25 For 25

by Various

  As soon as Syrric was over the first gap, Bas kicked the planks away. Then, grabbing Syrric’s hand again, he ran.

  Anti-aircraft fire poured into the sky, lighting their way across the rooftops. The shadowy shapes assaulting the orks from above were forced to pull out. Moments after they did, the artillery strikes started again. Bas was halfway across one of his makeshift bridges when a shell plunged into the building he was crossing towards. It punched through the tenement roof and a number of upper floors before it exploded somewhere deep within the structure. Bas watched in horror as the building in front of him began to disintegrate, turning to little more than loose stone. He turned and leapt back towards the edge of the roof where Syrric stared in horror, just as the planks beneath his feet fell away.

  His fingers missed the lip of the roof. He felt his dizzying plunge begin. But small hands reached for him just as he fell, gripping his wrists and hauling him in towards the building. Bas struck the stone wall hard, winding himself, but the small hands didn’t let go. He looked up and saw Syrric stretching over the edge, face twisted in pain, grunting and sweating with the effort of keeping Bas from plummeting to his death.

  Bas scrabbled for a foothold and found a thin ledge, not enough to support his full weight, but enough to take some of the strain off Syrric.

  Can you climb up?

  Bas stretched and gripped the lip of the roof. Then, with Syrric pulling, he heaved himself up and rolled over the edge. There, with death averted once more, he lay panting, adrenaline racing through his veins. Syrric crouched over him.

  We can’t stay up here. Isn’t there some other way?

  The ground shook. More explosions rocked the town, striking just to the north of their position. Bas didn’t have time to wait for the shaking to stop. As soon as he had his breath, he got up.

  ‘The greenskins will be everywhere at ground level,’ he said miserably, but, looking at the empty space where the next building had been only moments ago, he knew that staying high would be just as dangerous. Besides, that building had been the only one linked to this. It looked like there was little choice. If they couldn’t travel above ground, and they couldn’t travel on the ground…

  ‘There’s one more way,’ said Bas. ‘Let’s go.’

  Bas began training under his grandfather after the fourth time Kraevin’s gang beat him up. It was the worst beating yet. One of the smaller boys – an ugly, rat-faced lad called Sarkam – had actually stabbed Bas in the belly with a box-cutter. It was the sight of so much blood that brought the beating to an early end this time. Instead of strolling off in casual satisfaction, Kraevin and his gang ran, knowing this level of violence would mean serious trouble for them if they were caught.

  Bas staggered home, both hands pressed to his abdomen, drawing sharp looks from everyone he passed. A rough-looking woman in a filthy apron called out, ‘You need help, boy?’

  Bas ignored her and kept on. He knew the Sarge would be waiting at the table with the medical kit laid out. He had warned Bas that the other boys might attack him today. He had just about healed from the last beating, after all.

  But this time was different, in more ways than one.

  Bas wasn’t crying.

  More important than that, he had actually fought back.

  True, his unpractised attempts to retaliate had met with dismal failure, but they had caught the other boys off guard. For the first time, Bas saw an instant of doubt in their eyes. They knew fear, too, he realised. They loved to dish out pain, but they didn’t want any coming their way.

  That was when he knew his grandfather was the answer.

  This time, while the old man stitched the wound in Bas’s belly, Bas glared at him.

  ‘Something you want to say to me, boy?’ said the Sarge.

  Bas’s words came out as a growl that surprised even him.

  ‘I know who you are,’ he told the old man. ‘I know what you did, how you fought. Sherridan told me. He called you an Imperial hero!’

  A sudden scowl twisted those terrifying features. ‘You think Imperial heroes live like this, you fool?’ the Sarge snapped back. He gestured at the dank, water-stained walls of their home. ‘Sherridan had no business saying anything. I’ll bet he didn’t tell you I was stripped of my medals. I’ll bet he didn’t mention that I was dishonourably discharged after forty bloody lashes! Sherridan sees what he wants to see. You hear me?’

  ‘I don’t care about that,’ Bas shot back. He would not be denied. Not this time. ‘You could teach me. You could help me, make me stronger. Make it so I could kill them if I wanted to.’

  His grandfather held his gaze. For what seemed an eternity, neither blinked.

  ‘I can teach you,’ the old man said at last with a solemn nod. ‘But it’ll hurt more than everything you’ve endured so far. And there’s no going back once we start, so you’d better be damned sure.’

  ‘It will be worth it,’ hissed Bas, ‘to smash those bastards even just once.’

  The old man’s eyes bored into his. Again, he nodded. ‘We’ll begin when you’re able,’ he told Bas.

  And so they did.

  It started simply enough. Bas drilled footwork for hours around the old dead tree at the back of the tenement. Slowly, the number of push-ups, chin-ups and sit-ups he could do increased from single digits to double. Within a month and a half, the old man had him into triple digits. Then they began training with weights, anything they could find whether it be rocks or old tyres or bags of cement.

  Bas learned to wield sticks, knives, broken bottles, anything that could be used as a weapon. He became lean and hard like the grox meat they ate at every meal. He became faster, stronger, better than he had ever believed possible, and every bit of it was bought with sweat and blood, but never tears.

  Tears were forbidden.

  His grandfather was a brutal, relentless instructor. Every day was harder, more painful, more severe than the last. But Bas endured, his hatred burning within him, spurring him on. It wasn’t just hatred for Kraevin and his schoolhouse thugs. It was hatred against all the wrongs he had known. Even as his grandfather forged him into something new, something tough and independent, Bas learned a fresher, deeper hate for the old man. His mistakes, fewer and fewer as time went by, were exploited with merciless brutality, until Bas wondered who was worse: Kraevin, or the Sarge himself.

  It hardly mattered. He saw the results. And others saw them, too.

  Kraevin’s gang spent less time taunting him as the days passed. Sometimes, he saw them glancing nervously in his direction from the corner of his eye. He recognised that doubt he had seen before. The weeks since they had attacked him stretched into months. Bas started to wonder if they had given up for good.

  Then, as he was walking home three days before Emperor’s Day, Kraevin and his gang ambushed him from an alley and dragged him in.

  Bas lashed out immediately without pausing for thought and smashed one boy’s nose to a pulp.

  The boy yowled and broke from the fight, hands held up to his crimson-smeared face.

  Kraevin shouted something and the whole gang backed off, forming a semi-circle around their target. Bas watched as they all drew knives. If they expected him to piss his pants, however, they were gravely mistaken.

  ‘Let’s have it!’ Bas hissed at them. ‘All of you!’

  Reaching into the waistband of his trousers, he pulled his own blade free.

  The Sarge didn’t know about this. Bas hadn’t told him he was now carrying a weapon. He had found it on the tenement stairwell one morning, a small kitchen knife stained with a stranger’s blood. After washing it and sharpening it while the Sarge was at work, Bas had started to carry it with him. Now he was glad of that. It was his equalizer, though the odds he faced here were still far from equal.

  Kraevin didn’t look so smug right then, but he motioned and the boys lunged in.

  Bas read their movements, just as the old man had taught him. The closest boy was going for a thrust to his mi
dsection. Bas slipped it. His hand flashed out and cut the tendons in the boy’s wrist.

  Screaming filled the alley and the boy dropped to his knees, clutching his bleeding arm.

  Bas kicked him hard in the face. ‘Come on, bastards!’ he roared at the others. Again, he kicked the wounded boy.

  This display was unlike anything the others were prepared for. They didn’t want any of it.

  The gang broke, boys bolting from the alley in both directions, knives abandoned, thrown to the ground. Only Kraevin remained. He had never run from anything. If he ran now, he’d be giving up all his status, all his power, and he knew it. Even so, Bas could see it in his eyes: the terroriser had become the terrified.

  Bas rounded on him, knife up, stance loose, light on his feet.

  ‘Bas the bastard,’ said Bas, mimicking Kraevin’s voice. ‘You’ve no idea how right you were, you piece of filth.’

  He closed in, angling himself for a lightning slash to the other boy’s face. Something in Kraevin snapped. He dropped his knife and backed up against the alley wall, hands raised in desperate placation.

  ‘Bas, please,’ he begged. ‘It wasn’t me. It was never me. Honestly.’

  Bas drew closer, ready to deliver a flurry of nasty cuts.

  ‘He said never to tell you,’ cried Kraevin. ‘Said he’d see us right for money and lho-sticks. I swear it!’

  ‘Groxshit!’ snarled Bas. ‘Who? Who said that?’

  He didn’t believe Kraevin for a moment. The boy was just buying time, spinning desperate lies.

  ‘The Sarge,’ Kraevin gasped. ‘Old Ironfoot. He came to us after the first time we beat you. Honest, I thought he was going to murder us, but he didn’t. He said he wanted us to keep on you, keep beating you down. Told us to wait until you were healed each time.’

  Bas halted his advance. That couldn’t be true. No.

  But… could it? Was the old man that twisted? Why would he do such a thing?

  ‘Talk,’ he ordered Kraevin, urging him on with a mock thrust of his knife.

  ‘Th... that’s it,’ stammered the boy. ‘Two days ago, he found us and told us to ambush you. Said to use knives this time. I told him he was crazy. No way. But he tripled the money he was offering. My old man’s got lung-rot. Can’t work no more. I need the money, Bas. I didn’t want to, but I had to. But it’s over now, okay? Throne above, it’s over.’

  Bas thought about that for a second, then he rammed his right boot up between Kraevin’s legs. As the bully doubled over, Bas kicked him again, a blistering shot straight to the jaw. Teeth and blood flew from Kraevin’s mouth. He dropped to the ground, unconscious.

  Bas sheathed his little knife in his waistband and looked down at the boy who had taught him the meaning of fear.

  ‘Yes,’ he told the crumpled figure, ‘it is over.’

  At home, he found the Sarge at the back of the tenement, leaning against the old dead tree, smoking a lho-stick in the sunlight.

  ‘No medical kit this time?’ Bas asked as he stopped a few metres from the old man.

  The Sarge grinned at him. ‘Knew you wouldn’t need it.’

  ‘You paid them to do it, didn’t you?’ said Bas.

  The old man exhaled a thick cloud of yellow smoke.

  ‘You’ve done well,’ he told his grandson. It was all the confirmation needed.

  Bas said nothing. He felt numb.

  ‘Stay grounded, boy,’ rumbled the Sarge. ‘Stay focused. We’re just getting started, you and I. You think you’ve bested your daemons, and maybe you have, for now. But there are worse things than childhood bullies out there. Never forget the fear and anger that brought you this far.’

  Bas didn’t answer. He stared at the dirt between his feet, feeling utterly hollow, consumed by a raw emptiness he hadn’t known was possible.

  ‘There’s more to learn, boy,’ the Sarge told him. ‘We’re not done here. Remember the chubby runt you used to be. Think of how you’ve changed, what you’ve achieved. I gave you that. Keep training, boy. Keep learning. Don’t stop now. As much as you hate me, you know I’m right. Let’s see how far you can take it.’

  The old man paused, his brows drawing down, and added in a voice suddenly harsh and hateful, ‘If you want to stop, you know where the damned door is. I won’t give bed and board to an Emperor-damned quitter.’

  Bas looked at his hands. They were clenched into fists. His forearms rippled with taut muscle. He wanted to lash out at the Sarge, to bloody him, maybe even kill him for what he’d done. But, for all he’d changed, all he’d learned, his hands were still a child’s hands. He was still only seven years old, and he had nowhere else to go. Besting other boys was one thing, but the old man was right about greater foes. Bas had seen big, barrel-chested men from the refineries beating their wives and children in the street. No one ever stopped them. No one dared, despite how sick it made them to turn away. Bas always wished he was big enough and tough enough to intervene. The impotence inherent in his age and stature angered him. More than any daydreams of dispensing justice, however, he knew that training had brought focus and purpose to his life. His newfound strength, speed and skill had burned away that clinging shroud of fear he’d lived with for so long. Every technique he mastered brought him a fresh confidence his former weakness had always denied. He saw it, saw that he needed to keep growing, keep developing, to master every skill the old man offered and more. No. He didn’t just need it. He wanted it. Right then and there, it was all he wanted.

  There was nothing else.

  He locked eyes with his grandfather, his gaze boring into him with cold fire.

  ‘All right,’ he spat. ‘Show me. Teach me. I want all of it.’

  A grin twisted the Sarge’s scarred face. ‘Good,’ he said. ‘Good.’

  He ground his lho-stick out in the dirt at the base of the tree.

  ‘Go change your clothes and warm up. We’ll work on nerve destructions today.’

  Two and a half years later, in the shadow of that same dead tree, a slightly taller, harder Bas – now ten years old – was working through a series of double-knife patterns while his grandfather barked out orders from a wooden bench on the right.

  The sun was high and bright, baking the dusty earth under Bas’s feet.

  ‘Work the left blade harder!’ the Sarge snapped. ‘Watch your timing. Don’t make me come over there!’

  A deep rumble sounded over the tenement rooftops, throaty and rhythmic. It must have meant something to the old man, because the Sarge stood bolt upright and stared up at the azure sky, muscles tensed, veins throbbing in his neck.

  Bas, surprised by the intensity of the old man’s reaction, stopped mid-pattern and followed the Sarge’s gaze.

  Seven black shapes crossed directly overhead.

  ‘Marauder bombers,’ said the old man. ‘And a Lightning escort out of Red Sands. Something’s wrong.’

  Despite their altitude, the noise of the aircraft engines made the air vibrate. Bas had never seen craft like these before. They had the air of huge predatory birds about them. They had barely disappeared below the line of tenement roofs on the far side before another similar formation appeared, then another and another.

  The old man cursed.

  ‘It was just a matter of time,’ he said to himself. ‘This planet was always going to get hit sooner or later.’

  He limped past Bas, iron leg grinding, heading towards the tenement’s back door. But he stopped halfway and turned.

  ‘They’ll be coming for me,’ he said, and there was something in his eye Bas had never seen before. It was the closest thing to fondness the old man had ever managed, though it still fell far short. ‘They always call on the veterans first,’ he told Bas. ‘No one ever truly retires from the Guard. I’ve done the best I could with you, boy. You hate me, and that’s only proper, but I did what I had to do. The Imperium is not what you think. I’ve seen it, by the Throne. Terrors by the billion, all clamouring to slaughter or enslave us. And now it looks like they
’re here. Only the strongest survive, boy. And you’re my blood, mark you. My last living blood! I’ve done my best to make sure you’re one of the survivors.’

  He paused to look up as more bombers crossed the sky.

  ‘Come on inside,’ he told Bas. ‘There’s something I want to give you before I go. May it serve you well in what’s to come.’

  They went inside.

  A few days later, just as the old man had predicted, the Imperium came to call on him, and he answered.

  It was the last time Bas ever saw him.

  The shelling from the sky had opened great craters in the streets below. Through choking clouds of smoke and dust, over hills of flaming debris, the boys searched for a way into the sewers. Many of the massive holes were filled with rubble and alien bodies, but Bas quickly found one which offered access to the dark, round tunnels that laced the town’s foundations. He had mostly avoided these tunnels during his time alone. Those times he had come down here looking for sources of potable water, he had encountered bands of scavenging hook-noses. Each time, he had barely escaped with his life.

  There didn’t seem to be any of the disgusting creatures here now, however. In the utter darkness, he and Syrric held hands tightly, using their free hands to guide themselves along the tunnel walls. They couldn’t see a damned thing. Bas had no idea how or when they would find a way out, but he couldn’t let that stop him. The tunnel ceiling rumbled with the sound of war machines on the move and explosive detonations. If he and Syrric were to survive the journey to one of his boltholes, they would have to travel down here in the dark.

  As they moved, Bas became sharply aware of the comfort he was drawing from Syrric’s hand. He wondered if that made him weak. His grandfather had used that word like a curse, as if weakness was the worst thing in the universe, and perhaps it was. Bas hadn’t lived this long by being weak. He knew that. But he wasn’t so sure it was weak to want the company of your own kind. Syrric’s presence made him feel stronger. His body seemed to ache less. The other boy was following his lead, depending on him. Here was the sense of purpose Bas had so desperately missed. Alone, his survival had been nothing more than an act of waiting, waiting for a time in which he’d find something to live for, to fight for. Now he had it: someone to share the darkness with, to watch his back. He had gotten Syrric out, just as he had intended. Despite the deaths of the others, it still felt like the greatest victory of his young life, better even than beating Kraevin.