‘Nobody says anything,’ I tell my people, giving them a warning glare while we wait for the arrival of the waster delegation. ‘We don’t need more enemies.’
A shadow over my shoulder reveals the arrival of Schaeffer. I can tell he’s itching to issue orders, to take charge, and it must be burning him up inside to give ground to me. I wonder if he’ll do it. Prepared to run the risk of Nazrek’s challenge now that we’re away from the other orks.
‘What is your intent, Kage?’ he says quietly.
‘Stay alive. Say whatever gets that done.’
‘Any succour they provide will only be temporary. Sooner or later you will have to return to the Imperial zone.’
‘Is that what you’re worried about? That I’d give you up for a chance to live like a waster? I’m insulted, Colonel. It never crossed my mind.’ But now that Schaeffer’s brought the idea to my attention I do give it a little thought as I watch the three wasters stepping carefully up the slope of an ash drift. They have an elegant, calm way of walking that seems unhurried but doesn’t disturb the surface layer too much. Is it a trick I could learn? Could I live that life, staying just ahead of starvation and dehydration?
Not really me, I prefer my potential death threats to be abrupt and violent rather than drawn-out and tedious.
I holster my pistol and raise my empty hand in greeting, the other on the hilt of my knife.
The tallest waster separates slightly from the other two, a hand wrapped in slender bandages rising to the skull-mask beneath the hood. I hear the slight hiss of a rebreather disconnecting as the mask comes away, revealing skin darker than mine, two emerald eyes gazing at me with interest. Full lips and shallow cheeks. Maybe a woman, after all. Her disconcerting gaze moves to the others and then back to me.
She turns her head and says something in a dialect I haven’t heard before and gets a laugh in reply from the other two.
‘What’s so funny?’ I demand.
‘You take wrong turn, hive-walker?’ the waster says, without any venom. Her lips form a broad smile. ‘You look like rust-eel shit, and smell worse.’
I look at her for a few seconds, not quite sure what to make of this, and then burst out laughing. The joke isn’t even that funny, but the last few hours of pent-up madness just find a way to break through and it takes nearly a minute before I can even muster any words.
‘We might have been a bit rushed,’ I tell her. As my hysteria subsides I’m conscious of the presence of the other wasters. They still have us in their sights and this could all be an elaborate deception, no matter what the Colonel says. I venture some information to help keep things civil. ‘My name is Kage.’
‘Orskya,’ she replies. ‘Orskya Adrausk, daughter of Adra Nurien.’
‘These your grounds? We didn’t mean to trespass.’
I see the three wasters tense and look at something behind me. Turning my head slowly, I see Nazrek, grunting to itself, swaying left and right a little.
‘Nazrek is with me,’ I say, though what that means to the wasters is debatable. It’s also a reminder that I need to choose my words carefully in front of the ork.
Orskya turns her attention back to me.
‘No, these not anyone’s grounds, not since Bestiz come back. Found your trail when we ash-dipping on the hive base, made such a mess, thought you were orik. Luckily your bigmouths show us you not.’ Her eyes move to Nazrek, a calculating look. ‘Least, not all.’
‘See that?’ I point up to the wound in the sky. She nods. ‘That’s bad news for all of us. Acheron is swarming with netherfiends and it won’t be long before they burst out everywhere else too, I bet. Could be coming right now.’
‘We already have bad time,’ she tells me, her expression going sombre. ‘Our vitchya not wake. Sleep-murder, terror kill her.’
I’m not sure what to say next, but my eye is caught by a movement. I launch myself forward without thinking, seeing a sinuous motion in the ash a couple of metres from Orskya’s left leg. A black-and-grey serpent bursts from the dune slope but I’m close enough to grab it behind the head, the knife in my other hand driving up through the bottom of the jaw, pinning its mouth shut. It spasms, almost knocking me sideways as more of its immense length uncoils from the ash. I hear shouts of alarm from behind. Orskya’s companions come to my aid as I fall to my back, the thrashing snake trying to pull itself from my grip, foul-smelling blood spilling from its wound. Between them they take it from me and quickly decapitate it, letting the body fall to the ash at my feet.
I lie there for a moment, not quite sure what happened, feeling the dribble of serpent blood down my itching cheek. Orskya stoops over me and wipes it away with her cuff before offering me a hand to pull me up. She’s taller than me by about ten centimetres, and her grip is as strong as any I’ve felt in the Guard.
‘Strykvena,’ she says, looking down at the headless corpse twitching down the slope. She turns her attention back to me. ‘Strike-viper, or maybe hollowtooth your people call it. Deadly.’
‘You’re welcome.’
Her eyes narrow and she takes a step back.
‘Nobody move faster than strike-viper.’
‘Instinct, that’s all. Must have seen it moving but not realised. I’ve stayed alive a long time just acting without thinking.’
‘And now I alive too.’
‘I suppose you owe me a life debt now, or something?’
She sneers at me, shaking her head.
‘I not shoot you through left eye ten minutes ago. I owe you shit and nothing. You can have both.’
I laugh again, taken aback by her forthright manner. I’ve lived alongside some very interesting people – if your definition of interesting is thieving, murderous, self-serving and insane – but Orskya seems different from all of them. Most of the ‘free speakers’ I’ve known just spout off their own prejudices, rebels against the discipline of the Imperial Guard, trying to shock with their so-called honesty. They want a reaction to justify their existence. There’s no posturing in Orskya. She just says what she means. Life in the wastes doesn’t really leave room for niceties, I suppose.
She tenses and her companions step forward as someone makes their way down the slope towards us. I turn and see that it’s the Colonel, and suppress a sigh of annoyance.
‘I am Colonel Schaeffer, ranking officer,’ he says, darting me a look, daring me to argue. Technically he’s right, he certainly outranks me, and he doesn’t claim to be in command. ‘What is your intent?’
‘Intent, Colonel?’ Orskya shrugs. ‘No intent. Now we see you, we not interested. We pick bones of the army camps good these last days. You? Nothing to trade. Nothing to steal.’
‘Do you know the way back to the Imperial lines?’
‘What you mean?’
‘The Imperial forces,’ I explain. ‘Trenches, bunkers, tanks and soldiers? There’s fortifications close to here, keeping guard on Acheron. Where are they?’
‘They leave.’
Schaeffer grunts, then shakes his head, confused.
‘Half a million Imperial Guard do not just leave.’
‘How long were you looking for me?’ I ask, wondering how the Colonel could not know about an entire army group moving off.
‘Army move south,’ says Orskya, pointing over my shoulder. ‘In hurry too. Four days ago?’
‘Five,’ one of the other wasters corrects her. He slaps his thigh. ‘Was day Alanza broke her leg.’
‘Ah, five days ago.’
‘Where did they go?’ asks the Colonel, clearly put out by this revelation. He glances at me and drops his voice. ‘There were no pertinent orders when I departed headquarters.’
‘Which was when?’
‘Eighteen days ago.’
‘Your people in big hurry. March quick, get on trucks and tanks. They gone by nightfall. Zoom, boom! One day, al
l gone.’
‘There was no ork attack?’
She points up to the sky but doesn’t look.
‘That happen day before.’
Orskya looks away as another waster hurries through the fog. She bends to listen to a whispered message, the deliverer casting rapid glances back through the mists. Orskya straightens, says something in return that I don’t understand. Her two companions gather to her for a quick conversation before heading off into the gloom.
‘Orks are leaving Acheron,’ the waster tells us. ‘Thousands.’
‘Driven out by the abyssal invaders,’ I say. ‘That’s how we ended up out here.’
‘There will be many more in the coming hours and days,’ adds Schaeffer. ‘And then the infernal servants will come after.’
‘I know this sounds strange coming from me, but I’m tired of running,’ I say, looking from Schaeffer to the miserable crowd behind us.
A few nod, others look scared enough to bolt into the smog at the smallest provocation. Nazrek gives an appreciative ripple of its lips, and a rumble of agreement emanates deep in the ork’s chest.
‘I mean,’ I continue, ‘we need somewhere to take a breath and resupply. Work out our real options.’ I laugh. ‘I wasn’t talking about some stupid counter-attack…’
‘There must be some Imperial forces remaining nearby,’ says the Colonel. ‘Orskya, do you have any kind of vox-caster or receiver?’
‘Vox-box? Yes, we have two. One with Nordas, other back at camp.’ She gestures with a thumb over her shoulder. ‘Long-range vox at camp. Two kilometre that way. Why?’
‘We can use it to contact assistance, perhaps find out where the retreat muster point is,’ Schaeffer continues.
‘Not with our vox,’ says the waster, grimacing. ‘Army find us, shoot us.’
‘You can’t survive out here on your own,’ I tell her, pointing back towards Acheron. ‘There are hundreds of thousands of orks, millions of humans, in that hive. The more they fight, the more of them that die, the bigger that rip above us gets, I reckon. Those orks coming this way now? Just the start.’
‘We survive Bestiz two time. We survive this.’
‘You should listen to him!’ We all turn in surprise as Karste surges forward. In the mists, wasters raise their weapons in response. ‘He has the Emperor’s sight.’
‘Who are you, small girl?’ says Orskya, looking at the slight hiver with a mixture of amusement and confusion. ‘What is this Emperor’s sight?’
‘When the Beast came and von Strab surrendered Acheron, I ran. But I didn’t run far enough. Then these two came,’ she points at me and the Colonel, ‘and they killed the traitor. I ran again, into the depths. But the Burned Man, he found me. He saved me. All of us!’
‘This true?’ Orskya raises an eyebrow at me. ‘You kill von Strab?’
She makes a gesture across her face, as though picking the words from her lips and throwing them to the ground. I realise it’s a sign of disgust, as if the name itself tastes bad. There could be some leverage there.
‘Yes, I killed him,’ I say. I point to Schaeffer and then turn and pick out Oahebs from the others. ‘We were part of a team sent to get rid of the traitor commander.’
‘The Burned Man died so that the traitor was slain!’ someone calls out from the group.
‘The flames purified him!’ another shouted.
‘You not look dead, Burned Man.’ Orskya looks me up and down, appraising me again in light of this new information.
‘I got better,’ I say with a lopsided grin.
I can feel Schaeffer tensing next to me, though whether from this talk of my supposed holiness or just a more general agitation, it’s impossible to know. It does remind me that we’re against the clock here. I know it didn’t take us too long to get this far into the wastes; the orks can’t be too far away.
‘He led us to sanctuary against the abyssal fiends,’ Karste adds, looking at me with wide eyes. ‘He will find us sanctuary again! You should come with us.’
Her earnestness is almost overwhelming, bordering on the comical, but Orskya is looking at me with an expression I can’t quite decipher, gaze moving occasionally to the sorry sight of the other underhivers.
‘You can use vox-box,’ she concedes, taking a step back. ‘Come with me to camp. Call friends.’
‘Thanks,’ I say as she starts to turn away. ‘I’ll owe you one, for sure.’
Orskya turns back, her look intent.
‘You will, Burned Man. You really will.’
And then she goes, long strides quickly taking her into the swirling ash clouds. Schaeffer’s already organising the others by the time I turn back to the group. Harla makes his way to me, almost falling as he drags his feet through the ash drift.
‘This is a plan, right?’ he says. ‘We’ll get in the camp then take their stuff?’
‘No. We’ll go to the camp, use their vox-set to see if we can link up with any Imperial forces, and then get these people somewhere where they won’t get their faces chewed off by orks or abyssal monsters.’
‘Come on, Kage. I’ve been speaking to some of those troopers we caught. That Oahebs, he’s a creepy bastard but he told me all about you.’
‘He did?’ I resist the urge to look at the Guardsman and keep my tone level. ‘Like you say, he’s a creepy fragger. Maybe not believe everything he says.’
‘But you were close to von Strab, right?’ Harla crosses his fingers. ‘Real tight, I hear.’
‘There’s Emperor knows how many orks coming right at us,’ I tell him. ‘This isn’t the time or place for this.’
I turn away but he grabs my arm.
‘We ain’t done.’
‘We are,’ I snarl quietly, looking down at his hand. ‘You can finish with functional fingers, or without. Your choice.’
He lets go immediately, retreating a few steps from the raw venom in my voice and stare. I take a pace after him, voice still low.
‘Be nice, Harla. You could lose your way on the trek to the waster camp.’
And with that threat left hanging, I stalk off, not giving him any more chance to argue.
Seven
WASTERS
‘You know, I hear wasters can track their camps by the smell.’ This sparkling contribution to the sparse conversation comes from Nezeriav, one of the hivers that first found me. He nudges me with his elbow. ‘You know, on account of the stink they make.’
‘They’re wearing rebreathers,’ I reply, shaking my head. ‘Idiot.’
He falls silent, pouting, but I’m beyond caring about moody followers and mutinies and being the Emperor-damned chosen one. My legs ache, my back aches, I’m going to choke to death on dust if some painful violence isn’t visited upon me in the next few hours.
It would seem he has a point. I can’t tell one way from another; we could be walking in circles for all I know. The dunes all look the same, and the banks of ground-hugging fog sometimes bring visibility down to just a few metres. Other times we can see for maybe two or three hundred metres, just an expanse of undulating grey and brown ash, indistinguishable from anywhere else we’ve passed.
After a few minutes the Colonel catches up with me, glaring daggers at the sands sucking at his boots as if he could make the wastes part for him with raw anger. He hauls himself across the ash in defiance of the shifting slope rather than working with it, which pretty much says all you need to know about Colonel Schaeffer.
‘It would not be wise to spend too much time with these thieves,’ he tells me, throwing a suspicious glance at our waster escorts. ‘They will cut us loose as soon as they are threatened. Or worse.’
‘You’re the one that wanted a vox-caster. You’re gonna get one. What’s to complain about?’
‘The most temporary and pragmatic of alliances, nothing more. As soon as we find out the
location of the Imperial mustering point these people are no more use to us.’ He drops his voice even further. ‘The same is true of the ork and your deserter companions. They will cause trouble.’
‘We’ve got enough trouble as it is, without picking fights amongst ourselves.’
He shakes his head and allows himself to fall back a few steps.
Looking for better company, I hurry to catch up with Orskya, puffing hard to match her long, effortless strides as it seems I’m thrashing knee-deep through the sliding ash. I see the gleam of something on her wrist before it disappears into her cuff.
‘That’s your secret sense, is it?’ I say, nodding at her arm. ‘Got yourself a navigation piece?’
She draws back the sleeve to show me the wrist-mounted auspex. The green screen is cracked and the casing heavily scuffed, but as she touches a thumb to the activation stud it quickly comes to life.
‘Four generations the duneseers of our people have this,’ she says proudly, turning it off again. ‘All my mothers, and now to me.’
‘Duneseer, that’s what you call your leader?’
‘No. I am what you call, ah, chief scout? Vitchya, the Wise One, is leader, but she die as I say. We not choose new leader yet, still sad for loss. Too soon.’
I can’t think of anything to say to that and we carry on in silence. In the absence of talking, now and then I catch a different noise, like the gurgle of some unseen pipeway or stream or the crackle of some unknown substance just beneath the ash underfoot. I can hear changes in the wind too. Different speeds and angles whistling and moaning over the drifts.
In fact, it sounds a lot like voices. Distant howls and baying cries.
‘Does it always sound this creepy out here?’
Orskya stops and pulls back the hood of her cape, revealing her ear.
‘No,’ she says. ‘That is not the noise of the wastes. I do not know what it is.’
Armageddon Saint - Gav Thorpe Page 9