by Henry Zou
Unable to wait idle, isolated companies of CantiCol infantry marched seventy kilometres in one day, in order to initiate a rescue effort to the ravaged southern rural districts of Astur and Valadura. The Kholpeshi Governate was in disarray and senior officers of the Cantican Colonials organised independent rescue efforts.
Twenty-four hours later, a column of sixty thousand Guardsmen, shovels on their rucksacks, banners of the Kholpeshi Garrison fluttering, began the long trek to the outer provinces.
Military trucks with supplies attempted to cross the burst dams and irrigation systems between shallow archipelagos with a cavalier disregard for their own safety. Many made it through to the refugees stranded amongst the ruins of their villages, delivering much-needed medical and food supplies. But dozens of trucks, along with their occupants, were lost to mud sinks and landslides.
Further from the city reaches, in the provinces, settlements became isolated in their own little pockets of suffering. A husband bound the body of his wife to his back with string, as he rode his bicycle thirty-five kilometres to the funereal caves.
In the cities themselves, many wandered amongst the rubble and smoke in a daze. In Orissa Minor, a young mother and father shrieking with distress flagged down and pleaded with a passing industrial dirt-miner to find their son, lost underneath the collapsed folds of their tenement building. The parents had been on manufactorum shift when it happened. Despite a death toll that reached the hundreds of thousands, a crowd gathered in breathless silence as the sheets of rockcrete were lifted. For many hours they dug, passers-by joining in with shovels, pails, even bare hands.
When the debris cleared inside, they found three bodies. A young child, two months shy of six. He was cradled in the arms of his grandfather, his grandmother holding her husband from behind. Even amongst the destruction, the crowd wept openly.
Axial Mantilla, the ruling seat of Kholpesh, had always been the domain of the aristocrats, oligarchs and upper tier of Kholpesh. It was thus the only city-state sheathed in the semi-sphere of a void shield. Like a shimmering bubble of oil-slick water, the shield dissipated the worst of the Archenemy bombardment. It was precisely because of this that Mantilla became the focus of the Ironclad’s major ground offensive. Having secured a deployment site following their brutal aerial campaign, the Archenemy besieged the city-state with the entirety of its Kholpeshi invasion force – fifty deca-legions of Ironclad, five hundred thousand strong, supported by the motorised and mechanised battalions so prevalent amongst Ironclad doctrine.
By the fourth month of the siege of Mantilla, the battle had mired into a grinding trench war of attrition. The Imperial trench networks were three hundred metres deep, the high mosaic walls and shield pylons of Mantilla rearing up behind them. Entire sections of the sand-bagged entrenchment were within grenade-throwing distance of Archenemy trenches. It was vicious, it was close and the firing never stopped.
It was here that the Task Group made their descent. The stratocraft scraped an evasive landing into the defensive bulwark, tailed by enemy flak and tracer. It was the welcome they had all expected.
Once on land, the Task Group understood their obligations and they went about them with determined efficacy.
Liaising with Cantican senior officers through Captain Pradal, Inquisitor Roth made a thorough assessment of the siege. He inspected the flak-board trenches, ankle-deep in sour filth, slogging through kilometres of zigzagging fortifications. The Cantican Guardsmen on Kholpesh were the most desolate body of fighting men he had ever seen. Their uniforms were ragged and worn thin; many were wounded and indiscriminately bandaged. Disintegration seeped into the very eyes of those men.
Madeline de Medici, escorted by Inquisitor Celeminé entered the city of Mantilla proper. They were to establish communications with one of Madeline’s contacts, a minor broker of the underground and often very elite network of private collectors.
The atmosphere within the capital was like nothing they could have imagined. Two million refugees crowded the streets, shuddering in blankets and bundles of their last possessions. They clustered in throngs, sleeping openly on the pavements, in alcoves and crevices, and congregating in miserable huddles down side lanes and one-ways.
Under the protective veil of the void shield, the aristocrats and wealthy bourgeois flaunted their position with a defeatist debauchery. They revelled as the planet burned. In their pavilions and theatre-houses, they saluted endless rounds of liquor with the cry, ‘They are coming!’
There was no rationing. No sense of responsibility or inhibition amongst the elite. Mantilla had accepted its fate. It was only a matter of living as much as they could with the time they had left.
The auto-sedan, cigar-nosed and open-topped, was chauffeured by a young transport corps lieutenant. The Cantican officers, in their peculiarly cavalier fashion, had insisted that Madeline and Celeminé travel into Mantilla by staff car.
Mantilla was an old and powerful city-state. Tall terraces of soft pastel – pinks, jades and powdery blue – lined the slab stone roads. The city grew in tiers, and to Madeline, it reminded her of an ancient pre-Imperial text documenting the Tower of Babel. Plum minarets and flaking, gilded domes dominated the skyline. In all, Mantilla had a haughty cosmopolitan charm that was unmatched by any other city-state on Kholpesh.
Not too far into the hab districts, their staff car became mired in refugee congestion. The desperate and the hungry tapped at their tinted windows, hands held out, pleading. The young lieutenant blasted his horn as he eased the vehicle forwards. Behind the soundproofed windows and armoured chassis, Madeline felt strangely distant from their distress. Their voices were muffled. The air in the staff car was cold and recycled. It made the outside world seem surreal. Unbearably so.
Madeline and Celeminé alighted from the vehicle, much to the protests of their escort. The two ladies, both dressed in the demure cultural garb of Medinian women, proceeded through the city on foot.
They cut across the municipal park of the district. The neat lawns and geometric footpaths had become a designated refugee camp. Makeshift tents strung up from ration sacks lined the square in densely packed rows. People resorted to using the sculptural fountains as drinking water, and disease spread rapidly. Everywhere they looked were the jaundiced faces of cholera and dysentery.
Beneath the columned arches, Madeline noticed small malnourished children track her with dark, sunken eyes as she went by. They lolled in the arms of their parents, too tired and too sickly to move.
‘This is horrible. This place is so wretchedly filthy. And the smell. Is this what all wars are like?’ Madeline asked.
‘These are the lucky ones. Millions of refugees, some coming on barges from across the archipelagos, some trekking for days on foot. For every one refugee you see here, they shut the gates on a dozen. Hundreds of thousands of people were caught out in the open as the Archenemy mounted their initial ground offensive,’ Celeminé said.
‘Oh please. Stop!’ Madeline said, not wanting to hear the rest.
The pair of them walked on in silence for some time.
They followed the pedestrian bridges that would take them into the commercial district. The four-storey terraces that faced onto the streets, with their painted railings and tiled steeples, were shut off from the world. Only the very privileged lived here. The refugees huddled for shelter at their doorstep, foraging through their debris bins for edible scraps.
Many times during their walk, Madeline saw the sled-chariots of minor dignitaries or bourgeoisie rattle past. Their occupants were more often than not blind drunk, sometimes yelling obscenities at the refugees who did not scurry fast enough away from the path of their horses. Once, a bodyguard riding on the running board even began unleashing a lasgun into the air to scatter the people before him.
As they walked closer to the upper tiers of Mantilla, the atmosphere began to gradually change. In the exclusive commerci
al and administrative quarters, the refugees began to thin out. Ape-faced private house guards stood sentry outside the gates of estates and manor houses. Women with painted faces, probably aristocrats by virtue of their tall hair and suggestive bodices, cavorted openly in the streets. Dishevelled noblemen mingled amongst them, their breath sour with alcohol, laughing the laugh of the mentally diminished. All were wreathed in beads and dry, wilting flowers.
Madeline was disgusted.
A soft-middled aristocrat grabbed her from behind, cackling as he buried his face into her neck. ‘Please, where are your manners?’ Madeline protested, trying to shrug him away.
The man was persistent. Still snorting his intoxicated laugh, he encircled Madeline with sweat-slick arms.
Celeminé put him out with a palm to the base of the skull. She moved fast and Madeline barely had time to register the movement. With a grunt, the man sagged to his knees, cupping the base of his neck.
The pair trotted away quickly, melting into the lascivious crowd.
The tea-house was created as a splendid aviary.
It was a fan-brimmed pavilion, its wrought-iron scrollwork and railings painted sea-green. Tripod tables and chess stools clustered under the veranda and meandered down the sidewalk. In the centre of the tea-house, a birdhouse crafted as a fenced palace contained hundreds of songbirds, flickering flashes of emerald, sapphire and magenta.
Here, the Mantillan elite could go about their daily business of trade, politics and social obligation without the unsightly distraction of war or refugees. A dozen private guards shouldering flechette shotguns saw to that.
It was also where Madeline would rendezvous with her broker. She recognised him immediately. He had no name of course, brokers worked on a strictly need-to-know basis; the black market of relic smuggling was an exclusive network and the patrons took this very seriously. But Madeline had acquired his services enough times to recognise him by face.
The broker was a mad bear of a man, shaggy and genial. Yet on occasion he wore periwigs of absurd pomp, flowing, curled and beribboned. A tiny waistcoat was stretched to splitting point across his shoulders and a lace cravat adorned his bullish neck. Combined with his looping pencilled eyebrows and white-painted face, he was once the most curious yet repellent individual Madeline had ever been acquainted with.
‘The client is always right,’ Madeline said as she took a seat at his table.
‘Oh, the client is never wrong,’ answered the broker with the prearranged cue.
‘This is a friend of mine, Lady Felyce Celeminé. She is the client interested in purchasing.’
The broker extended a heavy paw gloved in lace. ‘Pleasure to meet you, Lady Celeminé. You can call me Little Cadiz.’
‘Oh of course, Little, what a delightful name!’ squealed Celeminé, feigning interest. Madeline could see the repulsion that threatened to manifest as a gag reflex well up in Celeminé. But the inquisitor kept her poise.
Little Cadiz promptly ordered a round of herbal infusions before discussing business, as was the etiquette.
‘At your behest, I have devoted a good deal of time and energy to thinking of the patron. To this date you have not identified any of these patrons specifically, nor have you outlined the content of their character, forcing me to draw certain conclusions about them from your tone of voice,’ tittered Cadiz in his strained alto.
‘I refer to the patron Hiam Golias. A collector, I believe, who is offering a relic from the Age of Apostasy?’
‘I have inferred from your confident tone that these relics are at the very least quite important, as you seem to be in a hurry to locate them. Were these relics of a more mundane nature, say a rather expensive clock or xenos jewellery, I believe you would sound more relaxed.’
Is he mad?+ Celeminé projected into Madeline.
Madeline nodded slowly, biting her lip.
‘But no, your tone has been one of abstract concern, and seemed to be directed at the wellbeing of yourselves. I can certainly sympathise with your point. We live in a dangerous world and at a dangerous time. I would be hard pressed to come up with a group of people more at risk in this world than us, other than perhaps smaller children.’
This has got to be a ruse to throw people off,+ Celeminé sighed.
‘If it is, he does his job well,’ Madeline whispered under her breath. ‘When can you arrange for us to meet with Master Golias?’ she inquired, jotting down a tidy sum on a paper napkin as her broker’s fee.
Little Cadiz slid the napkin over to himself and peeked at the numerals. He appeared satisfied.
‘For the sake of the completeness of our deal, I would say – imagine a grand social gathering for recreational purposes, to be held on the Golias Estate. A celebration of liberation! That is where you shall find Master Golias.’
Ten seconds. I’ll give him ten seconds before I cross this table and put him to sleep,+ Celeminé commented with a searing tinge of half-hearted aggression.
Madeline laughed out loud without realising.
‘I’m sorry, was it something I said?’ Cadiz enquired, clearly concerned.
‘No no, not at all. When is this celebration to be held?’
‘Every night of course! They are coming, there is no time left to squander,’ he cawed theatrically.
‘Of course,’ said Madeline flatly.
‘But tonight is when Golias is willing to see you. The both of you. He is very eager to do so.’
Slipping a vellum fold from his breast pocket, Cadiz daintily slid it across the table. ‘Invitations to the Golias Estate. I wish you all the best with your purchasing ventures.’
With that, Madeline and Celeminé rose from the table, curtsied and left the madman.
Chapter Seventeen
Roth stalked up to the observation deck of the command post bunker. A flock of staff officers trailed him, ghosting him so hard they trod on his heels.
The bunker was set at the foot of Mantilla’s fortress walls, ringed by the apron of trenches that spider-webbed the terrain around it. An ugly structure of prefab boarding and sandbags, it resembled a fat-bellied urn, piled high with kev-netting and hessian sacks. Yet from the observation tower, the bunker afforded a clear enough view of the battlefield.
At first survey, the terrain was barren and undulating. What little vegetation that might have clustered in that sandy soil had long been churned away by artillery. The Imperial trenches encircled the city with a twelve kilometre stretch of razor wire, tank traps and gun nests. Facing them, almost interlocking amongst them, were the trenches of the Archenemy. Tactically speaking, the enemy held the higher undulating hills. It was a bad position for the Imperium, as the Ironclad artillery in those hills had been able to rain down ordnance with almost clear line of sight.
‘This is terrible,’ Roth said. ‘Absolutely untenable.’
‘What right have you to say that?’ growled one of the officers.
The man who had spoken was Major General Sihan Cabales, commanding officer of the Mantillan siege. He had been caustic with Roth since the inquisitor had made landfall. He was a tall gentleman in his late seventies, with a broad, imposing frame that stretched the shoulders of his cavalry jacket.
‘Major general, why, is it not an elementary mistake to allow the enemy to claim their high ground unopposed?’
Cabales joined Roth at the sandbagged ledge. The field before him was smoking, like the soil itself had soaked up the heat of the bombs that pounded it. ‘Because,’ he began, ‘these men are the most demoralised troops I have ever had under my command. Absolutely useless.’
‘General, wars are not lost by men, they are lost by officers. I’m not a military man, but even I know that,’ Roth said. The inquisitor couldn’t help himself, he realised he was being entirely too pompous, but the general could do with some unwinding.
‘Then you do it,’ Cabales grinne
d wolfishly. ‘You can take command of that far section of the Magdalah trenches.’
The general snapped his fingers and a young lieutenant bearing his snuff box and a handful of maps stepped forwards. Cabales slid one of the map tubes from the pile and unfurled its flapping corners across the ledge. ‘Here, the Magdalah foothills. If you think you can claim any of these hills, claim that one.’
Roth found the foothills on the map, and then made a sweep with his telescope. It was not a good area. He adjusted the mag-scope and zoomed in on a blast-withered patch of flat, rocky ground. A lattice-work of trenches covered most of the low-lying ground. That in itself was a military blunder.
What’s more, the Archenemy to their front had claimed the Magdalah hills. They rose up half a kilometre away, a series of hump-backed ridges, wrinkled with crevices, crannies and the natural cover of rock and gorse. The enemy had established static firing positions from up on high, shelling and pounding the flat, open trenches below. It was, in Roth’s opinion, the worst possible tactical plight.
‘Will you accept?’ Cabales said, loud enough for all the assembled officers to hear.
It was a ploy of course, for Cabales to regain face and knock the upstart young inquisitor off his pedestal. Cabales knew this. Roth knew this. An older, reserved commander, perhaps a veteran with less to prove, would have thought it folly. The voice of his mentor Inquisitor Liszt would have been lecturing him. But Roth’s mind was already made.
‘I accept,’ Roth shrugged. ‘Take me down to the Magdalah section and allow me to meet these fellows.’
The defensive lines around the Magdalah foothills were called the ‘The Pit’ for good reason.