Hammer and Bolter: Issue 20 Page 12

  ‘Not without you!’ Sascha said waving her axe as her brother gutted a pirate.

  ‘I’ll be right behind you,’ Dubnitz said.

  ‘Then there’s no reason to hurry, is there?’ Sark said, driving a pirate back with a swift slash of his purloined blade.

  ‘You Averlanders are a stubborn bunch,’ Dubnitz said. The creatures were moving towards the skiff now. Before, they had been content to watch, but now they had been prodded into motion – why? Why the sudden urgency, Dubnitz wondered as he blocked a blow that would have sent him to his knees. Why were the pirates suddenly so desperate? ‘Cock-crow,’ Dubnitz said suddenly.

  ‘What?’ Sascha said.

  ‘Morning is coming! That’s why they’re so impatient!’ Dubnitz said. ‘If we can just hold on until morning…’

  ‘I don’t think they’re going to let us!’ Sark yelped. He staggered back as one of the creatures grabbed for him. Sascha screamed. Dubnitz turned and saw her backpedalling from a scaly shape that loomed over her. Before he could go to her, Fulmeyer stepped between them, his eyes wild. The pirate hacked at him with berserk abandon. Dubnitz was forced back, his arm and shoulder throbbing with fatigue-ache as he blocked the wild blows.

  ‘I’m not going into the mist!’ Fulmeyer howled. ‘Not me, you hear?’

  ‘I hear,’ Dubnitz grunted, as he caught another blow. His eyes found the horn, clutched in Fulmeyer’s manic grip. With a twist of his wrist, he sent the pirate’s sword sliding from his grip and rammed his shoulder into the other man’s chest. Fulmeyer staggered, and Dubnitz grabbed the horn, yanking it out of Fulmeyer’s hand.

  ‘No!’ the pirate screamed.

  Dubnitz didn’t waste breath replying. Instead, he put the horn to his lips and blew. The note shivered out and the effect was nigh-immediate. The mist seemed to harden, as if frozen, and then it collapsed like a curtain that has had its straps cut. It sank and retreated, like the tide going out. The strange rock formations wavered like heat mirages and faded as the mist writhed past them. The rising sun glared down, its gaze suddenly no longer obscured by the daemon-sent mist.

  As one, the creatures gave out a great cry. There was despair in that sound, and a resigned rage. They began to stagger away, covering their bulbous eyes and heads as well as they could. A foul-smelling smoke rose from those not quick enough to reach the mist and their screams caused every man’s heart to shudder. Only one didn’t retreat – the first, the beast clutching its stone-headed maul like a talisman. It rose over Sascha, reaching for her. It didn’t intend to return to the mists without one sacrifice, at least. She screamed and raised her axe.

  ‘Ho beast! That’s not the one you want,’ Dubnitz bellowed. Its triangular head whipped around. Dubnitz grabbed Fulmeyer and propelled him into the water near the beast. The pirate screamed and tried to run, but the maul flicked out, and bones turned to splinters and he fell, his legs rendered into ruined sacks. He coughed and whined and splashed as the creature stood over him, considering. Its eye found Dubnitz again.

  ‘Go on, take him you one-eyed son of a frog,’ Dubnitz said. His limbs trembled from his exertions and he wanted nothing more than to fall down. But he forced himself to stay upright. He extended his sword. ‘Take what you’re given, and go.’

  The creature’s eye flashed with something that might have been a look of promise, and then it reached down and grabbed Fulmeyer by his scalp. The pirates who hadn’t fled found themselves in much the same predicament. Scaly, abnormally long arms shot from the retreating mist and grabbed ankles, elbows, heads and arms, jerking the terrified pirates into the mist they had earlier so eagerly sheltered in.

  The creature hefted Fulmeyer, whose shrieks had dwindled to moans, and pointed at Dubnitz with its maul. Smoke billowed from its heavy shape as it held his gaze for a moment, and then it turned and stalked after its fellows, its club tail sending waves slopping against the side of the skiff.

  Dubnitz watched it go, and when it had vanished and the mist had gone, he raised the horn and brought his sword down on it, shattering it.

  ‘Erkhart–’ Sascha began.

  ‘Get on the skiff,’ Dubnitz said hollowly. ‘We need to be far away from here by nightfall.’ Sascha and her brother got aboard the skiff, and Dubnitz followed slowly, looking back warily. The creatures might not come after them, but he couldn’t take that chance. He felt ill and tired. He hadn’t had a choice, and he wouldn’t weep for Fulmeyer and his crew, but it sat badly with him nonetheless. They had earned their ending, but he wished that he hadn’t been the one to deliver it in such a fashion.

  Even pirates deserved better than that.

  In the fading drifts of mist, Dubnitz thought he could see dim forms struggling, and hear distant screams and the thump of skulls on stone. Then he could hear nothing but the sounds of the Cursed Marshes, and the splash of the pole into the water as the skiff began its journey back towards the clean waters of the Reik.

  A MUG OF RECAFF

  Sandy Mitchell

  If anyone had asked Jurgen, which they never did, he would have said the operation had been a great success. As usual, Commissar Cain had outwitted the heretics they were hunting with ease, leading the squad of Guardsmen assigned to escort him straight to the heart of the coven, while the bulk of the raiding force provided a diversion by attacking the heavily-fortified stronghold of the renegades. After a short, intense firefight, most of the cabal lay dead, the few panicked survivors too intent on fleeing for their lives through the corridors of their leader’s mansion to put up any further resistance.

  ‘Went rather well, sir,’ he ventured as the commissar sheathed his chainsword while making the odd little twitch of the nose he so often did. As always, Cain had made sure he was in the thick of the action, and must be in dire need of a pick-me-up by now.

  Fortunately, Jurgen had noticed a kitchen during their initial assault through the servants’ quarters, and was sure he could find his way back there. As soon as the commissar was engrossed in discussing how best to sweep the building for stray cultists with the sergeant in charge of the escort detail, he slipped quietly away in search of it.

  The layout of the rambling house was a little confusing, but he found the object of his quest easily enough by the simple expedient of following the trail of combat damage; the path back to their entry point was marked by las-bolt pocks on the walls, many of which had charred the hanging tapestries or scored the intricate marquetry surfaces of the occasional tables scattered about the place. Most of these had once held ceramics, few of which remained intact, particularly around the scorch marks on the carpet and the widespread cratering of walls and furniture where frag grenades had gone off.

  Before long, the opulent furnishings gave way to the starker, more utilitarian environs of the servants’ quarters, although Jurgen didn’t expect to meet any of the staff; most of them had fled screaming as soon as the armed Guardsmen appeared, the ones that hadn’t being cut down in short order alongside the masters whose corruption they’d shared.

  Too seasoned a campaigner to take anything for granted, Jurgen remained alert, his lasgun held at the ready. The cultists who’d escaped retribution upstairs were almost certainly long gone, but it was always possible that a few had gone to ground, hoping to slip away quietly once the noise had stopped.

  So musing, he caught sight of his objective at last, the light gleaming from neatly-shelved pots and pans visible through a half-open doorway.

  He was about to walk through it when he hesitated, listening intently. Someone inside was speaking, the voice rising and falling in the unmistakable cadences of a chant.

  ‘Heyla, heyla sheyla, heyla sheyla, heyla hoh…’

  Jurgen had no idea what it meant, but he didn’t really need to. It sounded like warpcraft to him, which boded badly for the Emperor’s loyal servants still in the building. It might even inconvenience the commissar, redoubtable warrior though he was. Better put a stop to it now, he supposed. Besides, he needed the kitchen; too bad fo
r the heretic currently occupying it.

  Readying his lasgun, Jurgen dashed through the door, his eyes flicking left and right in search of a target. He’d been right, someone was practicing warpcraft: a tall, elegant man in expensive-looking robes, and far too much jewellery, was waving his arms about in time to the stream of gibberish gushing from his lips. His eyes seemed to flicker with balefire as he glanced up at the unexpected intrusion, and his mouth twisted into a grimace of distaste, as though Jurgen was something he’d just found on the sole of his shoe.

  The guardsman’s finger tightened on the lasgun’s trigger, but before he could squeeze it the air between them ripped, sounding, he thought, like the galaxy’s biggest fart. Smelled like it too. Something consisting mainly of eyes, mouths and teeth stepped through the rent in reality and lashed out at him with half a dozen whip-like tentacles.

  ‘Finish the scum,’ the sorcerer said, disdain dripping from his words like protomatter from the flesh of the newly-incarnate warp-thing.

  ‘Works for me,’ Jurgen said, holding down the trigger of his lasgun. The daemonspawn reeled back, keening its distress, as the hail of las-bolts chewed its midsection to pieces. It was far from the first such thing Jurgen had encountered in his years of fighting at the commissar’s side, and in his experience they were never as tough as they were made out to be. Apparently that was something the Emperor had gifted him with; Inquisitor Vail had tried to explain it a couple of times, but she used a lot of long words that made his head hurt, and he didn’t really care anyway. The fact that it worked was enough for him.

  After a couple more bursts from the lasgun, the warpspawn suddenly vanished, with a pop of imploding air, driven back to the eldritch realm from which the psyker had torn it, just as Jurgen had known it would be. He turned, taking in the rest of the kitchen in a single, rapid glance.

  The psyker was still standing in front of the stove, an expression of stupefied astonishment on his face, muttering another string of arcane syllables. Livid green wychfire flared around his upraised fist, then flickered and died as Jurgen took a step towards him.

  ‘You can frak off and all,’ Jurgen said, and shot him, wiping the stunned expression off the man’s face with a single las-bolt. He slung the weapon as he stepped over the sorcerer’s spasming corpse, freeing his hands to pick up the kettle, which gurgled as he shook it.

  Already full. That was a bit of luck. The commissar would definitely be needing a mug of recaff by now, and Jurgen meant to see that he got it.

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