Milo lifted the jar.
‘From there to here,’ he said, and knocked it back. He was a lone figure at the bar, an outsider, dressed in unmarked, un-badged black, but the locals had long since decided who he was. Not local, a saviour or just another invader, a stranger with a fish tattoo, at the very least not them. Militarum. Imperial.
‘So this is where you take yourself?’
Milo looked around. There were ghosts in the doorway, dark shadows. They stepped into the lamplight, and were still ghosts.
‘What are you doing here?’ Milo asked.
‘Thought we’d come and join you,’ said Mkoll.
‘Nice fething arsehole place you’ve found to crawl into,’ said Varl, glancing around in distaste.
‘Honestly, what are you doing here?’ asked Milo.
‘Oh, what? We can’t step out for a little laughing juice?’ asked Larkin, with a grin.
The three of them surrounded him at the bar.
‘What is that stuff?’ asked Varl, nodding towards Milo’s jar.
‘Fobraki.’
‘Looks like piss.’
‘Tastes like it,’ said Milo.
‘You really know how to have a good time, don’t you?’ Larkin chuckled. Mkoll held up three fingers for three more jars. Dubious, the barman set them up and filled them. The three ghosts raised their glasses to Milo.
‘From there to here,’ said Milo.
‘What’s that? That’s fething stupid,’ said Varl with a frown. ‘Forever the same.’
‘Forever the same,’ chorused Mkoll and Larkin. They drank. They made faces. They put down their empty jars, and stifled coughs.
‘Let’s take a table,’ said Mkoll.
Milo took a full bottle from the barman, and left some coins on the counter. He followed the others to a corner table. Forever the same. He’d forgotten that. The old Tanith pledge. Milo didn’t think he’d heard it since Tanith Magna. Surely, sometime since then? Sharing a flask some night with Bragg and Corbec and Feygor? It was hard to say. But just the sound of it, those three words, was an instant memory, like the smell of nalwood or the musk of a forest floor.
It was an honest pledge. And, just like the morose Urdeshi one, it was a salute to perseverance and endurance, to duty and resolve, to the journey, not the destination. But it didn’t seem so mean-spirited or grudging. He guessed that every culture had their own version, expressing the same stalwart sentiment.
Even the silenced Sons.
They sat on blue benches around a blue table that had once been a ware board.
‘What’s wrong with these seats?’ Varl asked. ‘Why are they so fething low?’
Milo shrugged. He put the bottle on the table.
‘And why is the table so low? And what is that fething filth?’
‘We won’t be needing it,’ Mkoll told Varl. He nodded to Larkin. The old marksman grinned and furtively slid a ceramic flask out of his satchel.
‘Proper stuff,’ he murmured as he filled their jars with sacra.
‘Why are you here?’ asked Milo.
‘Bored,’ said Varl.
‘Fancied I’d stretch my legs,’ said Mkoll.
‘Oh, don’t feth with him,’ said Larkin. He looked at Milo, showing his bad teeth in a vulpine smile. ‘We were worried about you, Brinny boy,’ he said. ‘You haven’t seemed yourself. Not since you got back from all your high and holy adventuring. Thought we’d come and keep you company. Perk you up.’
‘I’m fine.’
‘Yeah, you are,’ said Mkoll. ‘So it’s probably time you stopped acting like you’re not.’
‘What?’ said Milo, taken aback.
‘It’s not a good look,’ said Larkin.
‘Makes you look like a right arsehole,’ said Varl.
‘I didn’t say that,’ put in Larkin, ‘but it’s not a good look, Brinny. It’s not you. You’re a Ghost, boy, not a–’
‘Right arsehole,’ said Varl.
‘I said we should have rehearsed this,’ said Mkoll quietly. ‘You two are hopeless.’
‘Rehearsed?’ Milo echoed.
‘She said he was glum,’ Larkin said to Mkoll.
‘Yeah, she said we should talk to him like normal. Just like we always did, so that’s what I’m doing,’ said Varl. He looked at Milo. ‘Do you feel better yet?’ he asked.
‘I don’t know what’s going on,’ said Milo.
‘Someone told us, on the hush, that you were feeling out of sorts,’ said Larkin, ‘and that we, and by we I mean everyone, were being a bit stand-offish. Like we didn’t know what to say to you.’
‘We don’t know what to say to you,’ said Varl. ‘To be fair.’
‘We don’t,’ agreed Larkin, ‘but she said we should just talk to you. Settle you down. Say whatever. But that’s not easy, because you keep pissing off on your own every night.’
‘Who’s “she”?’ Milo asked, but he knew.
‘So here we are,’ said Larkin.
‘How did you find me?’ Milo asked. Mkoll gazed at him steadily.
‘Really?’ he said.
‘This is where you go, is it?’ asked Varl. ‘Why here? Is it the stink of the latrines? The lice? The piss-water?’
‘It’s the timber,’ Milo said.
They all thought about that for a moment.
‘I get that,’ said Varl. Mkoll raised his jar.
‘Forever the same,’ he said.
They echoed him, and necked the sacra.
Feth, that was more like it.
They were on their third shot of sacra, and Varl was telling a story about Brostin and a jammed flamer. Varl was gesturing theatrically, but his movements were tight. Like so many of them, he had come out of the Eltath fight wounded, and he was still healing. They all had scars. They all had wounds. Varl was just getting to the punchline when a figure appeared behind Larkin, leaned in, and put something on the table in front of Mkoll.
‘What the feth?’ said Varl.
‘Thought you’d want that back,’ said Zhukova to Mkoll.
‘What the feth?’ Varl repeated.
Mkoll stared at the warknife on the table with remarkable composure.
‘That’s mine,’ he said.
‘It is,’ she said. ‘You boys have a good night, now.’
She walked away towards the door.
‘What the feth?’ Varl exclaimed.
Mkoll picked up the knife. There was a tiny smile on his face.
‘I lost mine at Tulkar Batteries,’ he said. ‘This is a replacement. Got it out of stores when we came back. I’ve only had it a few days. Not worked it in yet.’
He held it out to Milo.
‘You better take it,’ he said. ‘I’ll get another. You’ll need one.’
Milo hesitated.
‘You will need one, won’t you, Brinny?’ asked Larkin.
Milo nodded. He took the knife.
‘Fill the jars,’ he said to Larkin. ‘I’ll be back in a minute.’
He caught up with her in the street outside. Rockets and flares over the harbour were lighting the long slope of Hainehill.
‘Wait!’ he called.
Zhukova looked back.
‘What?’ she asked.
‘You told them.’
‘Obviously.’
‘Well, you didn’t have to,’ he said.
‘Clearly, I did,’ she said. ‘You weren’t going to. Or, if you ever got around to it, the God-Emperor would have woken up by then and everything would be over.’
‘You don’t need to fight my battles, Zhukova,’ he said.
‘Oh, but that’s the point,’ she said. ‘I do. And you need to fight mine. This life, Milo, it’s a group effort. We’re a regiment. We count on each other. Otherwise, what’s the point? You couldn’t do it, so I did. One day, it’ll be the other way around. And you’d better not feth up.’
‘I won’t.’
‘That’s all right, then,’ she said. ‘Now go back to your friends, boy. You’ve got some st
ories to hear, and some stories to tell.’
She turned, and started to walk away.
‘Thanks!’ he called.
‘It’s not about the thanks,’ she called in reply, without looking back.
He waited a moment. He decided to watch until she was out of sight, but he lost her in the shadows almost immediately. Showing off, probably.
He turned, and walked back up the hill towards the liquor-house lights.
‘You don’t listen, do you?’ said the man in the machinist’s smock. He was standing in Milo’s path. In the mauve gloom of the evening street, his friends stepped into view. Six of them. Four big fab workers. Two soldiers. All Urdeshi.
‘You have a problem, friend?’ asked Milo.
‘Not your friend,’ the man said. ‘Not your friend, “hero”. Not your friend, “lasman”. I told you to stay away. For your own good.’
‘For my own good?’
‘That’s right. Just a word to the wise, but you didn’t listen. You want us to thank you? Buy you drinks and say what a great man you are?’
‘No.’
‘But you come in every night. Ignored my advice. Urdesh is Urdesh, and you’re not Urdesh, arsehole.’
Milo sighed.
‘I’m pretty tired of people calling me “arsehole” tonight,’ he said.
‘Oh, you should be used to it then,’ said the man in the machinist’s smock. He let a stout chair leg slide into his hand from his sleeve. It was wood, painted blue. Hard wood, repurposed yet again.
‘It depends who says it,’ said Milo.
‘Yeah, when I say it, it’s affectionate,’ said Varl. He and Mkoll and Larkin were standing behind the men.
‘You were gone a while,’ said Mkoll. ‘Come back and join us.’
Milo nodded.
‘I will,’ he said. ‘And maybe we can stand these fine gentlemen a drink to celebrate victory over the Archenemy.’
‘Imperial arseholes,’ said the man in the machinist’s smock.
‘You know what that sounds like?’ Varl asked.
‘Yeah,’ said Mkoll. ‘It sounds ungrateful.’
She says, ‘The path is what matters, Brin. The path. That alone. Not where it takes you. It’s how you get there. It’s how you carry yourself. It’s how you take the steps.’
‘But surely–’ he starts to say. The scent of islumbine is very strong. Chief Mkoll was saying almost the same thing last night, over sacra in the liquor-house. But that can’t have been last night, because that had been Eltath, on Urdesh forge world, and this was…
…where? Siprious? Gant? Ashwarati?
‘Paths shift,’ she says. ‘They shift all the time. Goals. Opportunities. Possibilities. Even destinies. Victory is only part of it. The trick is to find the path. To find it and follow it, and when it shifts, find it again, and follow it again, and never lose your way, no matter how many times it changes. I’m told the Tanith are good at that. Their famous scouts. I know them to be renowned pathfinders.’
He nods, and–
He woke.
The hallway in the Urdeshic Palace was cold, and they were obliged to wait on wooden chairs. When the Prefectus officer appeared, they all stood.
‘The commissar will see you,’ he said.
‘I hope it’s Fazekiel,’ Varl whispered. ‘I can sweet-talk her. Pretty sure.’
‘Or Blenner,’ Larkin whispered back. ‘He’s an easy touch.’
‘As long as it’s not Hark,’ Varl murmured.
‘Keep quiet,’ Mkoll hissed.
‘You first,’ the Prefectus officer said, pointing to Milo. Milo glanced at the others: Larkin with his black eye, Varl with his split lip, Mkoll with his bandaged knuckles.
‘Behave yourselves,’ he said. ‘I’ll take the rap for this.’
He walked into the office alone. The officer closed the door behind him. Milo stood to attention, eyes front, waiting for the dressing down and the list of punishment details.
‘Drunken brawling with Urdeshi locals. You put four of them in the infirmary. That’s not the responsible behaviour of the Militarum.’
Milo didn’t reply. It wasn’t any of the commissars he’d expected.
‘This isn’t the reunion I imagined,’ said Gaunt. He was sitting behind the large desk. He put down the incident report, and looked up. He seemed older, yet the same. His eyes were very different. His uniform too: austere, severe, vengefully commanding. Not the garb of a colonel-commissar. Not the uniform Milo had once pressed and repaired and button-polished.
‘Anything to say?’ asked Gaunt.
‘No, my Lord Executor.’
‘You sure?’
‘I am… surprised to see you. I had been told you were busy. Your new duties. I…’
‘I shouldn’t be here,’ said Gaunt. ‘I have seven lords militant waiting for me in the war room, and army lists to review. This is not my job any more. This is so below my duty level, in fact, that Macaroth would scold me if he found me doing it. But Beltayn noticed some names on the overnight watch list, and brought it to my attention. So I asked Commissar Hark to step out for five minutes. He’s getting some recaff.’
‘Yes, lord.’
‘Brawling in the street,’ said Gaunt.
‘No excuse for it, my Lord Executor. My fault entirely. The others aren’t to blame. They just stepped in to protect me.’
‘Mkoll, Larkin and Varl?’
‘Yes, my lord.’
Gaunt sat back.
‘The report says you were defending the honour of the Astra Militarum against local malcontents who were expressing anti-Imperial views.’
‘Still no excuse, my lord.’
Gaunt rose to his feet. Milo had grown tall since their last meeting, but he had forgotten how tall Gaunt was.
‘I’d wanted to see you,’ said Gaunt. ‘Intended to, when I heard you were back. I thought you were gone, you see. Dead at Oureppan. The Beati told me so herself. Turns out she was wrong. Even saints are fallible. So I wanted to see you, of course. To welcome you. But things have been so frantic. There’s so much work to be done. The next phase…’
His voice trailed off. He looked at Milo with his unfamiliar and unforgiving eyes.
‘No excuse for it, though,’ he said. ‘I should have made it a priority. These are hardly the circumstances I imagined.’
‘I don’t think I’m a Lord Executor’s priority, sir,’ Milo said.
‘I think you’re wrong, Brin. I should have made the time before now. I understand you’re rejoining the First.’
‘I don’t seem to have an option, my lord.’
‘Do you want an option?’ Gaunt asked.
Milo hesitated.
‘No, sir. I don’t.’
‘Good. Good to hear. Fazekiel’s got the paperwork in hand. You’ll need to get your kit up to spec. Badges, pins, the rest. Get the Munitorum on it.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘I hear…’ Gaunt said, then paused. He cleared his throat. ‘Chief Mkoll tells me you might feel you’d lost your way. After the Orchidel action, after Sek. A loss of confidence, perhaps. Or regret at your detachment from the Beati’s staff. You’d been with them a long time, seen a lot. The Tanith First might seem a backward step.’
‘I… felt disconnected, my lord. I felt like I’d failed the task that had been set for me.’
‘Failed?’
‘I didn’t kill Sek,’ said Milo.
‘No, not single-handedly. But then neither did Mkoll. And neither did I, and neither did any single soldier of the Astra Militarum. What you did do could hardly be regarded as a failure.’
‘Yes, my lord. I have had time to reflect on it. And now, I don’t see it as a backward step.’
‘What changed your mind?’
‘A few things. Common sense, mostly. And Chief Mkoll told me that it’s about the journey, not the destination.’
Gaunt frowned.
‘That’s his philosophy?’
‘Apparently, my lord.’
There was a knock at the internal door. Beltayn looked in.
‘Two minutes,’ Gaunt said. Beltayn nodded and stepped back out.
Gaunt returned his unblinking gaze to Milo.
‘Duty calls,’ he said. ‘Tell those idiots outside they’re cleared. No write-up. Sweating in a hallway is punishment enough. Oh, and I have your pipes. Tell Beltayn to arrange a meeting where I can get them back to you, and where we can have a decent conversation.’
‘When might that be, my lord?’
‘Feth alone knows. Now, dismissed and on your way.’
Milo saluted and turned.
‘No, wait.’
He looked back.
‘Do you remember Vincula City?’ asked Gaunt. ‘Back on Voltemand?’
‘Longer ago for me than you, but yes, my lord. I do.’
Gaunt unpinned the Tanith crest from his jacket, and tossed it across the room. Milo caught it neatly.
‘Seems only right that I welcome you back in the same fashion,’ said Gaunt.
The woods close in. This deep in the heartwood, the trees shift and stir, and paths never stay true for long. The green canopy rustles like a hushing ocean, and the light is emerald. The child is alone, just a boy, alone on the blurring track.
But he’s not afraid. The nalwoods murmur and sigh, and the pulse is a reassuring knot behind his breastbone. He can’t get lost. He knows where he’s going, and if the path fades, he’ll find it again. He knows how to get from here to there. It’s a talent he was born with, always and forever the same. Someone calls his name and–
He woke.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Dan Abnett has written over fifty novels, including Anarch, the latest instalment in the acclaimed Gaunt’s Ghosts series. He has also written the Ravenor, Eisenhorn and Bequin books, the most recent of which is Penitent. For the Horus Heresy, he is the author of the Siege of Terra novel Saturnine, as well as Horus Rising, Legion, The Unremembered Empire, Know No Fear and Prospero Burns, the last two of which were both New York Times bestsellers. He also scripted Macragge’s Honour, the first Horus Heresy graphic novel, as well as numerous Black Library audio dramas. Many of his short stories have been collected into the volume Lord of the Dark Millennium. He lives and works in Maidstone, Kent.
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