Hugo couldn’t just stand by and watch as his house was demolished. In a panic, he ran to the cupboard under the stairs, ignoring the swarm of rats that billowed from it, and grabbed a bucket. He rushed out into the garden, filling the bucket with pond water and a few unlucky fish, then rushed back inside to quench the flames that were threatening to set fire to his embroidered Bretonnian drapery.
The mansion’s systematic destruction went on for almost an hour, with Boris stomping along the best he could on his wooden leg, swinging his maul with abandon at the fleeing rats, as Hugo gradually emptied his stagnant pond onto the spreading flames. In the end he managed to put out the fires before his house was completely gutted, but meanwhile Boris had managed to lay waste to almost every room. Smashed furniture and squashed rats littered every floor, and as Hugo surveyed the carnage a tear rolled down one cheek. Boris stood in the entrance hall, or what remained of it, gasping for air, a satisfied grin on his face.
‘Well,’ he said cheerily. ‘This was a good start, don’t you think?’
At first Hugo couldn’t speak, so griefstricken was he over the destruction of his home and the precious contents within it. Artworks he had collected over decades had been smashed to shards and the fine décor was blackened by smoke and flame. As he looked at Boris with that idiot’s grin on his face, his grief suddenly turned to anger.
‘A good start?’ he growled. ‘A good bloody start? Are you insane, you brainless oaf? Look what you’ve done to my house! Get out! Get out now and take that thing with you!’ Hugo pointed accusatorially at the huge maul in Boris’s hand that had wreaked so much destruction in the house.
Boris could only look back with a hurt expression. ‘I was only trying to help,’ he said dejectedly, before turning and limping off into the evening air.
Hugo watched him go, making sure he was well off the boundary of his property before he slumped down on what remained of his grand staircase and wept.
The next day, Hugo Kressler found himself in Kreiger’s Gunsmiths of Wehrmunch Strasse. He had at first intended to purchase a pistol, one of the finely crafted matchlocks that Herr Krieger was so famous for, but after browsing for several moments he espied something much more suitable. Hugo had never fired a blunderbuss before, nor a matchlock pistol for that matter, but he guessed the wide spread of its shot would make it much a more suitable firearm for a novice such as himself.
Once back home, he loaded the weapon, dressed himself in his finest regalia, or at least what he could salvage from his partially singed armoire, and sat on the edge of his bed.
At the time of purchasing it, Hugo hadn’t quite decided whether he would use the weapon to defend himself from the remaining rats in his house, or if it was to blow his own head from his shoulders. Now it came down to it, he still couldn’t make up his mind. He sat for almost an hour, glaring at the blunderbuss, cocked and ready for action by his side.
But Hugo knew deep down in his tiny withered heart that he couldn’t do it. It would take a braver man than he to take his own life; he simply didn’t have the courage for it. And so, saying a little prayer to thank Shallya for her mercy and guidance, he placed the blunderbuss by his bed, laid down still fully clothed, and cried himself to sleep.
An explosion rocked Hugo’s mansion to its very foundations and at first, as he awoke bleary-eyed and terrified, he thought his newly acquired blunderbuss had suddenly gone off of its own accord. He quickly realised something far more sinister was afoot, as the sound of falling masonry echoed from beyond the door of his bedchamber.
Hugo rose from his bed, having the wherewithal to grab the loaded blunderbuss before venturing out to investigate the calamity. He did not have to move very far along the corridor before he saw what the source of the noise was. A huge crater had suddenly appeared in the middle of the mansion. Two floors had collapsed into a deep hole which, from the look of the passages that led off from it, was some kind of mine shaft.
Possible causes for this started to swirl around Hugo’s head. Had this been here all the time? Was it part of the ancient sewer system? Were dwarf prospectors digging beneath his house? Before he could begin to think of the litigious consequences for the guilty parties involved, something moved along the shadows of the corridor. As he stared, dumbfounded, a stooped and filthy figure slowly emerged from the dark and Hugo realised that those responsible for the crater were not dwarfs.
It was four feet tall with clawed hands and feet. Filthy robes covered it from the neck down and they stank of putrescence and muddy earth. But it was the face that most filled Hugo with terror – a rat’s face, with red, baleful eyes and monstrous incisors that clacked together hungrily.
He didn’t even think, raising the blunderbuss in his numb hands, and as the creature rushed towards him he pulled the trigger. The blunderbuss roared, bucking in his hands and knocking him flat on his backside. A spray of white-hot buckshot blasted from the barrel, destroying the creature’s bestial face in a splatter of crimson gore.
Gingerly, Hugo pulled himself back to his feet, staring down at the filthy animal’s corpse.
‘Ha!’ he bellowed. ‘Not so clever now are you!’
As if in answer, something pulled itself from the pit in the centre of Hugo’s mansion – something huge and hairy. Its muscles were thick, its flesh covered in a thick, shaggy down, its hands like clawed shovels, built for tunnelling through solid earth. It too bore the face of a rat, but this was no diminutive drone like the last; this was a beast, nine feet tall and monstrous to behold.
It glared at Hugo, anger burning in its tiny eyes, and as it approached Hugo noticed that one of its huge ears was missing. Despite the necessity for flight in this situation, Hugo found his feet simply would not move, and all he could do was stare as the creature approached, its foetid breath washing over him, inducing the need for him to vomit. He could only close his eyes, and await his inevitable fate.
‘Oi!’
The deep cry echoed through the cavern that now made up most of Hugo’s home. The massive rat creature craned its neck to see who dared to disturb its feasting. Hugo, too, glanced towards the entrance of the mansion to see a burly figure framed in the doorway.
‘I told you there’d be big ’uns,’ shouted Boris hefting his maul. ‘Remember me?’ he said cheerily. Then a sudden dark intent fell across his visage as he limped forwards on his wooden leg.
The monstrous fiend roared, and Hugo was all but forgotten as it leapt down from the balcony to land in front of the rat catcher. It swept its shovel-like hand toward Boris, but despite his peg leg he was nimble enough to avoid it, slamming his maul down on the creature’s clawed foot. It roared in pain, hopping back as Boris advanced.
‘I’ve been after you for ages,’ he said, slamming the maul forwards again. There was an audible crack as the maul struck the creature’s knee and it fell forwards, foundering in what remained of the entrance hall. Hugo could only watch agog as Boris set about the creature with gusto, smashing it with the hammer as it tried its best to avoid the solid blows that rained down, cracking its bones and smashing its limbs.
In the end it teetered at the edge of the huge crater, beaten and bloody, and with a final mighty swing Boris smashed it back into the black pit from whence it came.
Hugo’s knees knocked together, his body wracked by a convulsive spasm, but he still managed to descend from the first floor, avoiding the crater that had opened in the middle of his house, to fall at the rat catcher’s knees.
‘Thank you, thank you, thank you,’ was all he managed to say as he clung to Boris’s wooden leg.
‘All right fella,’ Boris replied, clearly embarrassed. ‘No need to make a scene.’
When Boris finally managed to extricate himself from Hugo’s unrestrained display of gratitude he glanced down into the pit and frowned.
‘Ah,’ he said, pointing into the crater. ‘There’s your problem. Weirdstone!’
Hugo looked down, and running along the side of the shaft beneath his hous
e was a seam of glittering black ore.
‘That’s most likely what they were after,’ Boris continued. ‘It draws ’em like flies to sh… well, you know what I mean? If you’re planning on staying here, make sure you get that removed.’
‘Yes, yes, I’ll do that,’ Hugo replied, still trying to take in what had just happened.
‘Anyway, must be off. Lads’ll never believe me down the Cat when I tell ’em what I’ve just done.’
With one last grin, Boris swung the maul over his shoulder, and sauntered out of the mansion, his wooden leg clicking against the ground as he went.
Hugo watched as he left, standing amidst the ruin of his house. ‘Thank you,’ was all he could think to say.
He was running, always running, in perpetual motion, legs pumping, breath coming in quick rasps. On it came in pursuit, on his heels, keeping pace, smelling his scent, dogging his trail.
This time he was slower, or was his pursuer just faster? Either way it caught him quickly, those iron hands grasping him in a solid embrace, squeezing the air from his lungs, raising him high.
He turned, looking at the hunter for the first time, seeing it glaring down at him with hate in its beady eyes, and he recognised that face, those bedraggled features. It was the face of Hugo Kressler.
In terror he squeaked, squirming for freedom, lashing his pink tail, twitching his whiskers…
Hugo’s eyes blinked open and he panted for breath. He was wrapped up in a tangle of sheets that held his arms and legs tight. With some difficulty he unravelled himself from the stark white bedding and sat up, breathing a sigh of relief.
All was well, he told himself, the rats were gone – there was nothing to fear.
He rose with a smile, suddenly remembering that it was to be a good day. He had commissioned Gepetto Montalban himself, the most famous architect in the province, to oversee the mansion’s renovations. The Guild of Miners had sent a dozen men to remove the strange glittering ore from beneath the cellar, and he had even started to put weight back on.
A smile crossed Hugo’s lips as he walked to the window, opening the shutters and looking out onto Talabheim. It wasn’t the most aesthetic of cities, it was certainly no Praag or Luccini, but it was still his city.
Glancing down he noticed the small black statuette that sat at his bedside, the first new piece of art Hugo had commissioned. It was in the shape of a hammer, in honour of Boris, and was crafted from the glittering black ore that had run beneath his house. Yes, Boris had warned him about it, and he had heeded that warning and had the glittering ore removed – but what harm could one little statuette do?
Taking a deep breath he turned, ready to break his fast heartily and sate the ravenous appetite he had recently developed, when the statuette suddenly fell from the table. Hugo stared down at it curiously. He was two feet away, how had he managed to knock it from the nightstand?
Then he saw it, just from the corner of his eye, something behind him, something long and sinuous.
He turned, looking down to see with horror that it was protruding from beneath his nightgown, twisting and writhing of its own accord, an appendage that had seemingly grown overnight – a long pink rat’s tail.
Hugo opened his mouth wide and squeaked in terror…
The Long Games at Carcharias
Rob Sanders
The end began with the Revenant Rex.
An interstellar beast. Bad omen of omens. A wanderer: she was a regular visitor to this part of the segmentum. The hulk was a drifting gravity well of twisted rock and metal. Vessels from disparate and distant races nestled, broken-backed amongst mineral deposits from beyond the galaxy’s borders and ice frozen from before the beginning of time. A demented logic engine at the heart of the hulk – like a tormented dreamer – guided the nightmare path of the beast through the dark void of Imperial sectors, alien empires of the Eastern Fringe and the riftspace of erupting maelstroms. Then, as if suddenly awoken from a fevered sleep, the daemon cogitator would initiate the countdown sequence of an ancient and weary warp drive. The planetkiller would disappear with the expediency of an answered prayer, destined to drift up upon the shores of some other bedevilled sector, hundreds of light years away.
The Revenant Rex beat the Aurora Chapter at Schindelgheist, the Angels Eradicant over at Theta Reticuli and the White Scars at the Martyrpeake. Unfortunately the hulk was too colossal and the timeframes too erratic for the cleanse-and-burn efforts of the Adeptus Astartes to succeed: but Chapter pride and zealotry ensured their superhuman efforts regardless. The behemoth was infested with greenskins of the Iron Klaw Clan – that had spent the past millennia visiting hit-and-run mayhem on systems across the segmentum, with abandoned warbands colonising planetary badlands like a green, galactic plague. The Warfleet Ultima, where it could gather craft in sufficient time and numbers, had twice attempted to destroy the gargantuan hulk. The combined firepower of hundreds of Navy vessels had also failed to destroy the beast, simply serving to enhance its hideous melange further.
All these things and more had preyed upon Elias Artegall’s conscience when the Revenant Rex tumbled into the Gilead Sector. Arch-Deacon Urbanto. Rear Admiral Darracq. Overlord Gordius. Zimner, the High Magos Retroenginericus. Grand Master Karmyne of the Angels Eradicant. Artegall had either received them or received astrotelepathic messages from them all.
‘Chapter Master, the xenos threat cannot be tolerated…’
‘The Mercantile Gilead have reported the loss of thirty bulk freighters…’
‘Master Artegall, the greenskins are already out of control in the Despot Stars…’
‘That vessel could harbour ancient technological secrets that could benefit the future of mankind…’
‘You must avenge us, brother…’
The spirehalls of the Slaughterhorn had echoed with their demands and insistence. But to war was a Space Marine’s prerogative. Did not Lord Guilliman state on the steps of the Plaza Ptolemy: ‘There is but one of the Emperor’s Angels for every world in the Imperium; but one drop of Adeptus Astartes blood for every Imperial citizen. Judge the necessity to spill such a precious commodity with care and if it must be spilt, spill it wisely, my battle-brothers.’
Unlike the Scars or the Auroras, Artegall’s Crimson Consuls were not given to competitive rivalry. Artegall did not desire success because others had failed. Serving at the pleasure of the primarch was not a tournament spectacle and the Revenant Rex was not an opportunistic arena. In the end, Artegall let his battered copy of the Codex Astartes decide. In those much-thumbed pages lay the wisdom of greater men than he: as ever, Artegall put his trust in their skill and experience. He chose a passage that reflected his final judgement and included it in both his correspondence to his far-flung petitioners and his address to the Crimson Consuls, First Company on board the battle-barge Incarnadine Ecliptic.
‘From Codicil CC-LXXX-IV.ii: The Coda of Balthus Dardanus, 17th Lord of Macragge – entitled Staunch Supremacies. “For our enemies will bring us to battle on the caprice of chance. The alien and the renegade are the vagaries of the galaxy incarnate. What can we truly know or would want to of their ways or motivations? They are to us as the rabid wolf at the closed door that knows not even its own mind. Be that door. Be the simplicity of the steadfast and unchanging: the barrier between what is known and the unknowable. Let the Imperium of Man realise its manifold destiny within while without its mindless foes dash themselves against the constancy of our adamantium. In such uniformity of practice and purpose lies the perpetuity of mankind.” May Guilliman be with you.’
‘And with you,’ Captain Bolinvar and his crimson-clad 1st Company Terminator Marines had returned. But the primarch had not been with them and Bolinvar and one hundred veteran sons of Carcharias had been forsaken.
Artegall sat alone in his private Tactical Chancelorium, among the cold ivory of his throne. The Chancelorium formed the very pinnacle of the Slaughterhorn – the Crimson Consuls fortress-monastery – which in turn formed the s
pirepeak of Hive Niveous, the Carcharian capital city. The throne was constructed from the colossal bones of shaggy, shovel-tusk Stegodonts, hunted by Carcharian ancestors, out on the Dry-blind. Without his armour the Chapter Master felt small and vulnerable in the huge throne – a sensation usually alien to an Adeptus Astartes’ very being. The chamber was comfortably gelid and Artegall sat in his woollen robes, elbow to knee and fist to chin, like some crumbling statue from Terran antiquity.
The Chancelorium began to rumble and this startled the troubled Chapter Master. The crimson-
darkness swirl of the marble floor began to part in front of him and the trapdoor admitted a rising platform upon which juddered two Chapter serfs in their own zoster robes. They flanked a huge brass pict-caster that squatted dormant between them. The serfs were purebred Carcharians with their fat, projecting noses, wide nostrils and thick brows. These on top of stocky, muscular frames, barrel torsos and thick arms decorated with crude tattoos and scar-markings. Perfectly adapted for life in the frozen underhive.
‘Where is your master, the Chamber Castellan?’ Artegall demanded of the bondsmen. The first hailed his Chapter Master with a fist to the aquila represented on the Crimson Consuls crest of his robes.
‘Returned presently from the underhive, my lord – at your request – with the Lord Apothecary,’ the serf answered solemnly. The second activated the pict-caster, bringing forth the crystal screen’s grainy picture.
‘We have word from the Master of the Fleet, Master Artegall,’ the serf informed him.
Standing before Artegall was an image of Hecton Lambert, Master of the Crimson Consuls fleet. The Space Marine commander was on the bridge of the strike cruiser Anno Tenebris, high above the gleaming, glacial world of Carcharias.
Hammer and Bolter Year One Page 37
