by Dan Abnett
“Nothing.”
“What have you got in your pocket? There, in your apron pocket. You’re holding something.”
Doctor Kolding pulled the pistol out. His visitor blinked and said something like, “Oh, you’ve got to be kidding me.” Doctor Kolding wasn’t precisely sure what his visitor said because he was too busy falling over to listen. His visitor had somehow bumped into him and the impact, though gentle, had deposited Doctor Kolding on his back in the open doorway. He no longer held the pistol. This was a strange turn of events, and it disturbed him.
Doctor Kolding lay on his back and looked up. Two more men were standing on the doorstep above him, framed in the porch light and the falling snow. They were upside down to Doctor Kolding. One of them seemed to be holding the other one up.
“Is this the doctor?” asked the man doing the supporting. He was tall, with a slender face and disturbing eyes. Doctor Kolding couldn’t tell much about the man he was holding up.
“I think it’s the doctor, sir,” the original visitor replied. “He’s not being very cooperative.”
“Is that why he’s lying on his back?” asked the man with the slender face.
“He had this pistol, sir—” said the original visitor.
“Help him to his feet, please,” said the man with the slender face.
“I’ll cooperate!” exclaimed Doctor Kolding as he was helped up. He was feeling trapped. He wanted to scream. “I’ll cooperate, but I don’t understand what’s going on. The men usually only come in the mornings. The mornings, you see? Not at this time of night. Never at this time.”
“Calm yourself,” said the man with the slender face and the disturbing eyes. The other man had called him “sir”. He certainly exuded a sort of authority. “Please, calm yourself. We’re very sorry to have disturbed you, and we don’t mean to put you to any trouble, but this is a rather critical situation. What’s your name?”
“Auden Kolding.”
“Are you a doctor, sir?”
“Yes.”
“Then I need your help urgently,” said the man with the slender face. “This man’s been shot and he’s dying.”
He led them downstairs to the theatre, once he’d made sure the street door was closed. They left snow-melt footprints on the hall floor and the steps, and that bothered him immensely, of course, but he reassured himself that he could take the mop to it just as soon as the wounded man was comfortable. A man’s life took precedence, of course it did. A man’s life was more important than dirty wet marks on a dark hardwood floor.
They got the man into the theatre. He wasn’t really conscious, and Doctor Kolding could smell blood. Doctor Kolding told them to get the man onto the examination table, to lay him back on the clean, red sheet he’d hung across the table at the end of his day’s work. The blood would stain, of course, despite the colour of the sheet. He would have to boil it later. He washed his hands in the counterseptic bath, and dried them diligently before pulling on a pair of surgical gloves. His hands were shaking.
When Doctor Kolding came over to the table, they had laid the patient back, and Doctor Kolding saw his face for the first time, starkly illuminated by the exam lamp.
“What is the meaning of this?” Doctor Kolding asked in a small voice.
The man with the slender face looked at him. “What do you mean, doctor?” he asked.
Doctor Kolding indicated the knotted scar-tissue that covered the patient’s head.
“You come in here,” he said, “you come in here and ask my help, and you’re bringing me some kind of animal. This isn’t a man, it’s an animal.”
“I don’t have a whole lot of time to debate this with you, doctor,” the man with the slender face said. “I need you to get to work on him. I need you to do everything in your power to save his life.”
“He’s an animal! An inhuman thing!”
The man with the slender face leaned close to Doctor Kolding, and he shrank back because he didn’t like to smell another person’s breath, or feel it on his face.
“We don’t have time to debate this,” said the man with the slender face, “but if we did, it would run like this. I would tell you that I was an officer of the Commissariat, and that I had the authority, on pain of death, to compel you to carry out my wishes. I would tell you that it was vital to Imperial security that this man remained alive, and would instruct you to carry out your function without further issue or demurral. I might even produce a weapon, just for show, to emphasise my seriousness.”
Doctor Kolding stared back at him.
“But I’m not going to do any of that,” said the man with the slender face, “because we really don’t have the time.”
“I see,” said Doctor Kolding.
“Do you?”
“Yes,” said Doctor Kolding, and reached for his tray of instruments.
Something was going on, and Tona Criid didn’t need to be told that it was bad. Capital BAD.
She’d looped around to take a look at Section, but there had been nothing to see, so she’d gone to find the slice of lime soforso she’d promised herself. Then she’d wasted an hour or more sitting in the comforting silence of Saint Theodor’s sacristy, until her legs got jittery and told her it was time to run again.
She’d had a simple circuit of Engineer’s Mall in mind, just up as far as the memorial, and then the long, steady run home to Aarlem, but some force, like a magnetic impule, had pulled her back towards Section. This time, she thought, she might ask at the guardhouse, and see if there was a procedure that would allow her to visit a prisoner. Whatever this feth-storm was all about, if she could get Rawne’s side of things, or Varl’s, maybe, she could put in a good word and ease things along. Left to itself, the system would most likely chew them up. She’d seen that happen. She didn’t care who shouted her down, the First could not go around losing officers like Rawne, Daur or Varl. Meryn, obviously. No one cared about that rat-stool.
So, she’d let the impulse bring her back towards Section. It had begun to snow by then. The snow was heavy, the sky was a sick colour, and there was a funny feeling to the afternoon. It wasn’t even that cold. Snow was settling in her hair and on her nose, but she was sweating like a grox in her exercise kit.
She was coming up Viceroy Square when she first realised that things weren’t right. What she’d taken to be heavy snow clouds turned out to be smoke. She could smell it. The building was on fire. There were sirens.
There was gunfire, full-on gunfire from inside the walls. She came up into the tree-line of the gardens in the square, and saw bodies in the road beside the gatehouse.
She got down into the cover of the trees, her eyes wide in disbelief, her pulse banging in her ear for the first time in months. It was the old adrenaline high, the combat rush, conquering her with such fury that she couldn’t resist it. Every bit of conditioning she’d kept suppressed or contained since the Tanith had retired sprang back into place. She red-lined. All the old habits, all the old crazy tics, reasserted themselves, larger than life, as if they’d never gone. She could taste the sour saliva in her mouth. The lime tang of the soforso was long gone. She could smell the smoke, and it smelled like Hinzerhaus. She wanted, more than anything else, for there to be a weapon to hand, a rifle that she could arm and sight. Her hands felt ridiculously useless and empty, like numb paddles, miming the act of holding a rifle.
She tried to control her breathing. She tried to back away a little, without disturbing the snow on the bushes and shrubs around her. She tried to decide on the best course of action.
Raise the alarm: that was all she could think. Something this big, the whole city had to be aware of it, but there was no sign of people rushing in, of reinforcements, of support or relief.
It was as if the whole city had become snow-blind and was ignoring the drama unfolding at Section.
Criid began to crawl her way back through the gardens. The far side of the square would put her back on a main thoroughfare. She could run then. At fu
ll stretch, it was about ten minutes to the guardhouse at Zannen Street, and she was sure there was a PDF defence shelter closer than that. Failing either of those things, she’d find a Magistratum station or somewhere with a working vox.
She’d just risen in a crouch, about to risk a run across the snow-covered lawns to the gate of the gardens, when she realised there was someone under the trees nearby.
She turned to look. It was another bystander, she thought, someone who, like her, had come upon this scene of bloodshed by accident.
It was a woman. She was wearing a long mourning dress of black silk and crepe. Her face was covered by a veil of black gauze. She was standing under the trees, the boughs above her head weighed down by the increasing freight of snow upon them. She seemed to be staring at the main building of Section. Criid wondered if she ought to go to her, and offer to escort her to a safe distance away from the gunfire.
Something made her hesitate. It might have been her increasing awareness of a soft, high-pitched sound, like a drawn-out wail, that seemed to be emanating from the woman. It may have been a preternatural sense of self-preservation triggered by the abrupt return of her old adrenaline high.
Something simply made her hesitate. Something told her that taking another step towards the woman in the black silk dress was a Very Bad Idea.
The woman turned to look at Tona Criid. Her veil obscured her face, and Tona was instantly glad of that, because she instinctively knew that she didn’t want to see the woman’s face, ever.
The shrill sound was coming from the woman. It was just rushing out of her with no allowance for breath.
The snow had stopped falling. Tona realised it had stopped falling in mid-air. Snowflakes hung around her in a constellation, suspended in the act of descent.
She began to back away. The woman in the black dress stared at her. Tona took a step forwards.
The shrill sound continued to come out of the woman. She raised her right hand to lift the corner of the veil.
Criid let out an anguished cry, and turned. She started to run. The world was slow, like glue, like treacle. The shrill sound was in her ears. Suspended snowflakes puffed into powder as her flailing arms collided with them. Her feet churned the snowy grass underfoot, and she went down, falling hard.
The shrill sound was in her ears. It was louder. Criid knew it was louder because the woman was getting closer. She also knew it was louder because the woman had lifted the veil. She thrashed, trying to rise. Her legs kicked at the snow. She felt something close around her pumping frantic heart, and grip it, like a ghostly fist. It began to squeeze, constricting the muscles. She knew that unless she got up and started running, that unless she ran and ran until she was out of its reach, it would keep squeezing until her heart burst like a blister.
Her limbs thrashed, sending snow flying. She got up. Her chest was so tight, and the shrill sound in her ears was so loud. She didn’t look back. She didn’t want to look back.
She didn’t dare look back.
She started to run. She started to run more seriously than she had ever run in her life.
Maggs took a battered old tin out of one of the cupboards, took off the lid, sniffed inside, and then tilted the tin towards Gaunt.
“Caffeine,” he said.
“Make some,” said Gaunt. “Enough for three cups.”
Maggs nodded, and began to look around the small kitchen for a suitable pan. Gaunt sat down at the kitchen table. The table top was lined and worn. It had been, Gaunt felt, the location of many solitary suppers.
The kitchen stood off the landing over the steps down to the theatre. There had been no sound from below for a long time.
“So, this is pretty fething insane, then, isn’t it?” said Maggs, by way of striking up a conversation. They hadn’t said much to one another since their panicked flight from Section.
Gaunt nodded.
“That was Blood Pact?”
“Yes.”
“Really? Here?”
“Yes, Maggs.”
Maggs whistled. He ignited one of the sooty old stove’s burners and set a pan of water on it.
“Pardon me for asking, sir,” he said, in a tone that suggested he was delicately skirting a thorny issue, “shouldn’t we contact someone? I mean, summon help, alert the authorities?”
Gaunt looked at him.
“Who do we contact, Maggs? Who should we trust, do you suppose?” he asked.
Maggs opened his mouth to answer, and then closed it again.
“The Blood Pact have infiltrated an ostensibly secure crown world,” said Gaunt. “They’ve done so with enough confidence and ability to stage a frontal assault on the Commissariat’s headquarters. They’ve got warpcraft on their side. We have absolutely no idea how far their reach and influence extends. Let’s say we were to head back to Aarlem, or to company command, or say we take him to the Imperial hospital for treatment. We could be walking into a trap. Until I know what’s going on, I’m not going to trust anyone.”
Maggs shrugged. He was spooning out the ground caffeine powder into a cup.
“You’re trusting this doctor chap.”
“Necessity. That’s all. We had no choice. Better a backstreet clinic like this than a big, central facility.”
“He’s a freak.”
“He’s got eccentric qualities, certainly,” Gaunt agreed.
Maggs snorted.
“He’s obsessive compulsive,” he said, “and what’s with the shades?”
“The doctor is an albino, Maggs,” said Gaunt. “Didn’t you see? The dark glasses are to protect his eyes.”
“He’s still a freak.”
The caffeine was brewing. Maggs took out the gun he’d taken from the doctor and examined it.
“I wonder where he got this? It’s ex-Guard issue.”
“Is it loaded?” Gaunt asked.
“Yeah. Ten rounds.”
“So we’ve got that, your laspistol, and my bolt pistol with one clip left.”
It didn’t seem to be much to work with. Both of them had put on a sidearm that morning, Gaunt because it was a uniform requirement, and Maggs because service regulations stated that an appointed driver should bear a pistol, or similar, fit for defensive purposes. Neither of them had even buckled on their Tanith warknives.
“We’re deep in the stinky, aren’t we, sir?” asked Maggs.
Gaunt nodded.
“I’m afraid so, Maggs.”
“The Blood Pact,” said Maggs, searching the kitchen cupboards in the vain hope of locating some sugar, “they’re after this man? The one with the fethed-up face.”
“Yes.”
“He’s key to this whole thing, then?”
“Yes.”
“Can I ask who he is?” Maggs said, looking sidelong at Gaunt from the open cupboards.
“It’s probably better if you don’t know,” Gaunt replied.
Maggs shrugged.
“Well, you know,” he said, “I don’t see it like that. Right now — and I say this with the enormous deference that a specialist like me owes to his commanding officer — right now it seems to me that I’m the only person you can count on, and vice versa, may the Emperor help us both. So, I think maybe you need to tell me more than you’d usually tell me.”
Gaunt thought about it.
“You’re probably right,” he said.
“Don’t worry,” said Maggs with a laugh, “we’re not going to become friends or anything.”
That’s a relief.
Gaunt rubbed the bridge of his nose with his fingers. Then he said, “His name is Mabbon. He holds the rank of etogaur, and he was an officer in the Blood Pact before switching allegiance to the Sons of Sek. He was on Gereon when I was on Gereon.”
“Old scores?”
“I never met him. The thing is, he’s carrying vital intelligence. Serious high-grade stuff. That’s why the Blood Pact wants him dead. That’s why we’ve got to keep him alive.”
“Shit,” said Maggs.
“Exactly.”
Maggs wiped three chipped enamel cups with a damp cloth from the sink, and set them in a row to receive the caffeine. They heard footsteps on the stairs. Maggs looked at Gaunt.
Doctor Kolding appeared in the kitchen doorway. His scrubs were badged with blood. He was still wearing his blue-tinted glasses.
“I’ve done all I can,” he said.
“Will he survive, doctor?” Gaunt asked.
“I don’t know,” Kolding replied.
“Well, feth load of good you are!” Maggs exploded. “What kind of fething doctor are you, anyway?”
“I only work on the dead,” said Kolding softly.
“What?” Maggs exploded.
“I perform autopsies for the Health Department. I don’t usually work on the living.”
“Now you tell us! You’ve got the fething sign outside!” Maggs yelled.
“Maggs,” Gaunt said sharply.
“The sign’s always been there,” Kolding said, “for generations. This was my father’s practice. Right up to the war.”
“And now you’re a meat carver? A corpse butcher? Feth!”
“That’s enough, Maggs,” said Gaunt, scraping back his chair and rising to his feet.
“Oh, tell that to Doctor Death here!”
“Maggs!”
“Have you any idea how fething important that patient is?” Maggs shouted into Kolding’s face.
Kolding flinched.
“That’s really enough, Maggs,” said Gaunt in a voice that had a rod of steel running through it. “Why don’t you go out and check on the car?”
“The car’s fine,” said Maggs.
“The car’s shot to pieces and they’ll be looking for it,” Gaunt corrected. “Go and check it. Make sure it’s secure. Make sure we’re secure. All right?”
Maggs, simmering, sighed and nodded. He handed the doctor’s old pistol to Gaunt, took a swig of caffeine from one of the enamel cups and left without another word.
“I apologise,” said Gaunt. He gestured for Kolding to sit at the table, and set a cup of caffeine in front of him.
“There’s no need.”
“Will the patient survive?”