by Dan Abnett
Screaming, Ortiz trained his mounted gun on the World Eater and fired. He shot long at first, but corrected before the monster could turn. The creature didn't seem to feel the first hits. Ortiz clenched the trigger and streamed the heavy tracer fire at the red spectre. At last the figure shuddered, convulsed and then blew apart.
Ortiz cursed. The World Eaters soaked up the sort of punishment that would kill a Leman Russ. He realised his ammo drum was almost empty. He was snapping it free and shouting to his bombardier for a fresh one when the shadow fell on him.
Ortiz turned.
Another Chaos Marine stood on the rear of the Basilisk behind him, a giant blocking out the pale sunlight. It stooped, and howled its victory shout into his face, assaulting him with concussive sonic force and wretched odour. Ortiz recoiled as if he had been hit by a macro shell. He could not move. The World Eater chuckled, a macabre, deep growl from behind the visor, a seismic rumble. The chainsword in its fist whined and swung up…
'The blow didn't fall. The monster rocked, two or three times, swayed for a moment. And exploded.
Smeared with grease and ichor, Ortiz scrambled up out of his hatch. He was suddenly aware of a whole new layer of gunfire – sustained lasgun blasts, the chatter of support weapons, the crump of grenades. Another force was moving out of the woods, crushing the Chaos Marine ambush hard against the steel flanks of his artillery machines.
As Ortiz watched, the remaining World Eaters died. One was punctured dozens of times by lasgun fire and fell face down into the mire. Another was flamed repeatedly as he ripped apart the wreck of a Basilisk with his steel hands. The flames touched off the tank's magazine and the marine was incinerated with his victims. His hideous roar lingered long after the white-hot flames had consumed him.
The column's saviours emerged from the forest around them. Imperial Guards: tall, dark-haired, pale-skinned men in black fatigues, a scruffy, straggle-haired mob almost invisible in their patterned camo-cloaks. Ortiz heard strange, disturbing pipe music strike up a banshee wail in the close forest, and a victory yelp erupted from the men. It was met by cheers and whoops from his own crews.
Ortiz leapt down into the mud and approached the Imperial Guardsmen through the drifting smoke.
'I'm Colonel Ortiz. You boys have my earnest thanks,' he said. 'Who are you?'
The nearest man, a giant with unruly black hair, a tangled, braided beard and thick, bare arms decorated with blue spiral tattoos, smiled jauntily and saluted, bringing up his lasgun. 'Colonel Corbec, Tanith First-and-Only. Our pleasure, I'm sure.'
Ortiz nodded back. He found he was still shaking. He could barely bring himself to look down at the dead Chaos Marine, sprawled in the mud nearby. Takes discipline to ambush an ambush. Your men certainly know stealth. Why is—'
He got no further. The bearded giant, Corbec, suddenly froze, a look of dismay on his face. Then he was leaping forward with a cry, tackling Ortiz down into the blue-black mud.
The ''dead'' World Eater lifted his horned skull out of the muck and half-raised his bolter. But that was all. Then a shrieking chainsword decapitated him.
The heavy, dead parts flopped back into the mud. One of them rolled.
Ibram Gaunt brandished with his keening chain sword like a duellist and then thumbed it to ''idle''. He turned to Corbec and Ortiz as they got up, caked in black filth. Ortiz stared at the tall, powerful man in the long dark coat and cap of an Imperial Commissar. His face was blade thin, his eyes as dark as space. He looked like he could rip a world asunder with his hands.
'Meet the boss,' Corbec chuckled at Ortiz's side. 'Colonel-Commissar Gaunt.' Ortiz nodded, wiping his face. 'So, you're Gaunt's Ghosts.'
Major Gilbhar poured himself a brandy from the decanter on the teak stand. 'Just who the hell are these awful barbarian scum?' he asked, sipping from the huge crystal balloon.
At his desk, General Noches Sturm put down his pen and sat back. 'Oh, please, help yourself to my brandy, Gilbear,' he muttered, though the sarcasm was lost on his massive aide.
Gilbear reclined on a chaise beside the flickering amber displays of the message-caster, and gazed at his commander. 'Ghosts? That's what they call them, isn't it?'
Sturm nodded, observing his senior adjutant. Gilbear – Gizhaum Danver De Banzi Haight Gilbear, to give him his full name – was the second son of the Haight Gilbears of Solenhofen, the royal house of Volpone. He was nearly two and half metres tall and arrogantly powerful, with the big, blunt, bland features and languid, hooded eyes of the aristocracy. Gilbear wore the grey and gold uniform of the Royal Volpone 50th, the so-called Bluebloods, who believed they were the noblest regiment in the Imperial Guard.
Sturm sat back in his chair. They are indeed called Ghosts. Gaunt's Ghosts. And they're here because I requested them.'
Gilbear cocked a disdainful eyebrow. 'You requested them?'
'We've had nigh on six weeks, and we can't shake the enemy from Voltis City. They command everything west of the Bokore Valley. Warmaster Macaroth is not pleased. All the while they hold Voltemand, they have a road into the heart of the Sabbat Worlds. So you see I need a lever. I need to introduce a new element to break our deadlock.'
'That rabble?' Gilbear sneered. 'I watched them as they mustered after the drop-ships landed them. Hairy, illiterate primitives, with tattoos and nose rings.'
Sturm lifted a data-slate from his desktop and shook it at Gilbear. 'Have you read the reports General Hadrak filed after the Sloka took Blackshard? He credits Gaunt's mob with the decisive incursion. It seems they excel at stealth raids.'
Sturm got to his feet and adjusted the sit of his resplendent Blueblood staff uniform. The study was bathed in yellow sunlight that streamed in through the conservatory doors at the end, softened by net drapes. He rested his hand on the antique globe of Voltemand in its mahogany stand by the desk and span it idly, gazing out across the grounds of Vortimor House. This place had been the country seat of one of Voltemand's most honoured noble families, a vast, grey manse, fringed with mauve climbing plants, situated in ornamental parkland thirty kilometres south of Voltis City. It had been an ideal location to establish his Supreme Headquarters.
Outside, on the lawn, a squad of Blueblood elite in full battle dress were executing a precision synchronised drill with chainswords. Metal flashed and whirled, perfect and poised. Beyond them, a garden of trellises and arbours led down to a boating lake, calm and smoky in the afternoon light. Navigation lights flashed slowly on the barbed masts of the communications array in the herbarium. Somewhere in the stable block, strutting gaudcocks whooped and called.
You wouldn't think there was a war on, mused Sturm. He wondered where the previous owners of the manse were now. Did they make it off world before the first assault? Are they huddled and starving in the belly hold of a refugee ship, reduced overnight to a level with their former vassals? Or are they bone-ash in the ruins of Kosdorf, or on the burning Metis Road? Or did they die screaming and melting at the orbital port when the legions of Chaos first fell on their world, vaporised with the very ships they struggled to escape in?
Who cares? thought Sturm. The war is all that matters. The glory, the crusade, the Emperor. He would only care for the fallen when the bloody head of Chanthar, demagogue of the Chaos army that held Voltis Citadel, was served up to him on a carving dish. And even then, he wouldn't care much.
Gilbear was on his feet, refilling his glass. 'This Gaunt, he's quite a fellow, isn't he? Wasn't he with the Hyrkan 8th?'
Sturm cleared his throat, 'Led them to victory at Balhaut. One of old Slaydo's chosen favourites. Made him a colonel – commissar, no less. It was decided he had the prestige to hammer a new regiment or two into shape, so they sent him to the planet Tanith to supervise the rounding there. A Chaos space fleet hit the world that very night, and he got out with just a few thousand men.'
Gilbear nodded. That's what I heard. Skin of his teeth. But that's his career in ta
tters, stuck with an under-strength rabbit-like that. Macaroth won't transfer him, will he?'
Sturm managed a small smile. 'Our beloved overlord does not look kindly on the favourites of his predecessor. Especially as Slaydo granted Gaunt and a handful of others the settlement rights of the first world they conquered. He and his Tanith rabble are an embarrassment to the new regime. But that serves us well. They will fight hard because they have everything to prove, and everything to win.'
'I say,' said Gilbear suddenly, lowering his glass. 'What if they do win? I mean, if they're as useful as you say?'
'They will facilitate our victory,' Sturm said, pouring himself a drink. 'They will not achieve anything else. We will serve Lord Macaroth twofold, by taking this world for him, and ridding him of Gaunt and his damn Ghosts.'
'You were expecting us?' Gaunt asked, riding on the top of Ortiz's Basilisk as the convoy moved on.
Colonel Ortiz nodded, leaning back against the raised top-hatch cover. 'We were ordered up the line last night to dig in at the north end of the Bokore Valley and pound the enemy fortifications on the western side. Soften them up, I suppose. En route, I got coded orders sent, telling us to meet your regiment at Pavis Crossroads and transport you as we advanced.'
Gaunt removed his cap and ran a hand through his short fair hair. 'We were ordered across country to the crossroads, all right,' he responded. 'Told to meet transport there for the next leg. But my scouts picked up the World Eaters' stench, so we doubled back and met you early.'
Ortiz shuddered. 'Good thing for us.'
Gaunt gazed along the line of the convoy as they moved on, taking in the massive bulk of the Basilisks as they ground up the snaking mud-track through the sickly, dim forest. His men were riding on the flanks of the great war machines, a dozen or more per vehicle, joking with the Serpent crews, exchanging drinks and smokes, some cleaning weapons or even snoozing as the lurch of the metal beasts allowed.
'So Sturm's sending you in?' Ortiz asked presently.
'Right down the river's floodplain to the gates of Voltis. He thinks we can take the city where fifty thousand of his Bluebloods have failed.'
'Can you?'
'We'll see,' Gaunt said, without the flicker of a smile. 'The Ghosts are new, unproven but for a skirmish on Blackshard. But they have certain… strengths.' He fell silent, and seemed to be admiring the gold and turquoise lines of the feather serpent design painted on the barrel of the Basilisk's main weapon. Its open beak was the muzzle. All the Ketzok machines were rich with similar decorations.
Ortiz whistled low to himself. 'Down the Bokore Valley into the mouth of hell. I don't envy you.'
Now Gaunt smiled. 'Just you keep pounding the western hills and keep them busy. In fact, blow them all away to kingdom come before we get there.'
'Deal,' laughed Ortiz.
'And don't drop your damn aim!' Gaunt added with a threatening chuckle. 'Remember you have friends in the valley!'
Two vehicles back, Corbec nodded his thanks as he took the dark thin cigar his Basilisk commander offered.
'Doranz,' the Serpent said, introducing himself.
'Charmed,' Corbec said. The cigar tasted of licorice, but he smoked it anyway.
Lower down the hull of the tank, by Corbec's sprawled feet, the boy Milo was cleaning out the chanters of his Tanith pipe. It wheezed and squealed hoarsely. Doranz blanched. 'I'll tell you this: when I heard that boy's piping today, that hell-note, it almost scared me more than the damn blood cries of the enemy.'
Corbec chuckled. The pipe has its uses. It rallies us, it spooks the foe. Back home, the forests move and change. The pipes were a way to follow and not get lost.'
'Where is home?' Doranz asked.
'Nowhere now,' Corbec said and returned to his smoke.
On the back armour of another Basilisk, hulking Bragg, the biggest of the Ghosts, and small, wiry Larkin, were dicing with two of the tank's gun crew. Larkin had already won a gold signet ring set with a turquoise skull. Bragg had lost all his smokes, and two bottles of sacra. Every now and then, the lurch of the tank beneath them would flip the dice, or slide them under an exhaust baffle, prompting groans and accusations of fixing and cheating.
Up by the top hatch with the vehicle's commander, Major Rawne watched the game without amusement. The Basilisk commander felt uneasy about his passenger. Rawne was slender, dark and somehow dangerous. A starburst tattoo covered one eye. He was not… likeable or open like the other Ghosts seemed to be.
'So, major… what's your commissar like?' the commander began, by way of easing the silence.
'Gaunt?' Rawne asked, turning slowly to face the Serpent. 'He's a despicable bastard who left my world to die and one day I will slay him with my own hands.'
'Oh,' said the commander and found something rather more important to do down below.
Ortiz passed Gaunt his flask. The afternoon was going and they were losing the light. Ortiz consulted a map-slate, angling it to show Gaunt. 'Navigation puts us about two kilometres or so short of Pavis Crossroads. We've made good time. We'll be on it before dark. I'm glad, I didn't want to have to turn on the floods and running lights to continue.'
'What do we know about Pavis?' Gaunt asked.
'Last reports were it was held by a battalion of Bluebloods. That was at oh-five-hundred this morning.'
'Wouldn't hurt to check,' Gaunt mused. 'There are worse things than rolling into an ambush position at twilight, but not many. Cluggan!'
He called down the hull to a big, grey-haired Ghost sat with others playing cards.
'Sir!' Cluggan said, scrambling back up the rocking Basilisk.
'Sergeant, take six men, jump down and scout ahead of the column. We're two kilometres short of this crossroads,' Gaunt showed Cluggan the map. 'Should be clear, but after our tangle with the damn World Eaters we'd best be sure.'
Cluggan saluted and slid back to his men. In a few moments they had gathered up their kits and weapons and swung down off the skirt armour onto the track. A moment more and they had vanished like smoke into the woods.
'That is impressive,' Ortiz said.
At Pavis Crossroads, the serpents spoke. Stretching their great painted beaks towards the night sky, they began their vast barrage.
Brin Milo cowered in the shadow of a medical Chimera, pressing his hands to his ears. He'd seen two battles up close: the fall of Tanith Magna and the storming of the citadel on Blackshard, but this was the first time he had ever encountered the sheer numbing wrath of armoured artillery.
The Ketzok Basilisks were dug in along the ridge in a straggled line about a mile long. They were hull-down into the grey earth, main weapons swung high, hurling death at the western hills across the valley nine kilometres away. They were firing at will, a sustained barrage that could, Corbec had assured him, go on all night. Every second at least one gun was sounding, lighting the darkness with its fierce muzzle flash, shaking the ground with its firing and recoil.
Pavis Crossroads was a stone obelisk marking the junction of the Metis Road that ran up the valley from Voltis City, and the Mirewood track that carried on towards the east. The Serpents' armour had rolled in at nightfall, ousting the encamped Bluebloods who held the junction, and deploying around the ridge-line, looking west. As the first stars began to shine, Ortiz's men began their onslaught.
Milo kept his eyes sharp for the commissar, and when he saw Gaunt striding towards a tented dugout beside the orbital communication stack, accompanied by his senior officers, Milo ran to join them.
'My scope!' requested Gaunt over the barrage. Milo pulled the commissar's brass-capped nightscope from his pack and Gaunt stepped up onto the parapet, scanning out of the dugout.
Corbec leaned up close by him, a thin black tube protruding from his beard.
Gaunt glanced round. 'What is that thing?' he asked.
Corbec took it out and displayed it proudly. 'Cigar. Liquorice, no less. Won a box off my gun-crate's CO. and I think I'm getting a
taste for them.
'See much?' he added.
'I can see the lights of Voltis. Watch fires and shrine-lights mostly. Not so inviting.'
Gaunt flipped his scope shut and jumped down from the parapet, handing the device back to Milo. The boy had already set up the field-map, a glass plate in a metal frame mounted like an easel on a brass tripod. Gaunt cranked the knurled lever on the side and the glass slowly lit with bluish light. He dropped in a ceramic slide engraved with the local geography and then angled the screen to show the assembled men: Corbec, Rawne, Cluggan, Orcha and the other officers.
'Bokore Valley,' Gaunt said, tapping the glass viewer with the tip of his long, silver Tanith war-knife. As if for emphasis, the nearest Basilisk outside fired and the dugout shook. The field map wobbled and soil trickled in from the roof.
'Four kilometres wide, twelve long, flanked to the west by steep hills where the enemy is well established. At the far end, Voltis City, the old Capital of Voltemand. Thirty metre curtain walls of basalt. Built as a fortress three hundred years ago, when they knew the art. The invading Chaos Host from off-planet seized it at day one as their main stronghold. The Volpone 50th have spent six weeks trying to crack it, but the bastards we met today show the kind of force they've been up against. We'll have a go tonight.'
He looked up, oblivious to the constant thunder outside. 'Major Rawne?'
Rawne stepped forward, almost reluctant to be anywhere near Gaunt. No one knew what had passed between them when they had been alone together on Blackshard, but everyone had seen Gaunt carry Rawne to safety on his shoulder, despite his own injuries. Surely that sort of action bonded men, not deepened their enmity?
Rawne adjusted a dial on the field-map's edge so that the plate displayed a different section of the chart-slide. The approach is straightforward. The Bokore River runs along the wide valley floor. It is broad and slow-moving, especially at this time of year. Most of the way is choked with bulrushes and waterweed. We can move down the river channel undetected.'