made chilled the souls of every one present. 'You see it?' asked Priad. 'Y-yes...' murmured Strabo.

  'Good.’ said Priad, and hosed the daemon-thing with flame, annihilating it.

  V

  'I saw it with my own eyes.’ Lexicanium Phrastus was telling Captain Phobor. The veteran Iron Snake was glaring at Priad, who sat on the edge of the practice platform, dabbing at his nose.

  'I thought Sergeant Priad had gone mad at first, assaulting the captain like that.’ Phrastus continued. 'But I saw it. A thing of the warp. A thing from inside Skander.’

  'Priad!' growled Captain Phobor.

  'Sir.’ Priad said, getting to his feet. The men of Damocles fell in behind him, bruised and bloody-lipped from their brawling. Priad was impressed to see that Aekon and Dyognes took their place in the line.

  'There will be questions, Priad. A lot of questions.’

  'Sir.’

  'From what the worthy lexicanium here says – and the other men besides - you may be exonerated, praised even.’

  'Sir. I hope that what has happened here might assist in the case of Khiron too.’

  Phobor paused. 'It's too late for him.’

  'Sir?'

  At Captain Skander's personal request, Khiron was taken to Ithaka at first light. I'm sorry. Oethanar is already under way.’

  The seas around the Primarch's Causeway were raging. White water marysae bloomed around the line of the stilt rocks, and a fierce storm was rolling in from the ocean.

  Retyarion. Wyrm-storm. The ferocious squalls that seemed to follow the movement of the marine serpents. Soon, the seunenae, the folding walls of iron, would rise out in the deep waters and come crashing in, kilometres high.

  'I can't go in any closer!' the shuttle's pilot wailed. The wind shear will break us on the rocks!'

  'Damn you!' Priad snarled. 'Lower then! Drop height!'

  'You're mad!'

  'Do it!'

  'Look at the auspex, in the name of Seydon!' the co-pilot shouted above the noise of the wind and the rain. 'Hard returns, coming up from the depths! KraretyerY

  Priad saw the swirling green shapes on the scanner's dished screen. They were big. Perhaps not kraretyer, the giant bulls. But big. Three, four. Maybe five of them.

  'Drop height!' Priad demanded again.

  The shuttle's turbines shrieked as it came down over the water at less than ten metres. It was a hunting ketch, sleek and long-bodied, that Priad had virtually stolen from the Chapter House dock.

  Priad scrambled back into the cargo bay where two lancing skiffs lay in hydraulic cradles. He ordered Scyllon, Xander and Kules into one, and leapt into the other himself. All of them were still clad in their grey bodygloves.

  'Pindor! Andromak! With me! Natus... man the releases!'

  Natus hurried to the aft position, pushing past the agitated and bemused petitioners Aekon and Dyognes. Priad wanted a good man at the release clamps. A clean clearance was a key part of a hunt run. And Natus knew that craft well.

  Andromak caught Priad by the arm as he was unlashing the fore-tethers. The squad's standard bearer held out his right wrist. It was twisted, broken in the brawl.

  'Stand out, brother, you're no use to me. You!' Priad pointed at Dyognes.

  'Sir?'

  'Can you hand lances?'

  'Yes, sir!'

  'Take his place!'

  Dyognes helped Andromak out of the skiff and took his place midships, pulling the covers off the lances racked under the gunwales.

  Priad looked up at Andromak, Aekon and Natus. 'Make sure our brother-pilot doesn't fly clear away. We'll need extraction.'

  'Sir!' the trio chorused.

  A bell clattered.

  'Drop height!' sang out Natus.

  'Prepare!' ordered Priad. He dropped down on one knee in the prow of his skiff and looped his hands into the side ropes, pain throbbing from his broken fingers. Behind him, Dyognes did the same, and Pindor braced himself at the slim vessel's aft.

  In the other boat, Scyllon, Xander and Kules duplicated the stances.

  'Go!'

  'Belly open!' cried Natus, raising his voice to yell over the engine noise and sea thrash that boomed in through the opening hold doors.

  'Hunt with the gaze of the primarch and the grace of the Emperor!' Natus yelled. With an experienced, unruffled eye, he watched the wind speed indicator and the shuttle's yaw.

  'Brace, hold... now!'

  Natus threw the release lever. The skiffs dropped out of the shuttle and fell towards the water.

  Impact. A swirl of bubbles, and a rush of water noise. Priad held on as the skiff inverted, drowning them, and then slammed upright again as the thin, helium filled buoyancy tanks self-righted them.

  Kneeling at the back of the craft, Pindor cued the engines and they lurched forward, lifting out of the swell and skipping across the breaking waves like a flying fish. The slender nacelles containing the
anti-grav plates extended out from the skiffs sides.

  'Turn in! Turn in!' Priad yelled, his voice lost in the roar. But Pindor, at the helm, read his gesture.

  Still crouched at the prow, Priad looked back at Dyognes.

  'Draw a lance.’ Priad said.

  Dyognes crouched with his legs wide to ride out the buffets and slid a sea-lance from the rack. Two metres of polished bronze with a long spine of razor-sharp adamite projecting from the tip. He passed it deftly to Priad.

  'Draw another and wait,' Priad said. He settled in the prow with the lance against his hip, the tip projecting out across the bows.

  They circled in around Oullo's Stilt, kissing the edge of the marysae that slammed up around the rock tower. Priad had ridden retyarion before, worse than this. But it was gathering force. And the sky out to sea had gone a fulminous dark yellow. The iron waves were close.

  'Around!' Priad cried, circling his fingers so his helmsman Pindor could see. The skiff took off left, bouncing through the incoming breakers, nacelles shuddering.

  Priad looked aft. The other skiff was following them in, Scyllon at the bow with a lance in his hands, Xander behind him amidships ready to pass more lances forward, and Kules, sitting low, at the helm.

  'Wyrm-spoor!' Dyognes yelled.

  Dark, thrashing ulbrumid broke the water two hundred metres to their port side. Priad's hand clenched on the haft of his lance. He was no longer aware of the pain in his damaged fingers.

  The ulbrumid calmed and faded. A sub-surface rising. They're down there, but not breaching yet, Priad thought.

  'Auspex!' he yelled.

  Dyognes was already on it, wiping flecks of spray from the screen. The auspex scanner was built into the deck just in front of the lance-giver's position in the middle of the boat.

  'Deep! Two of them! One below at ninety metres!'

  'Others?'

  'Three more, out at a space of six hundred metres.' Dyognes adjusted the rangefmder's water-proofed brass dials.

  'And anoth- God-Emperor!'

  Priad felt the lurch. He grabbed the side ropes automatically. Foam broke around them, an explosion of white water. He caught a glimpse of coiling horn plate sliding under them.

  Dyognes had taken a mouthful of seawater. He coughed and spat.

  'Sorry! Sorry! That one came from nowhere!'

  Right underneath them. But it hadn't surfaced. They were still turning and rising.

  'Left!' Priad indicated with his hands. Pindor swung them.

  They passed objects floating in the water. Brontoie, the summoning drums, automatic percussion buoys dropped by the shuttles that had brought Khiron down here at dawn. Their steady but erratic beating mimicked the sound of struggling prey in the water and brought the wyrms in. One brontoie could bring a hunting wyrm from a thousand kilometres away.

  Priad looked back. He saw his own shuttle hanging off near Splinter Rock, and another hunting ketch swooping down after them. It dropped its skiffs half a kilometre behind him.

  Over the vox, Priad heard the battle chant of Manes squad. Brother Strabo had brought his men in to join the hunt.

  The skiffs of Manes closed up, powering in, and all four vessels cut a wide crescent of white wake as they circled around Boethus Tower and the minor stacks that huddled nearby. Captain Phobor had told Priad that the oethanar duty ships had left Khiron on Lacres Stilt, a thirty metre-high column right at the edge of the

  Primarch's Causeway.

  Priad could see it now, a finger of rock rising from the white water. There were dozens of summoning drums in the water, beating out their enticing rhythms. Perhaps they were already too late.

  'Wyrm! Wyrm sounding!' Dyognes hollered.

  It came up out of the ocean fifty metres behind the squadron of hunting skiffs, pluming sheets of spray from the edges of its interlocking horny plates. Twenty metres out of the water, barely a third of its whole length. A maturing sub-adult. Its bone-armoured skull, the size of a drop-ship, opened to expose a white maw and articulate translucent fangs that were longer than a sea-lance. It called. The sub-sonic note blasted them with ultrasound. Then it writhed and fell back into the sea with the detonating force of an Earthshaker salvo. Tidal waves smashed out from its impact. But Priad wasn't looking at it.

  He was gazing ahead at Lacres Stilt. Ulbrumid was boiling at the base of the rock stack. And high up, on the flattened top, stood a lone figure: Khiron.

  The ulbrumid broke and a wyrm coiled up around Lacres Stilt. A mature female by its silvery plates, one hundred and forty metres long. Horn plates glistening, it wrapped around the rock pillar, rising. A second wyrm came up, a juvenile male eighty metres long. It locked around the female, writhing up around her, trying to constrict her into the rock with its coils.

  The wyrms snapped and sounded at each other, snouts banging against snouts. The ultrasound of their calls percussively dimpled the sea swell, causing back waves and eddies. The skiff wobbled, but Pindor steadied them, and curved them in.

  Priad raised his lance and made the hand-down sign to Pindor that meant slow.

  Ulbrumid boiled in the water ahead, rocking the skiff. In a surge of foam, the flat arrow-shaped head of a wyrm broke the surface, jaws open. It was another juvenile, but big enough to swallow them whole.

  Priad rose on the casting deck in the broad, braced stance of the laoscrae and cast his lance. It tore into the beak-bone before falling away into the sea.

  The wyrm broke the water and went down out of view.

  'Draw me!' Priad cried.

  Dyognes reached a fresh sea-lance into his waiting grip.

  'Auspex?'

  'It's running under us! Ten metres!'

  'About! About!'

  Pindor turned the skiff hard. Priad watched the water, braced, the lance ready. His arm was pulled back and the tip of the sea-lance was beside his ear.

  The wyrm broke again, running the surface. Priad saw the horn-plates slicing through the chop as it slid under.

  He cast again.

  The sea-lance went right into the wyrm's side between the plates. The water went dark around them.

  'Hold on!' Priad yelled, grabbing the side ropes.

  The wyrm's death frenzy stormed the water into a chaos. They were lifted clean out of the sea by a blow from the writhing tail.

  'On! On!' Priad cried.

  Pindor pulled on the helm to correct and powered them out of the death froth.

  Priad looked back in time to see one of Strabos's skiffs thrown up out of the water and splintered to kindling by a mature female. He saw bodies flailing, falling. The wyrm lunged and took the lance caster out of the air like a feline snatching a dangled treat.

  Hurling lances from his casting deck at the prow, Strabo turned his skiff back desperately to assist his wyrm-taken boat.

  'Scyllon!' hissed Priad over the vox. 'In!'

  'Aye!'

  The two skiffs of Damocles ran in towards Lacres Stilt. Dyognes passed a fresh lance to Priad. There were three left in the other rack.

  Priad looked up at Khiron, forlorn on the top of the stack. Below him, the mature female and the juvenile male were locked in mating combat, cracking the stone as their coils tightened. The smaller, fatter male bit its fangs deep into the female's back. In response, she shuddered and swung her sinuous head around, ripping out the male's throat with her vast blade-teeth.

  Dead, the male collapsed back into the sea, its ropes of coil slackening. The weight of its impact threw up a swell that capsized both Damocles's skiffs.

  Priad spluttered as they righted. He was still holding the third lance. The female had gone.

  Priad looked around. There was no sign of her. Had the juvenile injured her so badly she had withdrawn?

  Priad looked up at Khiron. The Apothecary was standing at the lip of Lacres Stilt, looking down. He disappeared for a second and then reappeared, running. Khiron threw himself off the stilt top and closed his body into a perfect diving shape. He hit the water like a missile.
>
  A thirty-metre dive into marysae, into white water. Not even the best... Priad thought. 'Brother-sergeant!' Dyognes called. 'What?'

  'Hard return, twelve metres, rising...'

  Priad scanned the water. There was a flash of foam. Khiron surfaced, spluttering and coughing, fifty metres ahead of them. 'Pindor! Swing us in!'

  'Brother-sergeant!' Dyognes called again. 'Hard return! Huge echo, six metres astern!'

  Priad looked back. He saw the ulbrumid. Saw the size of it. This wasn't the female returning. This was why the female had fled. A mature male. A giant bull. Kraretyer.

  VI

  Priad leaned over the bow and grabbed the floundering Khiron by the arm. Struggling, he heaved the half-dead Apothecary up over the gunwale. Scyllon's skiff closed in to assist. The kraretyer broke the surface behind them.

  Even old Pindor cried out in alarm.

  It was an old, old bull. A three hundred-metre monster. Its girth matched the widest rock stack. Its huge skull seemed the size of a battle-barge. It towered above them, cascading water from its ancient plates, opened its maw and exposed five metre-long fangs.

  It sounded. The surface water was blitzed into drizzle. Both crews fell down in agony, holding their ears. The hardwood casting deck of Priad's skiff cracked.

  The bull surged forward, forepart raised out of the water. Scyllon threw a lance that bounced off the plate, and then snatched a fresh one from Xander.

  He threw again.

  It was a perfect cast.

  The lance punctured between the third and fourth plates and lodged fast.

  The old bull didn't even seem to feel it.

  Priad dragged Khiron onto the casting deck and turned to pick up his lance. The vast wyrm was right on them.

  Priad seized another lance and cast it hard.

  It struck the bull's nose scales and quivered away.

  'Draw me!' Priad yelled.

  But Dyognes was leaning back to throw the next lance himself. Cursing, Priad stooped and pulled the last remaining lance free from the rack.