Bird Of Change (Warhammer Horror) by Richard Strachan

Author:Richard Strachan [Strachan, Richard]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Published: 2021-10-28T16:00:00+00:00

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Richard Strachan is a writer and editor who lives with his partner and two children in Edinburgh, UK. Despite his best efforts, both children stubbornly refuse to be interested in tabletop wargaming. His first story for Black Library, ‘The Widow Tide’, appeared in the Warhammer Horror anthology Maledictions.

An extract from ‘Imperator Gladio’

By Richard Strachan

in the anthologie The Accursed.

The night had been cold, and the smell of the salt marshes was still dormant as the twin suns rose, one casting a pale corona to wreathe the first with fire. In the distance came the sound of a desultory cannonade from the Basilisk batteries, and from the other side of the motor pool the battered tank platoons were turning over their engines, preparing the retreat. ­Captain ­Becherovka stowed the data-slate in the thigh pocket of his fatigues as he cut through churned and oily mud. Dread was coiled deep in his stomach. It was an old friend now, much missed when it wasn’t there.

He held out a trembling hand and gripped it with the other. Then, as he skirted a line of Chimeras, out of the mist it loomed, monolithic, the salt marshes fanning away behind it. Like an outcrop of rock, he thought, or stacked basalt slabs cooling on a volcanic plain. The camouflage paint had flecked away to reveal the brooding black metal underneath. He held his breath as he approached it, reverent, afraid.

Imperator Gladio… It was as if he were approaching a temple, a primitive homage to some appalling, vengeful god.

The main gun stretched out like a brandished sword, the squat muzzle of the Demolisher cannon beneath it glazed with afterburn. The Baneblade bristled with secondary weapons: lascannons, heavy bolters, heavy flamers, heavy stubbers. Nothing about it was light, or geared for anything other than total destruction. It was the most powerful weapon available to the Zentrale 77th Armoured Dragoons, but as Becherovka came near he felt only the wild stirrings of that dread in his stomach, the sense of fate lying heavily against him.

The Gladio… There wasn’t a super-heavy crewman in the regiment who didn’t fear that name.

‘We need to be certain that you’re up to the job,’ Colonel Radetzky had said to him the night before.

‘What he means,’ the lord commissar had drawled, ‘is will you break? The nightmares, the trauma – can we rely on you, captain?’

The command tent had been musty and close, the light stark from the lumen-globe that stuttered above the map table. Much revised, the map showed a front on the verge of collapse – troops’ positions overrun by suicidal cultist assaults, counter-attacking armoured spearheads shattered against impregnable defences. The Archenemy was rolling up the advance everywhere. The whole campaign was on the brink.

‘Yes,’ he’d said, with as much certainty as he could muster.

‘A recon team found it four days ago,’ Radetzky said. ‘It was recovered last night, refitted, rearmed. It’s in good working order, as far as we can tell. Throne knows we need every advantage we can get.’

‘The mission schematics will be cast to your slate,’ the commissar informed him.

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