by Dan Abnett
It felt to Elodie like the heady holiday fairs that led up to a major feast day back on Balhaut. It was noisy and brash and cheerful, and there were treats and temptations to savour. But there was a gaudy, apocalyptic air about it too. The regiment was going to war. No one yet knew where, or what kind of war, and no one even knew the exact hour they would make shift. Such things were classified. Certainly, though, they were not leaving Menazoid Sigma the way they had left Balhaut. They were not heading for a dispersal point or a holding station. This was the real thing, and some of those leaving would never come back, not to here or anywhere.
She rose early. There were things to do. Daur hadn’t told her specifically, but it was probably the last day on shore. She had kissed him while he was still shaving at the mirror, and left their quarters. He was going to need his number one jacket by lunchtime. There was some kind of reception. She’d left the jacket with a tailor on the fifth row the night before and she needed to collect it.
It was early still, the suns just rising in the smog, but it was busy already. The shore bustled around her. Because the Guard camp at Anzimar was literally on the shore, Elodie had assumed that was what ‘the shore’ meant. The camp was a large town of prefab and rockcrete barrack buildings and halls housing, at present, six different regiments including the Tanith. It was flanked on one side by the sprawl of the city, and on the other by vast rockcrete skirts, the huge soot-scorched platforms where the bulk landers waited, cargo doors open, to swallow up the regiment and carry them up to the ships in high anchor orbit. The landers were huge, monolithic craft. The landing skirts met the shoreline and, with their hold jaws open and the waters of the bay behind them, they looked like oceanic monsters that had come ashore to bask and eat.
Elodie had learned that ‘the shore’ was simply Guard slang for any camp they occupied before shipping out. The shore was a lasman’s temporary connection to one world before he marched on to the next. Sometimes a shore was a real shore, like it was on Menazoid Sigma. Sometimes it was a hive top, or a desert platform, a forest town or an island base. Sometimes it was an orbital station, sometimes it was a dizzying metropolis.
One more thing to learn. There was always one more thing to learn.
She was wearing a simple dress and a shawl and an old pair of combat-issue boots. It was cool, but the temperature would increase as the suns came up, and the cold stink of chemicals would acquire a burning tang. Plumes of brown filth trailed from the peaks of the galvanic reactors across the bay. There was fog out on the water.
The revel camp was a temporary fair of stalls and traders that had grown up between the barrack buildings at the landing skirts. Bright, hand-painted signs numbered the rows and thoroughfares to guide people around. Crowds were already growing. There were acrobats and tumblers, men hawking song sheets and hymnals, barrows selling hot slab fritters and fried biscuits, a smell of caffeine and sacra and lho-stick smoke, the tapping of tinkers and cobblers at work.
Trinkets were the most common purchases for the rabble crowd, parting gifts and keepsakes and forget-me-nots. Engravers at small stalls worked to mark names onto cheap jewellery and lockets. Ecclesiarchs and trancemissionaries sold safeguard charms and rosaries; prophylactics against harm, the eternal protection of the God-Emperor. They also handed out pamphlets and treatises for uplifting consolation during the voyage. Blessings were obtainable, and so were sermons, delivered from portable pulpits. Garlands and posies were sold in abundance, and the victuallers and black-marketeers did a busy trade in foodstuffs, drink and smokes, indulgences for the last night on shore or the long nights in transit.
The crowd parted and a jester came by, clown-masked, striding on stilts. Behind him came a gang of laughing children, most of them regimental offspring. Elodie recognised many of them. Some she knew by name. That little girl was Yoncy. She was one of the ones Juniper minded, so Elodie had come to hear the story. For a while, Yoncy and her brother had been minded by a woman called Aleksa, but Aleksa had passed away and Juniper had taken on the care of them. The children were orphans from Verghast, and they’d been adopted by Tona Criid, a woman officer who’d found them on the battlefield. It turned out later their father wasn’t dead at all. He was Major Gol Kolea of C Company. He hadn’t wanted to overturn their little lives any further by taking them away from their adoptive mother, so he’d stayed out of it, and just kept an eye on them through Aleksa. Now the boy, Dalin, was a trooper, the adjutant of E Company, and the girl was getting quite big. The regiment had become their family, and had provided for them.
Still, they had suffered and lost a lot. Tragedy had marked their lives. You could see it in them, especially the little girl. From the time she had first seen her, Elodie had detected the most haunting sadness in Yoncy’s eyes.
The girl was a pretty little thing though. She raced past after the stilt-clown, giving Elodie a wave. Behind her, letting her run along, came the brother, Dalin. He was in uniform, a fine young man, watching his sister’s enjoyment with a smile. A last hour of shore leave for him before duties began. He’d bought a little medal of the Saint on a ribbon, no doubt for his sister.
He saw Elodie.
‘Mam,’ he said.
‘Dalin,’ she returned.
‘A good day,’ he said.
‘I would think almost any day is a good day to leave Anzimar,’ she replied.
He laughed.
Elodie walked on, past a bottle stall. She saw two Tanith men purchasing flasks of amasec. One of them saw her and suddenly looked guilty. He put the bottle he had been studying back hastily.
‘How are you today, mam?’ he asked.
‘Well, soldier,’ she said. His name was Costin. She knew it, because Ban had pointed him out as a man who had known great trouble with drink over the years. He was embarrassed because an officer’s woman had seen him buying liquor.
‘I was considering a gift,’ he said. ‘For my good captain, Domor, to mark this making shift. I would otherwise not touch the stuff.’
‘You don’t have to explain yourself, soldier,’ she said.
But perhaps he did. As a hostess in the clubs of Balhaut, Elodie had observed much about the relationship between men and their poisons. Costin was clearly a sot. The raw redness of his face told her that. He drank quantity, not quality, or his Guard pay would not stretch to cover his habit. He was the sort of man who would brew his own sacra to ensure a cheap supply.
So why would he be purchasing a fine bottle of amasec that ought to be locked in a colonel’s tantalus? Was it truly a gift as he said? Where would a man like Costin get that sort of money?
She reached the tailor’s stall on the fifth row and joined a short queue that was being entertained by a fire-eater. Sixteen Valkyrie assault carriers wailed overhead in formation. Elodie watched the entertainer, oiled and lithe, caper as he blew cones of flame from his burning wands.
‘Quite a trick,’ said a voice from beside her. ‘I tried to learn it once, in the hope that it might impress the mamzels.’
She turned and found Commissar Blenner standing in the queue behind her. He smiled and doffed his cap.
‘Good day, Lady Daur,’ he said.
‘Not quite lady yet, sir.’
‘You should see about that,’ he replied.
‘Really?’
‘Yes, before–’
Blenner paused, as if he had strayed into territory he regretted.
‘I always believe,’ he said, changing tack, ‘that sensible provision is the greatest defence against the vagaries of war.’
‘I’ll bear that in mind, sir.’
‘Please,’ he said, ‘a blind man could see you are no soldier, so there is no need to address me like one. Vaynom, I insist.’
Commissar Blenner had, like her, joined the regiment at Balhaut. He was, Ban had told her, an old friend of the commander’s, and he’d been brought in to supplement the Tanith First’s commissar strength, now that Commissar Hark’s work had become so specialised.
&nb
sp; Elodie had encountered Blenner at several formal dinners. He didn’t look like a soldier. He seemed a little pudgy and unfit, a touch bloated from an easy life of inaction. He looked like an Administratum clerk dressed up as a soldier. He had, perhaps, been handsome once, but he was no longer as handsome as he thought he was, and his roguish manner was a little obnoxious. Elodie had met his type many times in the clubs of Balhaut. Privileged, silver-tongued, charming enough to like. But you’d always wonder where he was going to put his hands.
‘You are here for the tailor?’ she asked.
‘Indeed,’ he said. ‘My coat is being stitched. I have an influx to greet. Duty calls us all.’
It was her turn. She took Daur’s jacket from the tailor, inspected the work, and paid.
‘Good day, sir,’ she said to Blenner. ‘May we all make shift safely.’
‘The Emperor protects, dear lady,’ he replied. He watched her walk away. The view was worth the effort.
‘Now, where’s my damn coat?’ he said to the tailor.
Blenner put on his stormcoat as he walked through the crowd. No one, not even the enforcers’ serjeants-at-arms policing the revels, got in a commissar’s way. He crossed a small yard where men were playing camp ball, and entered the infirmary.
Inside, a big Tanith thug was stripped to the waist and sitting backwards on a wooden chair while one of the orderlies, a skinny fellow still wearing his medical smock, applied a tattoo to his shoulder blade with an outsized needle. Blenner stood for a moment, watching in fascination. The man was big and hairy, and smelled of liquid promethium. This wasn’t his first piece of ink. The new tattoo, half done, was a playing card, the King of Knives. Colour would be added later.
‘Is that really an appropriate use of medical facilities?’ Blenner
asked.
The orderly jumped up, realising Blenner was there. His smock was clean, but his fingers were permanently stained with blue ink. He had a cup full of needles. The man receiving the tattoo turned his big, bearded face and looked over his shoulder at Blenner. He made no attempt to get up or show respect.
‘I’m sorry sir, I had a moment,’ said the orderly.
‘You do this work?’ Blenner asked, peering at the tattoo.
‘I’ve always done it, sir.’
‘He’s good with needles,’ said the big man.
‘What’s your name?’ asked Blenner.
‘Lesp, sir,’ said the orderly.
Lesp. Lesp. So many new names and faces to remember.
‘What is that?’ Blenner asked, gesturing to the tattoo.
‘King of Knives, sir,’ said Lesp.
‘The Suicide King,’ growled the big man.
‘And what’s your name?’ Blenner asked.
‘Brostin,’ he said.
‘You know what, Trooper Brostin?’ said Blenner. ‘I think you should get up off your arse and show me some civility.’
Brostin got up. He looked down at Blenner. He stank of fire-grease.
‘Don’t you like my ink?’ he asked.
‘I don’t like your attitude,’ replied Blenner.
‘Life’s full of disappointments,’ said Brostin. ‘Sir,’ he added.
‘What does it signify, the King?’ Blenner asked.
‘It’s what I’m going to be, isn’t it?’ said Brostin. ‘B Company, first platoon. We’re going to be the Suicide Kings.’
B Company, Blenner thought.
‘You’re one of Rawne’s?’
‘I belong to Rawne and I belong to the fire,’ said Brostin. ‘I have done since before I belonged to the Guard.’
Blenner looked at Lesp.
‘This isn’t a suitable place to conduct this kind of business,’ he said.
‘Sir.’
‘I should have you both up on a damn charge.’
‘Is there a problem?’ asked a quiet voice.
Blenner turned, and found himself face to face with the regiment’s new medicae. The man had joined the company at Balhaut, just like Blenner. Blenner didn’t have much time for him. The man’s name was Kolding, a civilian drafted in by Gaunt. He was an albino, which Blenner had a little trouble with. It was off-putting. Kolding’s skin was pale, and his eyes were always hidden behind dark glasses. His voice was soft and colourless too.
Blenner’s main problem with Kolding was that the man was a death doctor, a mortician, an examiner of corpses. In Blenner’s considerable opinion, Kolding had no business practising on the living. Blenner couldn’t fathom what Gaunt saw in the man.
‘I came in here,’ said Blenner, ‘and I found this activity going on. It’s not good enough.’
‘Why?’ asked Kolding quietly.
‘Because–’ Blenner began. ‘Because.’
Doctor Curth came into the room behind the albino.
‘Lesp is one of the regiment’s most sought-after inkers, commissar,’ she said.
Doctor Curth had entered carrying a stainless steel tray of clean instruments. She was looking at him intently. Blenner liked her. She was a handsome, slender woman. He’d often imagined her looking at him with that sort of intensity. Except that this felt uncomfortable, as though she was deciding where to make an incision.
‘This is filthy and unauthorised, doctor,’ Blenner said.
‘I’ll handle this, doctor,’ she said to Kolding, who nodded and walked out of the room.
‘Let’s talk about it in here,’ Curth told Blenner. She glanced back at Lesp and Brostin, and said, ‘You two, get on. Finish later.’
She led Blenner into her small consulting room.
‘Lesp is an artist. Ink is important, especially to the Tanith, though the Verghast and Belladon men are taking to it.’
‘There is a matter of uniform code–’
‘Certain regulations have always been overlooked when it comes to the Tanith and their ink,’ she said. ‘There is a long established precedent. To make a discipline issue out of it now would be unwise.’
‘There is a health issue,’ he replied. ‘Ink and needles… This is supposed to be a hygienic area.’
‘I can’t think of a better place to keep the tools sterile, can you?’ she asked. ‘I’d rather they did it here, where needles can be boiled and tattoos dressed than have to treat men for infections caught from filthy backroom work.’
Blenner opened his mouth, and then closed it again.
‘I… see I have a good deal yet to learn about the operation of this regiment, doctor. Can I call you Ana?’
‘No, commissar. That wouldn’t be seemly. Now, how can I help you?’
‘I just stopped by for a moment.’
‘You did,’ she said. ‘You look stressed. Troubled.’
‘Is that a medical opinion?’
‘It’s the only kind I give.’
‘I was hoping to see the doctor.’
Curth hesitated, and pursed her lips.
‘I am a doctor, commissar.’
‘And quite the most fragrant I’ve ever seen,’ he said. ‘But I wanted to consult with a male doctor. Privately.’
Curth nodded. She wasn’t surprised, especially a lizard like Blenner. She honestly had no idea why Gaunt tolerated him. He undoubtedly needed powder for some pox he’d picked up, and was too ashamed to let her examine his pathetic genitals.
‘Doctor Kolding is–’
‘Doctor Dorden,’ said Blenner firmly.
‘I don’t really want to disturb Doctor Dorden,’ she said.
‘I do,’ he replied.
Curth sighed, and got up. She went to the door of Dorden’s room and knocked.
‘Commissar Blenner wants to see you,’ she called.
‘One moment. I was just about to step out.’
‘He says it won’t take long,’ said Curth. She looked at Blenner, who nodded his head to concur.
‘Send him in.’
Dorden, the regiment’s chief medicae, was sitting behind his desk swallowing, with the aid of a glass of water, the last of the six pills he took eve
ry two hours. There was no longer any disguising his weight loss and the thinning of his hair. His illness was not a secret, but it was not discussed. All Blenner knew was that the man had already out-lived every prognosis.
Blenner closed the door behind him.
‘How can I help you?’ asked Dorden.
‘I would like you to give me something,’ said Blenner.
‘What, exactly?’
‘A tonic, sir, a remedy.’
‘For what, commissar?’
‘That which ails me, doctor.’ Blenner forced out a merry laugh.
Dorden did not smile.
‘I don’t have all day,’ Dorden said. ‘Well, I hope I do, but I don’t know how many more days after that I’ll get. So if you’d cut to the matter directly.’
Blenner cleared his throat.
‘I’m afraid,’ he said.
‘We’re all afraid. Throne, I know I am.’
‘Forgive me, but I am serious. I am quite un-manned by it.’
‘So get a grip.’
‘Doctor, I have to lead these men.’
‘You’ve led men before,’ said Dorden. ‘You’ve had a long career. Who were you with before us? The Greygorians? You’ve seen action.’
‘Look, between you and me,’ said Blenner, sitting down opposite Dorden and leaning forwards, ‘life with the Greygorians was pretty charmed. I mean, Throne! It was a ceremonial detail. We did marching and pomp and colour drills. It was a life of bloody luxury!’
‘I’ve heard you talk, at length, about your exploits under fire,’ said Dorden.
‘Yes, well. I tell a good story.’
‘Does Gaunt know this? He brought you into our company.’
‘He must know. Throne, I don’t know. He knew what I was like back when we were at scholam. I haven’t changed. He must know.’
Dorden steepled his thin, white fingers.
‘Vaynom,’ he said, ‘we are on the eve of making shift on a mission so significant, we haven’t even been told the parameters yet. Everyone is apprehensive. It’s perfectly natural.’