Jocasta steadied her breathing, a life of petty crime and scholarship in Andred wasn’t the best preparation she might have had for desperate and headlong flight in a frozen wilderness. If she lived she might suggest a course in cardiomancy be added to the curriculum. Her eyes flicked over the ancient serpentine script. It was ironic that she had come north of the Gate to study just such ancient sites, and now there was a better than good chance she was about to be skewered while attempting to do so. It was a difficult dialect and even under ideal circumstances it would have taken her days to fully translate. Fortunately Andernic had certain alliterative constructs which were depressingly familiar. Woe be to he who opens this portal. Death shall come upon swift wings. Cursed be the seed of the interloper to the seventh generation. May the manhood of he who breaks this seal shrivel and rot. Etcetera Etcetera. What was abundantly clear was that she didn’t have a snow flakes chance in Arad Lund of unraveling this spell before the pair of them were chopped to orc kibble.
“Hurry up!” Beren urged as the big orc with the axes rushed him, windmilling its vast tendon lace arms alarmingly. Another orc burst from the brush, this one lifting a crude black bow and pulling a rust tipped arrow from a quiver that must have been made from half a deer. Jocasta lifted a hand.
“Yeshira adac anisoptera,” she snapped. A cloud of dragonflies burst from the under brush and swarmed the orc archer battering at its eyes and nostrils. The brute roared and pawed at the air, momentarily distracted by the swarming insects, though it was clear that the spell wouldn’t hold it for long.
“Less jabbering more getting through the door,” Beren called, flicking his strange staff up. To Jocasta’s amazement he was managing to keep both weapons away from his body.
“Less helpful than you might think,” she admonished before reaching into her pouch and rooting desperately around her small collection of arcane tools and pulling out a stubby stick of wax wrapped in metallic foil. Hematallow was one of the tools she had used when a wizard was not polite enough to do the civilized thing and take a bribe to let her into his library, or when the Occult Bastion wanted a particular price for a lesson. Its making was unpleasant and limited by certain lunar conditions and the would be alchemists ability to focus. She carefully inscribed two glyphs and then added a third, then placed her hands on her hips.
“Redrecko mater putarii!” she shouted. Beren cast a shocked glance over his shoulder, apparently recognising at least some of the words. The rock seemed to boil up into a snarling face, thin lips spreading into a maw filled with vicious teeth. Jocasta grabbed Beren by the belt and leaped into the mouth. They hit the back wall but rather than smash themselves against the granite they splashed through it like children in a pool of viscous mud. Jocasta squeezed her eyes shut as they passed through the oddly liquid rock and burst into the pitch darkness on the other side. She dispersed the spell with an effort of will and she hit something in the darkness a moment before Beren hit her and sent her sprawling on her ass. She rolled downwards in the darkness, smacking frequently against unseen objects that gouged at her knees and elbows before finally coming to rest with a clatter. She swiped furiously at her mouth, dislodging a thin layer of mud that had air hardened into rocky flakes when the spell had ended. There was a muffled howling from the other side of the stone, the Orc trying to follow them was either very frustrated, or more likely, had become partially stuck in the newly solid rock. Lifting her hand she muttered a simple cantrip and a ball of light sprang into existence above her hand, casting a cool faintly greenish light around the chamber. They were in a circular room cut into the rock, a spiral staircase of crudely cut stone leading up to the portal they had entered through. Exiting corridors with monumental arches carved from stone lead in three of the four cardinal directions. The floor itself was covered with bodies. They weren’t quite skeletons owing to the fact that a kind of mossy fungus grew on the bones, its roots having sucked the moisture out of the ancient cadavers to the degree that they more resembled mummies. The preservation was good enough that Jocasta could tell that each of them had been laid carefully in place and then had their throat ritually cut. Shallow trenches gouged in stone were dusty with ancient blood which had been drained away for purposes unknown but which Jocasta doubted was black pudding. The whole place smelled of death and mushrooms.
“First thing,” Jocasta muttered disconsolately, “new paint, new cabinets.”
“Do all of your plans involve falling down things?” Beren asked a touch sourly as he picked himself up.
“Are you kidding?” Jocasta asked, “most of my plans scarcely involve plans.”
She had nearly made it. The door transcribed three complete rotations before it smashed into the wall in a shower of plaster dust and splinters. Jocasta Jonquille was frozen in the task of shoving papers and belongings into her rucksack as rough looking men rushed through the smoking hole where her door had been, truncheons raised. There was no point in resorting to sorcery. Rychards’ boys all wore amulets of amber set with lead. She considered running, but there was no chance she could wiggle her bottom out of one of the basement’s small windows before the grabbed her. Rychard himself stepped through the low doorway behind his bully boys, long cane clicking on the stones. He took a look at her hastily stuffed sack and clucked his tongue in disapproval.
“Going somewhere Jo?” he asked in his crackly dry voice. Recovering herself, Jocasta tossed her tight bob of white blonde hair nonchalantly.
“Just a little spring cleaning,” she lied patently, casting an accusing eye to the wreckage of her door and wall.
“Ah,” Rychard replied, in acknowledgement but certainly not agreement. He was a heavyset man with large jowels and drooping mustaches, a bastard of Andred’s over inflated nobility some said. Nobility or not, as the chief loan shark of the city, he certainly was a bastard.
“Good to see you getting things in order, a smart move for someone who owes me so much money…” he said, casting an eye around the basement. It was a small space, almost every inch of which was covered with tacked up pieces of parchment containing arcane notes, formulae and experiments. Faintly luminous potions were racked along one wall in a bewildering array of glassware that lacked any kind of consistency. Reagents were packed into boxes and vials stacked haphazardly in the center of the room, miraculously untouched by the flying door, save for a crate of mint which had been scattered like confetti by the missile.
“I’ve been meaning to talk to you about that,” Jocasta replied, fighting the urge to lick her lips nervously. Rychard arched a bushy eyebrow.
“Really, because one of my associates tried to talk to you at the College and you vanished out a latrine window. Another tried to speak with you in the market and you rushed into a brothel and never emerged,” he accused.
“Well,” Jocasta said, “I obviously emerged…” Rychard narrowed his eyes dangerously. The cat was evidently done playing with the mouse.
“I see a lot of people like you, coming here and going into debt to study at the College. Most of them are smart enough to quit while they are ahead. By my calculation you now owe me one thousand nine hundred and six marks,” he told her. Jocasta winced slightly at the number. Even that was a fraction of what it would have cost to attend the Mythrim Tethir formally. Most of the gold had gone to bribes to get access to libraries and laboratories, or to encourage people to look the other ways while she audited the odd class. The Occult bastion had been a somewhat easier place to gain instruction, but both tuition and tutelage tended towards the criminal. It was a poor fit for Jocasta’s obsession with ancient magics, though like her small potion selling shop, it helped pay the bills. Well keep the bills from becoming crippling too quickly. Come to think of it, she had probably made her share of anti-magic amulets and door breaking charms that allowed thugs like Rychard to collect on loans to his more magical clientele.
“Do you have one thousand nine hundred and six marks miss Jonquille?” he asked with exaggerated politeness. Jocasta sagged slightly and opened her mouth, but he held up a hand to forestall her.
“Because if you don’t, I know a Vrettonian noble who will pay top dollar for… shall we say less willing witches?” he leered. Jocasta shivered with genuine fear at the idea of winding up as fuel for some nobles perversions, be they sexual or political. Rychard was, no doubt, as good as his word. There were rumors of others he had disappeared under similar circumstances. The fear galvanized her into action.
“I have seven hundred, I hoped it might buy me an extension,” she all but wined. Rychard grinned his sharks smile.
“With your shop, that might make a full thousand. Why don’t you get it and then we can discuss my terms,” he told her. Jocasta sagged and stood up, surreptitiously lifting the satchel she had been packing when he arrived. She crossed the room to a large trunk made of old leather bound with brass. One of the guards whistled at her as she went but she ignored it. She bent down and opened the trunk.
“It’s empty,” one of the nearby guards remarked, his monobrow crinkling in confusion. Jocasta stepped into the trunk and closed the lid on herself, the latches snapping shut.
“What the…” the confused guard bleated.
“Get out!” Rychard, sharper than his men, blurted. The shelves of potions collapsed in an avalanche of falling glass. Unstable magical elements, mixed and frothed for a long second, spewing forth rainbow coloured vapors. Then the whole mess exploded like the mother of all Dre Costan cannons.
[/i]present day [/i]
It took Jocasta a moment to realize she was free. Her mind had been in a fog, partially magical, partially of cold terror. The sight of her few possessions galvanized her into action. She staggered unsteadily to the chest and snatched up her rucksack with its precious notes and pulled her shortsword free. The man, Beren she thought his name was, was yelling at her to move. That seemed like an obvious course though where exactly they should go was less clear. An orc charged past her, skin burning squealing in agony only to meet the talons of one of the undead horrors as it cleared the end of the wagon. All around her was magic, steel, and the reek of blood.
“Move!” Beren shouted and shoved her towards the copse. She moved, leaden limbs coming to life as she ran for the cover of the trees. The tall arctic beeches reached skyward like fingers thrusting up from the chilled earth. Under normal circumstances it would have been a foreboding sight. Being caught between the army of the damned and the army of the hammed hardly counted as normal circumstances Jocasta thought and then giggled at her own joke, the sound brittle and hysterical in her own ears. An orc charged out of the thicket, leveling a spear at her. She yelped in panic and swatted the point aside with her, embarrassingly, still sheathed short sword. The axe in Beren’s hand hacked the orc’s arm away just below the shoulder. It squealed and staggered away, gouting stinking black blood that steamed in the snow. They ran into the trees, crashing through the low underbrush. Jocasta’s breath billowed out in front of her in great clouds of steam and her lungs burned from sucking in cold air. She ignored the scratches of twigs and branches as they ran into the copse, her conscious mind not even registering the minor injuries.
“Watch…” Beren shouted as Jocasta ran through a low bush and suddenly found there was no ground beneath her leather snow boots. Jocasta made an inarticulate squawk as she plunged down a steep defile, crashing into sapling and bushes that clung to the shallow rocky soil. The sky cartwheeled dizzyingly over her head until she crashed into a hawthorne bush significant enough to arrest her fall. Her knapsack hit her on the head by way of final insult. As Jocasta lay on her back staring up at the cloudy sky she realized that the sounds of fighting had died away, at least for now.
“Are you ok?” Beren asked, as he descended the gully with significantly more grace. Jocasta sat up and spat out a mouthful of dirt, snow and twigs.
“Never better,” she replied brightly, reaching behind her to retrieve the still sheathed blade which had whacked her across the head during the tumble.
The oasis, like the rest of the landscape, was strange to Calliope's eye. She had read of them of course, much of the Old Magic came from the East and not all treatises were simple spell craft, but she had never seen one. It seemed like a beautiful jewel in the middle of a field of sand and rock. A rim of green around a large dark pool around which sprung up date palms and short prickly bushes from which orangish fruit with purple veins hung. The bandits, or whatever they had been, had clearly been here for some time and had constructed small shelters from woven palm fronds and other leaves. A fire pit had been indifferently covered with rocks and several joins of charred meat hung around it, the leftovers of some evening meal. The only permanent structure was a small hut that looked to be constructed of layers of palm fronds and layers of mud from the oasis that had been baked semi hard in the hot sun. Calliope thought it would melt if there were ever a really significant fall of rain, but that didn’t seem very likely in this arid land. A boy of perhaps ten summers stepped out of the hut looking confused and sleepy. His eyes focused on the intruders and he began to shout at the top of his lungs.
“Take it easy kid,” Neil advised. The kid did not take it easy. Instead he whipped a small knife from somewhere and lunged at him. Calliope snapped a word and he sunk to his waist in mud which a moment before had been solid ground. She spoke a second word and suddenly the ground was as it had been, save it trapped the lower half of the boy, including both legs and his knife hand. The boy continued to shout, thought they sounded more like curses than please for help. Intrigued Calliope stepped forward, batted away the childs free hand and grabbed both sides of his head. White wispy light gathered around her hands.
“Sawf 'aqtuluk! Sawf 'ateam,” he screetched, then the white light surged up into Calliope’s ears and eyes, “...your breasts to the goats. I will cut off your manhood and nail it to the door!”
“Take it easy kid,” Calliope recommended, though her words now sounded in his own tongue. Neil gave her a puzzled look and she flicked a wrist in his direction. A small storm of motes of white light floated up into his ears and mouth as the translation spell took hold.
“I will have the hounds rut with you! I will…” he continued to rant. Calliope sighed.
“Have it your way,” she said and picked up the knife and yanked back his head by a handful of greasy hair, pressing the blade against his neck so it pinked his dark flesh. The child fell silent, freezing in place.
“Out of threats are we?” Calliope asked. The child nodded and Calliope held his hair for a moment longer before dropping it. The child began to cry. Calliope stepped over him and into the hut. It was surprisingly cool inside, and for a miracle it seemed the bandits hadn’t been using it for a latrine.
“Well hello,” Neil said, spying a small wooden chest amidst the rough hewn furniture and few clay pots of oil, dates, and other necessities. Calliope lowered the earthenware pot of wine she had been sniffing to pay attention. The chest was made of some highly polished wood that reminded her somewhat of dark cherry and had been artistically inlaid with brass. Neil pulled the lid open and whistled, turning the box so she could see a few small handfuls of coins, gold and silver of unfamiliar type and a small scroll. He took the scroll out and proffered it to her. Calliope took it and unrolled it, the translation spell didn’t teach one to read unfortunately, but she knew enough of the old arcane tongues to make something out about tombs. The tombs of the Sisters who are Mother to the Sun maybe? It was very old and written on crumbling vellum. Lines of ancient ink formed something of a map which seemed to be bound by the symbol for Ibn Kaydos’ ghost fence and included markings which might have represented several of the larger hills, those which might be picked out from a distance.
“It’s a map,” Calliope mused as Neil gathered up the various foodstuffs as best he could.
“To what?” he asked, his eyes glittering with avaricious excitement.
“Who knows, we can talk about it when we are away from here, at least one of those bandits knew a few spells to get that box open in the first place.” The turned hand headed out the door.
“Please! Please don’t leave me here, they will kill me for letting you steal everything!” the boy wailed, his tears cutting lines through what was likely months of grime on his face.
“I suggest you start digging then,” Calliope told him without much interest, knowing there was no way he was going to get himself out in time.
“Wait, there is another treasure, I can tell you where it is! Hakim hides it so the others dont steal it! If you let me out, I will show you where it is!” he pleaded. Calliope and Neil shared a look.
“Alright, but its no trouble to put you back where I found you. Come to think of it less trouble just to kill you and save Hakim a job,” Calliope warned him. The boy shook his head so violently it was a wonder his neck didn’t crack.
“No trouble mistress, Ibrahim will not lead you astray, I swear it,” he pleaded. Calliope spoke the same arcane word as before and the earth around Ibrahim became mud once again. He scrambled out, furiously batting at the dirt as though it might entomb him once again.
“The treasure Ibrahim, we don’t have all day,” Calliope prompted. The boy bobbed his head obsequiously and stepped back into the hut. He crossed to the bed, and pulled the straw palette away from the wall. At first Calliope though nothing was there, but then the boy knelt down and thrust his hand through the wall. A space had been cleverly hollowed out in the wall and then covered with mud as though it were part of the original structure. He pulled out a gemstone, or half of a gemstone cut so cunningly that light seemed to be trapped within, even in the darkness of the hut. It seemed obvious the stone was meant for a setting of some kind, though at the moment Calliope couldn’t think of what it might fit.
“Where did you get this?” Calliope asked, taking it from the boy and turning it over in her hands, feeling the subtle presence of magical energies around the thing.
“In one of the tombs on the map, the Djiin there killed Subadah and Kareem and wounded Yafrid so bad Hakim had to finish him off,” the kid babbled. The word Djiin didn't translate in her mind. They lacked a common concept.
“Interesting,” Calliope conceded and then turned for the door. “We best get going before our friends return.”
Calliope awoke on the shore of a cool rocky stream. Awoke wasn’t quite the right term, she returned to her senses. The back of her neck prickled with the warm sun and she rolled onto her back to stare up at the cerulean blue of the sky for a long minute, allowing her body to fully rejoin her mind. Once she felt strong she sat up. It was just passed mid-day and a cool wind was blowing out of the low brown hills that stretched off to the north. To the south lay desert, increasingly arid and sandy as one moved away from the foot of the hills and this stream which drained what little moisture collected there. Whirling tempests capered above those hills and Calliope’s exposed skin felt the chapping that her mind didn’t remember. The Ghost Fence of Ibn Kaydos stretched for almost a thousand mile and was fully a hundred miles thick. An ancient spell which cut off the Banian Caucuses from the northern deserts of Al’ardbahja. Esoteric legends said it had been constructed in the earliest days, when some great evil had driven the early tribes from the Caucues where they had once flourished. To cover the retreat of his people Ibn Kaydos and his Four Hundred Acolytes had conjured the Ghost Fence. A vast magical barrier to keep their enemy, whomever or whatever it had been, to the north. Such a working verged on the miraculous and could not have been replicated by the petty and divided mages of this later age. Travel through the Ghost Fence was impossible, within minutes it destroyed the sanity of even the most heavily warded minds, and it made no distinction between the living, dead, or demon.
Calliope had seen the advantage at once, a barrier that the Ivan Deathbeloved and his minions could not cross. The Necromancer had been in hot pursuit of them since he learned of her completely fraudulent status as a holy priestess who could destroy the undead. The undead didn’t move as fast as the living, but they never rested and never tired. Short of reaching the coast, a thousand miles in any direction, this was the only way to out run him. Of course that left the problem of crossing the Ghost Fence themselves. Neil had provided the answer to that problem. If the living couldn’t cross, and the dead couldn’t cross, then what you needed was something in between. She had wrapped both their minds in Neil’s aura and put them in a kind of waking comma, imparting simple instructions to their bodies and to their horses to cross the Ghost Fence. It had been like going to sleep while drunk. Queasy but forgotten. And now they were across, or at least she was. She sat up and looked around for her horse and was relieved to find it clopping halfheartedly at a clump of scrubby grass. Probably the last easy sustenance before a long trek across the desert.
“Neil?” she tried to say only to discover that her mouth was beyond parched from days of travel across the windswept hills, the scarf she had wrapped around her face having fallen off at some point. She stuck her face into the water and drank greedily. The tepid water almost painful against her parched throat and lips.
“Neil?” she called again and then caught sight of movement further down the shallow creek bed. His horse was still walking mechanically forward, sunk to its chest in a pool and unable, with its limited instructions, to get out. Neil sat atop the steed, staring sightlessly forward. She had been lucky he hadn’t fallen in and drowned in his sleep. Unsteadily she pushed herself to her feet. Her stomach shrieked that she hadn’t eaten in days. The blood stung her legs as she made her way down to the pool and splashed in. Placing a hand on both Neil and the horse she lifted the spell. Neil’ eyes flew open and the horse reared in sudden surprise, dumping the thief into the pool with a splash.
When the Boyar's men broke in Calliope was kneeling before the bed in an attitude of pious prayer, hands clasped. She was arrayed neatly, dressed in black, the black bearskin drapped over her shoulders. In many cultures that would have been an ominous omen, but here the bear was a symbol of strength and right. If she had white silks to wear, Calliope would have worn them, appearing pure and virginal would have been her first choice, but dark and mysteious would have to do.
"Woman, you will come with us," one of the guards growled. Calliope stood gracefully and walked passed the guards, evading a half hearted attempt to grab her. She strode through the hallway, the guards falling into what might have been escort or might have been pursuit behind her. So long as she was moving in the direction they wanted, they wouldn't try to interfere. In the courtyard before the inn the Boyar himself stood, resplendent in silver mail and a white lion pelt around his shoulders. His steed, a great white charger, steamed and stamped in the snow. His guard, dressed in similar style, though less ostentatious, were astride thier mounts behind him. Short cavalry bows slung across pommels and pennoned spears snapping in the frosty air.
"You are the woman Dragoslava," the Boyar stated without question. Callipe bowed her head in aquiesence a moment before the two flusterd guards crunched onto the fresh fallen snow.
"There is a devil beyond the wall, calling for you. Why is this?" he demanded.
"I do not know, why any devil might want me," Calliope said, almost stumbling and using 'him' which might have given the game away. "I am a simple pilgrim, making my way through the world." The Boyar gave her a skeptical look but didn't contradict the statement.
"Do not trust her lord, she is an outlander and..." one of the guards cautioned but the Boyar held up his hand.
"Enough Ivan, get off your horse and help the lady mount," he sneered. The guard stiffend at the snickers of his fellows at such punishment for speaking out of turn. Reluctantly he swung down out of his saddle and made a stirrup of his hands. Calliope stepped into it and sprang up into the saddle before the red faced guard could make any mischief. All around them men were streaming to the walls, mostly half drunken laborers with billhooks, clubs and other improvised weapons. They cleared the main street for the Boyar and his party as they rode towards the gate where men were busily dragging wagons across the door to reinforce the vulnerable point. Torches were blazing all along the wall, filling the air with an ugly red illumination and the constant hissing of dissolving snowflakes. Calliope badly wished she could afford a little magic to keep herself warm, but she was going to need all she could muster for the next bit.
The Boyar dismounted and his men did also. Calliope followed their example without being told. They climbed the staircase to the wall. Calliope had to resist the urge to cheer with delight. Neil's illusion was so convincing that if she hadn't known otherwise she would have sworn it was real. It wasn't so much in what she could see as what was suggested. The rattle of bones, the faint witchlights in eyesockets, even the gentle moan of the damned souls.
"Send her too me or you will be destroyed!" a dread laden voice roared from the darkness.
"How do we know you will keep your word?" the Boyar called back. A malicious chuckle came from the hodded figure.
"The only assurance I offer is that my legion will slaughter you all if you don't," the NeilThing called. She almost felt sorry for the Boyar. He was at his core a nobel man, but he knew that he was holding the lives of his men against hers, an unknown stranger of uncertain allegiences. For a moment Calliope thought he was going to stand on priciple and refuse.
"The Goddess will not abandon me," she intoned loudly enough for all to hear. That seemed to make up the Boyar's mind.
"Let her down," he called, guesturing to a rope. Swords were drawn but Calliope didn't show any hesitation to climb down the rope to the snow infront of the wall.
"Good," the NeilThing crowed then faltered as Callipe drew the chalice from her pouch. She lifted it slowly above her head, the moonlight glinting off its exquisite craftsmanship.
"Kill them all!" Neil shouted, the slightest hint of panic coming to his voice. Calliope carefully scratched her hand with the shard of glass in her pouch. The undead horde was charging forward, gaining clarity as they came closer to the light. She drew in the tiniest bit of magic and channeled it into the challice. It began to glow with a golden light that spread infront of her in a wide golden arc.
"The Goddess Protect Me," she called, brandishing the glowing cup.
"The Goddess Strengthen me," she continued.
"The Goddess Preserve us all!"
Light exploded from every creature simultaneously, the merest flicker of magical illusion channeled through the mirror shards a thousand fold. Neil, in a feat of imagination so epic that even Calliope was impressed, rendered his skeletons stumbling and grasping forwards as their bones disarticulated. He even managed to make the bones burn away as he did so. Neil himself let out a shriek and then vanished in a burst of golden light that coloured for a moment with infernal red so bright that it blinded any eyes on the wall. Blinded them long enough for him to make his escape. Calliope injected the slightest hint of a heavenly chorous behind the roar of flames and it was nearly too much. She hardly had to feign falling to her knees, and her collapse into the snow was quite real.
It was not unlike dancing, dancing with a very unskilled very irritating partner. I followed Hadrian’s moves easily enough, anticipating his attempts to pull me too and fro, but I just didn’t have the mass or the strength to push him off balance. At one point I tried to kick him and he shoved me over onto my ass.
“Don’t try that until we have shown you how,” he advised as I climbed to my feet, “you don’t have the strength or the leverage to make it count.”
I elbowed him in the kidney and he flinched back slightly. I followed it up with another elbow aimed at his throat but he managed to get his hands infront of that one and spin me away, grabbing me from behind. I lunged forward with what momentum I had and twisted hard, driving him into a bulkhead though not hard enough to make him loosen his grip.
“Good,” he approved and let me go, “always try to use your enemies strength to make your attack. We continued sparring for another two hours, by the end of which I was thoroughly done with the exercise to the point that even the fact that it might save my life seemed too small a comfort.
“Enough for today, let’s hit the showers,” Hadrian suggested. “Then I have a surprise for you.”
Somewhat to my disappointment the surprise did not involve the showers but that was not to say it was impressive. The armory on the Caledonian, one of several I was later to learn, was immense. It reeked of gunoil, burnished metal, propellant powder and more exotic scents I couldn't name. Urien was a collector of sorts, a trophy taker might have been a better term and Hadrian’s personal collection was also extensive. The sheer variety of implements of death was a little overwhelming. Some weapons, like the las carbines and flamers, were familiar enough from imperial service. Others I thought I recognized from tales and texts, like the bejeweled Aeldari shuriken catapult. Others were so alien that their very relationship to violence was alien to me.
“Don’t bother with the xenos stuff,” Hadrian advised when he saw me looking at a strange glove like thing that might have been a gun and might have been a whip. I arched an eyebrow in surprise. We were the inquisition weren’t we? Didn’t that allow us to use the tools of the enemy? Or did they just not trust me not to shoot myself in the foot.
“Heretical xenos tech?” I asked skeptically. Hadrian shook his head and chuckled.
“Well yes, but mostly its because we don’t have alot of ammunition for them, it isn’t as though I can whistle up a corrupted Aldeari and ask for a few extra magazines of ammunition for yon splinter rifle,” he told me, making a gesture which might have been aimed at anyone of a dozen bizarre looking weapons. I had no idea what a splinter rifle might be. Well that wasn’t strictly true. Presumably it was a rifle and it either fired splinters, or made things splinter when it was fired at them. Emmaline Von Morganstern, ace Inquisitorial Operative, blinding powers of deduction.
“Oh,” I said lamely and continued through the collection into a more recognisabley imperial section.
“Might I suggest a sling shot, low risk to the rest of us,” Lazarus sniped as he followed in our wake.
I ignored him and picked up a gold and chrome hand gun with a black rubberized grip. The slide had been engraved with various images of St Sabat and with tiny curleques of text that seemed to be a variation on the Prayer for Accuracy. A half dozen magazines lay beside it, loaded with fat blunt ended rounds. I placed it on an arming tray and added the magazines beside it, then took a standard magistratum issue riot gun and a bandolier of reloads.
“I have fired a pistol before,” I declared loftily, glossing over the fact that it had been a las derringer designed to be pushed up against the target before being triggered, effective at scarring off unwelcome attention from men or their irate wives. I wondered what had happened to it, presumably the hotel I had been abducted from had taken it as collateral to my unpaid fees.
“What about a melee weapon?” Hadrian mused, turning his head to make it clear he was asking Lazarus. The Skitarii made a series of clicks.
“In all honesty, I would consider lending her your force staff, she cant cut her fingers off with it and her instinct is going to be to rely on her psychic powers if things go wrong. Which, if she gets into hand to hand combat, they most certainly have.”
I shuffled my cards and shifting my watching the two Eclisarchs in my hand and waying the odds that Hadrian or Urien had anything better. Lazarus, whose card playing was a brutally logical as his Skitarii training had already folded. I tapped the table with a knuckle to check the bet. The hour was late and the haze of lo-smoke from Urien’s pipe hung in the air like burned spices. They food had been cleared away hours ago by servitors, as had the bodies of most of his senior officers who, unlike us, had no inhibitions about drinking to excess. Hadrian gave me a suspicious look and tossed a card into the maelstrom, face up so he could draw two fresh ones. The sour look he gave when he did so might or might not have been a sign they were poor replacements. The Cannoness he discarded suggested he wasn’t trying to build the Church or the Four Pillars. Urien picked up the Cannoness and raised the bet, tossing a card face down into the maelstrom. His play was more erratic than Hadrian’s, sometimes brilliant, sometimes baffling. I suspect he was fishing, though he pushed a few more chips into the pot to stay in the game for the blind draw.
“I cannot decide between your stories, both worthy of za Saga!” Urine rumbled, taking another drink of the spiced carnworm mead that was his favorite, staining his whiskers with the sticky fluid before tactfully wiping it on his sleeve. As was the custom at these late watch gatherings Hadrian and Lazarus had been telling tall stories to thrill the table while we played. Hadrian had told a tale of a cult he had investigated with his old master in which children had been abducted every ten days. They had suspected the local Ecclesiarchy of being involved until the Children themself had reappeared one dark night, slaying their parents and priests in an orgy of blood letting. Lazarus for his part had told the tale of a Titan so old that upon learning the Emperor had ascended the Golden Throne, had laid waste to a city out of grief before being buried by the collapse of a cathedral spire.
“I have one,” I interjected, tossing a chip into the pot, then an additional chip into the side pot that Hadrian had created earlier in the hand. All two and a half men looked up in surprise. I didn’t customarily participate in the story telling, but then blanked their faces to mask reaction as I tossed a chip into the pot, then an additional chip into the maelstrom as a hedge against the Eye or the Flayed Man.
“This would have been… oh, three years before we met,” I began, lifting my amasec and taking a sip. It was rich and hot and smoky, a favorite vintage of mine Hadrian had whistled up from the God Emperor knew where.
“I was traveling on the Archlector Lord Cante, on old sword class frigate,” I explained. Watching the betting go around again, though interest had shifted from the cards to the story.
“And vat were you doing on this warship?” Urien asked with a slight scoff.
“I was the Captain’s…” I trailed off, casting a look at Hadrian, “friend.” Urien’s guffaw suggested that he took the meaning, and might have been about to say so if Lazarus hadn’t waved him to silence.
“We were out near Micar on the edge of the Orphidian Sub,” I continued.
“Micar as in the Massacre of Micar?” Hadrian interjected, more a student of history than either of the other players. I nodded somberly.
“Back in M38 there was a founding from Micar, half a million men headed for the Crusade in Angellus under Warmaster Kackston,” I confirmed. “The whole flower of her manhood.”
“Probably a fair amount of her gutter sweepings and derelicts too,” Lazarus put in. That was probably true, judging by the scale of the subsequent famine, pretty much every able bodied Micari male must have been given a las gun and packed into those transports. It was a common enough practice with foundings, though Micar had been a particularly egregious example of over tithing by sector lords who cared nothing for the welfare of individual worlds, especially those as poor and unimportant as Micar had been. I waved my had to regain control of the conversation. Pausing to slide both of my Ecclesiarchs under a face up Aegis of Faith.
“They were on their way to join the Crusade, in the Fifty Silver Ships, owing to the fact they plated their prows with silver to mark the honor of carrying Micar’s soldiers to the Warmaster. They wrote songs about it, the great triumph of Mother Micar sending her sons off to fight for their Emperor. Only they never made it,” I continued ominously. Hadrian discarded a Primarch, drew two more cards and then discarded one face down, sliding a coin to Urien in payment of the penalty for playing subterfuge. Urien scowled at him but his heart wasn’t in it.
“As they were preparing to jump into the Immaterium, three ships appeared from nowhere, three great cruisers all ivory and gold, marked with the wretched runes of the enemy. The took the Fifty Ships completely by surprise,” I declared. We all nodded somberly, each of us having seen those runes with our own eyes and feeling the aftershock of the soul deep twisting they induced.
“Surely there was an escort,” Urien interjected. I nodded somberly.
“There was, the heavy cruiser Sword of Saint Catherine,” I confirmed. Saint Catherine was a marshall saint whose fame had spread beyond the Angellus and Orphidian Subs. She was a patron saint of vigilance and watchfulness, often invoked by watchmen and the more religious elements of the Magistratum. Judging by the look on Hadrian’s face, her name was not unknown to certain, more puritanical elements of the inquisition, for whom eternal vigil was a watchword.
“Captain Ravus told me the story,” I explained, “told me that there was a legend that the watch officer on the Catherine had fallen asleep and so by the time the alarm was raised it was too late.” Urien made another growl, among his people falling asleep on watch was one of the few unforgivable sins.
“The Captain of the Sword of Saint Catherine was Junia Daysun, as hard bitten a void warrior as ever wore the uniform,” I continued, taking my turn in another round of betting and reordering of cards.
“They say she had the watch officer’s eyes put out and had him nailed to his chair so he would be on duty for the battle. The Catherine was no match for the raiders and because they had failed to raise the alarm it was too late for the Fifty Ships to flee. Junia went for it anyway, and the last anyone saw of the Catherine she was being hit from two sides with lance fire as her port magazines went up,” I continued grimly.
“Massacre,” I declared, flipping up my two Ecclesiarchs and putting my Prior and Flagellant down beside them to make The Mission. Everyone grumbled as I raked in my chips, though Hadrian took the side pot he had been running against Urien. Lazarus shuffled the cards but didn’t re-deal, clearly eager to here the rest of my story.
“The songs say that not one of the Fifty Ships escaped. A half a million men burned and frozen to death in silvered coffins,” I went on, sipping at my drink. “I suppose there must have been some survivors, but not many. The agricultural economy of Micar had collapsed for lack of man power and millions died of starvation and subsequent plague. They say Warmaster Kackston died of apoplexy when he got the news.”
“Anyway, but the time I got there this was ancient history, though there is a band of wrecks called the Silver Reef where the battle took place. Ravus said that every so often they have to chase salvagers away who think they are going to lift the silver from the prows,” I told the company.
“We were escorting troop ships out of Micar, only a couple of regiments, but the first guard they had tithed since the Massacre. I don’t mind telling you that Bridge crew was jumpy that day, too jumpy to escort a bored civilian off the command deck anyway. As we approached the Silver Reef, our scanners lit up. Three enemy cruisers had been playing possum in the reef. It was just the Lord Cante and a pair of clapped out destroyers the Spiritus Santus and The Proclamation of Ayende. We weren’t a match for one cruiser let alone three,” I told them, my voice low and somber as though I were performing a funerary rite.
“As we came to general quarters Ravus gave the order for the convoy to scatter, then brought Lord Cante and her escorts around to buy what time he could for the transports to run, though I could tell he had no hope for us and only a little more for the convoy,” I explained. Chaos tainted warships were notoriously difficult to slip in the Immaterium, and could certainly be relied upon to outmaneuver old clunkers leased to the Astra Militarum for troop transport.
“We were just about in weapons range when it happened,” I continued, glancing around the table at the rapt attention of my fellow players.
“A signal lit up in the Reef. At first we thought it was just another raider but the vector was all wrong, then we thought it might be the Fleet though that hope was forlorn. We couldn’t get any response from her, but her void shields were up and glowing red. It was cruiser size at least, though it was hard to tell because the Lord Cante couldn’t get a proper fix on her. Even our Astopath couldn’t make heads or tails of her,” I shivered with a frisson of remembered dread then lifted my tumblr only to find it was empty. I sat the glass down beside my unviewed cards.
“I remember the crew cheering as she swung out to meet the heretics. I’m no naval expert, but I’ve never seen a ship fight like that. She was outgunned, she was outnumbered, but she plunged into the enemy formation like a spear. Lance batteries burning like the sun as the battle rent the ether. I have some dim recollection of Captain Ravus ordering a torpedo salvo, but I couldn’t take my eyes off the screen. Those lances burned so bright they hurt to look at even through the filters, and the red flash of her shields was searing not just to the eyes but to the soul. As quickly as it started it was over, the chaos fleet was shattered and the stranger had won. Three new wrecks falling burning into the silver reef,” I told them. Hadrian, whose appreciation for naval combat was better than mine, and I suspect Urien’s had a slightly skeptical look on his face, though he held his silence.
“She hove in beside us and then she dropped those horrible red shields to reveal an Imperial heavy cruiser, her hull plated entirely in silver. We were all silent and filled with a dread we couldn’t explain. Then she rolled over and we saw that the entire port side had been ripped away. There must have been twenty holes clean through her, and we knew that when it happened every soul on board had died. The only structure left intact between the ram and the engine housing was the statue of St Catherine, a hundred feet high and without a mark on her for all the pitting and damage to the plinth. Then the ship began to fade as we cowered on the bridge afraid. First her hull, then the bulkheads, until we all saw the bones of the Sword of St Catherine’s crew heaped where they had fallen, then they too began to fade. The last thing we saw was the skeleton of a single crewman, his crumbling bones nailed to the sensor station.”
There was a long silence at the card table during which no one spoke or seemed to draw breath. Then with a whoop that made everyone flinch Urien slapped his palm down on the table, making piles of chips and coins jump with a jangle.
“By the God Emperor!” he crowed, slapping Hadrien hard across the shoulder. “Dat is how you tell the story!”
“I do like a good story,” I confirmed, though I saw the slightest hint of a frown from Hadrian at the way my the neck of the bottle trembled against my cup as I poured myself another amasec.
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