Shadowsword

by Guy Haley

  Magnesium rounds hissed out from the tank’s coaxial autocannon, stitching the hillside closer and closer to the bunker, until three hit home and Meggen had the shot ranged.

  ‘Fire!’

  The main gun discharged, the shell’s rocket burn shooting it rapidly across the open space. It impacted the bunker with a resounding boom, blasting it to pieces.

  ‘Direct hit! Well done, Meggen.’

  With some of the pressure off the main attack, Kenrick’s men pressed forwards.

  ‘Shoam, left, follow the scarp. We’re going round the back.’

  The tank tilted alarmingly sideways as Shoam spun it round without slowing. Meggen swung the turret right round so that it faced the rear, and loosed two further shots towards the main conflict. The slope at the top was steep. Ganlick cursed as a back-pack came loose from its straps and bounced across the command deck into his chair. It was now frighteningly obvious that a vehicle with a higher centre of gravity would have toppled, Bannick was almost standing on the side of his cupola. Turf wrinkled as the tank slid slightly, but the slope held, and the Baneblade rolled around the cliffs at the north-western end of the crags. Men were running along the top shooting. A grenade bounced close to hand, exploding as it rolled down the hill. Bannick returned fire with his pistol. The gunner’s hatch clanged back and Meggen stood up, and grabbed the handles of the pintle-mounted heavy stubber.

  ‘Take this, you yellow basdacks!’ he shouted. A rocket round spanged off the main cannon, thrumming off high where it gave out in a brilliant white starburst.

  ‘Lascannon team, right, right, right!’ shouted Bannick.

  Meggen swung the gun about, sending a stream of solid shot at the three-man team setting up the lascannon above them. One took a bullet through the head, the others leapt back.

  ‘Scarp end approaching. Prepare to turn. Take it easy, Shoam. This is the steepest part.’

  Sparks flew as the right sponson grated on rock. Using the contact as a guide, Shoam pushed the tank past the end of the ridge. The ground dropped away two hundred feet there into a small valley where a lazy brook ran, the source of the Drava. Scree slopes gathered in folds in the land above it. The tank shifted sideways.

  ‘Come on!’ said Bannick. ‘Come on!’

  Shoam gunned the engine. The smoke-stacks belched fumes, the treads bit into the thin soil, and the tank came round the northern side of the hill where the ground levelled. A rise blocked sight of their approach from the northern slope.

  They crested it and came down all weapons firing.

  ‘Full speed ahead!’ shouted Bannick. The tank levelled out and accelerated. It could go no faster than a man could sprint. Their goal was a hundred yards away. Tank traps blocked the gap in the cliffs. The ground had been blasted to mud and loose rock. On the other side of that, the Destroyer surely waited.

  Bannick scanned the ridge. The northern slope was shallower than the south, but the cliffs were twice the height. Great portions of the crest were a tangle of bomb-shattered trees and cracked rock formations. The approach was almost like a broad road, as Kenrick had described it. A ribbon of muddy earth led into the rock formations, but the terrain that flanked it offered ample opportunity for ambush.

  ‘Emperor-forsaken thing could be anywhere,’ said Bannick. ‘All guns, lay down a suppressive pattern.’

  All through the attack the enemy artillery had been firing, the beat of the guns picking up tempo as the Yellow Guard anticipated defeat. They would cast as much destruction at the Imperials as they were able before they fell. Bannick admired such determination.

  The Baneblade was fifty yards from the beginning of the approach when the Destroyer struck. From a hiding place among the leaning stacks and frayed stone tables of the ridge, its blast took them all by surprise. Without warning, a blade of high-powered energy seared the sky, causing it to bang with pressure differential. It took the tank along the right side of the command deck, blasting a hole through the plasteel and causing havoc. Cortein’s Honour rocked at the impact. Shouts and cries replaced the intense, noisy chatter of men at the job of war. The internal comms buzzed and died.

  ‘Sir!’ yelled Leonates from below. ‘Sir! Ganlick is hurt bad! Epperaliant is down.’

  Someone was screaming below, endlessly, horribly. Bannick ignored it. He could not afford to be distracted. ‘Get Gollph to the foot of the ladder. We’ll have to relay orders verbally. Meggen, target the source of that blast!’

  ‘Aye, sir!’ The turret shifted minutely to the right, and Bannick thanked the Emperor and Omnissiah both that its motive engines still functioned and the turret ring had not buckled. Cortein’s Honour shot back, the shell’s casting the roar of a wounded, furious beast. It impacted in a narrow crevasse between two giant boulders.

  ‘Smoke! Smoke! Smoke!’ he yelled. The launchers at the front made hollow popping noises. Tubular grenades went spinning through the air, landing at preset distances in front of the tank to pump out thick white vapour all along the ridge.

  ‘Take us right, Shoam!’ Bannick bellowed. The order passed along to Gollph who ran to the front. A second’s delay. Too long, but just quick enough. Another Destroyer blast punched through the smoke, cooking off the vapours and leaving a long, clear tunnel that wound in on itself until it collapsed back into the smokescreen.

  ‘Damn it! Faster!’

  Again the order was relayed down. The tank accelerated, treads squealing. The demolisher cannon barked, then the main armament, blasting again at the Destroyer’s location. Both tanks were firing blind. Either one could emerge victorious.

  Blinking after-images, Bannick traced the line of the laser destroyer back to its source. ‘Barrel up, three degrees. We have to get it before they move,’ ordered Bannick.

  ‘Emperor, guide my hand!’ shouted Meggen.

  A third las-blast thrummed through the night, the boom of displaced air making Bannick’s ears ring through the protection of his vox-set. It sheared off the right sponson lascannon turret. The severed power couplings fountained sparks.

  Meggen kissed his hand and slapped the shell as the auto-loader slammed it home. He pressed his eye to the cannon’s periscope.

  ‘Fire!’ shouted Bannick.

  ‘No! Wait! Nearly, nearly... Got it!’ he replied, and depressed the firing pedal.

  One last time the cannon roared at the Destroyer. They were rewarded with an enormous explosion. Plates of metal pinwheeled high into the sky and came clattering down all over the rocks. Between two small rock formations, the square, blocky tank hull of the Destroyer was outlined by flames coloured by chemical burn. A burning man threw himself from the wreck, landed hard on the ground, rolled once, then was still.

  ‘Got it? By the Emperor, Meggen, you got it all right! Shoam, hard right, hard right. All weapons, fire at will. Let’s drive through these basdacks and show them the error of their ways.’

  The Baneblade rode up the natural way onto the top of the hill. A narrow plateau greeted them, studded with well-protected artillery pits. Their coming had not gone unnoticed, and a storm of fire blazed in.

  ‘Meggen! Kalligen! Kill these guns.’

  The turret whined back and forth, blasting shells at the artillery. Lesser, solid-shot anti-tank autocannons wheeled about to meet them, but such was the thickness of the Baneblade’s armour that their rounds spanked off at high speed, whining into the night. Cortein’s Honour fired back, blasting men into the air and shattering guns. Secondary explosions bloomed throughout the enemy positions as munitions cooked off. Hemispheres of earth and bodies were heaved high by the demolisher, and then the Baneblade roared up over the slight rise in the centre of the hill, and into the battered scrub on the south side. Pushing the remaining trees aside, Cortein’s Honour rolled over burned stumps and foxhole alike, bolter fire blasting the men running from this embodiment of the Emperor’s displeasure into bloody rags.
>
  Multiple red flares went from below. Bannick ducked down into the turret. ‘The Four Hundred and Seventy-Seventh are making their assault, cease forward fire. Hard left, Shoam. Let’s finish this now.’ He ducked down, crabbed over to the gunner’s turret and re-emerged there. Legs either side of Meggen’s back, he manned the heavy stubber. Adding its bullets to the firestorm kicked out by the super-heavy tank, Bannick took a full and active part in the slaughter, howling wordlessly as he killed.

  Chapter Fourteen

  The sacrifice

  IMPERIAL GOVERNOR’S PALACE, MAGOR’S SEAT

  GERATOMRO

  087298.M41

  Dostain couldn’t sleep any more. He didn’t like to. His dreams excited and repelled him in equal measure. He feared that were he to sleep too much, and sink into that nocturnal netherworld too often, his disgust would melt away, leaving only a fearful longing for more depravity, more excess.

  But sleep deprivation does things to the human mind almost as terrible as the worst of dreams. When he moved his head, it seemed his soul shifted within the box of his skull, imparting a delay to all sensation. His mouth was dry, no matter how much he drank, and he was maddeningly, insatiably hungry. At the edges of his vision small black shapes flowed over the objects in the room, new companions whose faithfulness he had not requested nor desired.

  So it was that when Dib crept through his door, Dostain took him at first for a hallucination. One of the sliding shapes given flesh, and he laughed at it in fear and resignation.

  ‘Heir the Second? My lord?’ said Dib.

  Dostain blinked stupidly. He had to swallow three times before his tongue worked around the words his brain commanded it to say.

  ‘Get out,’ he said. ‘Leave me be. These dreams. They are your doing. I know it.’

  ‘Me? I give nothing that is not already there,’ said Dib.

  ‘Get out!’

  ‘Are you sure, my lord? You are losing this war you started, and you know that too,’ said Dib. ‘And that is not my doing.’ He was no longer a youth, but a glorious and powerful man. He was naked except for a long, horizontally pleated kilt that garbed his perfect legs. Armlets and medallions of strange gold decorated his body, clinging to his muscles in ways that accentuated them uncomfortably for Dostain, for it made Dib too beautiful to bear. His second greatest fear was that Dib would seduce him, his greatest that he would enjoy it. Dib sat at the end of Dostain’s bed and gave him a sad, understanding smile.

  ‘I offered you a choice between slavery and power. You have done nothing! Choices need tending as much as any garden. They are not simple boxes to be filled on a form, sealed away and forgotten, but living things! Your choice requires attention, or it will turn and the outcome will not be to your liking.’

  Dostain peered closely at Dib. The youth wavered, replaced by Pollein, beautiful Pollein, immodestly dressed in Dib’s strange clothes.

  ‘You like this body, I know. I do not think you care much for the soul that it clothes, but the flesh itself... Well, that has cast a deep and powerful spell on you.’ When she spoke, she did so with Dib’s voice. She leaned onto the bed and began to crawl up it, her eyes fixed on Dostain’s. ‘Do you know, the most powerful urge of any organism is to reproduce. Of course, there are individuals within a sentient species such as yours that try not to. They deny themselves the genetic continuation of offspring for one reason or another, but most of them still practise the act of coupling. Do you know why?’

  Dostain moved backwards up the bed and fell into his pillows, undone by lust and lack of sleep.

  Pollein leaned over him, her long hair brushing his sweating face, making it hard to think.

  ‘Because it is nice,’ said Pollein. She leaned down and kissed him passionately. He squirmed against it, but gave in, responding urgently. Then Pollein’s head withdrew, and it was Dib’s again. He sat back and laughed. Dostain wiped at his lips in disgust.

  ‘Oh, poor boy,’ said Dib, tousling his hair. ‘Prefer the real thing? I can give her to you.’

  ‘You’ll make her want me?’

  ‘I can’t do that. Who has that kind of power? Not I. My lord has, but he is of a very rare sort.’

  ‘What kind?’

  ‘A god,’ said Dib provocatively, then laughed again. ‘I can’t make her like you, but I can give her to you to do with as you like. You don’t really like her anyway, so what does it matter if she likes you or not?’

  ‘What do you mean?’ gulped Dostain.

  ‘Don’t be so naive.’

  ‘I won’t be a party to seduction by force.’

  ‘Oh, you have morals now – the boy who provoked rebellion.’

  ‘It wasn’t supposed to...’

  ‘Then you are just greedy. Listen to me, foolish boy.’ Dib leaned in. ‘Their armies draw nearer and still you have not acted. I offer you the girl as a sweetener, but I shouldn’t really. Call me generous, if you like. It’s very easy, what you have to do. I don’t know how much easier I can make it.’

  ‘I don’t want to know!’ said Dostain.

  ‘Too late!’ sang Dib.

  An image came into Dostain’s head. His monstrous cousin in its crib, woven from forbidden science and Huratal’s yearning for vicarious immortality. Dostain clutched at his skull.

  ‘I can’t!’

  ‘It’s not really alive! Why so squeamish? It’s hardly even a person. Kill it, and as the next eldest heir, you shall be Lord of Geratomro.’

  ‘Lord of nothing!’

  ‘Then you will all be killed. This war is nearly done. The Imperial Guard are three days from the outskirts of the capital. Do this thing, and I shall provide the allies I promised as your coronation gift, and you shall have your aunt, the pretty one,’ laughed Dib, ‘as your bride the same day.’

  ‘I won’t!’

  ‘Then you shall burn.’

  Dib slid from the bed and walked towards the door. He pressed two fingers to his lips, kissed them, and blew the kiss to Dostain.

  Dostain sat in his bed, so frightened his teeth chattered.

  Burned.

  Pollein.

  Burned.

  ‘Wait!’ he called. ‘Wait! What must I do?’

  In contrast to those of her treacherous nephew, Huratal’s dream was a lovely thing, full of dancing and beautiful bodies. She rarely dreamed of carnal pleasure; she was past all but food and drink. Epicurean consumption had replaced the exercises of the night. But the dream was glorious, a sensuous infinity of writhing bodies that awoke in her desires she had not felt in a long time.

  A terrified wail yanked her from sleep to wakefulness in one step.

  The warm afterglow of her dreams dissipated in the dark of her room. She was soaked with sweat. The room was too hot. The fire, tended to by her handmaidens through the night, burned high. An overpowering musk cloyed at the back of her throat.

  She sat up in bed, pushing her sheets aside. It was the depths of the night, dark as it ever became. Rain pattered against the window. Wind soughed its sorrowful way through the spires of her palace, shaking the edifice with its ethereal strength. Her senses strained, alive as they were at no other time. Her nightmaid had stepped out, and she was alone. For a vertiginous moment she felt as though she were the only person left alive on Geratomro, perhaps anywhere in the galaxy. There is no loneliness like that felt in the last watches of the night, no matter how rational a person may be.

  ‘Joliandasa?’ she said, too disquieted to feel fury at her nightmaid’s absence.

  She got out of bed with difficulty, her weight dragging at her bones. Her feet sank into the fur of the rugs around her bed. She moved quietly, terrified for some inexplicable reason of making a noise. She could not see her canids either. ‘Mikki? Gilli? Come my babies, where are you?’

  The noise came again, a child’s wailing echoing up the corrido
rs of her palace.

  ‘Missrine!’ she gasped. A mother knows her babe’s cry.

  Joliandasa appeared at the door.

  ‘Where have you been?’

  ‘I... I went to fetch more wood, my lady. I came quickly when I heard you shouting. What has happened?’

  ‘Do you hear the cries?’

  ‘No, my lady.’

  ‘Fool! Missrine! Someone has my child! Sound the alarm, fetch my soldiers!’

  More ladies-in-waiting arrived at the door, covering their faces with their hands. The crying started again and didn’t stop. ‘Moooottthhhhherrr!’

  ‘Do something! Do something, all of you, or I’ll have your heads!’ snapped Missrine. She heaved her way across the room, the short distance leaving her breathless.

  The threat only worsened the matter, and the women panicked. They flapped their hands. One of them swooned into a dead faint. Missrine regretted now her practice of surrounding herself with the weak-minded.

  ‘Get out of my way!’ screamed Huratal. She bowled them aside by dint of her bulk, and burst from the door.

  For the first time in decades, Missrine Huratal I broke into a lumbering run. Missrine II’s nursery was her destination.

  She arrived to find the crib upended, grav-motors spitting sparks. The tubes that fed Missrine II with the elixirs she required were unplugged and dribbling onto the floor, staining spilled satin sheets toxic colours.

  The smell of musk was in the nursery too, and there it was overpowering. The wet nurses lay sprawled on the floor, dazed, unable to speak. At first she thought they were affected by drink, but they were too languorous, reaching out to stroke at her and smiling foolishly.

  ‘Get up, get up! Where is Missrine? Where is she?’ the Governatrice demanded. ‘Where are my soldiers?’ she yelled.

  ‘Madame, madame?’ said one of the girls woozily. ‘It was Dostain. He has the Heir the First.’

  ‘What, what?’ Missrine said. She got down on her knees with a grunt to hear better, her vast stomach inhibiting her movement.

  ‘Dostain! He was... He was with a youth, and Heir the Third Pollein. So beautiful,’ giggled the girl. ‘So beautiful.’