25 For 25

by Various

  ‘Little idiot’s determined to get himself killed,’ declared Massau.

  ‘He’ll have family down there, somewhere,’ Brael replied. He turned to his men. ‘Whatever happens, we’ll need transport out of here.’ He jabbed a finger at Kleeve and Tombek, who nodded then headed off down the slope. ‘The rest of us are going to see if we can’t take some survivors with us.’

  ‘Corfe,’ Massau stuttered. ‘You can’t seriously mean–’

  ‘It’s coming back!’ Tylor interrupted the guildsman. Those still gathered around Brael followed his pointing arm. The flying machine had climbed, then wheeled round to retrace its path overhead.

  ‘It’s letting its friends on the ground know we’re up here,’ Fellick commented. ‘Maybe we should get moving.’

  ‘That’s exactly what I–’ Massau began.

  ‘The greenskin riding it can’t be wearing much armour,’ Brael said, almost to himself. ‘You wouldn’t want to make that machine weigh any more than it already does.’

  As he spoke, Brael unslung his rifle from his shoulder. Almost unconsciously, those among his men who also had rifles did likewise. Eight of them, they aimed high.

  The greenskin aboard the flying machine must have realised what they were planning. Working a set of pulleys, whose cable-ends hung before him from the glider’s frame, he began to alter course. It was, however, too late. The muskets fired in unison, several punching tiny holes through the fabric of the wings, several more hitting the pilot in the face and chest.

  Brael’s men watched as the flying machine pitched away, rapidly lost altitude and slammed into the ground halfway down the incline and some way off to the left. A couple cheered, but Brael was already reloading and moving down the slope.

  ‘Think you can cover us?’ he shouted back to Costes and Perror, who were lashing together a pair of pikes to serve as a stand for the machine-rifle’s barrel. Kobar was the last of the men to deposit at their feet the ammunition belts they had carried away from Grellax, then follow Brael into the valley.

  Smoke from burning wagons moved in drifts along the valley floor. Vikor had recovered some of his senses and now used the wrecked wagons for cover as he moved across the battlefield.

  ‘Freytha!’ he called for his sister, knowing that she would not have left their mother. All he heard in reply was the sound of the invaders’ seemingly-inexhaustible weapons and the roar of their war engines.

  A shadow, taller than a man, loomed out of the smoke. Vikor recoiled instinctively and brought up his pike as the riderless horse, bleeding from several wounds, galloped across his path. He heard musket fire away to his right and wondered if Brael and his men had followed him onto the battlefield. The smoke seemed to be getting thicker and a tang like cooking porker drifted on the air.

  I’m already dead, he told himself. I’m already dead and this is where the damned spend eternity.

  ‘That way! Hurry!’ Fellick roared at the small group of militiamen and civilians he had found huddled in the lea of an overturned wagon. He jabbed a finger towards the wagon that Kleeve and Tombek had succeeded in righting. Kleeve, something of a rider in more peaceful times, was soothing the horses that had been unable to free themselves from the harness when the wagon overturned.

  Dropping to his haunches behind the wagon, Fellick grabbed one of the soldiers by the collar and shouted in his face: ‘Weapons! Powder! Do you have any weapons or powder?’

  The militiaman – the unicorn on his shoulder crest marked him as a member of the Mundax Reserve – stared blankly at Fellick for a moment, then managed to shake his head.

  ‘Powder wagon took a direct hit,’ he stammered. ‘Lost everything. Nothing left. No shot. No powder.’

  ‘Then take this.’ Fellick unhooked an old butcher’s knife from his belt. ‘We’re heading for the wagon over there. See it?’ Again he jabbed a finger towards the wagon. Tylor and Lollack had arrived. They had a couple of survivors with them. The militiaman nodded and took the butcher’s knife.

  ‘Th-thanks,’ he mumbled.

  ‘It’s okay,’ Fellick replied. ‘Now follow me and bring your friends.’

  Brael threw himself to the ground as the war machine roared past, firing blindly into the smoke. Whatever strategy the greenskins may have had appeared to have been abandoned; they continued to ride over the battlefield, shooting at shadows, because they enjoyed it.

  ‘Massau, you all right?’ Brael shouted, craning round to look for the guildsman, but finding no sign of him. Brael cursed. Massau was an effete fool, but he was a good shot and Brael was loath to lose his marksmanship.

  The roar of the war machine had faded, so Brael climbed cautiously to his feet. He carried the long rifle balanced loosely in his crippled hand, the looted greenskin cleaver in his right. The stubby pistol with which he had dispatched the greenskin in Grellax pressed against his back where he had holstered it through his belt. He moved silently, senses alert for any kind of movement nearby.

  The shot came from the right: a sharp report, a flash and the buzz of a projectile as it narrowly missed his ear. Brael ducked, moved quickly away to one side, then back at an angle that brought him up behind the sniper’s position.

  She was perhaps sixteen summers old, huddled with the corpse of an older woman. She swung the empty pistol round to face Brael as soon as he emerged from the drifting smoke.

  ‘It’s empty,’ he told her, then had to knock it from her hand as she rose at him, attempting to use the pistol as a club.

  ‘My skin’s not green,’ he said, hastily hooking the cleaver onto his belt and then grabbing her wrist as she made to claw at his eyes with her nails. ‘And I don’t have time to waste. We have transport – or we should have – and we are getting away from here.’

  The girl stared at Brael for a heartbeat then uttered a single word – ‘Mother’ – before wrenching herself free from his grasp and dropping back beside the dead woman. ‘I promised I wouldn’t leave her,’ she explained when Brael crouched before her.

  ‘She wouldn’t want this,’ Brael replied. ‘I have a son and, if I was dead, I’d want him to go on living. The last thing I would ever wish for would be to be the cause of my son’s death.’ Swallowing hard and remembering the faces of his wife and son as the iron caravan pulled away, Brael held out his free hand.

  Fellick had loaded the refugees aboard the wagon. The militiamen had recovered themselves and were standing with the others around the wagon while Kleeve continued to talk to the horses calmly.

  ‘How much longer?’ asked Tylor. The smoke was thinning as the wagons burned themselves out. It was becoming ever more likely that they would be spotted.

  ‘Soon,’ Fellick replied. He didn’t like the way he was expected to assume command in Brael’s absence. ‘We give them a chance to get back to us.’

  ‘There’s Massau!’ Kobar pointed to where the guildsman had emerged from the drifting smoke. Massau ran towards them, shouting. ‘Get moving! I lost Brael then heard gunfire.’ Massau shouted as he reached the wagon. ‘Surely we can’t risk waiting any longer,’ he continued between gulps of air.

  Tombek snatched Massau’s rifle from him and checked the firing pan. ‘This hasn’t been fired,’ he announced.

  ‘I couldn’t, I told you,’ Massau began to splutter. ‘They fired first. I couldn’t risk lifting my head to aim.’

  ‘You said you only heard gunfire,’ Tombek persisted, stubbornly.

  ‘There!’ shouted Distek. Two figures were running towards them through the last wisps of a drifting curtain of smoke.

  ‘And there!’ Lollak – a reticent former tanner from Terrax, far to the west – pointed away at an angle, where a lone figure was also running towards them. The smoke was clearing fast and they could make out who it was: Vikor.

  ‘Kleeve, get the horses ready to go,’ Fellick ordered. Kleeve climbed aboard the wagon and readied the reins. ‘Come on, Vikor, lad, move!’

  Vikor had no idea how he had found his way back through the
smoke. He only knew one thing: he had failed to find his mother and sister. His mind swam with images of them, lost somewhere on the battlefield, calling his name and receiving no reply.

  Then why was he running towards the wagon that his new comrades had been able to make ready? Shouldn’t he turn back, continue his search? To do that, he realised, would mean going to his death. And he wanted to live.

  The cheerful one – Fellick – was beckoning to him, urging him on. Then, between one step and the next, death took him, tossed him aside in broken, bloody pieces and roared away to claim his friends.

  The burst of gunfire punched Vikor off his feet and through the air. By the time he hit the ground he was already dead. The war machine roared out of the smoke behind him. Its fat front wheel rolled over Vikor’s pelvis, snapping bones like old twigs and grinding them into the dirt as its rider steered towards the wagon.

  ‘Gods, Kleeve, get moving!’ Fellick shouted. ‘Everyone aboard!’

  Flicking the reins, Kleeve urged the horses on. The animals, hearing the scream of the approaching engine, needed no encouragement; they took fright and bolted up the slope, hauling the bucking and jouncing wagon after them.

  Brael pushed the girl to the ground the moment Vikor was hit. Shielding her body with his, he watched the young Grellaxian fall and his men and the wagon head for the rise. He saw Fellick look towards him from the wagon, clinging to the jolting boards and wearing a helpless expression. They had been through a lot together, seen things neither would have believed possible. This, it seemed, was where it ended.

  Tombek grabbed Massau’s rifle and fired at the oncoming greenskin. The shot went wide and Tombek was almost thrown from the wagon as a wheel hit a sudden dip.

  Kleeve worked the reins frantically, desperate to urge a little more speed from the horses, whose flanks were already slick with sweat, their lips pulled back and flecked with foam.

  The war machine roared closer with every heartbeat. Its rider fired a short volley – a ranging shot which chewed up the ground to the right of the wagon, spraying its passengers with dirt. Everyone on board the wagon ducked, then stayed crouched low, expecting the next burst to be the last they heard. But the next burst of alien gunfire chewed a single line of impacts that ended at the war machine and its rider. Several shells punched through the machine itself; one exploded the fat rear wheel, causing the machine to fish-tail wildly. The rider struggled to regain control of his ride. Then a second burst slammed him from the saddle.

  The riderless machine veered off, bleeding oil from its punctured innards and tearing a furrow in the dirt with its collapsed rear wheel. As the wagon continued up the slope, its passengers watched as the greenskin staggered to its feet, still able to move despite the ugly impact wound it had received high on its chest. It howled after the fleeing humans and unslung a wide-barrelled rifle from across its back.

  A third burst of gunfire from the top of the slope hit the beast, throwing it backwards off its feet, this time rendering its misshapen skull into raw meat and bone. Splayed out with its feet facing the retreating wagon, its corpse continued to twitch as if some instinct remained after life had gone, knowing that its quarry was getting away.

  Kleeve barely succeeded in reining in the panicked horses and brought the wagon to a stop a few strides from where Costes and Perror were celebrating, shouting to be heard over the ringing in their ears, their faces and hands coated with smuts ejected from the machine-rifle. The weapon sat propped against the lashed-together pike staves, smoke drifting from its barrel and the reek of hot oil tainted the air.

  Brael hauled the girl to her feet and ran with her up the slope. They reached the wagon as the machine-rifle was being loaded aboard.

  ‘Good to see you,’ Fellick said.

  ‘You too,’ Brael replied. He surveyed the number of people gathered around and sitting in the wagon. Too many for them all to ride in the wagon without killing the horses in less than a day. As before they would only be able to move as quickly as the slowest of them could march.

  ‘Who’s your friend?’ Fellick asked.

  Brael looked at the girl. Tall and slim, she had the dark hair and olive complexion of the local population. Her eyes still held a trace of the wildness that had been in them when she tried to club Brael with the empty pistol. She had retrieved the ancient-looking weapon from where it had fallen before following Brael away from her dead mother and was holding it limply in one hand.

  ‘I have no idea,’ Brael said. ‘What’s your name, girl?’

  ‘Freytha,’ the girl replied. ‘Freytha Lodz.’

  ‘We’re ready to move!’ Kleeve called from his seat aboard the wagon. The women and children among the civilians Fellick had found had been loaded aboard the wagon, along with Perror and Costes, who had set up the machine-rifle to point to the rear. The men were grouped around the wagon, awaiting orders.

  ‘We should get going,’ Fellick said. ‘The greenskins will be on our tail soon enough.’

  Brael nodded. ‘Head south,’ he said. With the army gone – either lying dead in the valley, or scattered to the winds in small groups of battle-shocked survivors, there was only one place left for them to go: the iron city. Mallax.

  PART TWO

  Mallax was founded on the few mineral and ore deposits that were ever found on this primarily agricultural world. Over the generations of decline which followed Agra’s loss of contact with the Imperium (cross ref. 666/852-hist: Age of Apostasy) the Mallaxians continued to mine these deposits and, in their manufactoria, to work them into agricultural implements and weapons of war.

  As the ore deposits were exhausted, Mallax’s manufactoria were turned to the repair and maintenance of those Imperial artefacts and machines that had survived the generations since contact was lost – though their origin and the existence of the Imperium was already slipping into the realm of myth and legend. Mallax became the workshop of the world.

  The other city-states, such as Primax (the site, its city charter suggests, of the first human settlement on Agra), Terrax and Mundax, looked down upon Mallax, despite their reliance on its workshops for the maintenance of their agricultural machinery and the weapons with which they occasionally fought their petty wars. Contempt turned to envy, however, as the invaders rolled across Agra’s verdant continent. Only one city had sufficient stockpiles of weaponry, ancient and patched though much of it was, to stand a hope of offering any real resistance.

  – Extract: ‘Inquisitorial communiqué 747923486/aleph/Samax IV’ Author: Inquisitor Selene Infantus. M41,793

  An ancient lantern held in his damaged hand, the stubby greenskin pistol in the other, Brael moved as swiftly as he dared along the tunnel beneath the city. Though the tunnel floor had been worn smooth by the passage of countless feet in ages past, the roof was of uneven height; the threat of dashing out one’s own brains on an unexpected overhang was very real.

  The lantern gave off a thin yellow light and the scent of animal fat. Its glow illuminated a few paces of the tunnel ahead, but neither Brael nor the men who had followed him down the shaft into the darkness beneath Mallax needed to see too far along the tunnel to guide them towards their destination. The shouts, screams and loud guttural roars, punctuated by the occasional gunshot were enough.

  It had been almost three weeks since Brael and his men arrived at Mallax. They made their way warily through the deserted districts outside the city’s tall curtain wall and identified themselves to the sentries – although Brael was sure that they had been tracking them for some time before making their presence known. After a short debriefing, they were assigned to a defensive station atop the wall and a reserve station below the battlements where they were to spend their off-duty hours.

  A week after they had reached Mallax, the vanguard of the invaders’ army had topped the horizon. As more and more of the infernal machines roared into view, carrying with them the greenskined plague that had wiped the Agran people from the rest of their land, the harrying attacks be
gan. Two- and three-wheeled war engines rushed through the outer districts, firing up at the defences, testing them. Brael was of the opinion that they weren’t trying to breach the wall. They were just amusing themselves until all their forces were assembled. Then they would come, together, to erase the last Agran stronghold from planet.

  Brael’s unit had been the third to respond to the cries of ‘Attack from within!’ Runners had been sent from the first unit to discover the attack and descend to meet it. Appalled that the greenskins might have found a way under the curtain wall, Brael led his men down from their reserve station and east through the streets to the head of the mineshaft.

  To their great chagrin, Brael ordered Costes and Perror to stay with the machine-rifle. There were those among the city’s swollen ranks of defenders and refugees who were not above stealing such a weapon and selling or bartering it to another militia company.

  ‘And besides,’ Fellick added when Brael’s orders didn’t manage to quieten their protests, ‘you finally seem to have worked out how to hit something with it. You wouldn’t want to waste all that practice.’

  At the mineshaft, a tower stood over the hole in the ground, with a wheelhouse huddled at its base. The area immediately surrounding the mine was clear of buildings, but was overlooked by warehouses that ringed the open space. The area itself was not completely featureless; it was dotted by ancient piles of slag and other debris brought up with the valuable black rock that Mallax’s engineers used to refine and use as fuel for their machines. The slag heaps were so old, hardy weeds had sprouted and covered them with grey and green patches.

  By the time Brael’s men had made their way down from their reserve station to the head of the ancient, disused mine shaft, a second platoon had descended to reinforce the first. Neither had returned, nor sent out a man with word of their progress. Brael and his company were the third to descend into the darkness.