WARHAMMER FANTASY BATTLES: BRETONNIAN QUESTING KNIGHT MUSICIAN

 By Godfrey Blackwell

The 6th Edition Bretonnian Questing Knights are among my favourite miniatures of any range, so it was a treat to complete another one last week.

WARHAMMER FANTASY BATTLES: KNIGHTS OF THE REALM

 By Godfrey Blackwell

SHORT STORY: VINCENT THE CONQUEROR

 By Godfrey Blackwell

    “Master Vincent,” Harold said, “what are you doing? We must get inside the walls! The barbarians —“

    Vincent sent a stream of tobacco juice to the bottom of the dry moat and regarded his apprentice with languid disaffection. One never expected a gong-farmer-in-training to be an impressive fellow, but Harold was a special sort of disappointing — fat, stupid, a hypochondriac, and always, ALWAYS, exaggerating, panicking or otherwise getting himself into a tizzy.

    Vincent slowly shifted his gaze to the moat that hadn’t so much as a drop of water in it, the ground at the base of it cracked with heat and aridity, thanks to the longest drought Ancoux had seen in many a year. And the garderobe chutes all over the royal castle sluggish if not completely clogged.

    “Barbarians!” Vincent scoffed, spitting another gout of tobacco. “There’s always rumours of barbarians. If I left my work undone each time some crone said she’d seen a war band these chutes would be jammed right back up to where the lords and ladies sit upon the tower tops to relieve themselves!

    “And this one’s especially bad … Yep, this is definitely one of the chutes that feeds into that addlepated cross-system that’s supposed to be flushed by aquifers on the top of the keep! Bah … it only works in spring when it rains every other day. Bloody engineers.”

    Vincent turned back and saw that Harold was gone. He frowned, but he didn’t have time to hunt down and punish that layabout now. He’d be sure teach him a lesson in the morning though. But now, there was important work.

    As he knew he would (because the work of a gong farmer was never, EVER easy — the Almighty had a special place in His heart for gong farmers and intended that they spend not an instant in Purgatory when they went to their judgement) , he had to climb right up into the garderobe chute to unclog it.

    Slowly he moved his way upwards towards the upper portions of the central keep of the royal castle. So intent was he on his work that he heeded not the roar of war machines, the screams of horses, and the clangour of weapons striking shields that raged all around the castle from shortly before midnight.

    Only when he reached one of the horizontally running channels that was supposed to flow with water to flush the (normally) slimy pipe he’d traversed, did Vincent pause for a rest. He adjudged he was about halfway up the keep, not far from the great hall. The pipe he was working on likely ended not far above.

    He fished out a candle from his handy pack (which also held the tobacco — his one consolation in a joyless life) and lit it to check his calculations. Indeed, he was correct, for he could see above, perhaps ten feet up the chute, the garderobe opening. His work on this chute was basically done, and there was no collection up there. He now paused and noted odd, muffled noises from the other side of the stone.

    He pressed his ear up against the wall of the flushing channel. He knew the sounds of battle well enough to discern them from those of a particularly late and raucous party (he was a veteran himself, and after all, the King and Queen were actually in the castle not afield to leave the Crown Prince to his devices this fortnight). The clash of swords and screams of the wounded did not last long before a great cheer went up which quickly gave way to chanting of a most uncouth sort.

    That was no victory cry of the king’s knights! Vincent heaved a sigh. The kingdom was beset by incompetents and laggards on all sides, not merely in the gong farmer apprentice department! Had the scoundrels who held themselves out as knights actually let the keep fall? Vincent reached into his pouch and jammed a huge wad of tobacco into his cheek. Well, it wouldn’t be a day keeping the cess pits sweet if he didn’t have to do EVERYTHING himself.

    He extinguished the candle and with his long-handled scraper in one hand, he shimmied up the rest of the chute and emerged into the royal privy just down the passageway that led to the dias whereupon the king and queen were wont to sup.

    There were two barbarians right in the very room. By gum, these creatures would ransack anything. They’d not had time to pick their jaws up off the floor before Vincent caved one of their empty skulls in with his scraper and sent the other one headfirst down the chute all the way to the refuse pile at the bottom where he most likely (and most deservedly) broke his pagan neck.

    Vincent relieved the cloven-skulled one of his cruelly barbed sword and shook his head at the rust on it. Back in his army days he’d have had a trooper flogged for failing to maintain his weapon like that. Well, they were barbarians, but that the strutting popinjays who called themselves lords would let these defeat them filled Vincent with scorn.

    He padded down the hall in none-too-clean bare feet. The chamberlain wouldn’t like that, but he’d have to come out from hiding under a table to do anything about it, Vincent reckoned. When he peeked out of the door that led to the king’s dias, he saw that the great hall was in disarray, strewn with bodies, smoking braziers on the floor, tapestries torn from the walls and trampled. Rugged men in furs with axes and jagged swords capered about. Some were dragging screaming ladies in waiting out of the room, others were putting the cowardly surrenderers of the castle to the sword. The latter Vincent figured wasn’t totally undeserved, but the ladies being taken by such as these was an outrage.

    Most outrageous of all, a massive black-skinned man with silky black hair sat sprawled on the king’s throne! And some sort of shamen or witch-doctors were chanting over him and bowing and Lord knew what else.

    “Aight, enough of this!” Vincent bellowed, crashing through the door with great indignation.

    He beheaded the great big snake the witch doctors were fawning over, and ran the fanciest of them through with the sword. He grabbed the heathen’s great club-like staff as the wretch gurgled and stared with eyes wide full of shock and indignation. He spun to see the hulking black man heave himself off the throne, wielding a great battle axe.

Vincent spat tobacco into the man’s eye and waded in. The gong-farmer’s accustomed stench smote the barbarian king and the man staggered and left a huge opening through which Vincent swung the pagan medicine staff. This caused the ruler to drop his axe, with which Vincent beheaded him.

    He fulled expected to die in the next second or two after that under a flurry of blows to his back, but the hall was silent. He turned, and picked out the King and Queen from among the captives who had not yet been dragged off or butchered.

    “Yer grace,” Vincent nodded. “Now then, are you bloody barbarians going to fight me one-at-a-time or what’s your game?”

    “Good Lord, who are you, man?” Vincent’s lord king shouted. “What heroism! Do you not know what you’ve done?”

    “Eh? I mean, begging your pardon, your Grace, but I’m Vincent the Gong Farmer. I don’t suppose you’d know me since I work mostly at night —“

    “The gong farmer?” The Queen almost shrieked with hysteria and shock at the whole situation. The King, however, maintained his composure.

    “Vincent, these barbarians … by their pagan faith a man owns whatever belonged to the man he kills — you’re now the great Khan of the Varlak Horde! Their lands spread … why …”

    “Huh!” Vincent found the barbarian Khan’s head at the bottom of the stairs and took the great unvisored horned crown-helmet off it. He put it on and sat down on the throne of his own kingdom. “And I thought I had problems before! I really do have to do everything, don’t I?”

THE END

WARHAMMER 40,000: FURIOSO DREADNAUGHT

By Godfrey Blackwell

 Probably my favourite model that has never actually been used in a game! I think maybe we need to do one this weekend just so it can see some use.

WARHAMMER FANTASY BATTLES: BRETONNIAN DAMSEL

 By Godfrey Blackwell

WARHAMMER FANTASY BATTLES: BRETONNIAN BOWMEN

By Godfrey Blackwell

 

WARHAMMER FANTASY BATTLES: BRETONNIAN KNIGHT OF THE REALM GALLANT

 By Godfrey Blackwell

After nearly 15 years, I went back to my tabletop gaming roots and painted up one of the many Bretonnian models I've had sitting in a box in the basement for eons. Warhammer Fantasy Battles and Bretonnia were my introduction to tabletop gaming and it was great to return to this army. I hope that many more models will follow at a decent speed.

SHORT STORY: MARTIAN MERCY

By Godfrey Blackwell

    The crucifix at the end of his father’s rosary swung back and forth ever so slowly as he worked the beads. Though he prayed the Paters and Aves without sound, his lips moved and Marcus could have followed the familiar words as they took shape there. But Marcus kept his gaze fixed on the cross with the tiny corpus of the crucified Lord swinging back and forth, back and forth.

    The habitation module was quiet, though the low background of the air circulation and the hum of the generators was always there. Every so often, above this, there would come a moan from down the short hall which led to the four bedrooms. A small, cracked voice, so quiet he could barely make it out, called for Portia. This caused Marcus to look up to his father’s face. Dad’s eyes were shut, but they seemed to squeeze a little tighter at the name.

    Portia had been buried a week ago, out beyond the last airlock, in the funeral caves carved into the inner wall of Valles Marineris. She slept among the dead now after a long wasting sickness. After she was gone, mom and Valentina started the same way. Marcus was so tired. He closed his eyes and wished for the nightmare to end, and that he could have rest.

    A firm hand took his shoulder. “Marcus, it’s time.”

    The boy opened his eyes. Dad stood up, and put the rosary over his head, letting it fall inside his spacesuit with the crucifix over his chest.

    Marcus drew in a long shuddering breath.

    “Get your helmet on. We can’t delay this any more … it’s getting late.”

    They put their helmets and gloves on, but left their helmets open. Dad grabbed a tool bag. From within, the hammer and metal spikes clanked against the drill. They moved out through the lock and into the maze of tunnels hewn from the Martian rock. Once through the warrens of their habitation section, they came to the high-roofed cavern cut by lava flow before history, before even the thing that haunted the colony now.

    Past rows of plants and crops that helped produce atmosphere as well as food they moved, drawing ever closer to their dreaded task. To walk through the cavern, one would have thought nothing was amiss in the colony. Miners trundled home on rolligans, trucks with goods passed-to-and-fro, and pedestrian traffic moved along the sidewalks. The ground took on a slight incline as they neared the end of the lava tube and the last lock that led out into Valles Marineris itself. They passed through the lock and out into the valley.

    Marcus looked up. The sun was already obscured by the steep canyon wall to the west, casting the valley in shadow. The sky was still pinkish-red and had not yet given way to the blue of the Martian sunset. He shivered inside his suit, thinking of the rapping at his door the night before, and the whisper … the whisper, terrible and beautiful, and unmistakably Portia’s.

    He pushed the thought away and focussed on his dad’s back, with a large air tank on it, as the big man trudged through the regolith and the swirling patterns of dust in the frigid air that whipped about them. He took comfort in knowing that Dad knew what to do. As awful as it might be … his dad wasn’t like other fathers who understood only their drill work or crop fertilizers and the 20-minute delayed sports ball transmissions from earth. His dad knew about Faith, and quietly taught them about it after their mandatory classes at school, and he understood that just because the medicos couldn't explain it that it couldn't be explained at all. In a word, Dad wasn’t stupid like so many other adults were. That was why he followed, and knew what they were doing was right — not just because the man ahead was his father.

    The burial catacombs, in a cave across from the colonial lava tube, were close at hand now, and Marcus could feel badness oozing from the dark opening. He stopped and found he couldn’t move his feet. A message flashed on the faceplate of his helmet warning that his heart rate and respiration were up. There was another voice at the back of his head screaming danger! at him.

    “D-dad …”

    His father stopped and turned. “I know, Marcus. I can feel it too.”

    He came back and took Marcus by the hand and squeezed hard so that he could feel it through the suit.

    “I’m scared.”

    “Me too. But we have to … no one else would even believe. And if we don’t …”

    Marcus knew the creatures — the vampires — that had taken his sister, would get the whole colony. In an age of interplanetary travel such an old superstition was beyond lunacy to “respectable”, “sane” people. Marcus stared at the cave entrance, so black it was like a hole punched right into the universe. It seemed to suck the last of the sun’s weakening light into itself. That gaping maw was hideous. 

    “Hail Mary, full of grace,” his father began the prayer, and stepped forward. Marcus found he had the strength to lift his feet despite their weight.

    Inside the catacomb, they activated their helmet lamps. Despite the bright white LED lights, the darkness pressed in on them. Thought it was impossible, Marcus swore he could smell the sickly-sweet odour of decay. They moved past the mummified remains of colonists on their tiered pallets in the walls. They reached the spot where Portia had been placed. He couldn’t look. Images flashed on his inner eyelids of terrible possibilities.

    “She’s not here!” Dad said.

    “What?” Now Marcus did look, and he saw that the niche that had been carved for his sister was, indeed, empty.

    “She must have moved, to make it harder for us to find her.” Dad crossed himself and looked around wildly. Through the faceplate Marcus could see his lunatic glances and knew that the strong man he looked up to, who had fought in the Void War before he was born, was as near to breaking as he was. Yet Marcus couldn’t help himself from saying,

    “Dad, I’m so scared.”

    Instead of unnerving his father, this seemed to fortify him. His eyes softened, and he squeezed Marcus’ hand again. After several loud breaths that made Shhh-shhhh sounds over the radio, Dad nodded to himself.

    “She’s here somewhere. I — we — can feel it. There aren’t many places in here. We just have to keep our wits, and our courage … and look. Remember, Marcus, there’s no courage without fear. Let’s do this.”

    They quietly prayed the rosary as they went. Marcus tried to ignore the bluish tinge to the ever dimming light coming from the cave entrance. They did not rush, however, and down a new spur that had been cut for future graves, the darkness seemed to deepen and Marcus’s helmet filled with a rank, rotten odour. And then they found her. A whoosh filled Marcus’ ears as Dad took a shuddering breath.

    Portia lay tucked under a shelf of dark rock, spotlighted by their headlamps. She wore a simple colony coverall, but bore none of the signs of exposure to the arid frigidness of the Martian air, to say nothing of death. She had been a pretty girl of fifteen, and Marcus guessed she’d probably be considered beautiful by other boys by the time she reached 18. But now, she radiated a gorgeousness that was terrifying in its darkness. Her cheeks were ruddy and her lips a deep and glowing red. Yet despite the colour she seemed so cold; but not from the thin Martian air. The coldness seemed to radiate from within.

    Dad moved forward and with great gentleness, cradled his arms beneath her and pulled her out from the little alcove under the rock.

    “Dad, I don’t think she’s dead,” Marcus whispered. Then shook his head at the stupidity of that. Nothing could survive out here. He glanced at his wrist readout without thinking — it was already minus thirty Celsius.

    “No, she’s worse than dead,” Dad said. He reached into his bag and pulled out the crucifix from their dining room wall and handed it to him. “Hold this.”

    He then pulled out the hammer and spike. “Miserere mei Deus: secundum magnam —”

    “Freeze! Don’t move!”

    Dad did freeze mid-motion as he was moving the spike into place. Marcus slowly turned and saw two suited figures hurrying down the rough-cut shaft, lights from helmets and drawn pistols cutting white lances through the darkness. As they drew near enough for Marcus’ head lamps to illuminate them, he saw SHERIFF stencilled above their visors.

    “Schaefer you really have lost it, haven’t you?” One of the security men said.

    “Sheriff Teng,” Dad said softly. “You can’t keep pretending you don’t see what’s going —”

    “Jiangshi? Vampires? That’s superstitious nonsense, how can you expect me to believe that?”

    “Look at her!” Marcus blurted.

    Marcus looked past the sheriff and his deputy. There wasn’t even a hint of bluish light from down the corridor. He glanced down at his wrist panel. 1830 … what time was sunset? 1832? 31? Movement caught the corner of his eye and he whipped his body around to see his father swinging the hammer.

    BLAM!

    Even in the thin Martian air and muffled by his helmet, the gunshot was reverberated loudly. Dad jerked and fell sideways, grasping his side. Before Marcus could react, Portia’s eyelids flew open and with impossible speed, she was on her feet. The dark beauty of a moment ago was gone; her face was a pallid circle split by a slavering open jaw with impossibly long incisors. Her eyes were like black holes punched in the fabric of space.

    Neither Sheriff Teng nor his deputy were able to get a shot off as they stared in gape-mouthed horror as she rushed them. With impossible strength, she sent them both flying back down the corridor where they pinballed off the walls, into each other, and finally down to the rocky floor. The thing that had once been Portia loped down upon them, almost dog-like, and Marcus looked away. He ran to his father who was clutching his side, but slumped and dazed looking through his visor. Marcus pulled the emergency repair kit out of his calf pouch and slapped a quick drying resin patch onto the hole. It wouldn’t fix the wound but would at least prevent hypoxia. Just as Marcus picked up the crucifix again, he was grabbed by a vice-like flip and swung around.

    Portia had grabbed him. Her eyes were as deep and black as black holes, shot with red. Marcus felt as if he were falling into the irresistible gravitational field of an actual black hole. Only it was his soul that was being sucked down there, not his body. And he knew that if he went there he’d never get out. He wrenched his eyes away and brought the crucifix up. With an ululating scream the vampire fell backwards and Marcus stumbled and fell to a knee. He held out the cross, now transfixing the not-Portia thing.

    His dad struggled to his feet, grabbed the hammer and spike and rushed in.     

    

    “Miserere mei, Deus: secundum magnam misericordiam tuam.”

STAR WARS LEGION: 1.4 FD LASER CANNON TEAM

 By Godfrey and James Blackwell

We were quite happy with how this conversion/customization went. Out of the box, the 1.4 FD cannon comes in an Empire Strikes Back/Hoth style. To get it to fit in with the rest of James' Rebel army, we replaced the gunner with a rebel trooper from the box set and painted the commander in a temperate colour palette matching the others.

COMIC: PEOPLE HELPING PEOPLE

 By Godfrey Blackwell

Here is a comic I drew back in 2012, envisioning what might have happened to me if young Albert had been in government school at the time drawing the sorts of stuff he likes to draw, after reading about this travesty:   https://kitchener.ctvnews.ca/kitchener-dad-receives-apology-after-arrest-and-strip-search-1.834997

(Yes, a man really was arrested because his daughter drew a picture of her dad "shooting monsters" at school)

SHORT STORY: UNDEAD NORTH, PART 3 of 3

 By Godfrey Blackwell

    The street outside the Avon Police Service Headquarters was eerily quiet. Thick pillars of greasy black smoke billowed upwards in three directions from unseen fires. It looked like half the city was on fire. Car alarms and screams sounded faintly with distance, but the immediate area seemed clear save garbage strewn about and a dozen or so bodies with head wounds. A wrecked car had ploughed into the L.C.B.O. across the street which appeared thoroughly looted.

    “Look, guys,” Alex said. “I know you need to get out to Falsaff, Paul. Namest, I know your wife is in Toronto … I’ve got to get to my own family. I’ve left them way too long. I waited because I knew there was no getting through the s-show yesterday, but I’ve got to go. You get to yours”

    “We should stick together,” I said.

    “And then who has to abandon his family?” Alex asked. “If we stick together we can only go in one direction.”

    “We’ll go get your family, then all of us head out to my place. It’s in the country, it’s more secure.”

    “There’s already one zombie family out there, man!”

    “He already killed it,” Namest said. “Paul’s right, we safer together, bro.”

    “Look, you know my place is a good setup, and we have less of a chance of making it anywhere if we split up. Now let’s see if we can’t find a vehicle.”

    “All right, man.” Alex sighed.

    We found a police S.U.V. around the side of the station. A well-gnawed officer lay sprawled beside it, with an apparently self-inflicted head wound. I fought back my rising gorge and searched the body for keys. I found them, but as I rose, I heard Alex curse and saw a half-dozen shambling shapes approaching us from each direction.

    Namest raised his fists and danced forward. “Get car started, bro!”

    He punched one of the zombies right in the chin with a devastating blow that sent it hurtling backwards. I decided I never, ever, wanted to be punched by the former Olympian. Alex grabbed the keys from me and jumped in the driver’s seat.

    “You’re a better shot than me!”

    He cranked the engine and I dropped to a knee, taking aim at the former Avon residents approaching from the other direction. I shivered as I looked into those vacant stares and remembered Mohammed’s iron grip. I told myself to calm down and forced myself to stop shaking. With six quick shots, they were all down. Alex pulled the car around and Namest and I jumped in. The zombies he’d toppled weren’t “dead”, but they were still trying to get up as we tore out of the alleyway.

    Out in the suburbs, things weren’t quite as bad. There were no bodies, and though there were a couple people frantically packing their cars, there were others out in their yards expressing confusion and denial. Alex’s wife and baby daughter were shaken but unhurt. Sparing a half hour to back some food and belongings, we had them bundled into the police S.U.V. and were speeding out of town.

    I knew our luck had been way too good (since escaping the police station, anyway), and it did not hold long enough to get us out to Falstaff. Near the eastern edge of the Avon, a heavily-laden minivan suddenly caromed out of a side street and slammed into us, sending the S.U.V. skidding sideways and a wheel flying.

    The airbag almost knocked me out and I sat dazed in the front passenger seat for several moments trying to figure out what had happened while Alex’s baby girl screamed in the back. I blinked to clear my view and fought the now useless airbag out of the way. I looked back; miraculously, despite a lack of car seat, the baby seemed more scared than hurt. The good old mom arms that we relied on back in the 80s worked, I guess.

    I had to kick the door a good ten times to get it open and I spilled out onto the pavement. I was able to get up and reassure myself that I was just banged around but not seriously hurt. I wiped blood from my upper lip and saw that Namest was already over at the van that slammed into us. Its windshield was spider-webbed and the big ex-boxer shook his dead.

    “He dead bro. Stupid kurva killed himself and almost us.”

    I started limping over. “Anyone else in there?”

    As if on cue, a woman started screaming from the passenger seat about her baby. She was nearly incoherent with hysteria as I reached the passenger side while Namest wrestled the driver’s side sliding door open.

    “Ok, calm down, ma’am,” I said. “We’ll check her out. Namest?”

    “Bozhe moy!” Namest cursed, jumping back.

    At the same moment I heard a rasping growling sound coming from the second row of seats in the van and my stomach did a slow somersault. I crossed myself and rushed around the van dreading what I would see. Namest was cradling a bleeding arm, and strapped into the child seat behind the driver’s seat, thrashing around was what had once been a little girl, maybe three years old. Her skin was greenish grey and blood ran down her chin below those same horrifically glazed, dead eyes I’d seen several times now.

    “Oh Lord,” I staggered back and put a hand to my mouth. If I had eaten more recently than two days before I probably would have been sick.

    The woman in the van had stopped screaming and gotten herself unbuckled. I lunged back towards the van in an attempt to stop her, but as I reached the open sliding door she had the thing that had been her child out of the seat. I couldn’t watch. I grabbed Namest and dragged him back to the wrecked police vehicle.

    “Paul, what’s going on over there?”

    “You don’t want to know,” I said. “We’ve got to get out of here. Let’s grab everything we can carry, and start hiking. Even if we don’t find another car, we can get to my place by dark if we move.”

    Alex looked doubtful, but he took his own toddler into his arms and started loading up. I had a look at Namest’s arm.

    “Man, that doesn’t look good,” I said. “She — it … took a chunk out of you.”

    A small half-moon about the size of a fortune cookie was missing from his arm and blood dripped down onto the pavement.

    “I be okay, bro.”

    I splashed peroxide we’d taken from Alex’s house on the wound and bound it. I had a pretty good idea by now that whatever was happening to people, it was some sort of communicable disease. I think we all knew. We grabbed as much stuff as we could; fortunately we’d found a few backpacks when loading up. As we moved past the van, I paused to fire two rounds into it. Then muttering “recquiscat in pace”, moved off.

***

    After a bad spot where we had to outrun a large group of zombies, we decided to travel off-road through the huge fields of soya and corn that surrounded Avon, reasoning that there’d be less chance of encountering anyone or anything. We couldn’t move nearly as fast as I’d hoped, and by five p.m. I knew there was no way we were getting to Falsaff before dark.

    Namestnikov put up a brave face and showed great perseverance, but I could tell he was in pain and his condition was deteriorating. He was sweating and staggering an hour after our ordeal with the minivan.

    A half hour after that he fell flat on his face and slowly pushed himself up onto his elbows with a confused and scared look on his face. I brushed away his weak attempt to brush me off and checked his wound. It was livid and stank awfully. His whole arm was festering with infection and he was feverish. He put his good hand on my shoulder.

    “They got me, bro.”

    I reached up and squeezed his hand. Looking around, I saw a farm house about half a kilometre or so to the north. “We’ll find you a place to rest, Namest.”

    “You and Alex, you both Catholic, eh?” The huge Ukrainian asked.

    “Yeah, yeah we are.”

    “I was raised Catholic,” Namest said. “Ukrainian Catholic. Not go to church for years though … I … I don’t think I have long left.”

    “Let’s get you to that farm house.”

    Alex and I practically carried the huge Ukrainian the 500 meters and were winded and exhausted ourselves by the time we got there. After pounding on the doors and yelling for several minutes, I kicked in the door and we dragged Namest into the living room where we laid him on a couch. Alex’s wife made him as comfortable as she could with pillows and blankets scavenged from elsewhere in the house.

    “Alex, you and your family better wait outside” I said nervously.

    “You going to be okay, Paul? What if he?”

    “Just go. Pray.”

    He nodded and stepped outside with his wife and their baby who was now sleeping in her arms. With a long exhale, I knelt next to Namest. His eyes were glassy and his lips parched. He could barely speak but he gestured for me to come closer.

    “Maybe you better take care of me now, before …”

    “No way, I’m not killing a human man like a dog.” I took his hand. “I’ll stay with you until … until …”

    “Until the end. Bro, you think I go to hell?”

    “You don’t want to, do you? God never abandoned anyone who didn’t first abandon him.”

    “But I did … I wish we had priest here …”

    At my job as a history professor at the Avon campus of Conestoga College — which felt like a thousand years ago now — I specialized in Medieval History with an especial focus on the Crusades. I remember reading about crusaders hearing each other’s confessions before battle when there weren’t enough priests around. It had been something I’d meant to ask my own priest about. From my own studies it seemed a theologically dubious practice at best, but on the other hand it could help stir up a true perfect contrition. I suggested it to Namest and he agreed. With his last breath we prayed the Act of Contrition together.

    As his ragged breathing came to a stop I backed quickly across the room and brought the C-8 to my shoulder, thumbing off the safety. With my finger on the trigger I watched him, heart pounding, for several long minutes. Sweat trickled down into my eyes and stung them but I kept focused. He never reanimated though.

I     don’t know if we’ll ever find out why he didn’t where so many others did. Did he have a certain level of immunity? Is only a certain percentage of the population “reanimated” by the disease? Or is there a supernatural aspect to the physical affliction? The latter is my own theory, but I haven’t found a priest yet to ask … even before the “Zombie Apocalypse” there was only one priest I’d consider valid in all of Ontario, my own pastor at Our Lady of Sorrows. I don’t know whether he survived. I pray he did; but the chapel was a two hour drive from my home in non-apocalyptic times. I’m going to have to wait for the zombies’ numbers to be thinned out by starvation, or decomposition, or whatever, before I attempt that hike. And even then, with the new barbarian hordes, I think I’d want my children older.

    We buried Namest in the farmer’s back yard and spent the night in his house. Never did see a sign of the farmer or his family. We hiked all the next day and it was rough going, but we made it. Thank God, Nadejda had holed up good inside the house. Alex and I were able to clean off the zombies we found outside. As I said, Falstaff had maybe a hundred people living in it, and I was immensely pleased to discover — to my surprise — that my neighbour Joe two doors down was a closet prepper with a secret stash of weapons. And the Poulin family down the other street’s oldest son was a sci fi guy who saw what was going down and convinced them to batten down the hatches. So not everyone was dead, or turned, or whatever you might call it. And we had the beginnings of a human enclave.

SHORT STORY: UNDEAD NORTH, PART 2 of 3

By Godfrey Blackwell 

    “Are you frigging kidding me?” Alex, one of my fellow parishioners at Our Lady of Sorrows chapel, where we both attended the Latin Mass, screamed at me over the phone. “You know, I told you that you shouldn’t watch that garbage. But this is taking it way too…”

    “Alex, come on,” I said. “You know me. I’m not crazy. I’m telling you what I saw. Tell me you haven’t been hearing weird stuff about this latest pandemic anyway.”

    “Oh who knows man, the mainstream media isn’t saying anything and the internet is the internet. Look, I’m not debating this with you. If my advice to a client to keep his mouth shut was ever important, I’m telling you now to keep your mouth completely shut! Don’t spew any of this zombie nonsense to the police!”

    “Yeah ok, I won’t but —“

    “No buts, keep your mouth shut. This is bad enough. I can already see the headlines: WHITE SUPREMACIST/CATHOLIC EXTREMIST GUNS DOWN SYRIAN IMMIGRANT.  Look, I’ll be down for bail court in the morning. Until then you just keep your mouth shut.”

    “Alright. You talked to Nadejda?”

    “Yes, she’s squared away. Look … I’ve got to go, but I know one of my longtime clients, a guy named Namestnikov got arrested this evening too. You’ll be sharing cells with him. Tell him you know me and he’ll look out for you. I know this isn’t your normal scene.”

    I was a history professor at the Avon campus of Conestoga College. It absolutely was not my normal scene. It all started hitting me for real, as I mumbled a thanks and hung up the phone. The nervous-looking special constable hustled me out of the search room with the phone and down the hall into one of the row of holding cells attached to the Avon Police Service headquarters on the ground floor of the Avon Courthouse.

    He left without a word. There was only one row of cells, all next to each other, so I could not see how many of the others were occupied.

    “Yo, nice to have some company,” a voice with a heavy Ukrainian accent said.

    “Uh … I take it you’re Namestnikov.”

    “Hey, how’d you know?”

    “I guess we both have the same lawyer. Alex Velasquez is actually a pretty good friend.”

    “Yo, respect,” a huge fist came out from the next cell. I reluctantly gave it a fist bump. “You can call me Namest. What you in for, bro?”

    “Uhhh … it’s a long story.”

    “You’re not in here for doing something to a kid are you?”

    “No! Good grief no … I … oh, hell, I shot a guy. At least, I think it was a guy. It was …”

    “You shoot a zombie?”

    “What makes you ...?”

    Namestnikov chuckled. “You Canadians man, if the TV don’t say it real, you don’t believe it. I read the real news online. I know. I seen enough govno.”

    “Well, if zombies are real then that’s what I shot,” I said. “It was my neighbour’s body, but he was walking all weird, just making growling sounds like an animal. And those eyes … I shot him five times before he went down.”

    “Last one in the head, right?”

    “Yeah …”

***

    No one came to take us to bail court the next morning. By about noon on the clock in the hallway outside the cell block, we still hadn’t seen anyone and Namest started banging on the cells and shouting to let us out. At about seven in the evening, we heard what we thought were gunshots, lots of them, in the main area of the police station but we could see nothing as our view was blocked by the concrete walls separating us from the hall that led to the search rooms, let alone the other concrete wall separating that from the main station, all with locked steel doors.

    Through it all, the fluorescent lights hummed and cast the same bluish-white hue commingling night with day. By ten the next morning I admitted to Namest that not only had I been drinking from the toilet bowl in my cell I was getting really concerned.

    “Zombies, bro,” Namest said. “We gotta get out of here. Can you see anything?”

    My cell was the first in the row of holding cells and I could see through the doorway into the hallway that led down into the main police offices.

    “I can see the locker where the guard put the cell key,” I said. “But it’s a good fifteen feet away. No way could I reach that.”

    I looked around my cell for the thousandth time. There was just the concrete floor, the concrete slab that was supposed to be a “bed” and the stainless steel toilet. I had the rough blanket they’d given me, which was maybe six feet long.

    “Namest, you’ve got a blanket, right?”

    “Tak.”

    “What about the cell next to you? Is there one in there? Can you reach it?”

    There was, and I was able to tie the three blankets together. I tried flipping them at the locker holding the keys like a long whip. The blankets heavy and it was unweildy, but I kept at it, whipping the long chain up and down repeatedly. It was impossible to have any accuracy. I finally sat down hard, sweating and out of breath.

    After resting a bit, I tried at it again. Then I froze as there was a loud bang from down the hall.

    “Kurva!” Namest shouted. “What that, bro?”

    There was another metallic KLANG!

    “It sounds like it’s coming from that door just across from us.”

    There was another crash and this time I saw the door shudder.

    “That goes up to courtrooms,” Namest said.

    Oh man, here it comes, I thought to myself. I retreated as far back in my cell as I could get as visions of Mohhamed’s blank eyes and that iron grip flashed through my mind. I crossed myself and prayed. There was nothing else I could do … when zombies poured through that door we’d have no way to fight them, but they also wouldn’t be able to reach us.

    The door flew open with a boom like a gun shot and I jumped. But instead of a ravenous zombie, my friend Alex Velasquez burst through.

    “Alex!” I gasped with relief. “What are you doing here?”

    “Saving your sorry butt,” he smiled. “Plus I was hoping to find some living cops, or at least some of those AR-15s our benevolent overlords decided 'have no place in civilized society' … since we’re no longer in civilized society!”

    He retrieved the keys from the locker I’d been trying to open with the blankets and as he released us from our cells explained that the night I’d been arrested there were riots and mass panic throughout Southern Ontario. By the morning, no justice of the peace or judge could be found to run court and every officer who actually showed up for work was trying to keep zombies and chaos at bay. By the afternoon it was complete societal collapse.

    “I just decided to hunker down in my office and wait for the worst to die down,” he said. “But darn it if you weren’t right, it really is the zombie apocalypse!”

    “You sound almost cheerful about it,” I said.

    Alex shrugged. “What am I gonna do, be all Eyeore like you about it?” He winked. “I won’t lie, it’s been pretty intense out there. And I’m starved. Let’s see if we can get some guns, then scare up some food.”

    With the fire axe Alex had used to get the first door open, we smashed our way through into the main area of the police station. It was a mess of overturned tables, smashed chairs, and blood. We found no bodies, but we found a couple of C-8 patrol carbines and a few magazines.

    “Well, at least police could be trusted with thirty rounds” I said, checking the load on my weapon. “Although I’d still like another half dozen mags each. We need one more for Namest though.”

    “Nah, I okay with these,” the Ukrainian said, holding his massive fists up in a boxing pose. “I won a bronze for Canada with these in Beijing. And I never touched a popgun.”

    “I don’t know if getting close to those things is a good idea,” I said. “But we’ve wasted enough time in here. We need to hit the road. I need to get home.”

SHORT STORY: UNDEAD NORTH, PART 1 of 3

 

By Godfrey Blackwell

    The sun had just started to touch the trees along the ridge across from my house in the hamlet of Falstaff just outside Avon, Ontario, giving a slightly subdued hue to the fading light, as I drove up the long drive. I was returning home from my last visit to the range before it closed indefinitely under the latest emergency medical order. I didn’t bother trying to suppress a sigh as I pulled in front of the house.

    After the “COVID-19” lockdowns, I’d just started getting back to the range regularly this summer. As I put the Jeep in park, my phone buzzed. Probably my buddy Mike in Florida; we’d been exchanging texts between magazines while I was at the range. He was convinced that this was something a lot more serious than another COVID pandemic.

    I pulled the key out of the ignition and took my phone out of the cup holder.



Paul, things are getting real sporty, real fast down here.

My buddy Chris who works at Memorial Hospital in Tampa just texted me. There’s riots there that make the BLM stuff look like nothing.

I’m heading home early. This is bad.

Stay safe and God bless.


    By brow creased. Mike tended to be a bit pessimistic, but this really did sound bad. I started punching in a reply wishing him well when a scream tore the air, making my head snap up. I jumped out of the Jeep with my head on a swivel trying to locate the sound. It was so quiet in our village this time of day that with the trees and the ridge, sounds tended to echo.

    I heard the scream again — definitely a woman’s voice. Down the hill that led up to our house and across the road, I saw movement in the large garden beside our neighbour’s house one down from us. Khatol, easily recognizable from a couple hundred yards away in her black burqa (she was the only person in our rural village of 100 who wore the traditional Muslim garb) all but flew from around the back of the place she shared with her husband Mohammed. In her panicked sprint, she tripped on the hem of her burqa and sprawled face-first into a bed of petunias.

    I glanced back at my own place and saw Nadejda peering out of the living room window. I gestured for her to stay inside. I started down the driveway then stopped midstride as another shape emerged from behind the brown house across from us. It looked like Mohammed, at least his size, but the guy moved with a slow shuffling gait that looked nothing like Mohammed. Khatol shrieked again and scrabbled up out of the petunias and half crawled, half ran deeper into the garden.
    
    I’m still not sure why, but something deep inside told me — no, screamed at me — to arm myself. Something primal told me that there was something very very wrong with this situation and not only Khatol, but I, was in grave danger. I reached into the open back of my jeep and with a quick turn of another key on the keychain still in my hand, opened my gun case and pulled out my Bushmaster ACR and a magazine. I slung the rifle, and as I trotted down my dirt drive I loaded the magazine. It was a legal mag, of course, so five rounds in it was “full” and I left the remaining bullets in the cardboard box in my coat pocket.

    The saliva in my mouth dried up and I could feel my hackles rise and I closed the distance. Khatol tripped over a raised flower bed and again thrashed around as the inexorable shape pursuing her moved silently along. Khatol was now jabbering in Arabic.

    “Hey, what’s going on?” I shouted, not sure whether I was addressing Khatol or her pursuer.

    When I was within twenty yards, I recognized that, despite the bizarre gait, it was indeed Mohammed. He was beyond pail; his skin had a grey hue, and his eyes stared with a vacancy that chilled me to my soul. Unwittingly, I crossed myself.

    “Mohammed, what on earth?”

    I was within five yards when Mohammed lunged forward and grabbed Khatol, who shrieked louder than ever. I rushed the last distance and shoved Mohammed back. He staggered and fell over another of the raised planters. Khatol took the opportunity to regain her feet and sprint down the slope to the road.

    I stayed between her and Mohammed, who slowly got up and uttered a low, inhuman growl. I noticed for the first time that the white undershirt he wore was stained red on the left side around the kidney area.

    “Mohammed?” I asked, yet I felt I was not talking to my neighbour.

    He came at me with sudden and surprising speed, and tried to grab me and snapped at me like an animal. I was barely able to step back quick enough to avoid the grab and the bite but now it was my turn to stumble over one of the flower beds. I rolled back and kicked at Mohammed as he continued to grab at me. He got a hold of one ankle and his grip was like iron far beyond what a man on permanent O.D.S.P. should be capable of. I kicked again and again but he wouldn’t let go. I kicked him in the face a good three or four times, and even though blood poured down from his nose and mouth and broken teeth bounced into the foliage he continued his attack, growling and muttering.

    My heart was pounding, and in desperation I chambered a round.

    “Mohammed for God’s sake, stop!” I shouted. “What are you doing?”

    He grabbed me with another hand and I gasped in pain as the fingers bit onto my calf. With both legs now in his terrible grip, I had no choice.

    The rifle roared impossibly loud. I thought that, despite the point-blank range, I had somehow missed as he didn’t so much as flinch. I fired again. The second shot tore out part of his shoulder and his grip faltered and he tumbled off down the hill.

    There were more screams now — Khatol yelling in rapid-fire Arabic, and other voices as neighbours had been drawn by the commotion and the gun fire. I got to my feet and rapidly backed away from Mohammed who was again getting up. Khatol had apparently stopped her retreat as I saw she was just a dozen paces or so off behind me. Mohammed lurched forward.

    “Khatol, get out of here!” I shouted.

    I backed off until I bumped into her. She was crying and talking — to Mohammed maybe, or maybe she was trying to tell me not to shoot her husband again. But he kept coming. I pushed her and told her to run, but now she would not.

    Mohammed raised his arms and opened his mouth with a savage rasp. The ACR roared twice more. He staggered slightly at the impact of the rounds. His torso was covered in blood, yet still he came. I had only one round left. I adjusted my aim up and fired. I had the briefest image of the round striking him between the eyes then he fell backwards and crashed to the ground, and moved no more.

    Khatol shrieked and ran forward to kneel beside her dead husband. I looked up and saw another neighbour, Mandy, starting at me wish shock and rage.

    “You murdered him! What’s wrong with you?”

    By that point, I had decided that whatever I had killed, it wasn’t Mohammed. That wasn’t just a bad drug trip or psychiatric episode. Drugs don’t let a man keep walking after he’s received four mortal wounds from a rifle chambered in 5.56 NATO.

    All the same, I felt sick. I ran not from Mandy’s accusations, but so I could vomit on my own property and not near the grieving Khatol. By the time I was done retching, Nadejda had made it to the end of the driveway.

    I remembered Mike’s texts. Disease, lockdown, riots … a real pandemic this time. Good grief I thought, you can’t be serious. Zombie apocalypse? I’d watched the TV series and movies, I always enjoyed the genre. But this couldn’t seriously be what I just saw, could it? But if there was even a small chance …

    “Najedja,” I grabbed my wife by the shoulders. “This might be even worse than it looks.”

    “What, how could it be worse?” She said.

    “Just … call Alex, and you get the kids inside and lock all the doors. Don’t open the door for anyone. You make them come with a warrant and a cutting torch but do not give up any of the guns if they want them. We’re going to need them.”

    As it turned out, it took the police almost three hours to show up. When they charged at me, guns raised, I was already on my knees with my hands behind my head, and the ACR unloaded with the chamber locked open on the grass in front of me.

WARHAMMER 40,000: ASTRA MILITARUM VANQUISHER TANK

 By Godfrey Blackwell

WARHAMMER 40,000: FURIOSO DREADNOUGHT

By Godfrey Blackwell

SHORT STORY: COLONEL BLACKDOWNE'S CARGO

By Godfrey Blackwell

     Colonel John Blackdowne was an interesting character. Father Percy Grey watched the massive retired army officer over his glass of port as the officers of the CSS Pembroke, a packet air steamer out of Hamilton, lingered over cigars in the officer’s mess. Colonel Blackdowne was muscular and almost brutish in appearance, with heavy brows, a rugged angular jaw, and rough hands like a miner’s. Yet he was dressed impeccably in the latest style with a yellow waistcoat, silk cravat, and frock coat nearly the shade of Father Grey’s port. Colonel Blackdowne spoke in a subdued manner between puffs of his cigar and Percy knew that he greatly understated such exploits as the officers could pry form him — for Percy knew well this retired officer’s career.

     Colonel Blackdowne had most famously commanded the miraculous victory at Paardeberg where British and Canadian troops, outnumbered and outgunned with only infantry faced a force accompanied by a pair of steam walkers with volor air support. Against all odds, the Imperial troops had won the day and turned the tide of the Great African War.

     Many had thought he’d go on to great heights in the service of His Brittanic Majesty, yet at the age of forty-five he’d suddenly retired. And now here he was on a packet steamer headed back to the Dominion of Canada as the fellow passenger of the Catholic priest who’d taken the cheapest and fastest way over the Atlantic to report to the Archbishop of Québec on the news he’d received about the rumblings of renewed anti-Catholic republican sentiment in Napoleon IV’s French Empire.

     “Colonel Blackdowne,” Father Grey said. “You’re far too humble, good sir. In fact, I can’t help but wonder at a war hero of your esteem travelling on a packet air steamer.”

     Blackdowne took a puff on his cigar before responding. “And you father? The secretary to the Archbishop of Canterbury not on a private volor?”

     The retired colonel was very well informed, another surprise. It was Percy’s turn to delay by taking a sip of port. In fact, the Catholic Church’s finances were in dire straits and even more so in the British Empire. This was not public knowledge; it was, in fact, a closely guarded secret.

     “I try to be responsible with the faithful’s contributions.”

     “Most admirable,” Colonel Blackdowne said.

     “A frugal priest, that’d make a stuffed bird laugh!” Captain Cavendish, the air steamer’s skipper laughed loudly and the company moved on to other topics.

***

     In fact, Fr. Grey knew that the colonel was aboard on some sort of mission of his own, not merely sightseeing in his retirement. Percy had overheard — well, if he was honest about it, he *had* been listening in on a conversation that wasn’t wholly his business — when Colonel Blackdowne’s passage was arranged. ‘Was arranged’ was accurate, for Blackdowne hadn’t booked it himself; there had been a soft-spoken lady making the arrangements with the first mate.

     Blackdowne had seemed very protective of the lady and unhappy that she was making the arrangements herself, but aside from a brief comment in that regard held his tongue. It seemed that there was some very important cargo that the colonel was accompanying.

     As Father Grey took in the frigid night air, wrapped in his furs out on the gondola’s viewing gallery, he couldn’t help but wonder greatly at what the cargo might me. He finished the last of his cigar and threw it overboard to fall into the Atlantic far below and with a sigh reached for his breviary.

     He had just stepped inside to pray his office when he saw Jones, J. the second engineer’s mate, clattering up the staircase from the hold. Such was his mad rush that he nearly bowled the priest over.

     “Mr. Jones, what’s the matter?” Father Grey said, grabbing a handrail to steady them both.

     “Begging your pardon, Father,” the engineer’s mate puffed in his heavy Welsh accent. “But it’s that colonel, he’s gone orf his chump!”

     “What nonsense is this?”

     “I think he’s going to blow up the ship!” Jones rushed to an intercom station and grabbed the handset. As he began cranking, Father Grey grabbed his arm.

     “Where is he?”

     “In the hold, Father.” Then Jones began jabbering into the intercom.

     Father Grey rushed down the stairs, nearly tripping on first his cassock and then his furs, which he cast aside. As he neared the main hold, a trio of sailors had already taken up positions to either side of the entry hatch, armed with spanners.

     “What’s the meaning of all this?” Father Grey demanded.

     “‘e’s holed up in there,” Jones, D., another Welshman said. “Jones — the other Jones, said he’s got a bomb.”

     “Yes, he did say he thought the ship would blow up.”

     “Said he heard it ticking,” Jones, D. said.

     “Hmmmm, now what …?” Ticking; that reminded the priest of something. Something from that meeting he overheard.

     By now, several other ratings were coming clattering down the passageway from either direction, these ones armed with pistols and one with a scatter gun.

     “Is he armed?” Percy asked.

     “Pretty, sure,” Jones, D. said.

     Percy took a deep breath. “I’m going to go speak to him. There’s got to be more to this. Colonel Blackdowne isn’t some lunatic; I know enough of the man to be sure of that.”

     “Father, I can’t let you do that,” the officer leading the reinforcements said. “I’ve seen plenty of blokes crack up after the wars.”

     “Nonsense,” Percy said and leapt through the portal before the sailors could stop him.

     “Don’t come any nearer!” Came a voice from behind a stack of crates.

     “Colonel Blackdowne, it’s me, Fr. Grey,” he said, moving cautiously forward.

     “Father, what are you doing here? You really ought to mind your prayerbook.”

     “And let those sailors poke you full of holes?” Percy continued forward but stopped at the corner of the boxes as he heard the click of a hammer being pulled back.

     “I mean it Father. I can’t let anyone, not even a priest …”

     “You know it would be an excommunication to shoot me?”

     There was a long pause. In the silence, Percy could hear the quiet whirring of gears and a very soft tick-tock; surely the sounds Jones, J. had heard.

     “You did convert to Catholicism, didn’t you? That wasn’t mere rumour? And … ah yes, you know Lady Acton, don’t know?”

     He could hear Blackdowne stiffen. “What do you know about her?”

     “John, enough of this foolishness,” came a quiet, muffled voice from the same crate wherein the clockwork sounds originated. “And let me out of here. This is all so ridiculous, going to Canada to die and letting you risk your life.”

     Father Grey stepped around the corner and Colonel Blackdowne lowered his multibarreled hand cannon. Percy looked at the crate.

     “Are you going to open it?”

     With a sigh and a shrug of his massive shoulders, the retired officer took up a crowbar and wrested off one side of the crate. As it was moved aside, the padded interior was revealed with a sturdy chair in the centre holding what at first appeared to be a life-sized doll of exceptional craftsmanship and beauty. She had real human hair the colour of wheat that could be seen below a miniature top hat of black silk with its heavy veil pulled back above an exquisite mask that might have been the finest pearl or porcelain.

     But it was not a mannequin for the whirring and ticking came from within her torso and as Father Grey approached and knelt next to the chair a hand came up to the lips in an unmistakable gesture of embarrassment.

     “Oh father, please don’t do that,” came a soft female voice with a tinny tone from the unmoving mouth.

     “Mary Frances Acton,” Fr. Grey whispered, involuntarily crossing himself.

     The gloved hand moved from the perfect lips of the mask up towards the eyes. Percy could see bright blue and very human eyes from those sockets.

     “I know, I’ve become a monster, trapped in this —“

     “Oh no, my child,” he said softly, quickly standing. “No, that’s not why I crossed myself at all. I simply couldn’t help but marvel at the breathtaking feat … I am sorry. There had been rumours, but I had no idea.”

     It had been well known in Recusant circles that Lord Acton’s eldest daughter, Mary Frances, had been born with the hideously painful and debilitating Ehrenfrucht’s Syndrome. She had been bedridden and hidden from the public eye for years, only the family chaplain allowed to see her. Then she had completely disappeared and though Fr. McIsaac had clearly been sworn to secrecy, rumours began to circulate when a Japanese, rumoured to be a Karakuri puppet master was spotted on the family estate along with the legendary surgeons Livingstone and Charcot.

     Karakuri were very lifelike clockwork marvels that could perform basic tasks like serving tea, and Percy had heard some stories of newer creations that could walk and talk. But this was something else — a new clockwork body had been constructed for the youngest Acton daughter. But …

     “You said you were going to Canada to die, my child,” Fr. Grey said.

     “I can’t go on like this. I was meant to die, God wanted me to die.”

     “God wills not the death of the sinner, but that he be converted and live.”

     “Then why did He give me Ehrenfrucht’s Syndrome?”

     “Why did He give you a family that could afford and acquire the magnificent expertise to give you a new body?” Father Grey asked.

     “A new and beautiful body,” Colonel Blackdowne added softly.

     “This isn’t a body, it’s a coffin,” she said. “Must I continue like this?”

     “It is not required to take extraordinary steps to preserve life. I take it that your plan was to wait for your gears to wind down, hidden in Canada, and have Colonel Blackdowne prevent anyone from winding the life-giving mechanisms?”

     He looked to Colonel Blackdowne, who nodded. His eyes glistened with tears.

     “It would not be a sin to let nature take its course. But it would cause your parents great grief. Look at what lengths they’ve gone to for you. And I believe there is more for you to do.”

     “And to suffer?” She asked.

     “Yes. We all must suffer.”

There was a very long pause.

     “Will you hear my confession, Father?”

     Father Grey took his small travel stole from his pocket, kissed it, and with the violet side facing out draped it over his neck. Colonel Blackdowne strode quickly out of the cargo hold and the priest pulled a small crate over so that he could sit next to Mary Frances.

     “Bless me Father, for I have sinned, I confess to Almighty God and to you Father …”

***

     A little over two hours later, Father Percy Grey was again back out on the viewing gallery in his furs, now with Colonel Blackdowne next to him, puffing on a cigar. All had been explained to the crew and the furor had finally died down. Mary Frances Acton had been installed in the Captain’s cabin and the crew was abuzz with excitement. The giant screws propelling the great brass airship pushed her onwards through the night.

     “Do you think she’ll choose to live, Father?” Colonel Blackdowne asked.

     “Time will tell, Colonel, but I have a good feeling about it.”

WARHAMMER 40,000: PRAETORIAN GUARDSMAN

By Godfrey Blackwell

This week we're going to be kicking-off some steampunk-themed posts including a series of stories over the next few Fridays, so I thought it would be good to share a piece from an aborted (but very fun project) I started then stopped (for good) a few years ago. The model is actually mostly Victoria Miniatures "Victorian Guard" parts with some Games Workshop "bitz" (robotic arm and gun are Adeptus Mechanicus pieces).

This model was a boatload of fun to model and paint and I did model up a full squad before realizing it was not realistic to build an army of these guys. However, the "New 40K" has expanded options for small games so I should finish the squad for such small games.

WARHAMMER 40,00: BLOOD ANGELS TACTICAL SQUAD

"Squad Tarcisius" from the Blood Angels successor Chapter, The Angels Sorrowful

WARHAMMER 40,000: BLOOD ANGELS' CHAPLAIN

By Godfrey Blackwell

STAR WARS LEGION: REBEL FLEET TROOPERS

Base paint and bases by James Blackwell, layer and highlights by Godfrey Blackwell