by Dan Abnett
“I’ve called for reinforcements,” Gaunt told his colonel. “I want set units to drop back and refresh. Make yours one of them.”
“We’re fine, sir,” Corbec protested.
“I know. But retire anyway. Soric’s falling back, Haller, Burone, Ewler, Scafond, Folore, Meryn. Join them, please Get your wounds patched. It’ll make a difference tomorrow if I can pull platoons like yours fresh out of the hat.”
“If there is a tomorrow,” Corbec sighed.
“There will be,” said Gaunt emphatically. “Now round up your platoon and retire.”
Corbec’s platoon meandered back through empty streets towards the inner guard stations, sandbagged emplacements manned by Regiment Civitas and PDF along the Guild Slope.
They could all hear the fighting raging on at the city limits.
“Medic station,” said a PDF officer, pointing. Dorden and Curth had set up shop in a vacant livestock hall. Corbec sent his injured in that direction, but he was distracted.
He’d heard something. A sound from his past, nostalgic eddying out of a hab across from the hall.
He walked over, and ducked into the hab. That noise! The shriek of a woodsaw. That dusty smell, that memory…
There was a stack of seasoned timber just inside the low door. Pale stuff with a fine bloom. Corbec ran his fingers along the grain. He’d forgotten how much the smell and feel of wood had been part of his life. A part of every Tanith’s life.
“Help you, trooper?”
Corbec turned and peered into the dark interior of the building. An old man with sawdust flakes in his wiry hair was feeding planks into a table saw beneath the light of a single phospha lamp.
“Just… didn’t expect to find a place like this here,” Corbec shrugged. The old man frowned as if he didn’t know what to say to that, and hefted up another board in his gloved hands. The saw whined.
“Colm Corbec,” Corbec nodded to the old man, holding out his hand. The man finished his cut, then set the wood aside, and removed a glove to shake Corbec’s hand.
“Gufrrey Wyze. Sure I can’t help you?”
Corbec scratched his head, looking around. “I used to work in a place like this. My father ran a machine shop back home, but he did a lot of timber cutting too. It was timber country.”
Wyze nodded. “Where was that?”
“Tanith.”
Wyze thought for a moment then said a single word that shocked Corbec. “Nalwood.”
“You know it?”
“Of course,” said the old man. He hit the rubber-sleeved switch on the side of the table saw and powered it down so they could talk without raising their voices.
“You know it?” Corbec repeated.
“You see many forests here on Herodor? Plantations? Sustainable woodstocks? We import from all over. People like wood. It’s reassuring. And it’s versatile too. Furniture, frames, panels, whatever.”
He wiggled a finger at Corbec, beckoning him towards a side door between laden shelves of tools, pots and junk. Beyond was the wood store. A great mass of timber was seasoning there, in floor-to-ceiling open shelves, divided by aisle gangways. The air smelled of resin and heart-wood.
“All imported,” said Wyze. “Most of it’s coloci and sap-maple and white toft from Khan, cheap stuff. Everyday. But I sometimes get shipments of choicer grades. There, that’s half-cut supple pine from Estima. You ever see better?”
“It’s nice,” agreed Corbec, stroking the velvet surface of the exposed pile top.
“And this is mature shiln from Brunce I’ve got some genuine Helican spruce somewhere.”
Wyze walked down the nearest aisle and bent down to a low shelf. He tore some pulp-paper freight wrapping away from a small consignment of dark wood. It was dusty. It hadn’t been touched in a while.
“Here you go. Thought I had some left. Only use it for special jobs.”
Corbec bent down beside him and knew immediately what he was looking at. He swallowed hard.
“Nalwood.”
“That’s right. Beautiful stuff. Costs too.”
“I know it,” Corbec said. Quality timber had been Tanith’s one major export. He’d worked the mills himself, years back, rough cutting wood for off-world shipment.
“Can’t remember what I paid. Must be a while back now, but when I saw what the merchant had, I didn’t argue about the price. This stuff is worth the outlay.”
Corbec reached down. The shipment’s paper wrapper had the vestiges of a merchant’s excise ticket pasted to it. He read off the fading shipping date. It was fifteen years old.
“I’ve been thinking about ordering some more,” Wyze said.
Corbec sighed. “You can’t get it anymore,” he said. “The supply’s run out.”
“Well, that’s a shame,” said the old man.
“Indeed it is.” Corbec could scarcely credit what he was seeing. He — and every other man of Tanith — had assumed that every last part of their world was dead, except for them and the stuff they’d taken off world with them. But here was a piece of Tanith that had survived, spared from the fires. How many other small relics remained, in woodshops and carpenter’s stores across the sector?
And how fething right it seemed for it to have found its way here with them. Gaunt believed that fate had bound them to Herodor, that some great invisible process of coincidence and cosmic synchronicity had tied them to this place and time. And here was the proof of it.
“I was wondering…” Corbec began.
“What?”
“I was wondering what you were doing here. I mean, with the invasion going on. The streets are cleaned out and everyone’s pulled back to the hives. Why are you still at work?”
“Reserved occupation,” said Wyze. “All part of the war effort.”
“Reserved? What’s the work, then?”
“Making coffins,” said Wyze. “We’re going to need a lot of them.”
Night was falling. The fierce fighting in the northern sectors of the Civitas did not abate. It lit the darkness with its flashes and beams. Deeper into the city heart, thousands of yellow fires flickered and glowed, the legacy of the shelling and the constant airstrikes. Every few minutes, Locusts loomed out of the closing darkness and streaked over the Civitas at low level, dropping payloads or firing cannons.
Beyond, in the obsidaes, the invasion force continued to land. The belly lamps of landers, frost white, burning in the air like flares. Rigs of phospha lamps had been built around makeshift drop points and, under their glare, as the cold night wind rose in the desert, armour columns assembled under marshals, and infantry brigades formed up. The glass fields were bright with circles of brilliance. Locust formations criss-crossed the area at speed. Massive transports came in, raising walls of dust, and shook the soil with their land fall. Iris valve belly hatches yawned open along their fat flanks and they gave birth to litters of stalk-tanks. Others landed, ramp mouths open like basking crocodilians, and lines of tracked armour, APCs, self-propelled guns and gref-carriers spewed from them onto the dusty plain.
Overhead, the low, baleful stars of the watching enemy warships shone.
Saul, the Marksman, entered the city through the Glassworks sector. He spent most of the first day shadowing the frontline forces as they ploughed into the Civitas, street by street. Saul had no aversion to fighting, but assault scrapping was not his business here on Herodor, so he preferred not to get his hands dirty. He left the slog to the death-brigades and the armour. He spoke to no one, for he was preparing his mind for the task the Magister had set him, but he kept his helmet link open and listened throughout the day to the comm-traffic of his own forces.
Occasionally, he retuned to the enemy channel. It was meant to be encrypted, but their tech-mages had broken the Imperial cryptography in the first few hours of the assault. Saul spoke Low Gothic fluently. He found it useful to understand the chatter of the weak souls he preyed on. When, in the middle part of the day, his forces had launched their jamming weapons, he�
�d been frustrated to lose the Imperial signal.
It was back on again now. This pleased him, even though it meant the enemy must have taken out at least a few of the specialist psyker vehicles.
By nightfall, he had reached the junction of Principal VI and Brazen Street. He knew this from his chart-slate. The tech mages in the first wave had almost literally ripped detailed street plans and schematics from the Civitas’ tac logis data banks, which were protected by laughably crude protection programs. The information flowed from the tech-mages on the surface back to the warships, where it was collated and transmitted back down to any one with the appropriate field gear. That meant officers, squad leaders, tank chiefs and Saul. A constantly updating, constantly refining picture of the city was made available to him on his hand-held.
The Imperials had fought well on that first day, to give them their credit. They’d held onto the Masonae and Ironhall districts, though it had cost them. By morning, Saul was certain, it would be a different picture.
In the Glassworks, the Imperials had been broken three times during the course of daylight, falling back on each occasion and redoubling their resistance. Monitoring the comm lines, Saul had learned that the Glassworks was defended in the main by local PDF and Regiment Civitas soldiers. Their area commander was a colonel called Vibreson.
This Vibreson was doing well in a bad situation. Nightfall had his forces stalling the Blood Pact push along Brazen Street and the Glass Road hab estates. The death-brigade units Saul had been shadowing all day were now dug in and stationary.
That didn’t suit Saul at all. He needed to get on, deeper into the city, where his goal awaited him. He realised the time had come to make an opening for himself.
The Marksman sat down on a kerb beside a torched hab, just a few hundred metres from the fierce front of the fight, and took out his chart. He scrolled the specific map reference onto the little screen and studied it as he listened to the enemy’s channel.
Blood Pact units moved up past him, and he ignored them. The night was coming down, and that was his hour, a time to capitalise on shadows and move forward. Night could get him within rifle-range of the target, and then he could simply wait, still and silent like just another corpse, until the moment came.
Saul switched channels and listened for a while to his own side’s chatter. Officers, using the name of the Magister as a threat and a promise, were screaming for more armour to push up into the Brazen Street defences and crack them. Saul smiled. That was no good. The Imperials were too well established. Their line would hold for a good time yet.
It would hold against force, that was. Against physical attack.
But Saul had murderous experience of war. Their line would not hold against fear and confusion. Not for a moment. Fear and confusion would do in a minute what it would take a full motor division a day to accomplish.
He flicked back to the Imperial channel. He listened for the word “Drumroll”. The Imperials — those poor fools — so loved their code names. They thought they were so clever. They never mentioned Vibreson in person, but that was what “Drumroll” meant. Drumroll was needed at Casten Street. Drumroll was moving with twelve platoon up to Ravenor Crossing. Would Drumroll approve the repositioning of PDF eleven to the Sespre Aqueduct?
Idiots. It was like a child’s game, trying to hide the truth from adults. That was always the Imperial failing. They regarded the armies of the warp as scum, so they also assumed they were stupid.
Where was Drumroll now?
“Drumroll, this is Sentry. Respond.”
“Sentry, go. Situation?”
“Taking heavy fire now, major fire. Junction of Brazen and Filipi. Request support.”
“Hang tight, Sentry. Switching rolling one and rolling two to your position in five. Got a shit-storm here on VI. Chapel of Kiodrus under heavy, sustained.”
“Read that Drumroll. Can you deal?”
“Stand by.”
Saul looked at his slate. He took off his right glove and traced the line of Principal VI with a scar-disfigured middle finger. He kept his right index finger curled protectively against his palm. It was the only part of his hands that was not ritual-scarred. It was his trigger finger, after all.
The Chapel of Kiodrus. There it was. A temple raised to the memory of some half-arsed commander who had stood with the Saint in the early times. Apparently, that made him a big deal.
Saul got to his feet and tucked his slate in his thigh pouch. He put his glove back on and picked up his long-las.
It took him twenty minutes to skirt round the back of the habs, avoiding his own forces as much as the enemy, before he came out onto Principal VI.
He could see the chapel, a tall, dignified place raised from ashlar. Its facade was dented with shell holes. Las crossfire whipped across the roadway in front of it. Smoke hazed the early night air.
Saul crossed to a hab on the other side of the wide avenue, keeping low, and knocked the entry door off its hinges with a single kick. The building was dirty and stale. The stench of decomposing food wafted from the shared larders on each block level.
The Marksman went up five flights and broke into a hab apartment. A glance told him the window view wasn’t quite right, so he went back out and up another floor.
Better.
He slid the window up and braced it with a leg he snapped off a chair.
Then he lined up.
Saul fired up his scope. It whirred and blinked, then the image resolved. In green and black, light-boosted, high res. He panned around. The front of the chapel. The side. The alley beside it. The barricades. Now he got winks of brilliant light Las-fire. The muzzle flash of several cannons. He adjusted the scope’s glare setting.
He saw figures. Imperials. Dark blobs. PDF and Regiment Civitas, manning the defences, invisible from the street behind the solid defences, but oh so vulnerable from this lofty viewpoint.
Where are you, Drumroll?
“Drumroll, this is Sentry. Respond, urgent!”
“I hear you. Sentry. Little busy just now.”
“They’re pushing hard, Drumroll.”
“Dammit, I said wait!”
Saul panned around again. Figures. An ammo runner scrambling up to the barricade with pannier boxes. A medic, bent over a sprawled body. Three riflemen in cover, firing. A vox-officer on one knee, offering up a speaker horn.
Offering up a speaker horn to a man whose very body language told of frustrated anger.
“Hello, Drumroll,” Saul said softly in Low Gothic, sniggering to himself at the odd sound of it.
He’d taken off his right glove so his hand was bare, and settled it around the grip. His one perfect finger hooked gently against the trigger.
With his gloved left hand he pulled a kill-dip from his belt pouch and snapped it into the long-las’ belly.
The weapon pinged and a little red light lit up.
Charged to power.
“In the name of the Bead, Drumroll! We’re getting pasted here!”
“Shut up, Sentry! Keep it together. Rolling is inbound to you. Keep it together and no one will get killed.”
Not a promise you’re really in any position to make, Saul thought.
He didn’t slow his breathing for the shot. He didn’t have to. His lungs had been replaced thirty years before by augmetic air-exchangers which did the work with no moving parts and therefore no body motion. He simply shut them off and went rigid, a flesh statue.
The long-las cracked.
Saul pulled the weapon in and sat back against the wall.
“Say again?”
“Down! He’s down!”
“Say again, Drumroll!”
“He’s dead! Vibreson’s dead!”
So much for your silly code names, Saul thought.
Fear and confusion. More devastating than a full motor division. The PDF around the chapel panicked when their beloved leader went down. In under fifteen minutes, that panic turned into a fatal flaw.
Rushed by dea
th-brigades, the line broke. It broke at six other places along the Principal at roughly the same time. Headless, the Imperial defenders went into a mindless spiral and were slaughtered.
By midnight, the invaders had smashed their way into the Civitas as far as Loman Street, just a few blocks short of Astronomer’s Circle, deep in the western sectors of the city. Saul followed the tide, walking in its bloody wake through burning streets piled with PDF dead.
Just after midnight alone and on foot he pushed past the front-line of his own forces and slipped away into the dark streets of the mid-city and the Guild Slope. The rapidly retreating, badly organised Imperial defences were easy to avoid.
The target awaited him.
The war grumbled far above him like someone else’s nightmare. Leg-mounts splashing through warm water, Karess advanced. Where the limestone chambers became too tight and encumbering, he used his cutting beams to burn them smooth and open. The reek of cooked stone and ash filled the air.
Karess couldn’t smell it. He couldn’t feel the heat. He felt nothing but the machine-induced pain of his being. He strode forward, metre by metre, into the belly of the Civitas.
“The west has fallen,” said the life company aide.
Kaldenbach turned to face him, a harrowed look on his face.
“Fallen?”
“Broken, sir. Gone. Vibreson’s dead. They’re pouring in through the Glassworks now.”
The room, a small sub-chamber in the basement of an Ironhall manufactory, fell silent. The phospha lamps flickered. Vox officers looked up from the portable rigs and apparatus they’d set up in the makeshift command space.
Kaldenbach had been holding the Ironhall for nearly eighteen hours, and was excessively proud of that achievement The Guard forces under Gaunt in the east had done well too, but Kaldenbach felt their efforts had been nothing compared to those of himself and his men. Two spearheads of the archenemy had struck at the Ironhall, and he’d fended them off.
If the Glassworks had gone, then his entire left flank was open suddenly.
Kaldenbach waved Captain Lamm over to the hololithic tactical display. “We’re down to the wire here, mister. I need you to mount a counter-guard. Here, here and here. Use Principal II as a line defence.”