Brothers of the Snake

by Dan Abnett

  The servants spread out, helping her to search. She sent one off to locate a curator, or some index or catalogue. Priad wandered the hall, inspecting the displays. Old coins, medals, maps and manuscripts lurked in the dim glass boxes. Rain began to beat against the high windows of the museum, and outside it had become very dark. Priad began to fret at the time it was taking, but Antoni seemed much more impatient.

  'My damn eyes! So weak and old.' She rubbed her hands together. 'I have lived a very long time, by the standards of my people.’ she said. 'Did you know that? The physicians are at loss to explain it. I've outlived two husbands. I never bore a child. The physicians suspected that the exposure to contamination left me sterile. That has been a sadness to me. How could that be, though? Left barren by the poisons of the enemy, yet cursed with a long life?'

  'I protected you.’ he said.

  'With drugs. I remember that very well. They made me awfully sick. But they can only have been temporary.'

  'No.’ he said. 'I gave you a measure of my own blood, so that you might share my immunity.’

  'Oh.’ she said, and thought about that. 'That would have made a very good addition to my story. The blood of Ithaka, in my veins.'

  'Where is Princeps?' Priad asked.

  'Who?'

  'The dog?'

  'Great Throne, he died years ago. He was only a dog.’

  The servant returned, lugging a dusty catalogue of the museum exhibits. After much discussion and page turning, Antoni and her servants determined that the teeth had been removed from the exhibition twenty years earlier.

  'Where to?' Priad asked.

  'Into storage.’ Antoni replied. 'Oh dear. They could be in the museum archive beneath us, or in the Treasury. I wish this damn book said, one way or another.’

  She clapped her hands, and sent one of the servants off again to gather more servants out of hiding and begin a full search of the museum archive. The rest would accompany her to the Treasury.

  'This is most annoying.’ she said to Priad. 'With so few servants left in the palace precinct, this hunt could take weeks.’

  This did not sound encouraging to Priad.

  They left the museum, and crossed a wide courtyard in the rain to reach the sulking basalt edifice of the Treasury building.

  Out in the open, Priad paused. There was something in the air, a feeling more pernicious than the lowering storm and the downpour.

  He felt his unease grow.

  Wiping his hands upon a cloth, Khiron came out of Petrok's chamber and allowed the attendants to reconnect his gauntlets. Autolochus was waiting for him.

  'Well, Apothecary?'

  'Petrok is awake, praise be the Emperor. His fever has broken. He is still weak, and can barely move or even speak. But he is returned to us. He made me put my ear against his mouth so he could dredge up some small words. He said something about advising Priad.’

  What exactly did he say?' Autolochus asked.

  'He said "They're here. Tell Priad that they've come to stop him." This much he repeated twice.’

  'Prepare Damocles for descent.’ said Autolochus. 'I believe that at last I might get something useful to do.’

  XXII

  Inside, the Treasury building felt like a mausoleum. Within the thick walls lay a series of rooms and vaults in which the Legislature had stockpiled bullion, fiscal records, taxation archives, art treasures and many other objects deemed valuable or worth safeguarding. The items and the bundles of files were stacked willy nilly and without method, like the clutter of an attic, sometimes spilling out into the hallways from overstuffed chambers. The interior walls and floor were dressed with tiles of red and black marble, and what windows existed were mere slits. There was no real daylight outside to seep in.

  Several unshaven and distracted guards were discovered and put to work with the servants sorting through the rooms of junk and paperwork. Tapers and lamps were lit, creating little yellow pools of light in the sepulchral dark. Priad felt they were like tomb robbers, looting the funerary offerings inside some dead king's vault. He hoped it was simply the nature of the place that made him think so: his sense of foreboding made him worry that the Treasury might soon take on the most fundamental prerequisite of a tomb.

  He idly looked through piles of old paintings and stacks of dusty ledgers, wondering how involved he ought to become. These were not his treasures to ransack. Antoni directed the servants to clear shelves of bundles of exchequer rolls, old edicts, and the manuscripts of ancient laws. Strong boxes were opened and searched, filing drawers rifled, old coins of long withdrawn issues scattered on the red and black floor. Occasionally, Antoni would pause to examine something, as if wondering why anyone had ever kept it, or murmur 'so that's where that went.’ until she noticed the look on Priad's face and got on with her business.

  'Why do you need these damn things anyway?' she asked, rummaging through a small metal casket.

  'To save many lives.’ Priad replied.

  She waited to see if he would elaborate, and when he didn't, she set the casket aside, and pulled back the dust sheets curtaining another shelf.

  'Look at this now.’ she said. It was a painting. It was her, in regal gowns, upon a gilded seat. She looked much as she had done when he had last been on Baal Solock.

  'My official portrait. I sat for it the month after my election.’

  'What's it doing here?' he asked.

  'I never liked it.’ she replied. 'Rather too glamorous, I always felt. I hated having it in the palace. An image of me I could never live up to. I sent it away for cleaning, and managed to have it interred here. Hmm, look at it. Look at her. So proud.’

  She lifted the painting and studied it with squinted eyes. 'I fancy I will hang it again. In the palace, above my throne. I may not have looked like that then, but who's going to argue with me now that I wasn't ever so beautiful?'

  A servant came over, and she put the painting back down. The servant had found something. Priad moved forward, eager, but heard Antoni snort derisively.

  'Do these look like teeth?'

  The servant shook her head.

  'Then why did you think they were teeth?' The servant shrugged.

  'Get along with your work and stop being silly.’ Antoni said. She looked at Priad and smiled. 'Buttons.’ she told him.

  They could hear the rain pattering off the roof and walls of the Treasury. 'What a miserable day.’ she sighed. 'Shall we stop for lunch?'

  He was about to reply when all the candles blew out at once. Priad stiffened, adjusting his eyes to the darkness and making to strap on his helm. He heard some of me servants moan in fear and surprise.

  'It's just the wind.’ Antoni chided them. 'Light them again. Tinder, someone.’

  Sparks chinked in the darkness. One by one, the tapers were relit, illuminating fearful faces with wide, startled eyes.

  'Carry on with the work.’ Antoni ordered. She looked at Priad and whispered 'That was just the wind, wasn't it?'

  'Stay here.’ he said. 'Keep looking.’

  He left the inner vaults and the bobbing lights of the candles and made his way back along the main hallway, his helmet display reading and graphing the topography in the gloom.

  He heard something, and moved his hand to the grip of his bolter. Targeting graphics lit up across his vision and hunted for something to condemn. He was cautious. He didn't want to execute some blundering servant or Treasury guard.

  Something moved, down a side hall to his right. He turned that way, feeling the delicious engagement of his honed combat instincts. Whatever it was had disappeared out of sight beyond the next corner of the hall. Astonishingly silent for someone so large and heavily armoured, he turned the corner.

  Alone, in the middle of the sub hallway, the black dog stood looking at him. It wagged its tail stump, and cocked its head slightly, its tongue dangling from its dog-grin.

  Priad had faced many things in his life, many things that would have congealed a mortal soul in abject
terror. But this made his heart skip.

  'Princeps?' he said, then felt like an idiot. The dog was ages dead. This was just another black dog, lost in the ill-kempt halls. Except that look, that cock of the head...

  At the sound of his vox-filtered voice, the dog growled slightly and backed away. Priad removed his helmet so his own voice would issue.

  'Princeps?'

  Stump wagging again, the dog trotted forward and sat down at his feet, gazing up at him. He knelt. The dog was real. He could smell its wet coat and its sour breath.

  'Why have you come to find me, Princeps?' he whispered, silently adding 'all this way'.

  The dog got up again and began to trot off down the sub hallway. It looked back at him once and yapped a little bark, twice.

  Priad didn't need to be told. He followed the dog's lead, down the hallway into a gallery that led through into the Treasury's second principal hall, which extended to the rear exit of the building.

  The dog vanished. He took his eyes off it for a moment, and suddenly it wasn't there anymore.

  He was alone in the rear hall. He stopped still, and slowly slid his helmet back on. The visor systems lit up as they came down over his eyes.

  He wasn't alone at all.

  There were shadows in the shadows, dark shapes that resolutely refused to become visible, even when subjected to the amplified scrutiny of his visor systems.

  He heard a chittering noise, like rats or grinding teeth.

  Time slowed down.

  Priad ripped his bolter out and up, freeing the lock, and began to fire as the shadows rippled towards him. He blasted one shape to his right, and heard it bounce with recoil and fall, then swung round to slam two more shots into the shadows to his left. Two more shapes flew backwards in the darkness, flailing and writhing. Dark blood splashed across the red and black marble.

  Something struck his chest plate hard, and drove him back a step. Then a second object plunked heavily off his shoulder guard and ricocheted into the wall beside him, chipping the stonework. He heard the unmistakable buzzing of splinter weapons.

  They came for him. Shadows coiled forward out of the walls, out of the darkness of the ceiling. He squeezed his trigger and kept it squeezed, firing a sustained burst, ripping the darkness to pieces wherever it moved. His aiming graphics jumped and flickered, delineating target after target. The muzzle flash of his weapon was so bright, the after-image became a slow-fading ghost on his optic systems. Enemy fire chopped and tore into him, gouging his plate and leaving craters and gashes of bared metal.

  His clip ran out far too soon. He made to reload, but the primuls rushed him, clawing into him and hacking with their blades. He smashed one away with the weight of his bolter, tore another in two with his lightning claw, then slammed his own body backwards into the wall, crushing something that had jumped onto his back.

  Another daemon-shadow lunged at him, driving a lance-like weapon with a long, wicked blade. The blow forced him back against the wall, and he felt pain, as cold as glacial ice, explode across the left side of his gut as the razor-tip plunged through his plate and into his torso.

  He thrashed out with his empty bolter again, and split the skull of the thing that had stabbed him. It fell backwards, jerking in its death spasms, and the blade tore out.

  Priad rammed a fresh munition load home. The next things that moved were cut down in swift flashes of gunfire.

  He ceased fire, scanning, hearing his own breath rasp inside his helm. A commotion had risen in other parts of the Treasury, and in the palace quarters outside. He wondered if Antoni's guards had any real combat skill. He doubted it.

  Dark bodies sprawled, mangled and twisted, along the hallway. Primul blood steamed in the chilly air. He moved towards the thin daylight, towards the rear entranceway, executing two more shadows that rose up at him from the darkness.

  He was onto his third clip. He could feel the slippery warmth of his own blood leaking down from his gut wound into his groin and thighs beneath the armour.

  He emerged into the grey morning. The rain was sheeting down. A wide courtyard lay behind the bastion of the Treasury, flanked by wings of the palace. Four sleek raider craft sat on the yard, hooked and menacing like giant anthracite scorpions. They were uncrewed, but as he watched, three more swooped overhead, banking out across the roofscape of Fuce.

  He heard distant screams, gunfire, and clanging bells. Smoke fumed up from the city

  Baal Solock's long-held fears had become reality.

  The primul lord must have been waiting for him. Too late, Priad swung round at the warning pulse of his senses. The blade's blow caught him across the shoulder plate and threw him down the wide stone steps of the rear entranceway.

  Priad landed hard, but rolled immediately on the soaking flagstones, in time to see his enemy leaping down towards him, his long-bladed spear stabbing low. The primul lord was quite the most magnificent example of his species Priad had ever seen. Tall and slender, his lithe form covered in a sharply segmented body armour of black and gold metal. Priad knew it was a lord, for only the most elevated of the dark eldar race would rate armour so fine, and a war-mask helmet so tall and cruel and spiked.

  He tried to raise his weapon to fire, but the primul was faster. The whistling spear tip flashed down and pinned Priad's right wrist to the ground. He felt his wrist bones crack and shatter as the blade ground through them. He kept hold of his weapon, but the enemy's spear was power-charged with a shock field, and agony seared through Priad's arm.

  As the primul, standing astride Priad, gleefully drove the spear deeper, electrical discharge danced up the brother-sergeant's pinned limb, triggering involuntary neural spasms. The bolter fell from his limp fist.

  Priad cursed and kicked upwards, driving his armoured foot up between the primul's legs. The force of the blow threw the primul over, taking his spear along with him.

  Priad leapt to his feet, aware of how encumbering his belly wound had become, and how painful his skewered wrist was. He shut those feelings down. The primul lord landed smartly on the flagstones, legs splayed, hunched over in a fighting posture. He circled his lethal spear in his hands. The falling rain glittered on his armour like diamond beads. His eyes were yellow slits in the sculpted mask.

  Priad lashed out with his claws, ripping at the foe, the rain crackling and fizzling off his charged gauntlet weapon.

  The primul lord side-stepped and dodged each powerful strike as it came, agile and light, dancing away from the heavy Ithakan warrior. Priad lunged furiously.

  He hit rain and empty air. The primul lord had hopped back, turning delicately to swing in with his spear. Priad managed to parry the strike. The primul danced away again, pivoted, and then gripped his spear with both hands by the centre of the haft. There was a clicking whirr, and the metal spear extended, doubling in length.

  Whirling the long weapon, the primul re-addressed, and struck in at Priad. The Ithakan dodged the first strike, deflected the second, and then took two heavy blows to the upper body from the butt-spike end that sent him staggering across the yard.

  The primul lord did not spare him a second's remorse. He closed again, smashing a haft blow into Priad's face, before ducking under the grasping lightning claw and drawing the spear back like a club, two handed.

  He swung from the butt of the shaft. The long weapon's blade, like an oversized executioner's axe, slammed into the side of Priad's head.

  XXIII

  Bodies lay in the echoing halls of the palace. Human bodies: guards and servants, murdered as they tried to flee. Hall tables and candle stands had been overturned. Drapes had caught fire. Screams resounded from the heart of the palace complex.

  The primuls moved forward, lingering over the strewn bodies. The fiendish warriors cackled as they found humans that were still alive, those injured or playing dead in their terror.

  Blades were drawn and abominations performed. Shrieks filled the air. Blood spread out wide across the tiles. One of the primul killers
discovered a servant girl cowering behind a wall hanging, and cast her out into the main body of the hall. She wailed. The primuls mimicked her distress in hideous fluting voices, then laughed again as they closed in to have their sport.

  One of them suddenly burst in an explosion of gore that misted the air with blood droplets. Another, turning, lost his head to a howling bolt round. The others buckled and twisted as they were cut down.

  Xander strode down the hallway, boltgun smoking. To his right came Aekon, to his left Rules.

  'Damocles and Ithaka!' he cried. The servant girl, down on her hands and knees, looked at them uncomprehendingly. To her, these grey giants were as terrifying as the laughing daemons.

  'Help her up,' Xander barked.

  Aekon moved forward, holding out a hand. 'You're safe.’ he said. 'This site is now under the protection of the Ithakan phratry.' She blinked at him.

  'Hide yourself, or get clear of the palace,' Aekon said, lowering his hand, aware that he was intimidating her. 'Go on, now.' She understood that much. With a squeal, she got up and ran.

  'Contacts, side staircase,' Kules said. A hail of splinter rounds chipped and whined down across their position, shattering against their plate and pinging off the stone floor.

  'As I was saying.’ Kules remarked sourly.

  'Damocles and Ithaka!' Xander answered, opening fire. Aekon and Kules moved in beside him, raking the marble staircase with their shots, killing the shadows lurking there. Aekon swung to his left, calmly exterminating two primuls rushing out of a side apartment. He paused, and bent down, wrenching the helmet off one of the eviscerated corpses.

  'What are you doing?' Xander snapped, his voice curt and metallic over the comm.

  'I always wanted to know what they looked like. What their faces looked like, I mean.’ Aekon said.

  Any the wiser?' Kules asked.

  'My curiosity is satisfied.’ Aekon replied, repulsed. He tossed the empty helm aside.