Fire and Thunder

by Rachel Harrison

  Nine. Nine. Nine. Nine. Nine. Nine. Nine. Nine. Nine.

  ‘It’s not just him,’ Wyck says. ‘It’s all of them. Even their own.’

  Raine casts her stablight around and sees that he is right. Every one of the bodies has been blinded and opened at the throat. The Sighted have used the blood to paint deliberate, careful shapes on the stone.

  ‘Every death is a gift,’ Wyck says, with dread in his voice.

  ‘It was not enough,’ Zane murmurs.

  The psyker’s words startle Crys so badly that she curses and lets go of Zane. The psyker falls to her hands and knees amongst the dead. Her staff hits the roadway with a clatter. Raine moves straight over to where the psyker is kneeling and crouches down beside her.

  ‘What are you talking about?’ she asks. ‘What was not enough?’

  Zane drools thickly onto her robes.

  ‘They tried to run,’ she says, ‘but they were not quick enough. There is no escape from death.’

  It is Wyck who curses this time.

  ‘Shut up,’ he hisses at Zane. ‘Shut your damned mouth.’

  Zane does not listen. She just keeps murmuring with lightning crackling across her scalp.

  ‘There is no escape,’ she says, her voice growing louder. ‘No escape.’

  Zane’s words run together into one long, shapeless moan that echoes across the avenue.

  ‘Mists alive,’ Wyck snarls. ‘She’s going to get us killed.’

  Hale orders Lye to quiet the psyker. The medic runs over and draws a needle, but as Lye pushes it under Zane’s skin and depresses the plunger, Zane snaps her head up.

  ‘Death is coming,’ she slurs.

  In that moment, several things seem to happen all at once.

  Gunfire splits the air with a series of loud, flat bangs. Raine ducks reflexively. Zane moans through her teeth. One of Koy’s Mistvypers stumbles forwards, gasping and pawing at the mess that’s left of her throat before falling onto her face.

  ‘Break for the buildings!’ Hale shouts. ‘Move, now!’

  Raine grabs hold of Lydia Zane and drags the half-conscious psyker to her feet, putting her staff back into her hand. ‘Crys,’ she says. ‘Take her and go.’

  The combat engineer doesn’t look happy about it, but Crys is nothing if not obedient. She grabs hold of Zane bodily and runs as a rasping, wicked chorus echoes around the avenue, coming from the flock of Sighted reavers running out of the memorial hall opposite. More than a hunting pack, this time. There are dozens of them.

  Raine raises her pistol and fires at the advancing Sighted. Penance kicks in her hand, and two of the Sighted spill over backwards, but they keep coming. More take their place. Raine knows that she only has six rounds left. Around her, the Antari fall back firing. Yuri Hale is half dragging Makar Kayd. The vox-operator is hit, stumbling and bleeding all over the roadway. Lara Koy gets clipped by a solid round. The Mistvyper cries out as she loses her rifle and most of her right hand in a spray of blood.

  ‘We must slow them!’ Raine shouts.

  Beside her, Wyck’s rifle runs empty. He ejects the cell and replaces it with a hard click.

  ‘Awd!’ he calls out. ‘Burn them!’

  ‘Aye, sergeant,’ Awd says.

  Awd slows pace to let everyone pass him before triggering his flamer and sending a gout of promethium into the avenue. He moves backwards, sweeping the flamer back and forth to keep the Sighted at bay. Raine keeps firing at them through the wall of promethium.

  Five rounds left.

  Four.

  Three.

  The fire clings hungrily to the stone and the dead. To the Sighted, too, as they try to run through it.

  Two rounds left.

  Wyck and Awd follow up the fire with smoke grenades. They burst and hiss, throwing thick plumes of grey, choking smoke into the air. Raine can no longer see the Sighted, but as she runs for the buildings alongside the Antari she can hear them laughing and chanting.

  Every death is a gift.

  Wyck can still hear the Sighted laughing.

  The sound carries weirdly in the ossuary halls, wending around the tunnels and corridors and up into the rafters, sounding close and far away all at once. Sometimes he can hear them ring their blades against the stone, too.

  Clatter, clatter, clatter.

  Wyck pans his rifle back and forth as he leads his squad up the hallway. The way ahead is dark save for the stablight mounted on Wyck’s rifle. It paints a circle of white light everywhere he looks, illuminating the grinning, gilded skulls mounted on the walls and making everything else dark as a night without stars. Just like before, his mind keeps making shapes of that darkness. Inventing threats where there are none. Wyck takes a breath and resettles his clammy hands on the stock of his rifle. This isn’t his sort of fight. He likes to be able to see what he’s facing. Cut it and kill it and keep running. With every archway they pass, and every half-closed set of doors, Wyck waits for the Sighted to descend on them like hunting birds. A part of him wants for it, too. The part that finds quiet in killing. The Sighted don’t descend, though. They just keep their distance, laughing and rattling their blades.

  Clatter, clatter, clatter.

  ‘What are they hiding for?’

  Crys’ voice is a low snarl. She is still keeping the witch upright. Zane is in even worse shape than before. Drooling all over herself and bleeding again where Lye sewed her up earlier. Crys isn’t faring too well either. She is limping badly, her breathing ragged and uneven. Hale’s lot are just as bad. They are following a little further back with the commissar, slowed down by Lye as she tries to fix up the wounded on the move.

  ‘They want to make it last, that’s why,’ Ona says, with dread in his voice.

  He is the youngest of Wyck’s Wyldfolk, one of the newblood called up after their losses on Gholl. Ona’s eyes are wide under the brim of his helmet. The chinstrap hangs loose on him, because there’s nothing to him but cords and bones, no matter how much food he puts away.

  Crys glances at Ona and clucks her tongue.

  ‘Those are dark thoughts, little one,’ she says. ‘Best not to think them.’

  Ona would usually give her hell over that nickname, but he doesn’t now. He’s worn too thin from the day. Wyck can see it in the newblood’s face. He remembers then that it’s only Ona’s second major engagement, and it makes Wyck think of Cawter, because that was his. Because that was where everything changed.

  Where death started chasing him, looking for what is owed.

  Wyck shakes his head. ‘If they come for us, we’ll kill them. That’s all there is to it.’ He glances at Ona. ‘Stay sharp. I’ve already got too many fires to light.’

  Ona’s face is still bloodless and pinched, but he nods. ‘Aye, sergeant,’ he says.

  They keep moving along the hallways in silence, save for the dull scraping of boots and the sounds of breathing. After almost an hour, the Sighted’s laughter fades away altogether, leaving nothing but the sound of the wind singing through the twisting hallways. That should be a relief, but it isn’t, because it doesn’t feel like the Sighted are gone.

  It just feels like they are waiting.

  Eventually, the hallway that they are following opens up into another vast, vaulted space. The ceiling is glassaic, so everything is painted in greys by the moonlight. Wyck sees more skulls. More bones. More dead bodies, all turned to face the skylight ceiling. All blinded, just like the ones in the avenue.

  ‘Hag’s teeth,’ Awd murmurs, in a low voice.

  Wyck looks to see words painted on the wall to their left in dribbling, angry strokes.

  The Emperor cannot see you here.

  Anger twists up inside him. He scowls, and spits on the ground.

  ‘Spread out,’ Wyck says, in a low voice. ‘Check for threats.’

  A handful of murmu
red Aye, sirs answer him as the Wyldfolk start to pick their way through the chamber, moving in a ragged spread. The smell of the dead makes Wyck’s eyes water. Insects burr their wings in the darkness around him. He sees more Balfarans amongst the dead. More Kavrone, too. He stops beside one of them. The Kavrone’s uniform is gilded and strung with gold braiding, her lapels set with stones. Wyck knows enough about the Kavrone Dragoons and their finery to know that makes her a captain. Or made her a captain. Now she’s just as much a mess as all the others.

  Save for her rifle.

  Wyck lets his own lasgun hang by the strap and crouches down beside the dead Kavrone captain. Her weapon is a sniper rifle. Solid shot. Bolt-action. It is made from matt-black metals and wood with inlays that are as gilded as she is. Wyck unhooks the strap from the dead Kavrone captain’s shoulder and picks up the rifle. He hasn’t held a sharpshooter’s weapon for years. Not since Keller tried to make a longshot of him, all that time ago. The weight of the rifle puts Wyck all the way back before Cawter, when he was just about eighteen, and doing firing drills in the driving rain. He’d hated every second of it. Not because he was a poor shot, but because using a rifle like that felt distant. One step removed.

  Crys does a low, quiet whistle from beside him.

  ‘Now that is a lovely thing,’ she says, in a low voice. ‘I have to say, though, sarge. I don’t think it’ll be all that much use in a place like this.’

  Crys is right. There’s no use for it in the Deadways. Certainly not inside the buildings. A rifle like this is made for distance, and quiet. But once Wyck’s out of here – once he’s made it through the night, the Saint’s Blessing and back to the outlands – there he’ll find a use for it. Wyck knows a good number of bad souls who would pay a hell of a handful of trade-coins just for the components.

  ‘You never know,’ he says to Crys, as he straightens up. ‘Might come in handy.’

  Wyck clears the breech, then checks the rifle’s short clip. The Kavrone had fired all but one of the high-calibre rounds. Looking at the state of her, she should have used all eight. Wyck slings the sniper rifle over his shoulder, but before he can move off again there’s a sudden, loud curse from Ona as the newblood fires a noisy burst of las-rounds into the dead and the darkness. Wyck snaps his own lasgun up and draws sight on what Ona shot at, only to see a fat, blood-slick rat twitching itself to death on the stone.

  ‘Throne,’ Ona stammers, as the echo of las-fire fades. ‘Oh, Throne.’

  ‘Shhh,’ Wyck hisses, cutting him off.

  For a moment, they all just stand there in silence, listening. Frozen. Waiting for the Sighted’s laughter to echo around the chamber.

  It doesn’t.

  Wyck walks over and grabs hold of Ona by the collar of his flak-plate and shakes him.

  ‘Mists alive,’ he hisses. ‘What did I tell you?’

  ‘Stay sharp,’ Ona says. ‘Sorry, sergeant.’

  Crys huffs a quiet laugh from behind them. ‘Looks as though he stayed pretty sharp to me, sarge, hitting something that size in the half-dark.’

  Wyck shakes his head and lets go of Ona.

  ‘Keep moving,’ he says.

  Ona nods his head, looking ashamed.

  ‘Aye, sir,’ he says, and he goes back to stepping carefully over the dead. Wyck does the same, panning his rifle back and forth. The stablight catches on armour plates, and shell casings. Bits of stone and bone.

  Then, something else. Something glittering by Ona’s feet. Wyck’s exhausted, fogged mind turns it over slowly, and he lunges to grab hold of Ona. Opens his mouth to speak.

  But he’s not quick enough.

  Ona takes another step, and there’s a loud click that’s immediately followed by a boom and a bright rush of light and heat. One moment, Wyck is on his feet, the next he is flat on his back on the floor with his ears ringing. Motes of fire drift overhead. A word bubbles up through the white noise in Wyck’s head. The word he was too slow to say.

  Tripwire.

  Wyck drags himself upright. His vision blurs and runs. As sound starts to filter back in, he catches Crys cursing.

  And Ona moaning.

  Wyck gets up, though his legs are trying their best to give out and the room is spinning lazily around him. He doesn’t let himself fall to his knees until he reaches Ona’s side.

  ‘Damn it,’ he says, softly.

  Ona’s right leg is gone, almost to the hip. His left is a mess. All ragged and twisted the wrong way. His grey eyes are wide, and he’s breathing like a hunted thing.

  ‘S-s-sorry,’ he says, between breaths. ‘S-should have seen it.’

  ‘Shut up,’ Wyck says, because it’s not Ona’s fault. It’s his. He should have been quicker.

  Wyck unwinds his scarf and tries to staunch the bleeding, but there’s no stopping it. It just floods right through. Lye comes running through the dead and drops to her knees opposite Wyck. She takes one look at Ona and her face pales.

  ‘Dav,’ she says.

  ‘You have to fix him,’ Wyck says, interrupting her. ‘Now.’

  Lye runs a bloody hand over her hair and then shakes her head. He knows what that means.

  There’s no fixing him.

  Wyck knows it too, really. That they don’t have the time, or the kit to do it. It doesn’t stop the moment feeling like shell shock over again, though. It doesn’t stop him wanting to hit Lye or shake her or shout at her. It’s not just about Ona. It’s the fact that every loss feels like death drawing closer. Cutting through his own kin to get to him.

  Wyck draws his combat blade.

  ‘Dav,’ Lye says, in a low voice. ‘I can do it.’

  Wyck shakes his head, because she can’t. Ona is one of his own. He looks Ona in the eyes.

  ‘You know what I’m going to do,’ he says. ‘What I have to do.’

  Ona nods. His teeth are chattering, and his pupils are dark and fixed.

  ‘W-when you get out, will you light a fire?’ he stammers. ‘G-give up my name?’

  Wyck nods his head. Puts one arm under Ona’s shoulders so that he can lift him.

  ‘Right away,’ he says. ‘I swear it.’

  ‘T-thank you,’ Ona says.

  And then Wyck lifts Ona half-upright and buries his combat blade in the newblood’s chest. Under the armour. One quick, deep cut, right to the heart. Ona chokes and seizes and then goes still. Wyck lowers him back to the ground, slowly. Pulls his knife. His hand is slick with Ona’s blood. It feels like it’s soaking right through his skin. Leaving a mark on the inside. Wyck can’t speak. Can’t think. Everything is the wrong kind of rush.

  Thank you. That was what Ona just said.

  Thank you.

  ‘Dav.’

  Wyck looks up to see Hale standing there.

  ‘The Sighted will be coming,’ he says. ‘We need to keep moving.’

  Wyck looks around the chamber at the others. Koy is leaning heavily against the wall with her bandaged, mangled hand strapped to her chest. Crys and Awd are still reeling from the tripwire charge. Dal’s arm is broken. Efri’s face is a mask of blood. Kayd is slumped over his vox-kit, with one hand clamped over the gunshot wound in his side. He looks back at Ona. At the pool of blood that’s spread all around the newblood’s body. It’s soaking into Wyck’s fatigues. Going cold. The rush becomes a roar. Wyck gets to his feet.

  ‘Keep moving?’ he snarls. ‘What, so they can bleed us, one at a time, until there’s nothing left? It’s madness.’

  Hale’s face clouds over. ‘It’s a damned order,’ he says. ‘So get your squad, and get a move on. We’re marching for The Saint’s Blessing.’

  Wyck has known Hale a long time. Much longer than either of them has held rank. There’s a part of Wyck that knows Hale is just trying to get them out alive, but it’s much quieter than the part of him that’s guilty and angry and spoiling f
or a fight.

  ‘This thing has been a shit-show from the first sunrise,’ Wyck says. ‘Look around, Yuri. We’re not going to make it to the damned aqueduct. You’ve killed the lot of us and you know it. You’re just too much of a coward to admit it.’

  Just like the explosion, Wyck is too slow to get clear of the punch Hale throws. It bursts Wyck’s lip and sets his head ringing like a bell.

  ‘Call me that again, you insubordinate bastard,’ Hale says.

  Wyck rights himself, feeling foolish enough to fight back. He raises his fists to do it, but freezes when he hears another deadly click, this time right by his ear.

  Wyck turns slowly to see the muzzle of a bolt pistol pointed at his face.

  ‘Enough,’ Raine says.

  ‘Stand down,’ Raine says. ‘Now.’

  There is a moment of silence. Raine listens to her timepiece ticking in her coat pocket. Wyck has five seconds to back down. To prove he’s more of an asset than a risk. That he can still be controlled. Wyck’s eyes are wide and flooded. Full of anger and grief. Raine tenses her finger on her pistol’s trigger.

  And then Wyck lowers his hands and backs down.

  Raine lowers her pistol a fraction, but not completely. Her work is not done yet. Wyck might have been the one to speak the words, but she knows full well that he is not the only one to think them. Raine can see the same feelings written plainly in the rest of the Antari, too. In almost two years, she has never seen them so close to broken. They are all exhausted and wounded. Grieving and angry. That last emotion is the one that Raine needs if she is going to get them out of Whend alive.

  She looks around the room, making sure to catch each pair of grey Antari eyes.

  ‘You know full well what the Sighted have done here,’ Raine says, without raising her voice. She doesn’t have to. She knows that they are listening. ‘The evidence is all around you. Look at the dead.’

  They glance downwards. Some make warding gestures with their bloody hands.