25 For 25

by Various

  It was almost a relief to turn away from the cityscape and to return his gaze to the horizon and the smoke-belching war machines, ridden by the greenskinned abominations that were assembled there.

  Brael had returned from the Temple of the Varks to find Costes and Perror scanning the lightening horizon through the fire slit. The rest of the men were checking their weapons by the light of several oil lamps.

  The company had grown, Brael noticed as he moved amongst them. Men from the mines had chosen to join his company rather than return to their own. Brael didn’t ask why, nor did he attempt to reason them out of their apparent willingness to believe in an old aunt’s tale.

  ‘Keep your heads down!’ Brael shouted over the sound of the explosions, more for the benefit of the new arrivals than the men who had fought and survived with him, some for the better part of a year. ‘Keep your nerve!’

  ‘We brought one of those damned things down outside Grellax,’ Kleeve shouted. ‘Why not now?’

  ‘They’re too high!’ Brael replied. At that moment a shadow passed over them. Brael glanced up. The black silhouette that wheeled against the dawn sky seemed as large as the flying machine they had brought down outside doomed Grellax, but it wheeled and swooped higher above them, which meant it must be larger, the wings broader and perhaps better armoured.

  ‘Maybe if they come down towards us,’ he added.

  ‘To get a better view of the slaughter?’ Kleeve asked, a wry smile on his face.

  ‘They’re retreating!’ Tombek shouted. The drumbeat of the bombs had ceased, to be replaced by the sound of falling masonry, the cries for help, the ringing of fire bells and the shouts of those assigned to man the mobile pumps that now clattered through the streets.

  ‘I’d heard about those things, but I never imagined they were real,’ said one of the survivors from the mines, a Mundaxian named Karel. ‘Don’t think much of their aim even now. I doubt any of them managed to hit the walls.’

  ‘I doubt they were trying,’ muttered Tombek. ‘They just want to tell us what we can expect when they’re through the walls.’

  Karel looked as if he was about to say something in reply, but a familiar whistling cut through the air above them.

  ‘Artillery!’ came the shout from further along the street-wide walkway that ran behind the battlements. Once again, heads dropped between shoulders, hands covered ears and prayers were offered up to gods few believed in any more.

  Not like this, Brael asked silently. He thought of the shattered Varks and of Vika and Bron. I want more blood on my hands before I die. Greenskin blood.

  The walls bucked as the first shell landed. A cheer went up; it had landed in the empty districts in front of the wall.

  ‘Ranging,’ Tombek muttered.

  The second artillery shell sailed over the heads of the men atop the western battlements and landed in the streets behind them, causing more damage than all of the bombs dropped from the flying machines. A chapel that had been converted into a physic station was vaporised, along with its immediate neighbours. Those buildings that escaped utter destruction were left shattered and teetering on the edge of a broad, deep crater.

  The cheering on the walls ceased.

  ‘Here it comes,’ muttered Tombek.

  The artillery fire came down upon the walls of Mallax like a hard rain, scouring away the metal and stone detritus that had been hauled up from the city streets to augment the ancient battlements. The men and women who sheltered behind, praying for a chance to strike back against the attackers, were reduced to tatters of skin and fragments of bone. Some panicked, broke cover and ran, only to be cut down by swarms of shrapnel from a hit further along the wall. The walls shook beneath the defenders’ feet, as if a giant as tall as the sky was stamping down upon them.

  Karel half rose from where he crouched against the battlements. Lollak, crouching beside him, put a restraining hand on his arm.

  ‘I don’t want to just sit here and wait to die!’ the Mundaxian shouted over the bombardment. Lollak shook his head and pointed to where Brael crouched, back to the wall, beside the firing slit and the machine-rifle.

  ‘We move when he says it’s time!’ Lollak shouted. ‘He’ll know when. Don’t ask me how.’

  They didn’t need to do more than they were already doing, Brael thought as he sheltered in the lea of the battlements. So long as their ammunition lasted, they could pound Mallax to scrap and rubble from a distance that made them untouchable by the few ancient war machines that had been rescued from the city museum and pressed back into service on the wall: a handful of cannon; a complex-looking construction of wood and iron that hurled rocks by means of some kind of sling-shot action; a pair of huge crossbows, able to fire bolts the size of small trees. The wall shuddered again, like an old man with the ague, as Brael wondered how many of the museum pieces had survived the bombardment so far.

  The invaders could destroy Mallax from the horizon, but they would not. It wasn’t their way. Something in their nature demanded that they tear apart whatever they found with their bare hands. Their appalling engine-driven weapons were just machines by which to accomplish this – to prepare their victims, to transport the greenskins to the battle at unnatural speed and to enable them to stand at the heart of the destruction. Their capacity and their enthusiasm for bloodshed was breathtaking, as unthinking as the fury of a storm and every bit as unstoppable.

  They would come, Brael knew. Sooner or later, they would come.

  The destruction of the North Gate, along with much of the gatehouse and neighbouring defences, appears to have acted as a signal for the ground assault to begin, though the city wall had already been breached at several other points by this time. Motorised units – objects of terror and awe even among those that had fought against them in the past – led the assaults at the North Gate and the other breaches. Bomber-variant gliders (cross ref. 775/xeno-tech – engine-driven catapult launching mechanism) re-joined the attack; one might assume they did so in order to sow confusion within the city ahead of the ground troops, though sheer bloodlust would be an equally credible motivation for this xeno-type (cross ref 114/xenology – Orkoid species).

  Despite the city’s preparations, its destruction could now be measured in hours.

  – Extract: ‘Inquisitorial communiqué 747923486/aleph/Samax IV’ Author: Inquisitor Selene Infantus. M41,793

  Brael ducked as a stretch of the defences to his company’s right exploded, showering them with shrapnel. The shadow of a greenskin flying machine passed over their bowed heads like a presentiment of doom.

  ‘It’s coming back!’ shouted Tombek, who had been the first to raise his head. Costes and Perror, huddled around the machine-rifle, were the first to recommence firing at the greenskins that were still racing at them in ragged waves, some on foot, others bouncing on the flatbeds of four-wheeled engines that ran on the same fat wheels as the two- and three-wheeled war machines. The four-wheelers seemed designed to carry their brutish cargo to where they could do the most damage, then tear back through the ruined outlying districts to collect another load.

  The machine-rifle roared and coughed oily smoke as Perror depressed the trigger. The makeshift tripod, constructed from lashed-together pikestaves, shook violently as he swung its heavy barrel after one of the retreating motor-wagons. The heavy shells tore into the ground in its wake as it jagged across the narrow street in an effort to evade the gunfire.

  A shell clipped one of the rear wheels, which exploded, sending the wagon into a slewing skid before slamming sideways into the wide frontage of what must once have been some kind of warehouse. The force of the impact brought down the wall and half of the roof.

  Costes, crouching to one side of the weapon, checked that the ammunition belt would continue to feed through the rifle’s inner mechanism without jamming, then slapped Perror’s shoulder in celebration.

  The walls were lost, Brael was sure. Off to their left, usually obscured by the curve of the wall and the heig
ht that had been added to the battlements, the North Gate had taken several hits at once. Shattered masonry and fragments of the gate’s defenders had risen in a fluid gout, as if the greenskins had the power to transform the ground in which the city was rooted to liquid. At that moment, large numbers of the attackers had veered away from their original points of attack to make for the ruined gate. Within minutes, the first of them would be inside the city.

  Brael’s first instinct had been to lead his men to defend the breach, but the reappearance of the flying machines and their explosive payloads had pinned his company to their spot on the wall.

  Following Tombek’s shout, Brael looked up. There was the flying machine, wheeling in the sky in a parody of a bird’s graceful arc.

  Brael slapped Perror on the shoulder. When the gunner looked round, away from the firing slit, Brael pointed skywards.

  ‘What to do you think?’ he shouted. Perror and Costes exchanged glances then nodded, almost in unison. Under other circumstances, it would have been almost comical, the way in which they had formed a partnership around the looted greenskin weapon.

  ‘We’ll need something to rest it on, to raise the barrel,’ Costes said. Brael nodded and began tearing at the rubble and rubbish that had been used to augment the battlements. An itch had begun to nag at the back of his mind which, he was sure, had nothing to do with the flying machine’s diving approach.

  Working quickly, Costes and Perror withdrew the rifle from the firing slit. Resting the tripod on the pile of detritus Brael had pulled from the wall, Perror had only heartbeats left to steady his aim.

  ‘Thank the gods he’s coming right at us,’ Costes muttered, a moment before Perror depressed the trigger.

  The greenskin must have realised what was about to happen. Brael saw the creature tug at the control levers that hung before him. The flying machine began to turn but, being larger than the machine they had encountered outside Grellax, this one was not so quick to change course.

  The skin of one wing all but vanished as the machine-rifle’s shells tore through it, breaking the wing struts before racing across the pilot’s chest and doing the same to the other wing. The dive had become a fall.

  ‘Move!’ Brael shouted. He grabbed Perror by the back of his tunic and hauled him away from the gun. Costes, who had also realised where the creature’s fall was going to end, had already begun to move.

  The wrecked flying machine ploughed into the machine-rifle, shedding fabric and fragments of its superstructure, which seemed to chase Brael, Costes and Perror along the wall. Tombek, Lollak and most of the rest of the company joined them as they retreated at speed from the tumbling, rolling mess.

  As soon as the flying machine had exhausted its momentum, they moved cautiously towards it, close-quarters weapons drawn. Perror was cursing it, threatening retribution if it had damaged the machine-rifle.

  The pilot was dead, its slab-like head twisted at a fatal angle. Brael saw that several bombs were still attached to the harness in which the pilot had been suspended beneath the wings. They were long-handled things with a round charge at one end, the size of a man’s fist, and they looked equally suited to throwing as they were to being dropped from the sky.

  Perror’s fears had been realised: the machine-rifle had not survived the flying machine’s impact. While he cursed, the others fell to stripping the wrecked machine and its pilot.

  Brael let them work as long as he dared before ordering them off the wall. Several of the newer members of the company raised eyebrows – there had been no order, no call to abandon the battlements, but those who had fought beside Brael before moved without question.

  The shell that vaporised the section of wall Brael’s company had been assigned to defend was as large as a small house. It had been fired from beyond the horizon by a cannon as large as the engines that pulled the iron caravans, before the city leaders had blocked up the termini gates and ordered that the rails be uprooted, in order to prevent their use by the invaders.

  The shell’s only victim was the rapidly cooling corpse of the glider-bomber’s pilot. Brael had already led his men down from the wall and out into the city.

  Once inside the city walls, the invaders abandoned all pretence of strategy. Confident of their eventual victory, their command structure appears to have devolved upon small groups, possibly defined upon tribal or familial lines, operating individually, seeking first to destroy then to plunder.

  [NOTE: though the above is speculation, it is informed by close study of relevant texts pertaining to ork psychology and reported endgame tactics. (Cross ref 1119/xenology – psych sub-list: Orkoid species and sub-species).]

  Ironically, this lack of overall tactics proved beneficial in the close-lined streets of Mallax, where large-scale actions would have been impossible to co-ordinate successfully.

  The fighting moved from street to street. The invaders always pushing forwards, the defenders in barely-disguised retreat.

  – Extract: ‘Inquisitorial communiqué 747923486/aleph/Samax IV’ Author: Inquisitor Selene Infantus. M41,793

  ‘What in the name of all that’s holy are they?’ Tombek hissed the words as he and Brael looked down from the window of a refining works that overlooked the flat, slag-strewn area around the minehead, the buildings that surrounded the shaft and the wheelhouse that stood over the shaft itself.

  There were figures moving warily around the wheelhouse: greenskins, but unlike any they had seen thus far. They were smaller than the animals that were rampaging through the city, smaller even than men of average height, Brael estimated. They appeared to be armed with lighter weapons than their larger kin: handguns and wickedly serrated knives. They wore little or no armour and moved between the slag piles and the buildings closer to the minehead in quick darting runs. It was impossible to estimate how many of them there were above ground.

  ‘They must have climbed up the shaft,’ Brael hissed his reply as he motioned for Tombek to slip silently back, away from the window. The rest of the company were waiting for them a street away. Those who recognised the area of the city they found themselves in, after Brael pulled them out of the dogged street-by-street retreat towards the old town, were already muttering their incomprehension.

  ‘Either up the sides or using the chain like a ladder,’ Brael continued as they moved quickly down the stairs to ground level.

  ‘Aren’t you forgetting something?’ Tombek asked as they darted across the street at the rear of the refining works. ‘Kobar closed the mine. You were there.’

  ‘I know,’ said Brael as he beckoned to the rest of his company from the corner of the street in which they were sheltering. His men moved quickly from doorways and out over window ledges to assemble around him. ‘But you saw them. You saw them come out of the wheelhouse.’

  Tombek could only nod glumly and check the heavy pistol he had taken from the dead pilot of the flying machine while Brael briefed the rest of the men. Another of his notions had proved right. Tombek was too stolid, too concerned with the here-and-now to waste time with talk of witchcraft, but the accuracy of Brael’s notions was uncanny. Brael always dismissed talk of them as anything other than good luck, but, as Fellick once commented, Brael must have grown good luck along with the animals on his farm to have accumulated so much. And this time he had led the company back to the mine like a hunting dog on a scent. He had known that there was danger there, danger that had to be met.

  ‘We all know what’s going to happen to Mallax.’ Brael surprised everyone by adding a coda to his typically terse briefing. ‘And we might not know exactly how it’s going to happen, but we know the same thing’s going to happen to us. I’m a farmer. I never wanted to be a soldier, but the greenskins made me one. They did the same to most of you. All I’ve ever wanted to do, since this nightmare began, is to make those animals regret what they turned me into.’ Heads nodded in agreement. Brael scanned the faces that surrounded him.

  ‘It’s been an honour to know you, no matter how l
ong it’s been. Now let’s go. For Mallax. For Agra.’

  ‘For Mallax. For Agra.’ Most of the company quietly echoed Brael’s words, then moved off to their assigned positions.

  It was probably just his melancholic disposition, Tombek told himself, but he couldn’t shake the feeling that he had just heard the company’s funeral oration.

  From her vantage point at the window that Brael and Tombek had used to reconnoitre the area, Freytha Lodz watched most of the company run out from between the buildings below her and towards the mine’s wheelhouse. None of the smaller greenskins had noticed them yet. Brael wanted to get as close as possible to their target before alerting every one of the creatures within earshot with the sound of gunfire – even if that gunfire was covering their advance.

  Two loaded muskets of varying vintages were propped beside the window from which she peered. Five others had been assigned the job of covering the advance, each from their own vantage point; between them, they had divided up the company’s entire stock of rifles, balls and blackpowder. Those who were racing towards the wheelhouse carried only hand weapons.

  Something moved between the buildings off to the right. Freytha shouldered her rifle and brought it to bear. One of the smaller greenskins, armed with a pistol, was taking aim at Lollak’s back.

  Thinking of Vikor and her mother, Freytha squeezed the trigger.

  It was just one more gunshot in a city that rang with the sound of death’s machinery, but it was enough to alert the greenskins that they were not alone. Brael spared a glance to his right; one of the smaller greenskins lay sprawled between two buildings. Its fellows grouped outside the wheelhouse now turned, bared evilly outsized teeth and brought their weapons to bear.

  A few strides more, that’s all I would’ve asked, he thought, then fired his looted greenskin pistol from the hip. A greenskin’s face dissolved before it could fire its own pistol.

  A glance upwards brought more bad news. The wheel atop the wheelhouse tower had begun to turn. The cage was rising.