Hammer and Bolter: Issue Twenty-Six

by Christian Dunn

  Laughter made an ugly sound through Nemiok’s battle-helm as he hailed the gunner’s kills.

  ‘Wipe them from existence!’ he roared, sighting a group of orks that had escaped the fusillade. He unclipped a grenade and tossed it towards them.

  As the greenskins were engulfed by explosion, he called to Varik. ‘Brother, I wish to anoint my blade with their xenos blood!’

  Varik nodded, his drawn chainsword burring in his iron grip.

  Though battered, the orks charged, cleavers and cutters swinging. Varik sliced the head off one as his battle-brother impaled another. Nemiok then eviscerated a third before Varik finished the last, bifurcating the beast from groin to sternum.

  Sheathing his chainsword, Nemiok headed down a narrow street that led into a larger plaza.

  ‘Hold!’ Varik’s cry fell on deaf ears as he rushed to catch his brother.

  Emerging from between a pair of smouldering blockhouses, Nemiok drew a bead on a greenskin’s back. It was already wounded, missing half an arm and badly shot up. It was rushing at a kill the Marines Malevolent couldn’t see and didn’t care about. He scythed the ork down, opening up its back and spine as the mass reactive bolter shells exploded. As it fell, Nemiok saw two females he recognised through his blood-flecked crosshairs. He pulled his finger from the trigger, but it was too late.

  Betheniel was dead. Her eyes were open as she lay on her back in a growing pool of blood. The shell shrapnel had only clipped her, but it was enough for a killing blow. Athena held the novitiate in her arms, muttering a prayer.

  ‘Saint Katherine, I beseech you, bring this faithful soldier to the side of the Emperor. Protect her soul for the journey to the Golden Throne…’

  She did not weep. Her resolve was hard as marble. Athena tightened her grip around Private Kolber’s sidearm and stood up. She wasn’t unsteady, nor did she feel any fear or doubt as she approached the armoured giant in yellow and black.

  ‘You are a disgrace to the aquila,’ she spat, bringing up the laspistol.

  The shot was almost point-blank. It made Nemiok grunt and stagger but otherwise left him unscathed. He tore off his helm, uncaring of the battle around them. Underneath, he wore a mask of pure hatred.

  ‘For that show of strength, I will let you see my face before I execute you,’ he snarled, letting the bolter drop to its strap and drawing his spatha. ‘This will really hurt,’ he promised.

  The punch to his unarmoured jaw sent Nemiok reeling and the spatha spiralling from his grasp to land blade down in the earth.

  ‘You’ve shamed yourself enough.’

  Nemiok looked like he was about to reach for another weapon but stopped when Varik shook his head.

  ‘Killing innocents in cold blood, there is no honour in that.’ Varik turned to Athena.

  ‘Get out of here. A warzone is no place for a sister of mercy,’ he told her. ‘Stay alive and do some good at least.’ He took the pistol, crushed it. ‘Draw on my brothers a second time and I won’t stay my hand.’

  She nodded, realising what Varik had sacrificed so that she could live.

  Athena rushed to Betheniel’s side. Another group of refugees had found them and helped lift the body onto an Imperial Guard half-track. They drove off south, away from Devil’s Ridge and the orks. There were still more greenskins thronging the edge of the camp, coming down from the mountains.

  She didn’t know what had made Varik intercede. Perhaps there was more compassion in the Space Marines than she realised. It didn’t matter. Compassion wouldn’t win this war. Only Yarrick could do that.

  Overhead the barrage began anew, stealing away her thoughts and keeping the orks pinned. It would be several hours before the battle was done. Many more civilians would die. Only a few would know the Emperor’s deliverance.

  Varik kept his brother in his sights until he was sure his ire had cooled.

  ‘You’ll regret that,’ Nemiok told him.

  ‘You go too far.’

  The dense throb of heavy engines interrupted and they looked up to see a squadron of gunships coming down to land in the distance.

  ‘Now there’ll be trouble,’ Varik muttered.

  The gunships were forest green, emblazoned with the snarling head of a firedrake. They belonged to the Salamanders.

  Vinyar yanked off a gauntlet as he reclined on his throne in the Marines Malevolent barrack house. It was gloomy within the boxy ferrocrete structure, furnished with all the austerity expected of his puritanical Chapter. The captain kept banners and trophies close at hand. It was the only ornamentation he allowed in the stark chamber, except for a broad strategium table where a host of maps and data-slates were strewn.

  He reviewed one, a report of the bombing at Emperor’s Deliverance, not deigning to look at the two warriors standing silently in his presence.

  ‘How many human casualties?’

  ‘Around four thousand, sire.’

  ‘And the orks?’

  ‘Total annihilation.’

  Vinyar set down the slate, smiled at the two warriors.

  ‘Acceptable losses.’

  ‘There was also significant structural damage.’

  ‘Negligible,’ Vinyar waved away any concerns. ‘The greenskins are in retreat, the Marines Malevolent are victorious.’

  ‘What of Armageddon Command? I have heard talk of sanctions against us.’

  Vinyar’s laugh was derisive. ‘Destrier has been reminded of his place and purpose in this war, Brother Varik. There’ll be no further repercussions from him.’

  The warriors lingered, prompting the captain to ask, ‘Was there something more?’

  Varik awaited Nemiok’s damning account of what had happened with Sister Athena, but his response was surprising.

  ‘No, sire,’ he rasped, jaw tight.

  ‘Then you’re dismissed.’

  Both warriors saluted, turned on their heel and left.

  Vinyar was poring over the maps on his strategium table, planning the next assault, when he heard the barrack house door opening again.

  ‘Changed your mind, Nemiok?’ he asked, looking up but finding someone else in his chambers. Vinyar sneered. ‘You.’

  An onyx-skinned warrior was standing before him, armoured in forest green. A scaled cloak hung from his broad shoulders, attached beneath gilded pauldrons. Iconography of drakes and fire, hammers and anvils emblazoned his battle-plate. His voice was abyssal deep.

  ‘I have spoken with Colonel Destrier,’ he said. ‘I have also witnessed the excessive force used at Emperor’s Deliverance and been told of the civilian casualties.’

  ‘There is collateral damage in any war,’ protested Vinyar. ‘If I had not acted as punitively as I did, there would still be orks roaming that camp. Besides, cowards are unworthy of being spared.’

  The green-armoured warrior had unhitched a thunder hammer from his back and slammed it on the strategium table, cracking data-slates and tearing maps. He was unbuckling a holstered pistol when he said, ‘You misunderstand the purpose of my visit, Vinyar.’ He looked up and his eyes flashed fire-red. ‘This isn’t a discussion.’ He glanced at the gauntlets the Marines Malevolent captain had discarded. ‘Put those back on. I want this to be even.’

  Vinyar was belligerent, but reached for his gauntlets anyway. ‘What are you talking about, Tu’Shan?’

  ‘Penance and restitution,’ said the Chapter Master of the Salamanders. Bones cracked in his neck as he loosened them.

  ‘I’ll give you one piece of advice,’ he added, clenching and unclenching his fists to work the knuckles. ‘Don’t go for a weapon.’

  Then he closed the barrack room door.

  THE FANGS OF THE ASP

  Josh Reynolds

  ‘What day is this, Djubti?’ High Queen Khalida asked. Her voice issued from dry, cracked lips like sand sliding through a stone sluice. She blinked eyelids as fragile as papyrus and sucked air into long-shrivelled lungs, flexing her withered fingers. They were fragile looking, but capable of crushing
stone. So much had changed.

  The wizened, bent shape of the liche priest who served as her advisor turned slightly. Like Khalida herself, and the legions which stood at her back, silent and patient, Djubti was a shrivelled thing, empty of fluid, if not vitality. Dead flesh the colour of dried leather shrunk tight against yellowing bones beneath tattered rags which had once been fine. Decorations of gold and turquoise dangled against a shrunken chest and armlets meant for living limbs sagged and rattled on his bony arms.

  ‘The Day of Challenge, mighty Queen,’ Djubti said, as if she had not forgotten and his reminder was nothing more than a formality. ‘It is the Day of Scorpions, the Day of Swords.’

  ‘So soon,’ she murmured. That was why she was out here then. The explanation brought comfort, though not relief. Memories clutched at her, previous days of challenge and challengers both and the dim clangour of long-gone weapons.

  She looked up, at the black shape of Nagashizzar, which pierced the body of the horizon like a cancer. Its shadow spread across the slopes of Cripple Peak and the shores of the Sour Sea like some monstrous hand, rendering all within its envelop withered and dead, including the armies which unceasingly patrolled these lands, awaiting an enemy long-extinct. Armies such as hers, stationed here at the very heart of the ancient enemy’s land; it would fall to her to face Nagash first, should he return. That was her burden and her honour, by right of besting the former sentry on a previous Day of Scorpions, so long ago. She had held her place since then, against every challenger on every Day of Scorpions. Today would be no different.

  ‘It has been a decade since the last, most puissant and cunning lady,’ Djubti said, looking at her. She wondered, idly, what he saw. She had seen her reflection before, in the warped and blasted patches of sand which now dotted the Great Land as well as in the sluggish waters of oasis and river. But the reality of her was always blended in her mind’s eye with the memory of what – of whom – she had been. She saw the living warrior-queen, not the dead thing, the mummified parody of womanhood. Her hands clenched with a crackling of dry linen.

  ‘Has it?’ she said, not really requiring an answer.

  ‘Indeed, oh Beloved of Asaph,’ he croaked, air wheezing through his cracked and fleshless jaws. ‘Though I would not wish to insult the High Queen of Lybaras by implying that she had forgotten such, being but a humble scholar and not worthy.’

  ‘Humble scholar, is it?’ she said.

  ‘Most humble and indeed, unworthy to stand in the shadow of the wings of the Great Hawk of Lybaras, most beloved and gracious daughter of the Asp goddess,’ Djubti said, leaning on his staff. Merry sparks danced in his otherwise empty eyes. In life, Djubti had advised her grandfather and great-grandfather, or so he claimed. In death, he counselled her.

  ‘Only a decade,’ she said.

  ‘Every ten seasons comes the Day of Scorpions, my Queen,’ Djubti said. ‘Like the rains it comes and challengers with it.’ He gestured with his staff and she saw them, marching in silent formation. Spearmen, archers and horsemen were all in evidence and likely had been for some time, the dust of their passage rising high into the sky. She felt a moment’s dismay at the fact that she had not seen them, too lost in her memories.

  The tomb-legion stalked across the shore, the poisonous waves of the Sour Sea lapping at bare bones and skeletal hooves and the grinding metal talons of a massive, bestial warsphinx. The leonine statue caused none of the fear in her she would have felt, centuries past when blood still pumped in her veins. Now, its relentless lope merely piqued her curiosity. It was a show of ostentation, to unleash such a war-engine for an occasion such as this. Whoever he was, he obviously had little idea of who she was if he thought to overawe her in such a fashion.

  ‘Who is it who comes, Djubti?’ she said, not recognising the age-grimed standards that swayed and caught at the light with reflective talons.

  ‘Ushtep of Rasetra, High Queen, to judge by the falcon on his standard’ the liche priest said. He knew all the standards and who they were borne by. ‘His force is small, but battle-tested. Settra himself has spoken warm praises of his prowess.’

  ‘Has he,’ Khalida said.

  ‘No,’ Djubti said mildly. ‘But so Ushtep claims. Even in death, he seeks to elevate himself on the shoulders of others. He thinks that a period guarding this befouled tomb will gain him some influence; it is an honour, after all.’

  ‘It is my honour,’ Khalida said.

  ‘So it is,’ Djubti said, ducking his head. ‘But perhaps, my Queen, it is time for another to take your place?’ She looked at him. Djubti made a sound that might have been a sigh. ‘Perhaps not,’ he said.

  She ignored Djubti and looked down at her hand, her once slim fingers now reduced to linen shrouded talons. The loss of her beauty, of her life, bothered her not at all, a fact which in its turn did bother her, though in no way she could grasp. Her living years were as a dream, rags and tatters of colourful memory which occasionally swam to the black surface of her mind.

  ‘Speak softly and only into the ears of those inclined to listen,’ Neferata murmured as they watched the acrobats perform in the feast-hall of the great palace of Lahmia. They sat together on a pile of sumptuous pillows, set onto one of the many raised dais’s that dotted the hall. Among the worthies gathered amidst the stone columns and silken curtains below were men of noble birth from across the width and breadth of the Great Land. The motion of Neferata’s hand plucked them from obscurity in the same manner as another woman might choose sweetmeats. ‘Look there my little hawk, where Lord Ushtep of Rasetra and Imrathepis of Numas, third in line for the throne of that city, plot, for instance.’

  ‘How do you know they are plotting?’ Khalida had asked. Her eyes never left the men.

  Neferata chuckled and stroked the nape of her cousin’s neck with an easy, familiar gesture. ‘How could they be doing otherwise, given the tension between those two cities?’ She raised a hand and Khalida saw a shave-headed servant thread through the crowd towards the two men. ‘Likely, they intend to use that tension in order to raise their cachet amongst their own circles. Games within games, my little hawk,’ she said.

  ‘What will you do?’ Khalida asked, intrigued.

  ‘I will help them, of course,’ Neferata said. ‘I will have them both in my debt and Lahmia will benefit greatly from that.’

  ‘What if they do not want your help?’

  ‘One of them will,’ Neferata said confidently, ‘even if he must go behind his co-conspirator’s back to get it.’ She looked at Khalida and smiled. ‘Men think themselves wise if they know how to wage war, but none are so wise as those who recognise that war has more than one form.’ She gestured smoothly. ‘War has levels and fields undreamt by bull-headed generals and power-drunk kings.’ She pulled Khalida to her and kissed the top of her head. ‘Every war, every fight, has more than one front, Khalida. You would do well to remember that…’

  Khalida blinked away the fraying strands of memory and looked around, trying to re-familiarise herself with the present. It was hard, sometimes, to recognise the here and now. There were some among the risen dead of Nehekhara who could not, and spent their days in death as they had in life, unable to discern the change which had been forcibly wrought upon them. Servants, collections of bone and rags, stood immoveable around her, the brown bones of their arms bent against the poles of the ancient sunscreen they held over her head, a head no longer capable of feeling the sun. Behind them, the legions of Lybaras stood, waiting for her orders. Not all of them, to be sure, for she was no longer the Queen, but one queen among all the risen queens and kings of that fallen city.

  She touched her face and then her palm fell to the pommel of the khopesh stabbed into the dry earth before her. Her other hand was still wrapped tight around the comforting length of her staff of office. It was called the Venom Staff, and it was to be wielded only by the Beloved of Asaph, first among the servants of the Asp goddess. Serpentine shapes coiled the length of the staff, intertwini
ng so intricately that it was impossible to tell where one began and others ended. It was a thing of beauty, and sadness as well, for there would never be another Beloved of Asaph. All of her servants were dead, and the dead held their offices forever. She so-rarely released it from her grip that sand had collected in the dips and runnels where her fingers met metal. She set herself, one hand on the khopesh, one on the staff, and waited for the arrival of her latest opponent.

  Drums thumped as Ushtep’s legion drew to a halt some distance away. The warsphinx was a looming presence, its brooding features glaring at Khalida’s forces. The drums gave a rattle and then a chariot rolled forward, pulled by skeletal horses. Ushtep wore a cloak of hammered brass feathers over his mummified shape, and his helm was fashioned to resemble a hawk’s head. A large shield decorated one arm and a khopesh, much more elaborately engraved than hers, nestled in the crook of his other arm. The chariot creaked to a halt at a point halfway between their two forces. Ushtep gestured sharply and a warrior who was more bone than flesh hopped from the chariot and strode forward, his king’s standard held high to catch the light of the sun as it dipped below the twisted peaks of Nagashizzar.

  ‘King Ushtep, Mighty Falcon of Rasetra, Settra’s Strong Hand in the South, Master of the Fortress of Vengeful Souls, High King of the Sweltering Jungles, Champion of the Charnel Valley, Prince of All Princes and King Among Kings does request that High Queen Khalida, Queen of Lybaras, set low her standards and release her oaths and move hence from these demesnes,’ the herald croaked.

  Khalida’s face cracked into a smile. It was an old trick, that. Forgoing the recitation of your opponent’s titles was as sure a way of annoying them as any. Ushtep was an old hand at challenges, or perhaps simply arrogant. Either way, the insult rolled off her back. She had heard worse and there was more at stake here than honour. She forestalled her own herald, a liche clad in the raiment of one of Lybaras’ long-extinct scholars, from replying and stepped forward, uprooting her khopesh as she strode to meet her opponent. ‘Be careful, my lady,’ Djubti said softly. Khalida did not reply.