Brothers of the Snake

by Dan Abnett

  'I want to wake up now.’ Priad said aloud.

  The black dog turned, whined mournfully, and then began to bound away, heedless of his calls, vanishing into the distance.

  'I want to wake up now.’ Priad said again, looking around.

  He froze. The dark shadows under the trees had moved out into the open, becoming tall, sharp silhouettes, grim figures that steadily cut their way towards him, swinging scythes through the corn.

  He started to blunder on. The corn he strode through chimed and clunked off his thigh plates. Looking down, he saw that it was no longer corn. Every stalk was made of iron, fashioned into a snake. Every stalk hissed.

  'I want to wake up now!' Priad cried. 'Let me wake up, in the name of the Throne! Let me do this!'

  The figures closed in, glossy black and skeletally thin, their reaping blades cutting down sheaves of snakes that hissed and bled on the meadow ground.

  'Let me wake up!' Priad yelled. He felt the chill of death creep over his shoulder. He dared not look around. He heard the steady, slithering swish of a scythe, cutting through the stalks, close behind.

  'I want to wake up!' he demanded.

  And he did.

  XIX

  The Bullwyrm, weary and spent, made orbit over Baal Solock, and set to high anchor. The entire world below was silent. No response came to the signals of the phratry warship.

  Priad had said nothing of his dream, though the content and sensation of it had lingered in his mind in the days since. Petrok had still not woken from his death-sleep. Priad had sat at his cot-side for hours, searching the still face for some sign that his dream had been more than just a dream.

  Finally, as the brothers of Damocles dressed in their wargear and prepared for descent, Priad had taken Khiron to a private part of the vessel, and told him all that had visited his slumber.

  "You must tell this to Autolochus.’ Khiron said.

  Priad shook his head. 'The old warhorse will have enough trouble dealing with the rest of my intentions. You tell him, after I'm gone.’

  What does that mean?' Khiron asked.

  * * *

  Damocles squad had assembled on the martial deck, gleaming in their repaired and refurbished plate. Autolochus stood with them.

  Priad entered the deck, and allowed the attendants to case him in his armour. They bound his limbs and torso with linen and leather straps, anointed him with oils, and carefully locked the segments of the armour into place, connecting feed lines as they built the suit around him. It had been finished to a rare degree of wonder, buffed and polished to a glassy brightness. The armourers had worked with consummate skill. He half expected to see a captain's laurels around the crown of his helm.

  Priad sat on a dressing block as they fitted his lightning claw. Slaves oiled his black hair, and coiled it up around his scalp, ready for the helmet fit. Others brought him his blade and his boltgun. Munition spares were strapped around his waist.

  The lightning claw was connected. Priad test-clenched it, watching the finger blades work, and the blue energy crackle, fierce blue, like the ice of the Kraretyer glacier.

  He rose to his feet as the armourers and their servants withdrew, nodding his thanks to them. He took his helm from a waiting slave.

  He crossed the deck to join the others.

  'The rite, Apothecary.’ he said.

  Khiron nodded, and withdrew the flask – tubular, copper, banded with straps of dull zinc – from a sheath strapped to the thigh-plate of his power armour.

  This was the Rite of the Giving of Water, and none of proud Damocles looked away. Nine armoured warriors, the entire assault squad, along with the looming dreadnought, surrounded the kneeling Apothecary as he unscrewed the stopper, and tipped a few drops out onto his segmented glove. The armour they wore was gunmetal grey, edged with white and red, and the armourers had burnished all the suits to a gleaming finish. The threads of water made stark black streaks on the shining metal of Khiron's gauntlet. As the brothers intoned the sacred rite, voices toneless as they rasped out through visor speakers, Khiron dribbled the water onto the deck. It pooled there, and the rite was made. Water had been given, precious drops from the raging salt oceans of their home-world, Ithaka.

  They were born from a world of seas, raised from it like the great horn-plated water-wyrms they named themselves after. To them, it was the embodiment of the Emperor, who they voyaged space to serve. Wherever they went, on whatever undertaking, they made this offering, the life-water of Ithaka, the blood of the Emperor.

  They were Iron Snakes. Just for a moment, this rite of compact reminded them of their solemn, eternal oath. The double-looped serpent symbol glowed proudly on their auto-responsive shoulder plates. They were Tactical Squad Damocles, charged with a holy duty. They stood in the ring, as Brother Khiron rose to join the circle, warrior-gods in the form of men, armoured and terrible. They sang, a slow ritual tune, and beat time in deadened clanks, slapping right hands against their thigh plates.

  Their weapons had been made safe for the Rite of Giving of Water, as ready weapons would be disrespectful. The chant over, they moved with smooth precision, clicking sickle-pattern clips into bolt pistols. Brother Andromak lit his flamer. Blue lightning crackled back into life around Brother-Sergeant Priad's lightning claw. He nodded. The circle broke.

  'I go alone,' said Priad.

  'I had a feeling you would say that.’ Autolochus grumbled.

  Twelve years ago, as a virgin inductee, I came here. I made an undertaking that I believed was done and finished with. I was wrong. I have to finish what I started. I have to complete the task I failed to complete then, or I am no better than an inductee, with no right to lead this band of Notables. And I must finish it as I started it, alone.’

  'Brother.’ Xander began.

  'No argument, Xander.’ Priad said. 'No discussion. I go on ahead. They know me here. Wait for me, for my summons. I'll call for you if I need you.’

  'Then may the Emperor protect you.’ Autolochus growled, and the brothers of Damocles murmured their assent.

  Priad walked to the air gate and settled himself into the cabin of the lander. The flight systems were fully automated, and governed remotely by the skill of the Bullwyrm's chief pilot on the cruiser's bridge.

  Priad sealed the hatches, blew the air ducts and fuel pipes, released the clamps, and settled down as the cabin lighting dimmed and his arrestor chair rotated back into descent mode.

  'Clear for descent,' the vox crackled.

  'Drop me,' Priad replied.

  There was a bang. A multi-G lurch. A rush.

  The lander fell sharply away from the belly of its mothership, corrected attitude in a torch-flare of burners, dipped nose-down, and rushed away towards the bright sphere of Baal Solock.

  XX

  Priad headed for Fuce, scoring the cloudy sky above the old city and made landfall in water meadows that seemed familiar.

  It was dawn, and the air was grey. Hefting up his wargear, Priad descended from the lander. No one came to meet him. Beyond the water meadows, the piles of the ancient city rose up, silent and unforthcoming.

  He made his way up out of the water meadows. His memory told him of a state park, a formal woodland, but that had long gone. Barrier walls of rockcrete and mesh encircled the outer flanks of the High Legislator's palace. Within the barrier walls, tall palings of wood and flint tiles had been erected, and earthwork defences had been built. They were old, he noticed. Moss and lichen clung to the tiles and coated the wood.

  'Hello!' he called, amping the volume of his helmet speakers. His call echoed around the empty place, rebounding from the stern, defensive walls.

  Unopposed, he climbed the walls and the paling fences, and came up the stone apron of the palace.

  His auspex read heat signatures ahead, and automatic target crosshairs lit up across his vision. He blinked them away. The hot spots were pockets of body heat, and the glow of gun batteries, concealed in the bastion wall ahead.

  '
Unless you mean to be my enemy.’ he called out, 'stop aiming your weapons at me.'

  The heat traces melted away. Priad heard hasty footsteps retreating from him along the platforms of the bastion. He walked in under the gate. The courtyard was empty. Glancing up, he saw how the sun was losing its battle with the weather. Clouds rushed across the sky, as if in a hurry to be somewhere else.

  He reached the palace door, a heavy timber thing, and raised a fist. Then he stopped, amused at the notion of knocking. He pushed the door open and stepped inside. Cold stone. Rush lights. Again, that vacant sensation that human life was hiding in the corners of the world, just outside of his perception.

  He strode down the hallway, his footsteps loud, passing under great windows full of sky, and oil portraits of significant men, long dead. A mechanical clock chimed somewhere, far away down one of the quiet halls.

  'Hello?' he called. 'Anyone?'

  He heard a soft, padding sound. A dog appeared.

  For a moment, he was disappointed it wasn't black. It was a large attack dog, its coat a woolly grey. It glared at him and growled.

  Priad knelt down and issued a command whistle.

  The hound balked, then ran to him, snuffling at his greaves.

  'Show me,' he said.

  The dog turned and ran ahead, down the lonely hallway, to a set of massive doors. Priad pushed them open. The room beyond was huge, a vaulted chamber glazed with candle smoke. A hundred tapers flickered around the edges of the chamber. A thin figure was seated in a wooden throne at the far end of the lofty room.

  'I have come to meet with the High Legislator,' Priad said, the dog running off ahead of him.

  The figure rose. 'You've found her.'

  Vocal recognition templates flashed across Priad's visor. 'Primary clerk?'

  Perdet Suiton Antoni, slender and grey-haired, rose to her feet. 'Priad?'

  'The very same.'

  'Terra in the heavens! I thought you were my death, coming to claim me.'

  He stepped towards her. She looked very old and delicate.

  'You are the High Legislator of Fuce?' he asked.

  'Can't a woman hold such an office?' she replied. There was a vigour inside her, despite her frailty. 'Great gods, Priad? Is it really you? I... I didn't send for you.'

  'I wasn't summoned.’ Priad replied. He walked down the length of the cold chamber, and removed his helmet.

  'Gods!' she gasped. 'You haven't changed!'

  He was close enough now, face to face with her, to see how time had eroded her looks and shrunk her frame. She was an old woman. The sight shocked him.

  'I mean it.’ Antoni said. 'You haven't changed a bit since I last saw you here. Do you remember that? It was an age ago. You've probably forgotten, the life you lead.’

  'I remember. Twelve years ago, on this soil, summoned by you.’

  She blinked, and went over to a nearby table, pouring herself a cup of wine. As she drank it, Priad saw how her lined hands trembled.

  'It's not been twelve years.’ she said. 'More like... forty. Forty years, by the calendars of Baal Solock.’

  That's not right...' Priad began to say, then stopped. He recalled what small learning he had about the complex ways time and the warp moved around each other, indifferent and unaligned. He had followed the path of his life along its own measurement, travelling from world to world, undertaking to undertaking, but it was entirely possible that dislocated places away from that path might have advanced through time at different rates. He had been gone for twelve of his own years, but Baal Solock had moved on at its own pace. There was no definition to the process of the galaxy, no fixed mark, no absolute degree of period. Even sidereal time, by which he'd measured this return, had no governed meaning.

  'You haven't changed.’ he said, believing that was the thing one was supposed to say.

  'Not true!' she snapped. 'I've grown old and paper-thin. You're the one who hasn't aged a day.’

  She put down her glass and came over to him, staring up at his face. 'Not a day.’ she said, and hugged him, stretching her arms around the broad case of his armour.

  You haven't changed.’ he said, truthfully. 'You might be older, Antoni, but you're still the same.’

  You smooth talker.’ she laughed, gamely, and playfully slapped his arm. 'I've become an old woman on an empty throne, watching over a frightened world. And now you arrive, fresh as the day you left, and confirm that all our fears are founded.’

  'How is that?'

  'You wouldn't be here, Priad, if Baal Solock wasn't in danger.’

  That's not why I've come, primary... High Legislator. I'm here to finish some old business.’

  'What old business?' she asked, limping back to her throne to sit down.

  The teeth. The trophies I left you with. From the jaw bone.’

  She frowned. 'Teeth? Yes, I remember. The teeth. Funny peg things. Throne, that was long ago. A long time. I must have been pretty then. Young and pretty. Is that how you remember me, Priad? Is that what you expected?'

  'I expected Perdet Suiton Antoni, and that's what I've found. The teeth, Perdet. Please, where are the teeth?'

  She thought about that and shrugged. 'I can't remember. I haven't seen them in years.’

  Priad looked around. Try to recall...'

  'I have had other matters to contend with.’ she snapped. 'Ruling the cantons and what not. We have lived in fear since your passing, Priad.’

  'Does that fear explain the new walls and palings?'

  'New? I had them raised thirty-five years ago, on my election. For which I must thank you, by the way I'd never have reached this rank but for the celebrity of adventuring beside the Iron Snake hero who saved our world. '

  What are you afraid of?' he asked simply

  That they'd ever come again. The primuls. Baal Solock has lived in fear and watched the heavens every day since you last set foot here.’

  The primuls are gone.’ Priad said. 'I drove them out. You won't see them again.’

  'You're wrong.’ said the aged High Legislator. They've come back. We've seen the lights of their ships in the sky.’

  'That was my vessel, on descent.’

  'Not today. For the last three weeks. Why do you suppose the city is empty? My people have fled to the hills. The primuls have come back, Priad. The primuls are here.’

  Priad looked up at the huge windows. Rain clouds had darkened the sky. There was a peal of distant thunder. 'Are you sure?' he asked. 'Oh, completely.’ she said.

  XXI

  She summoned servants. Half a dozen appeared, unwilling and scared. They had evidently been hiding in some basement or cellar. She made them take up tapers and light the way for them.

  'Where are we going?'

  'The museum.’ she declared.

  Surrounded by the bearers with their fluttering candles, the two walked side by side along the dark and empty corridors of the palace, passing staterooms and apartments where the furniture had been covered with dust cloths.

  'It is a curious thing.’ she began. 'When you came to us, you brought us salvation from a very real and very terrible threat. It was a historic moment for the Legislature. But there's always a price, isn't there?'

  'I would imagine so.’ he said.

  'Your salvation left us with a legacy of abject fear. It has quite become a national condition over the years. Before the primuls, we were innocent. Wary of the stars, perhaps, and sensible to such hazards that might come. But we lived our lives in peace and calm, and never jumped at shadows.’

  She waited while one of the servants unlocked a heavy set of wooden doors that glinted almost black with varnish.

  'Now we do.’ she said. We live in fear, paranoid. The visitation of the primuls proved the existence of true, cosmic horror, and showed us that we needed the help of gods to rid ourselves of it. It showed us our place in the galaxy, Priad, showed us how weak and insignificant and vulnerable we are.’

  'I'm sorry.’ he said.

 
; 'Don't be! It wasn't your fault. It changed people's spirits, though, changed character. In the years after the visitation, resources were taken up with the construction of fortification, with the improvement of our soldiery, with the development of new and better weapons and finer detection systems. Fear made us hard and untrusting.’

  She led the way through the open doors, down a long flight of marble steps into a grand room lined with columns. The floor space was filled with rows of display cases, and the lights of the candles reflected off the lead glass.

  'The teeth were popular, at first.’ she said. 'In the months after the visitation. I was popular too, and so were the stories I had to tell. I was feted throughout the Legislature, invited to attend the salons of many rich and influential lords. I was even sent on embassies abroad. Everyone wanted to hear about the monsters and my great adventure. Everyone wanted to hear about you.’

  Priad smiled. 'And how many primuls did you slay in the end?'

  What do you mean?'

  'Surely a tale like that would have grown and flourished in the retelling?'

  She looked hurt. 'Do you inflate the tally of your deeds, warrior?'

  'No, I do not.’

  'Neither do I. I have prided myself on a life conducted with proper honesty and decorum.’

  He thought that he might have offended her, but then she said, 'I may possibly have killed one or two more of them, by the time the invitations started to become less frequent. And you were a lord general, not a man-at-arms.’

  She looked at him. 'You wear insignia now.’

  'I am brother-sergeant of Damocles.’

  'Only a sergeant?' She turned away and began peering at the display cases. 'I should have brought my spectacles. These labels are old and hard to read.’

  'Is this the museum?' Priad asked.

  'The state museum. I kept the teeth with me to begin with, but there was great interest, as I said. People would come from leagues away to see them. I had them set on display here in the museum, where the public could visit them without bothering me, and they were quite a draw for many years. I haven't thought about them for such a long time. I suppose they're still here, somewhere.’