by Dan Abnett
“Not bad.”
“Pull this off, I’ll recommend you for a marksman lanyard.” Merrt grins and flashes his eyebrows.
“Should’ve got one anyway,” he says. “The last one went to Larkin. After his psyche evaluation, marksman status was the only special dispensation Corbec could pull to get his old mate a place in the company.”
“Is that true?” Gaunt asks.
“You ought to know. I thought you were in charge?” Gaunt stares at him.
“I’m really looking forward to meeting a Tanith who isn’t insolent or cocksure,” says Gaunt. “Good luck with that,” says Merrt. Gaunt shakes his head.
“I’ve got a smart mouth, I know,” says Merrt. “I said a few things about Larkin getting my lanyard, earned some dark looks from the Munitorum chiefs. My mouth’ll get me in trouble, one day, I reckon.”
“I think you’re already in trouble,” says Gaunt. He gestures out of the window. “I think this qualifies.”
“Feels like it.”
“So you reckon you’re good?”
“Better than Larkin,” says Merrt.
They settle in by the window. The mist shrouding the concourse and the surrounding ruins has grown thicker, as though the discharge of weapons has caused some chemical reaction, and it’s disguising the enemy approach.
Below, about fifteen metres shy of them, they can see the blasts of the approaching flamer, like a sun behind cloud. “Nasty weapon, the flamer,” says Gaunt. “I can well imagine.”
“Then again, it is essentially a can or two of extremely flammable material.”
“You going to be my shot caller?” Merrt asks.
“We have to let it get a little closer,” says Gaunt. “You see where it burps like that?”
Another gout of amber radiance backlights the fog in the square below. Merrt nods, raising the lasrifle to his shoulder.
“Watch which way the glow moves. It’s moving out from the flamer broom.”
“Got it.”
“So the point of origin is going to be behind it, and the tank or tanks another, what, half a metre behind that?”
The flamer roars again. A long, curling rush of fire, like the leaf of a giant fern, emerges from the mist and brushes the front of the guild house. Gaunt hears Domor curse loudly.
“He’s widened the aperture,” Gaunt tells Merrt. “He’s seen buildings ahead, and he’s put a bit of reach on the flame, so he can scour the ruins out.”
Merrt grunts.
“We’ve got to do this if we’re going to,” says Gaunt.
There is another popping cough and then another roar. This time, the curling arc of fire comes up high, like the jet of a pressurised hose.
Gaunt grabs Merrt, and pulls him back as the fire blisters the first-storey windows. It spills in through the window spaces, roasting the frames and sizzling the wet black filth, and plays in across the ceiling like a catch of golden fish, coiling and squirming in a mass, landed on the deck of a boat.
The flames suck out again, leaving the windows scorched around their upper frames and the ceiling blackened above the windows. All the air seems to have gone out of the room. Gaunt and Merrt gasp as if they too have just been landed out of a sea net.
Gaunt recovers the lasrifle and checks it for damage. Merrt picks himself up.
“Come on!” Gaunt hisses.
As Merrt settles into position again, Gaunt peers down into the swirl. “There! There!” he cries, as the flames jet through the mist and rain again.
Merrt fires. Nothing happens. “Feth!” Merrt whispers.
“When the flame lights up, aim closer to the source,” Gaunt says. The flamer gusts again, ripping fire at the front of the guild house. Merrt fires again.
The tanks go up with a pressurised squeal. A huge doughnut of fire rips through the mist, rolling and coiling, yellow-hot and furious. Several broken metal objects soar into the air on streamers of flame, shrieking like parts of an exploding kettle.
Gaunt raises his head cautiously and looks down. He can see burning figures stumbling around in the fog, PDF troopers caught in the blast. They sizzle loudly in the rain.
“Let’s get out of here,” he says to Merrt.
Gaunt calls to the three Tanith men below, and all five leave the guild house together and work their way back along the edge of the concourse to the advance main force, skirting the open spaces.
“I’ve been looking for you,” says Corbec matter-of-factly when Gaunt appears.
“Not hard enough, I’d say,” Gaunt replies.
Corbec tuts, half entertained.
“You set something off over there?” he asks.
“Just a little parlour trick to keep them occupied while we got out of their way.”
“‘A little parlour trick’…” Corbec chuckles. “You’re a very amusing man, you know that?”
“Wait till you get to know me,” says Gaunt. Corbec looks at him sadly and says nothing. “What shape are we in, colonel?” Gaunt asks. “Fair,” Corbec replies. “No losses so far?”
“Couple of scratches. But look, their numbers are increasing all the time. Another hour or so, we could start losing friends fast.”
“Can we vox in for support?”
“The vox is still dead as dead,” says Corbec.
“Recommendation?”
“We pull back before the situation becomes untenable. Then we rustle up some proper strength, come back in, finish the job.” Gaunt nods.
“There are problems with that,” he says.
“Do tell.”
“For a start, I’m still not sure who we’re fighting.”
“It’s tribal Archenemy,” says Corbec, “like Mkoll says. They’ve just ransacked the city arsenal.” Gaunt touches his arm and draws him out of earshot. “You never left Tanith before, did you, Corbec?”
“No, sir.”
“Never fought on a foreign front?”
“I’ve been taught about the barbaric nature of the Archenemy, if that’s what you’re worried about. All their cults and their ritual ways—”
“Corbec, you don’t know the half of it.” Corbec looks at him.
“I think they are Kosdorfers,” Gaunt says. “I think they were, anyway. I think the Ruinous Powers, may they stand accursed, have salvaged more than kit and equipment. I think they’ve salvaged men too.”
“Feth,” Corbec breathes. Rain drips off his beard.
“I know,” says Gaunt.
“The very thought of it.”
“I need you to keep that to yourself. Don’t say anything to the men.”
“Of course.”
“None of them, colonel.”
“Yes. Yes, all right.”
Corbec’s taken one of his cigars out again and stuck it in his mouth, unlit.
“Just light the damn thing,” says Gaunt.
Corbec obeys. His hands shake as he strikes the lucifer.
“You want one?”
“No,” says Gaunt.
Corbec puffs.
“All right,” he says. He looks at Gaunt.
“All right,” says Gaunt, “if we give ground here and try to fall back, we leave ourselves open. If they take us out on the way home, they’ll be all over our main force without warning. But if we can manage to keep their attention here while we relay a message back…”
Corbec frowns. “That’s a feth of a lot to ask, by any standards.”
“What, the message run or the action?” asks Gaunt.
“Both,” says Corbec.
“You entirely comfortable with the alternative, Corbec?” Corbec shrugs. “You know I’m not.”
“Then strengthen our position here, colonel,” Gaunt says. “We can afford to drop back a little if necessary. Given the visibility issues, the concourse isn’t helping us much.”
“What do you suggest?” asks Corbec.
“I suggest you ask Mkoll and his scouts. I suggest we make the best of that resource.”
“Yes, sir.”
Corbec turns to go.
“Corbec—another thing. Tell the men to select single shot. Mandatory, please. Full auto is wasting munitions.”
“Yes, sir.”
Corbec stubs out his cigar and moves away. Keeping his head down, Gaunt moves along the shooting line of jumbled pavers and column bases in the opposite direction.
“Trooper!”
Caffran looks up from his firing position. “Yes, sir?”
“It’s your lucky day,” says Gaunt.
He gets down beside Caffran and reaches into his jacket pockets for his stylus and a clean message wafer.
His hip pocket is torn open and flapping. It’s empty. He checks all the pockets of his jacket and the pockets of his storm coat, but his stylus and the wafer pad have gone.
“Do you have the despatch bag, Caffran?”
Caffran nods, and pulls the loop of the small message satchel off over his head. Gaunt opens it, and sees it is in order: fresh message wafers, a stylus, and a couple of signal flares. Caffran has taken his duty seriously.
Gaunt begins writing on one of the wafers rapidly. He uses a gridded sheet to draw up a simple expression of their route and the layout of the city’s south-eastern zone, copying from his waterproof chart. Rain taps on the sheet.
“I need you to take this back to Major Rawne,” he says as he writes. “Understand that we need to warn him of the enemy presence here and summon his support.”
Gaunt finishes writing and presses the setting of his signet ring against the code seal of the wafer, authorising it.
“Caffran, do you understand?”
Caffran nods. Gaunt puts the wafer back into the message satchel. “Am I to go on my own?” Caffran asks.
“I can’t spare more than one man for this, Caffran,” says Gaunt.
The young man looks at him, considers it. Gaunt is a man who quite bloodlessly orders the death of people to achieve his goals. This is what’s happening now. Caffran understands that. Caffran understands he is being used as an instrument, and that if he fails and dies, it’ll be no more to Gaunt than a shovel breaking in a ditch or a button coming off a shirt. Gaunt has no actual interest in Caffran’s life or the manner of its ending.
Caffran purses his lips and then nods again. He hands his lasrifle and the munition spares he was carrying to Gaunt.
“That’ll just weigh me down. Somebody else better have them.”
The young trooper gets up, takes a last look at Gaunt, and then begins to pick his way down through the ruined street behind the advance position, keeping his head down.
Gaunt watches him until he’s out of sight.
Under Mkoll’s instruction, the advance gives ground.
Working as spotters out on the flanks, Mkoll’s scouts, Bonin and Mkvenner, have pushed the estimate of enemy numbers beyond eight hundred. Gaunt doesn’t want to show that he is already regretting his decision not to pull out while the going was good.
Against lengthening, lousy odds, he’s committed his small force to the worst kind of combat, the grinding city fight, where mid-range weapons and tactics become compressed into viciously barbaric struggles that depend on reaction time, perception and, worst of all, luck.
The Tanith disengage from the edge of the concourse, which has become entirely clouded in a rising white fog of vapour lifted by the sustained firefight, and drop back into the city block at the south-west corner. Here there are two particularly large habitat structures, which have slumped upon themselves like settling pastry, a long manufactory whose chimneys have toppled like felled trees, and a data library.
The scouts lead them into the warren of ruined halls and broken floors. It is raining inside many of the chambers. Roofs are missing, or water is simply descending through ruptured layers of building fabric. The Tanith melt from view into the shadows. They cover their cloaks with the black dirt from the concourse, and it helps them to merge with the dripping shadows. Gaunt does as they do. He smears the dirt onto his coat and pulls the cloak on over the top, aware that he is looking less and less like a respectable Imperial officer. Damn it, his storm coat is torn and his jacket is ruined anyway.
They work into the habs. Gunfire cracks and echoes along the forlorn walkways and corridors. Broken water pipes, weeping and foul, protrude from walls and floors like tree stumps. The tiled floor, what little of it survives, is covered with broken glass and pot shards from crockery that has been fragmented by the concussion of war.
Gaunt has kept hold of Caffran’s rifle. He’s holstered his pistol and got the infantry weapon cinched across his torso, ready to fire. It’s a long time since he’s seen combat with a rifle in his hands.
Mkoll looms out of the filmy mist that fills the air. He is directing the Tanith forward. He looks at Gaunt and then takes Gaunt’s cap off his head.
“Excuse me?” says Gaunt.
Mkoll wipes his index finger along a wall, begrimes it, and then rubs the tip over the silver aquila badge on Gaunt’s cap. He hands it back. “It’s catching the light,” says Mkoll.
“I see. And it’s not advisable to wear a target on my head.”
“I just don’t want you drawing fire down on our unit.”
“Of course you don’t,” says Gaunt.
Every few minutes the gunfire dies away. A period of silence follows as the enemy closes in tighter, listening for movement. The only sound is the downpour. The entire environment is a source of noise: debris and rubble can be dislodged, kicked, disturbed, larger items of wreckage can be knocked over or banged into. Damaged floors groan and creak. Windows and doors protest any attempt to move them. When a weapon is discharged, the echoes set up inside the ruined buildings are a great way of locating the point of origin.
The Tanith are supremely good at this. Gaunt witnesses several occasions when a trooper makes a rattle out of a stone in an old tin cup or pot and sets up a noise to tempt a shot from the demented Kosdorfers. As soon as the shot comes, another Tanith trooper gauges the source of the bouncing echo and returns fire with a lethal volley.
The enemy becomes wise to the tricks, and starts acting more circumspectly. Unable to out-stalk the Tanith, the Kosdorfers begin to call out to them from the darkness.
It is unnerving. The voices are distant and pleading. Little sense can be made of them in terms of meaning, but the tone is clear. It is misery. They are the voices of the damned.
“Ignore them,” Gaunt orders.
They have to stick tight. The enemy has a numerical advantage. By getting out of the open, the Tanith has forced its own spatial advantage. Gaunt wonders if it will be enough.
The ruins still feel like a grave site, a waste of mouldering funereal rot. He wonders if this place will mark the end of his life and soldiering career; a well-thought-of officer who wound up dying in some strategically worthless location because he didn’t make the right choices, or shake the right hand, or whisper in the right ear, or dine with the right cliques. He’s seen men make high rank that way, through the persuasive power of the officers’ club and the staff coterie. They were politicians, politicians who got to execute their decisions in the most literal way. Some were very capable, most were not. Gaunt believes that there is no substitute at all for practical apprenticeship, for field learning to properly supplement the study of military texts and the codices of combat. Slaydo had believed that too, as had Oktar, Gaunt’s first mentor.
The vast mechanism of the Imperial Guard, as a rule, did not. Slaydo had once said that he believed he could, through proper reform of the Guard, improve its efficiency by fifty or sixty per cent. Soberly, he had added that mankind was probably too busy fighting wars to ever initiate such reforms.
There is truth in that. Gaunt knows for a fact that Slaydo had a reform bill in mind to take to the Munitorum after the Gorikan Suppression, and again after Khulan. Every time, a new campaign beckoned, a new theatre loomed to occupy the attentions of military planners and commanders. The Sabbat Worlds, now it was the Sabbat Worlds. Slaydo had committed
to it mainly, Gaunt knew, for personal reasons. After Khulan, the High Lords had tempted Slaydo with many offers: he’d had the pick of campaigns. He had turned them down, hoping to pursue a more executive office in the latter part of his life and work to the fundamental improvement of the Imperial Guard, which he believed had the capacity to be the finest fighting force in known space.
However, the High Lords had outplayed him. They had discovered his old and passionate fondness for the piety of Saint Sabbat Beati and the territories she had touched, and they had exploited it. The Sabbat Worlds had long since been thought of as unrecoverable, lost to the predations of the Ruinous Powers spreading from the so-called Sanguinary Worlds. No commander wanted to embrace such a career-destroying challenge. The High Lords wanted a leader who would stage the offensive with conviction. They sweetened the offer with the rank of Warmaster, sensing that Slaydo would be unable to resist the opportunity to liberate a significant territory of the Imperium that he felt had been woefully neglected and left to overrun, and at the same to acquire a status that allowed him much greater political firepower to achieve his reforms.
Instead, Balhaut had killed him. All he accomplished was the commencement of a military campaign that was likely to last generations and cost trillions of lives.
Thus are dreams dashed and good intentions lost. Everything returns to the dust, and everything is reduced to blind fighting in the shadowed ruins of cities against men who were brothers until madness claimed their minds.
Everything returns to the dirt, and the dirt becomes your camouflage, and hides your face and your cap badge in the dark, when death comes, growling, to find you out.
Faced alone, out of sight of the other men, the ruination of Kosdorf brings tears into his eyes.
Caffran understands the urgency of his mission, but he’s also smart enough not to run. Headlong running, as the chief scout has pointed out so often, just propels a man into the open, into open spaces he hasn’t checked first, across hidden objects that might be pressure-sensitive, through invisible wires, into the line of predatory gunsights.
Caffran is fit, as physically fit as any of the younger men who’ve been salvaged from Tanith. That’s one of the reasons he’s been selected as a courier.