by Dan Abnett
He turned to Beltayn and took his overnight bag from him. Then he took Beltayn’s pack too.
“That’s not necessary,” said Beltayn.
“Ah, let me carry them a while,” said Gaunt.
The track wound through the wood, but there was no sign of farmland or the village. They crossed a rushing brook by way of an ancient stone bridge, black with mould. Bird calls and the burr of insects floated eerily through the trees. In one dense thicket, the beythorn was strung with spider webs that glinted with beads of rainwater like quartz.
“What did the engineer mean about brigands?” Beltayn asked, pausing to get a stone out of his boot.
“Deserters, I believe,” said Gaunt. “Over the years, bands of them have run to ground out here in the wooded country. They live by pilfering from farms, poaching…”
“Brigandry?” Beltayn added. “Being, as it seems, brigands.”
Gaunt shrugged.
“Well, maybe this was a bad id—” Beltayn began, but shut up as Gaunt raised a hand.
Across the next clearing, a stand of white birch with gleaming bark, a deer had emerged from the smoke of mist. It stood for a moment, regarding them with its head cocked. Then it turned and darted away.
A heartbeat later, and they saw others, distantly, chasing soundlessly through the woods.
Like ghosts.
A full hour after they had begun their hike, they emerged from the edge of the wood at a point where the land became planted fields. Swaying heads of young, green wheat covered the slopes down the waist of a hill towards a fresh line of woodland in the valley.
It was a decent vantage point, but there was no sign of any village.
“I’m hungry,” said Beltayn.
Gaunt looked at him.
“Just saying,” he said.
Gaunt put the bags down and mopped his brow. The walk had reinvigorated him, but he was beginning to agree with Beltayn. This had been a bad idea.
He checked the position of the sun, and read his timepiece. He wished he’d brought his compass, or his locator, or even his auspex, but there had seemed no need that morning. His bag contained nothing but his shaving kit, his number one uniform, and his copy of The Spheres of Longing.
He wanted to ask Beltayn which way he favoured, but to do so would be to admit he was lost. He decided they should follow the track down the edge of the field where it curved into the bottom of the valley. Perhaps there’d be a road down there.
They’d gone about a hundred paces, when he stopped again. “You see that?” he asked.
Beltayn squinted. Down in the valley, hidden in the woodland there, was a building. Grey chafstone, the roof made of slate. Some sort of tower poked up through the canopy.
“You’ve got sharp eyes, sir,” said Beltayn. “I’d never have seen that in a thousand years.”
“Come on,” said Gaunt.
It was a chapel, old and rundown, buried in the green twilight of the wood. Trailing ivy and fleece-flower clung to its walls. Bright green lichens gnawed the chafstone. They walked around the partially-collapsed wall, in through the old gate, and up the path to the door. The scent was back, that flower scent. It was so strong, it made Gaunt feel like sneezing. He could see no flowers.
Gaunt pushed open the door and walked into the cold gloom of the chapel. The interior was plain, but well-kept. At the end of the rows of hardwood pews, a taper burned at the Imperial altar. Both men made the sign of the aquila, and Gaunt walked down the aisle towards the graven image of the Emperor. In the stained glass of the lancet windows, he saw the image of Saint Sabbat amongst the worthies.
“Well,” murmured a voice from the darkness. “There you are at last.”
She was very old, and blind. A strip of black silk was wound around her head across her eyes. Her silver hair had been plaited tightly against the back of her skull. Age had hunched her, but stood erect she would have towered over Gaunt.
There was no mistaking her red and black robes.
“Sister,” Gaunt said, and bowed.
“Welcome here. There is no need for obeisance.”
Gaunt looked up. How had she known he was bowing? For a scant second, he wondered if she was some gifted seer, but then he caught himself. Stupid. Her senses were sharp, and attuned to her blindness. She’d simply noted the direction of his voice. “I am Colonel-Commissar Ibram Gaunt,” he said.
She nodded, as if she didn’t especially care. Or, Gaunt thought, as if she already knew. “Welcome to the Chapel of the Holy Light Abundant, Veniq.”
“We’re near the village then?”
“Well, the name is a little misleading. Veniq is about four kilometres south of here.” Beltayn groaned quietly.
“Your boy is disheartened to hear that,” she said.
“My boy? My adjutant?”
“I hear two of you. Am I mistaken?”
“No. We’re trying to reach Veniq, to find transport. Our train… well, it doesn’t matter. I need to be in Meiseq tonight.”
She sat down on one of the pews, feeling her way with one hand, leaning on her staff with the other. “That’s a long way,” she said.
“I know,” said Gaunt. “Can you perhaps set us on the right road?”
“You’re on the right road already, Ibram, but you won’t reach your destination for a while.”
“Meiseq?”
“Oh, you’ll be there tonight. I meant…”
“What?”
She settled herself against the stiff back of the pew. “My name is Elinor Zaker, once of the Adepta Sororitas Militant, the order of Our Martyred Lady. Now warden and keeper of this chapel.”
“I am honoured to meet you, sister. What… what did you mean about my destination?”
She turned her head towards him. It was the fluid neck-swivel of a human who had been habituated to helmet-display target sensors. For a moment, Gaunt felt like she was aiming at him.
“I should speak less. There are things that mustn’t be said, not yet. You’ll have to excuse me. I get so few visitors, I feel the urge to gabble.”
“What things mustn’t be said?” Gaunt started to say, but Beltayn spoke over him.
“How long have you been here, lady?” he asked.
“Years and years,” she said. “So many, now. I tend the place, as well as I am able. Does it look trim and clean?”
“Yes,” said Gaunt, glancing around.
She smiled a little. “I can’t tell. I do my best. Some things I see clearly, but not my environment. He doesn’t sound very young.”
Gaunt realised this last comment had been made about Beltayn. “My adjutant? He’s… what, thirty-two?”
“Thirty-one last birthday, sir,” said Beltayn from the far end of the aisle.
“Well, he’s no boy, then.”
“No,” said Gaunt.
“I understood it would be a boy. No disrespect, Ibram. You’re important too. But the boy, he’s the crux.”
“You seem to be speaking in riddles, sister.”
“I know. It must be very distressing. There are so many things I can’t say. It would ruin everything if I did. And it’s really too important, so that mustn’t happen. Was there a boy? Very young? The youngest of all?”
“My previous adjutant was a boy,” said Gaunt, suddenly very unsettled. “His name was Milo. He’s a trooper now.”
“Ah,” she said, nodding. “It gets it wrong sometimes.”
“What does?” asked Gaunt.
“The tarot.”
“How can you read cards when you can’t see?” Beltayn asked warily.
She turned her head towards the sound of his voice. Another careful aim. Beltayn stepped back slightly as if he had been target-acquired. “I don’t,” she said. “It reads me.”
With her head turned, Gaunt could see the long, pink line of the scar that ran over the top of her skull, seaming her white hair like a plough-furrow through com, down to the left side base of her neck. He sighed inwardly. He’d almost been taken in
by her talk. He’d been on the verge of believing they had stumbled upon — or been fatefully drawn to — a prophetic being. But now everything, even her peculiarly apt references to Milo, took on another meaning.
She was mad. Brain-damaged in some long-ago action. Rambling, talking at shadows, deprived of contact by her lonely vigil.
Gaunt needed to get on. “Look, sister… we are heading for Meiseq. I believe lives depend on us getting there. Is there any way you can help us?”
“Not really. Not in the grand scheme of things. You’re going to have to help yourselves. You and the boy, I mean. As far as Meiseq goes… I wouldn’t want to go there. Ugly place. An affront to the eyes. But you can borrow my car, if you like.”
“Your car?”
“No use to me anymore. It’s garaged in one of the barns across the lane. You might have to clear undergrowth from the doors, but the car runs. I turn it over every day. The keys are on the doorpost hook.”
Gaunt nodded to Beltayn, and the adjutant hurried out of the chapel.
“Has he gone?” she asked.
“Gone to find the car,” Gaunt said.
“Sit with me,” she whispered.
Gaunt sat beside her on the pew. Rambling though she was, Sister Zaker was doing him a favour, so he could at least humour her for a minute or two.
He could smell the flower-scent again. Where had he smelled that before?
“It will be hard,” she confided.
“What will?”
“Herodor,” she replied.
“Herodor?” The only Herodor Gaunt knew of was a tactically insignificant colony world some distance to coreward. He shrugged.
“I’ve been allowed to pass on a few things,” she said. “There is harm throughout. But the greatest harm, ultimately, is within. Within your body.”
“My body?” Gaunt echoed. He didn’t really want to get drawn into this. But she deserved civility.
“Figuratively, Ibram. Your body, as DeMarchese describes the body. Have you read DeMarchese?”
“No, sister.” Gaunt wasn’t even sure who DeMarchese was.
“Well, do so. The harm is in two parts. Two dangers, one truly evil, one misunderstood. The latter holds the key. It’s important you remember that, because you commissars are terribly trigger happy. I think that’s it. Oh, there is something else. Let your sharpest eye show you the truth. That’s it. Your sharpest eye. Well, that about does it. I hope I’ve made myself clear.”
“I—” Gaunt began.
“I have to sweep the floor now,” she said.
She paused and turned her head towards him. “I really shouldn’t say this. I’m stepping way beyond my role… but when you see her, commend me to her. Please. I miss her.”
From outside, the cough and snarl of a motor engine racing into life broke the stillness.
“Of course,” said Gaunt. He gently took her hand and kissed it.
“The Emperor protect you, sister.”
“He’ll have his hands full protecting you, Ibram,” she replied. “You, and that boy.”
Gaunt retreated down the aisle. “We’ll return the car.”
“Ah, keep it,” she said with a dismissive wave of her hand.
Outside, in the damp trackway, Beltayn sat behind the wheel of a massive old limousine. Its night-blue body was chipped with rust and lichen caked its running boards. Weeds had sprouted from the grille and fender. Beltayn had turned on the headlamps, which burned like the eyes of a nocturnal predator.
Gaunt walked up to the car and ran his hand along the grey hide of the retractable roof. “This come down?” he called.
Beltayn fiddled with the dashboard controls. With a creak, the hood redacted on concertinaing iron hoops so that the car was open-topped.
Gaunt got into the back. Beltayn looked back at him and raised his bandaged hand in a rather pathetic gesture.
“I… uh… don’t think I can handle the transmission, sir,” he said.
Gaunt shook his head, amused. “Change places,” he said.
They roared away down the woodland lane, leaving the chapel behind. Sunlight dappled and flickered all over them.
“So…” shouted Beltayn from the back over the roar of the eight cylinder engine, “…how strange was that?”
“Forget it!” yelled Gaunt into the slipstream, changing down as he took the massive, elderly automobile around a hard bend. “She was just hankering for company.”
“But she knew about Brin—”
“No, she didn’t. A few enigmatic remarks. That’s all. Hive-market preachers use that kind of routine all the time. It works on the gullible.”
“Okay. So she was trying to fool us?”
“Nothing so calculating. She was just… not altogether there.”
A drove road brought them through Veniq, and then on across open arable tracts to Shonsamarl where they joined the Northern Highway. Southbound, the highway was thick with munition trains and troop carriers. Northbound, they caught the end of a convoy of Guard Thunderers and light armour moving up to Gibsgatte. They played leapfrog up the line of heavy tanks as well as the passing traffic would allow, until the convoy turned off at Chossene, and then they raced on over the Naeme viaduct and into the cornfield flats of Loncort County.
Fitful light rain and patchy sun followed them through the afternoon along metalled roads that lay like ribbons over the salty-green fields. They saw slow formations of Alliance tri-planes buzzing east towards the front, and once or twice the glint of Imperial air support banging in supersonically, taking a new kind of war to this lingering, old-fashioned theatre.
Shortly before 18.00, Gaunt saw the skyline of Meiseq rising over the fields.
Meiseq was a new town built on old roots. It had been almost entirely razed in the early years of the Aexe War, when the initial Shadik advance had sliced mercilessly right across country to the Upper Naeme. Five years of counter-fighting, focused especially on the Battle of Diem, had eventually ousted the enemy from a portion of territory marked in the north-west corner by the city of Gibsgatte and in the south-east by Loncort. This, the so-called “Meiseq Box”, was now perhaps the most sturdy of the Alliance’s line defences, forming as it did the middle section of the Northern Front. To the south, from Loncort, ran the Peinforq Line that held the Naeme Valley. To the north ran the hotly contested sectors beyond Gibsgatte. The Alliance considered the Box so sound it had turned the areas around Diem into a Memorial Park for the fallen. An eternal flame burned at the site of Diem’s cathedral, and the oceans of grass around it were lined with row upon row of white, obcordate grave markers.
Meiseq had been rebuilt. Its buildings were made from pressure treated wood-pulp, coated with an emulsion of rock cement. It perched on an escarpment above a bend in the Upper Naeme, encircled by pales of timber and flakboard. At its centre rose the wooden cathedral of San Jeval.
It was getting dark by the time they drove up through the fortress gate in the south face of the walls and entered the town. The cathedral bells were ringing, and lamplighters were igniting the caged chemical torches that lined the streets.
Meiseq reminded Gaunt of a frontier city. Its prefabricated bulk smelled new and entirely at odds with the old, stone-built population centres he’d experienced so far on Aexe. It was strategically important, and wanted visitors to know that, but it seemed little more than a camp, an earthwork. The air smelled of roofing pitch and sweating wood. He remembered moving in to occupy Rakerville, years ago, with the Hyrkans. That had smelled the same. An outpost. A brief statement of Imperial activity. A gesture made without confidence at a frontier.
They parked near to the cathedral in a yard surrounded by trees. The trees were old and withered, but the Aexegarians who had remade Meiseq had remade the trees too, grafting new boughs onto the old trunks shattered by war. Late blossom and fresh green growth formed a roof over the gnarled, grey trunks.
Gaunt and Beltayn walked down the neighbouring streets, through the light crowds, and found the
military hall, a grim, twin-towered edifice with a walled precinct of its own.
It was nearly 20.00 hours.
Washed and changed, Gaunt left Beltayn in the officio suite appointed to him, and went down to dinner. His guides were two subalterns of the Bande Sezari, dignified in their plumed head-dresses and green silks. Night had fallen, and the narrow passages of the military hall were caves of fluttering rushlights.
The dinner had just begun in a terrace room overlooking the river to the west. The last scraps of day-fade smudged the sky outside, and drum-fires flickered along the low river bend.
There were nineteen officers present and all stood briefly as Gaunt took his place at the empty twentieth place. He sat and the mumble of conversation resumed. The long table was dressed in white cloth, and lit by four large candelabra. Gaunt’s place setting twinkled with nine separate pieces of cutlery. A steward brought him an oval white bowl and filled it with chilled, blush-red soup.
“Imperial?” asked the man to his right, a short thin-faced Aexegarian who had clearly drunk too much already.
“Yes, sir,” said Gaunt, careful to acknowledge the man’s rank boards. A general.
The man stuck out his hand. “Siquem Fep Ortern, C-in-C. 60th sector.”
“Gaunt Tanith First.”
“Ah,” said the drunk. “You’re the one they’ve been talking about.”
Gaunt looked down the table. He saw Golke nearby, and Lord General Van Voytz at the head of the table. He didn’t recognise any other faces, except for Van Voytz’s chief tactician, Biota. Like Ortern, all the others were senior Alliance officers, either Aexegarians or Kottmarkers. Gaunt began to feel like he’d walked into a lion’s den. He’d assumed Van Voytz had summoned him to attend a private dinner where he could voice his disquiet at Alliance tactics in the company of chosen staff chiefs. He hadn’t expected this, a full, high brass banquet. Though Van Voytz, imposing in his dark green dress uniform, dominated the head of the table, the presiding influence seemed to come from the man to Van Voytz’s left, a bullish Kottmark general with a disturbingly bland, pale face, half-moon clerk’s spectacles and white-blond hair.