Hammer and Bolter: Issue 23

by Christian Dunn

  They are not subtle, these… things. Whatever they are, they lack my skill in woodcraft. They travel as brazenly as a kid on his first hunt; cracked twigs and broken branches mark their passage. I stayed far behind them and followed their trail, tracking them by the devastation left in their wake, and by that foul lingering scent. Now I have found them.

  There are five beasts, I think, and I am alone. But I am a hunter, and they are my prey. I check the string on my shortbow and finger the arrows in the small deerskin quiver that hangs low at my side. My spear sits strapped across my back. I am ready. My instincts tell me to attack, to kill them now and offer their remains to the gods in appeasement for their trespass. I restrain myself and await my chance.

  This past night, I crept close enough to see them. I sat outside the circle of flickering firelight and watched as they slept. That they would desecrate this land with fire shows that they do not respect the gods. I would have slit their throats as they slumbered and watched their blood feed the soil, were it not for the guard that paced their camp. I ventured as close as I dared, crouching low and stalking on all fours to watch them closer. Even asleep in the half-light, they were foul.

  Now, with the sun high in the sky, I perch in the treetops and watch as they pass below, never knowing I am there. This place is sacred. It is here that I hunt the great stags that the elders butcher for the holy day offerings. That the beasts walk here is an affront to the gods. I observe them. They walk upright, as do I, and use tools and weapons, as do I. But then, so do the greenskinned mountain brutes and the chittering tunnel-rats, and I have little in common with them.

  Their flesh, where it is exposed, is ruddy and hardened by the sun. They are covered by patchy fur on their heads and faces, thicker across their bodies. Seeing such a mockery of my own perfect form sickens me. An eremite who lives in seclusion in the sacred groves once told me that we were created by the gods in their own image. I wonder what manner of gods made these fiends.

  I see my chance. One of the beasts splits off from the pack and wanders beneath the trees on which I perch. I wonder why, until I smell the tang of urine. Anger flares in me. The monster is defiling this holy ground with its waste. I nock an arrow and take a deep breath as I aim.

  My quarry finishes. It turns. I breathe out. My arrow takes it in the throat. I am sure that I see a look of confusion cross its loathsome features. It falls.

  One.

  I step from the shadows and look down at the corpse as its blood soaks the leaves, deepening their autumn-red. An amulet hangs around its neck, harsh silver against the dark fur. I do not recognise the symbol, but I feel an instinctive fear of it. Perhaps it is an icon of whatever barbaric gods they worship.

  From the distance, I hear a bellow, and I dart behind a tree. Another beast comes off the trail, searching. It doesn’t see me as I rise and garrotte it with my bowstring. Its body goes limp in my arms and I let it fall.

  Two.

  My heartbeat quickens with fear as more come. They know now that I am here. The first is dead before it reaches me, arrows to the chest and leg spilling its life upon the forest floor.

  Three

  There are two left. I pull my spear from my back.

  They lope towards me, carrying broad-bladed axes that could split my skull with a single stroke. They are warriors, bulky and used to killing. One of them brays at me, its language harsh and guttural. A challenge? A question? I do not understand. I do not want to. It lunges, axe swinging towards my neck. It intends to finish this cleanly. It doesn’t get the chance. Surprise and fear war on its monstrous features as my spear pierces its gut. The spear snaps as I pull it out, and the beast’s blood gushes across me, soaking me. It stinks. I can smell and taste nothing else.

  Four.

  The remaining fiend throws itself at me. I drop the shattered haft of the spear and grab an axe from the ground. I deflect a blow aimed at my leg, and my desperate return stroke splits my foe from groin to throat. More heathen blood feeds the earth, and I feel the gods rejoice at the offering.

  I relax.

  Five.

  The arrow takes me in the throat.

  I try to laugh, though I make no sound, as I recall how the first of the beasts died. The gods mock me. I fall to my knees, and my eyes find those of my killer. I see something I recognise in its gaze, and realise that I was not the only hunter in the forest this day.

  Six.

  Fedor had been tracking the beastman for three days.

  He had heard tales that a pack of the subhuman monsters lived in the forest, but he had never believed it until now. He pulled his arrow from the creature’s throat, illuminated by the bright sunlight streaming through a gap in the forest canopy. It was a fusion of man and animal, covered in thick, shaggy fur, with horns coiling from its head. A beastman, the southerners called them. He pulled his thick fur coat tighter about his body.

  Pulling his axe from his belt, Fedor raised it to sever the beast’s head. As he looked down at the creature, he met its weak gaze and saw something familiar, something he recognised. For a moment, they were connected, hunter and prey, until Fedor let the axe fall.

  NECESSARY EVIL

  Rob Sanders

  The wraithgate sat in damnation’s darkness, lit only by the dread twilight of the Eye. Dusted in brimstone, its curves and arches cut a skeletal silhouette into the puce yonder. Here, among the perversity of a daemon world – where reality was twisted and the impossible ruled – the portal waited in the gloom. It waited for a visitor: one with reason to leave the interdimensional labyrinth of the webway beyond and step through a gateway to hell. Not many would accept such an invitation, but in a place where time had little meaning, the xenos artefact did not have long to wait.

  From the archway’s agitated nothingness proceeded the sizzle of warp static. Immaterial energies arced between the slants and barbs of the wraithgate’s alien architecture, shattering the space between. Drawing on unimaginable power, the portal scorched a hole through the fabric of time and space. Piece by piece, the reality beyond was assembled like the fragments of a stained glass window.

  Bronislaw Czevak stepped forth from this new reality and out onto the surface of the daemon world. His eyes were unmistakably ancient, yet his features were those of a much younger man. His coat was an abomination of eldritch design and alien fabric: ankle-length, incorporating a nauseating clash of colour with the insanity of interlocking patterns. As its harlequin tails flapped in the light breeze, the fabric’s surface rippled with a form of alien field technology that played with the eye. Inquisitor Bronislaw Czevak of the Emperor’s holy Inquisition, interdimensional refugee. Hunted by the Ruinous Powers for what he could do; by the Imperium for what he had done; by the alien eldar for what he might do. Inquisitor Bronislaw Czevak – known himself to hunt, on occasion.

  Taking in his surroundings, Czevak raised one furrowed brow. His shoulders sagged at the indication of a destination reached, before snapping the gilded covers of the Atlas Infernal shut and burying the antique tome in the depths of his alien coat. Still bathed in the protective purity of the book’s power and with the webway portal dying to inactivity behind him, the inquisitor jumped down from the gate and strode out across the hellish surface of an accursed world.

  Nereus had once been covered with fertile oceans and even now no sand or soil graced its surface, just rust and sulphur-dust. Stamping, the inquisitor found that beneath the powder was solid metal. Wrinkling his nose at the rotten stench, he climbed an escarpment of reinforced scrap and corroded plating, reaching the irregularity of an apex ridge. From this vantage point, the inquisitor took in the daemonscape. The rusted archipelago extended for some distance and height, reminding Czevak of a volcanic island reaching out of the waters. The blood-red of a brimstone ocean boiled beyond, the sulphurous surf lapping up against the metal shore, encrusting the coast with yellow crystals. The waters thrashed w
ith larval daemons, swarming and snapping like carnivorous fish in an evaporating pool. In the thin skies above, flocks of furies soared on the hunt for soul-prey.

  Beyond the predators, Czevak was treated to an unnatural celestial phenomenon. In the night sky, he could see the gaping mouth of the warp rift known to Imperial Navigators as the Craw. While Nereus bathed in the warplight of the rift’s exit point, its twin raged to the galactic south, erupting without warning to snatch vessels on the Imperial trade routes that skirted the Eye. Reports of Imperial ships lost to the Craw had been circulating for nearly a thousand years, with lost vessels forming the mountain of scrap that now reached up from the depths to create the rusted peninsula. Far out to sea, Czevak could hear the mournful drone of daemonsong: monsters of the deep, rumbling below the waves. Above, furies had started to circle, drawn down by the scent of fresh flesh.

  The daemons scattered unexpectedly.

  Czevak squinted, then shook his head slowly. Against the backdrop of the Craw’s swirling vortex, a silhouette grew. The horror of a doomed vessel, freshly tossed from the mouth of the rift. A freighter. Wreathed in spectral flame, the ship streaked down through the daemon world’s atmosphere, on a crash course for the archipelago.

  Czevak dropped down onto an expanse of rust-riddled hull plating and began to run. He felt the impact of the crash through the superstructure of the derelict below. As he sprinted, hurdling twisted scrap, he felt the ship grind its way up behind, cleaving through the hullscape. Time seemed to slow as Czevak became enveloped in the enormity of the catastrophe unfolding around him.

  The metal quaked beneath him as the vessel’s prow struck the escarpment. The freighter flipped, its colossal aft section thrown up towards the sky. It balanced for an incredible moment, like a great ferruswood about to topple, before rolling over and crashing awkwardly down on its side. The freighter – already wracked with explosions – erupted, sending a shrapnel-storm rocketing in all directions.

  Czevak threw himself to the ground, but a blast wave of debris struck him from behind. Metal bars shot past and sheets of hull plating pranged and rattled off the ground before the inquisitor. A section of decking flew overhead, smacking Czevak on the back.

  With nothing but the hiss of the crash in his ears, Czevak lay there. Blood ran down the side of his face. There was also something wrong with his leg. Turning his head he saw that his was not the only body out on the sulphur-dusted expanse. Czevak’s eyes met those of an ejected crew member who was trapped nearby, under a flaming girder. There was little the inquisitor could do to help, but instinct prompted him to go to the man’s aid. He tried to get up but agony shot through his leg and letting loose an involuntary howl, Czevak allowed his throbbing head to sink back to the metal floor.

  Something hit the metal beside him. At first the inquisitor assumed it was more debris but, as he blinked the blood from his eyes, he saw that it was a snaggle-fanged fury that had thunderbolted down from the wretched heavens. Tossing the huge girder aside with ease, the daemon sank its brazen talons into the victim’s flesh. With a swoosh of ragged wings, the thing shot back up into the sky, taking the screaming survivor with it.

  As the static of the crash faded and became replaced with screams, Czevak fancied he could hear, of all things, a bell; the clear ringing of a solitary bell coming from beneath the ground. Again the flock of furies scattered. Beside him, a rust-encrusted pressure wheel began to turn, and a maintenance hatch opened in the floor. From the opening surfaced a young woman dressed in scavenged rags. Her face was gaunt and sulphur-smeared, yet full of determination. As she climbed out beside him, Czevak could make out the bump of a swollen belly beneath her rags. A filthy sling held an infant to her breast and several sallow children followed in her wake, clinging to the ragged edges of her cloak. About them hatches, airlocks and bulkheads opened in the archipelago floor. Tattered figures poured out: scrawny men, women and children emerged and spread out across the crash site. All looked thin and unhealthy; some were hunched, while others bore the affliction of extra limbs and cancerous growths. The underdwellers were clearly not daemons but had suffered in the toxic environs of a daemon world. On Nereus they could not hope to escape the warping influence of the Eye of Terror. If it hadn’t been for the nullifying influence of the Atlas Infernal, Czevak would long since have suffered the same fate during his travels. The horde began checking for survivors, scavenging from bodies and stripping salvage from the wreckage.

  Turning, Czevak found the woman over him, checking his leg. She pulled back her hood to reveal a tumble of copper curls. She directed the children to gather around and the inquisitor felt their bony little fingers dig into his flesh. The red-headed woman inspected a wound on his scalp and then came in close to his face. She attempted a weak smile but her features fell out of focus. Czevak’s head hurt and he felt the irresistible pull of unconsciousness.

  ‘Your vessel crashed. We’re going to take you somewhere safe…’ he heard her say, but his eyelids fluttered closed. As the darkness claimed him, Czevak was left with doubt that any such place existed on the daemon world.

  The inquisitor awoke on the grubby mattress of a medicae cot. Reaching for the dull ache in his temple, Czevak found a bandage around his head and a filthy intravenous line drooping from his arm. He was alone in a small, roofless cubicle of stacked crates. Above he could see flickering lumen-strips in the ceiling of a much larger chamber. Tensing, he thrust a hand into the folds of his harlequin coat. He found the Atlas Infernal where he had hidden it, and fell back on the cot in relief. He allowed himself the luxury of a moment’s further respite before tearing the morphia line from his arm in disgust and swinging his legs over the side of the cot. His right thigh burned, again with a morphia-dulled delay, and upon inspection Czevak found that it too had been tightly bandaged.

  ‘Going somewhere?’

  Czevak looked up to find the woman he’d seen out on the archipelago in the cubicle doorway. She took her hands from where they rested on the bump of her belly and set to rearranging the infant at her breast within the ragged sling.

  ‘Where am I?’ Czevak asked, with little indication that he was about to engage in pleasantries.

  ‘Perdition’s Landing,’ she said, watching the inquisitor struggle to get to his feet before his thigh’s refusal to support him put him back down on the cot. ‘Careful, you’ll tear your stitches.’ She presented him with a shattered length of pipe. ‘We took this out of your leg.’

  ‘How long was I out?’ Czevak said, an expression of gratitude once again failing to fall from his lips.

  ‘About ten hours.’

  ‘Ten hours!’

  ‘About,’ the woman confirmed. ‘I’m Myra.’

  ‘I’m getting out of this cot,’ Czevak assured her.

  Myra hovered for a moment before taking a makeshift metal cane from where it leant near the cubicle door and tossing it to the inquisitor. Snatching it out of the air, Czevak got to his feet. ‘Who’s in charge here?’

  ‘The Curator minds the colony’s interests,’ Myra replied.

  Stabbing his cane into the metal floor, Czevak hobbled towards the cubicle entrance. ‘Well, I need to see this Curator. I needed to see him ten hours ago.’

  ‘The Curator is extremely busy with colony matters. He doesn’t usually meet initiates.’

  ‘Initiates?’

  ‘Newcomers,’ Myra explained. ‘The colony is the only hope for those left at the mercy of this world – and there is precious little of that. All who arrive at Perdition’s Landing join the colony, enjoying its protection and the fruits of collaboration. We are as one against the evil of this place.’

  ‘You say that the colony is the only hope for survival.’

  Myra nodded.

  ‘I am the colony’s only hope,’ Czevak told her. ‘You think that the darkness of this place is the only thing to fear? As we speak, there is an evil that makes
its way here, as I have. It is no casual malevolence, no indiscriminate daemonic dread. It is driven by unfathomable desire and its mindless servants will stop at nothing to satisfy its insatiable craving.’

  ‘Why would it come here?’ Myra asked.

  ‘Simple,’ Czevak told her. ‘You have something it wants.’

  Myra took Czevak through the crooked quads and thoroughfares of the castaway colony. Perdition’s Landing had been constructed in the cargo bay of some ancient vessel, long buried below the surface of the crash-site archipelago. The settlement was a labyrinth of crates and salvage recovered from the vessels that had come to their end on the rusted surface above. Myra took the inquisitor through habitation quarters and small markets of salvaged wares, as well as sparse devotional spaces housing silent multitudes at prayer.

  The colonists themselves were a motley collection. There were refugees of a hundred Imperial creeds and cultures, with a sprinkling of xenos unfortunates adding some exotic colour, but all uniform in their wretchedness. Their dirty faces poked out of ragged hoods, while tattered cloaks and shawls seemed the order of the day, presumably so that the men, women and children of Perdition’s Landing might hide the shame of their deformities.

  With the morphia wearing off and the demand of the walk searing through his injured thigh, Czevak found himself rubbing his wound. About him, the surroundings began to change. Instead of the haphazard structure of crates, objects seemed to have been placed deliberately, exhibited almost. Myra led the inquisitor through shattered murals and frescos, cracked busts and dusty urns. Singed tapestries sat alongside faded paintings and ancient treasures. Hooded colonists looked to the antiquities with the care of reliquary custodians. Thousands of precious artefacts, from huge sections of gargoyle-encrusted architecture to torn tracts and verdigris-covered coins were hung, arranged and displayed about them. Above Czevak’s head a mighty bell was suspended, dull with age.