25 For 25

by Various

  They went across open fields, thick with rime, and along the basin of a wooded dell where the fallen leaves had frozen into a slippery mat. The fog was actually beginning to disperse, but down in the hollow it was as thick as smoke. Butcher birds, jet black and armed with shiny hook-beaks, cawed, clacked and circled in the treetops.

  Drusher suddenly heard an extraordinary noise. It sounded like an industrial riveter or a steam-powered loom. A puffing, pneumatic sputter interlaced with high pitch squeals.

  Macks started to run. Her vox-link crackled into life.

  ‘What is it?’ Drusher called, hurrying after her.

  He heard the noise again and made more sense of it. One of Skoh’s men had opened fire with his autolaser.

  He scrambled through the frosty ground-brush, trying to keep up with Macks’s jogging back as it slipped in and out of sight between the tree trunks. Twice he went over on the frozen rug of leaves, scraping his palms.

  ‘Macks! What’s going on?’

  More shooting now. A second weapon joining the first. Stacatto puff-zwip-puff-zwip.

  Then the dreadful, plangent boom of a shotgun.

  Drusher almost ran into Macks. She had stopped in her tracks.

  Ahead of them, in a narrow clearing between leafless tindletrees, Skoh lay on his back. It looked like his chest and groin was on fire, but Drusher realised it wasn’t smoke. It was steam, wafting up from wretched wounds that had all but eviscerated him. His heavy weapon and part of its gimbal-rig had been torn off and were lying on the other side of the clearing. Huge clouts of fused earth had been torn out of the ground and two small trees severed completely from the fury of his shooting.

  ‘Throne of Terra...’ Macks stammered.

  Drusher felt oddly dislocated, as if it wasn’t actually happening. They walked together, slowly, towards the body of the hunter. He still had his pump-shot clamped in his hand. The end of the barrel was missing.

  Macks suddenly swung left, her riot-gun aimed. One of Skoh’s men stood on the other side of the clearing, half-hidden by a tree and only now visible to them. He wasn’t actually standing. His body was lodged upright by the tree itself. His head was bowed onto his chest, the angle of the tilt far, far greater than any spine should allow. Macks approached him tentatively, and reached out a hand. When she touched him, he sagged sideways and his head flopped further. Drusher saw that only the merest shred of skin kept it attached to the rest of the body.

  Drusher was overcome with heaving retches and he wobbled over to the thickets to throw up. Lussin and the other huntsman stumbled into the clearing while he was emptying his stomach.

  ‘Did you see anything?’ Macks barked at the other men.

  ‘I just heard the shooting,’ Lussin moaned. He couldn’t take his eyes from Skoh’s awfully exposed entrails.

  ‘That’s it, then,’ said the hunter. He leaned back against a tree trunk, and clutched his head in his hands. ‘Damn, that’s it then.’

  ‘It’s got to be close! Come on!’ Macks snapped.

  ‘And do what?’ the hunter asked. ‘Two of them, with turbo-lasers, and they didn’t kill it.’ He nodded to Skoh’s body. ‘That’s my paycheck gone. All my dividends.’

  ‘Is that all you care about?’ Lussin asked.

  ‘No,’ said the hunter, ‘I care about living too.’ He took out a lho-stick, lit it and sucked hard. ‘I told Skoh we’d wasted our time here. Stayed too long. He wouldn’t admit it. He said he couldn’t afford to cut our losses and leave. Screw it. Screw him.’

  The hunter straightened up and dragged on his smoke-stick again. ‘Good luck,’ he said and began to walk away.

  ‘Where the hell are you going?’ Macks demanded.

  ‘Where we should have gone weeks ago. As far away as possible.’

  ‘Come back!’ cried Lussin.

  The hunter shook his head and wandered away into the fog. Drusher never saw him again.

  ‘What do we do?’ Lussin asked Macks. She was prowling up and down, fists clenched. She growled something.

  ‘One of them got a round off, with a shotgun,’ Drusher said. His voice was hoarse from vomiting and his mouth tasted foul.

  ‘You sure?’ Macks snapped.

  ‘I heard a shotgun,’ Drusher said.

  ‘I didn’t,’ said Macks.

  ‘I think I did... maybe...‘ Lussin murmured softly, rubbing his eyes.

  ‘Get an auspex!’ Macks ordered. Drusher wasn’t sure who she was speaking to, but Lussin didn’t move. Reluctantly, Drusher approached Skoh’s body, trying not to look directly at it. He crouched down and started to peel away the tape that secured the compact scanner to Skoh’s left gauntlet.

  Skoh opened his eyes and exhaled steam. Drusher screamed, and would have leapt back if the hunter’s left hand hadn’t grabbed his wrist.

  ‘Drusher...‘

  ‘Oh no... oh no... ‘

  The hand pulled him closer. He could smell the hot, metallic stink of blood.

  ‘Saw it...‘

  ‘What?’

  ‘I... saw... it...‘ Thin, watery blood leaked from Skoh’s mouth and his breathing was ragged. His eyes were dull and filmy.

  ‘What did you see?’ asked Drusher.

  ‘You... were... right, Drusher... I... I did... know what... it was... suspected... didn’t want... didn’t want to say... cause a panic... and anyway... couldn’t be true... not here... couldn’t be here...‘

  ‘What did you see?’ Drusher repeated.

  ‘All the things... I’ve tracked... tracked and caught in... in my life... for the Pits... you know I worked for the Pits...?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Never seen one... before... but been told... about them... you don’t mess with... don’t mess with them... don’t care what the... the Pits would pay for one.’

  ‘What was it, Skoh?’

  ‘The Great... Great Devourer...’

  ‘Skoh?’

  The hunter tried to turn his head to look at Drusher. A torrent of black blood gushed from his mouth and nostrils, and his eyes went blank.

  Drusher tore the auspex from the dead man’s forearm and got to his feet.

  ‘What did he say?’ Macks asked.

  ‘He was raving,’ said Drusher. ‘The pain had taken his senses away.’

  He swept the auspex around and tried to adjust its depth of field. He was getting a lot of nearby bounce from the trackers that had gone wide and pelted the ferns and tree boles.

  Two contacts showed at a greater range. Two of the glue-dipped teleplugs anchored to the hide of something moving north-west, just a kilometre and a half away.

  ‘Got anything?’

  ‘Yes. Come on.’

  Macks was clearly considering taking one of the heavy turbo-las weapons from the corpses, but that would mean touching them.

  ‘Right,’ she said. ‘Lead on.’

  ‘Macks?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Maybe I should borrow that handgun after all,’ Drusher said.

  They hurried through the frozen woodland, following the steady returns of the auspex. The fog was burning off now, and the heavy red sun was glowering down, casting a rosy tint across the iced wilderness.

  When they paused for a moment to catch their breaths, Macks looked at the magos.

  ‘What?’ she asked.

  ‘I was just thinking...‘

  ‘Thinking what?’

  ‘Skoh was looking for this thing for months. State of the art track-ware, qualified help. Not a sign. And then, today...’

  ‘He got unlucky. Damn, we all got unlucky.’

  ‘No,’ said Drusher. ‘If you were the beast... wouldn’t today be a good day to turn and take him out? It was his last serious try. He’s coming out with a magos biologis at his side, changing tactics. Using taggers.’

  ‘What are you saying, Drusher?’

  Drusher shrugged. ‘I don’t know. It’s... convenient, I suppose. This thing is quick and sly enough to do its evil work and stay right out of
harm’s way. By the time a killing is discovered, it’s long gone. Today, we had the best chance yet of catching it. And what does it do? It changes its habits entirely and turns on us.’

  ‘So?’ asked Lussin.

  ‘Almost like it knew. Almost like it was concerned that a magos biologis and an experienced tracker might have enough skill between them to pose a realistic threat.’

  ‘It’s just an animal. What did you call it? An apex predator.’

  ‘Maybe. But it’s what a man would do. A fugitive who’s evaded capture this long, but hears that the search for him has stepped up. He might decide the time was right to turn and fight.’

  ‘You talk like you know what this thing is, Drusher,’ said Macks.

  ‘I don’t. It doesn’t fit into any taxonomy I’ve studied. It doesn’t fit into any Imperial taxonomy either. Except maybe classified ones.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Come on. ‘ Drusher stood up and hurried on through the copse.

  The air-mill had been derelict for fifty years. Its weather boards had fallen away and the sails of its wind-rotor were flaking. The district had processed its flour here, before the cheaper mass-production plant had opened in Udar Town half a century ago.

  Drusher, Macks and Lussin edged down through the chokes of weed brush towards the rear of the ruin. The tracker tags had been stationary for half an hour.

  Macks pushed the lap-frame door open with the snout of her riot-gun. They slid inside. The interior space was a dingy cone of timber and beamed floors. The mill-gear ran down through the tower’s spine like the gears of a gigantic clock.

  It smelled of mildew and rotting flour-dust. Drusher took out the pistol. He pointed upwards. Lussin, riot-gun gripped tightly, edged up the open-framed steps to the second level.

  Drusher heard something. A slither. A scurry.

  He hung back against the wall. There was something up with the auspex. An interference pattern that was making the screen jump. As if an outside signal was chopping the scanner’s returns.

  Macks circled wide, gun raised to aim at the roof. Lussin reached the head of the stairs and switched around, sweeping with his gun. Drusher tried to get the auspex to clear.

  Lussin screamed, and his gun went off. There was a heavy, splintering sound as he fell backwards down the steps, his weapon discharging a second time.

  He was dead. The front of his skull was peeled off and blood squirted into the air.

  Macks howled, and fired her riot-gun into the ceiling, pumping the grip and blasting the rotten floorboards in a blizzard of wood splinters with each successive shot. Every muzzle-flash lit the mill room for a millisecond

  Exploding wood away before it, the Beast smashed through the deck and came down at them.

  It was a blur. Just a blur, moving faster than anything had a right to. Macks’s riot-gun boomed again. The creature moved like smoke in a draft. Drusher had a fleeting glimpse of deep purple body plates, a snapping tail of gristly bone, forearm claws like harvest scythes. Macks screamed.

  Drusher dropped the auspex and fired his pistol.

  The recoil almost broke his wrist. He yelped in pain and frustration, stung hard by the kick. Use both hands, she’d told him.

  It turned from Macks, chittering, and bounded across the floor right at him.

  It was beautiful. Perfect. An organic engine designed for one sole task: murder. The muscular power of the body, the counter-weight tail; the scythe limbs, like a pair of swords. The inhuman hate.

  It had no eyes, at least none that he could see.

  Hold the gun with both hands and aim low. That’s what she’d said. Because of the kick.

  Drusher fired. The recoil slammed up his arms. If he’d hit anything, it wasn’t obvious. He fired again.

  The Beast opened its mouth. Fifty-three centimetres of bite radius, teeth like thorns. The blade-limbs jerking back to kill him.

  He fired again. And again. He saw at least one round flick away, deflected by the Beast’s bio-armour.

  It was right on him.

  And then it was thrown sideways against the wall.

  It dropped, writhed, and rose again.

  Drusher shot it in the head.

  It lunged at him. A riot-gun roared and blew it back. Bleeding from the forehead, Macks stepped up and fired blast after blast. She fired until the gun was empty, then took the pistol out of Drusher’s hands and emptied that into it too.

  Ichor covered the walls. Frothy goo dribbled out of the Beast’s fractured bone armour.

  ‘What is it?’ Macks asked.

  ‘I believe,’ Drusher replied, ‘it’s called a hormagaunt.’

  But Macks had passed out.

  It took the better part of an hour for the relief team of arbites to reach them from Udar Town. Drusher had made Macks comfortable by them, and dressed her wounds.

  Pistol in hand, he’d carefully examined the beast. The goad-control was easy to find, implanted into the back of the eyeless head.

  When Macks came round again, he showed her.

  ‘You need to deal with this.’

  ‘What does it mean?’

  ‘It means this abomination was brought here deliberately. It means that someone was controlling it, directing it in a rudimentary fashion.’

  ‘Really? Like who?’

  ‘I’d start by asking the bishop some questions, and his pet heavy, Gundax. I could be wrong, of course, because it’s not my field, but I think the bishop has a lot to gain from something that puts the fear of the God-Emperor into his flock. It steels the faith of a congregation to have something real to rally against.’

  ‘He did this on purpose?’

  ‘It’s just a theory. Someone did.’

  Macks was quiet for a while. He could guess what she was thinking. There would be an investigation and an inquest. The Inquisition may have to be involved. Every aspect of life in the province would be scrutinised and pulled apart. It could take months. Drusher knew it meant he wouldn’t be leaving Outer Udar any time soon. As a chief witness, he’d be required to stay.

  Outside, it had begun to sleet again.

  ‘You must be happy at least,’ murmured Macks. ‘That work of yours, your great taxonomy. It’s all done. You’ve finished.’

  ‘It was done before I even got here,’ said Drusher dryly. He nodded at the body of the beast. He’d covered it with a piece of sacking so he didn’t have to look at it any more. ‘That wasn’t part of my job. Just a curiosity.’

  ‘Oh well,’ she replied with a sigh.

  He went to the mill door, and gazed out into the sleeting wilds. Ice pricked at his face. Gershom would be keeping him in its chilly grip a while longer yet.

  ‘Could I keep this jacket a little longer?’ he asked Macks, indicating the fur coat she’d lent him. ‘It’s going to be a cold winter.’

  THE SKULL HARVEST

  Graham McNeill

  Dead, glassy eyes stared up at the bar patrons from the floor as the rolling head finally came to a halt. It had been a swift blow, the edge of the killer’s palm like a blade, and the snarling warrior’s head was ripped from his neck before the last words of his challenge were out of his mouth.

  The body still stood, its murderer grasping the edge of its crimson-stained breastplate in one gnarled grey fist. Blood pooled beneath the head and squirted upwards from the stump of neck. The body’s legs began to twitch, as though it sought to escape its fate even in death. The killer released his grip and turned away as the body crashed to the dirty, ash- and dust-streaked floor in a clatter of steel and dead meat.

  The excitement over, the patrons of the darkened bar returned to their drinks and plotting, for no one came to a place like this without schemes of revenge, murder, pillage and destruction in mind.

  Honsou of the Iron Warriors was no exception, and his champion’s bloody display of lethal prowess was just the first step in his own grand design.

  The air was thick with intrigue, grease and smoke, the latter curling aroun
d heavy rafters that looked as though they had once been part of a spaceship. Irregular clay bricks supported a roof formed from sheets of corrugated iron, and thin slats of harsh light, like the burning white sky of Medrengard, shone through bullet holes and gaps in the construction.

  The killer of the now headless body licked the blood from the edge of its hand, and Honsou grinned as he saw the urge to continue killing in his champion’s all too familiar grey eyes and taut posture. It called itself the Newborn, and was clad in tarnished power armour the colour of wrought iron. Its shoulder guards were edged in yellow and black, and a rough cloak of ochre was draped around its wide shoulders. It was every inch an Iron Warrior but for its face; a slack fleshmask of stolen skin that was the image of a man Honsou would one day kill. Stitched together from the skins of dead prisoners, the Newborn’s face was that of the killer in the dark, the terror of the night and the lurker in the shadows that haunts the dreams of the fearful.

  It turned towards Honsou and he felt a delicious shiver of vicarious excitement as he glanced at the dead body on the floor.

  ‘Nicely done,’ said Honsou. ‘Poor bastard didn’t even get to finish insulting me.’

  The Newborn shrugged as it sat across the table from him. ‘He was nothing, just a slave warrior.’

  ‘True, but he died just as bloodily as the next man.’

  ‘Killing this one might make you the “next man” to his master,’ said the Newborn.

  ‘Better he dies now than we end up recruiting him and he fails in battle,’ said Cadaras Grendel from across the table as he finished a tin mug of harsh liquor. ‘Don’t want any damn wasters next to me if we have to fight anything tough in the next few days.’

  Grendel was a brute, an armoured killer who delighted in slaughter and the misery of others. Once, he had fought for a rival Warsmith on Medrengard, though in defeat he had transferred his allegiance to Honsou. Despite that switch, Honsou knew Grendel’s continued service was bought with the promise of carnage and that his loyalty was that of a starving wolf on a short leash. The warrior’s face was a scarred and pitted nightmare of battered flesh, his cruel features topped with a close-cropped mohican.