A silo door splintered open. Two armoured troopers thrust into the gloom, weapons raised. They crunched forward. Just heaps of mouldering grain. One looked up. Rafters, crossbeams. Shadows and cobwebs. The place was empty. They turned to leave.
Bonin and Feygor, knives drawn, rose up out of the spoiled crop heaps behind them, grain streaming off them in hissing rivulets, and seized them by the throats.
The latch on the storage outhouse parted at a kick. The first trooper in the gloom lit a lamp pack and played it around as his companion covered him with his assault weapon. They advanced into the main shed, which was stacked with old wooden crates. Piles of old hemp sacking covered the floor. The second two troopers went left, into a lean-to area where a rusted threshing machine sat up on blocks. They heard a thump from the main shed and backed up to check it.
The store shed was now empty. There was no sign whatsoever of the duo that had split that way. The troopers edged forward. A shadow seemed to flicker across one of the yellow, dirt-crusted window slits, and they turned rapidly to face it.
But Mkvenner was behind them.
He grabbed one by the edges of his tightly-strapped helmet and wrenched hard, snapping the neck in one twist. The corpse collapsed into the sacking Mkvenner had spread on the floor, its impact muffled. Before it had even landed, Mkvenner had turned, bent low at the waist, and driven the heel of his right foot into the throat of the other hostile. The trooper staggered backwards, unable to breathe, unable to even cry out. He dropped onto his knees, head bowed over, and Mkvenner drove the tip of his fingers down into the man’s neck, finishing him off with a click like bone dice knocking together. The man collapsed forward onto his face, and Mkvenner dragged the bodies behind the crate stacks where the first two already lay.
The end silo also seemed empty. The two troopers sent in to check it approached the pungent, mildewed grain, searching for somewhere anything bigger than a rat could hide.
The cable shivered down out of the roof space and the noose on the end hooked neatly around the neck of one of them. Before he could exclaim his surprise, it had pulled ferociously tight and he was leaving the ground, feet kicking, hands to his throat.
Criid let gravity do the rest. As she jumped down off the rafter, she dragged the cable after her, and the trooper rose like a counterweight as the cable slid tight over the crossbeam, friction sawing it into the wood. The other trooper turned, astonished, as his companion shot up vertically into the roof, and she pendulumed into him, kicking him backwards onto the grain. Criid let go of the cable. The slicing noose had already finished the first man. Twitching, his body fell hard from the loosed cable.
Criid landed on the other one. She pinned his shoulders and shoved his face down into the polluted grain, her hand clamped around the back of his helmet. After a brief struggle, he went limp.
A trick? Her warknife made sure it wasn’t.
The patrol’s sirdar suddenly realised something wasn’t right. There were no signals of contact, no shots, but his men weren’t coming back out of the silos and the sheds.
With a violent gesture, he moved the remainder of his unit in across the yard. Those positioned to cover the front now circled in too, down the side of the end silo.
The trooper next to the sirdar commander fell over on his back. Furious, the sirdar turned to reprimand him, then saw the small, bloody hole in the man’s glare visor.
On the silo roof, sheltered by a vent hood, Larkin braced his aim and fired again. Using the silenced autopistol was no fun, but at least it was a challenge. It wasn’t just a matter of hitting the targets. They were armoured and would easily shrug off a small cal round, especially one underpowered by a silencer. The art was to aim really well and hit them where they were soft. Visor. Throat. The armpit gap between chest plating and shoulder guard. Larkin fired off three more shots, and dropped two more of the hostiles in the caked mud of the yard.
Coming down the side of the silos from the road, one of the troopers turned at the sound of a heavy impact behind him. He saw the man at his heels had been felled by a devastating blow to the head that had cracked his helmet. Gleeful, Brostin swung the old threshing flail he’d found in the shed and smashed the second man into the clapboard siding of the silo. Wood seams popped and burst. Rawne rose up out of the undergrowth and cut down the last two before they could take a pop at Brostin. His silenced gun spat.
Then he and Brostin hurried down to the end of the path and added their quiet firepower to Larkin’s. The final few troopers crumpled in the yard.
The sirdar had started running, along with his last surviving man. The silent sniper on the roof shot the man through the neck just short of the outbuildings, but the sirdar made it into cover, struggling with his helmet vox, trying to get a clear channel. He had to warn someone. He had to get a call out to the other units and—
Nothing. The vox was dead. Like it was being jammed. How was that even possible?
On the straw-littered floor of the shed in front of him, the sirdar saw an Imperial field-vox set, infantry issue. It was powered up and active, the dials set to a white noise broadcast that would wipe vox contact, at least anything in the locality of the farm.
The sirdar commander took a step towards it.
The silencer of an autopistol pressed into the side of his head.
“Something awry, sir?” Beltayn asked, and pulled the trigger.
NINE
“One,” Gaunt said softly. They’d been lying low for over fifteen minutes, and this was the third time he’d tried the link. Now at least there was a background fizzle on the channel that suggested the link was finally live again. The sudden, jammed deadness had made his heart race.
“One,” he repeated.
“Silver.”
They moved off quickly, along the drainage ditch on the field side of the road, with Mkoll at the front. A little way down, they sighted the quad-track carrier parked on a dusty verge under the trees.
Mkoll shot a look at Gaunt.
“Occupation troopers,” whispered Cirk.
They pushed on and cautiously crossed the dry road-pan to the silos of the ruined agri-plex. The place lay still and silent in the hot afternoon. Insects buzzed. The hazed, polluted sky had broiled to a toxic ochre laced with sickly clouds.
Mkoll suddenly brought his weapon up. Bonin appeared from behind a low fence. He smiled. “Good to see you,” he called.
“They jogged up to join him. Bonin clapped his hand against Mkoll’s briefly extended palm in a simple acknowledgement, then led them down the track to the rear of the silos.
Rawne and the others were dragging the enemy corpses into the yard and heaping them up. Feygor and Brostin were busy pilfering pockets and packs for anything useful. Or valuable. Most things they tossed aside: ugly charms, unholy texts printed into tiny chapbooks, inedible or inexplicable rations. Even gold coins lost their lustre to seasoned looters like Feygor when they came stamped with a mark of the Ruinous Powers.
“Been busy, major?” Gaunt asked.
Rawne looked up and shrugged. “They came looking, so we showed them some Tanith hospitality.”
“Any survivors?” Mkoll asked.
Rawne gave the scout sergeant a withering look. “Mkvenner’s sweeping the area to double-check, but I think we were pretty thorough.”
“And very discreet,” Feygor added.
Cirk looked at the crumpled bodies and raised one eyebrow. “That’s… a whole unit,” she said.
Rawne shrugged. “They didn’t get off a single shot. And we didn’t make a sound.” He turned to Gaunt. “Who’s this?” he asked.
“The contact we were after,” said Gaunt. “Major Rawne, Major Cirk.”
They nodded to each other.
“The others are with her. Acreson and Plower. That’s right, isn’t it?”
Cirk nodded again. The two cell members who had accompanied her were greeting Purchason and Lefivre. The underground was a close-bonded group.
“As soon
as they’re listed overdue, the enemy will come looking,” Cirk said, gesturing to the dead.
“We’ll be long gone,” Gaunt assured her. “Rawne. Assemble the team and make ready to move out. Major Cirk’s here to direct us to our next point of contact.”
“Good. I’m tired of waiting,” Rawne said.
“Anywhere we can dump these bodies out of sight?” Gaunt asked.
“The silos?” Bonin suggested.
“First place they’ll look,” Cirk said.
“There’s a silage pit down that way,” Varl said, walking over and wiping his dagger on a handful of straw.
“Let’s do that,” Gaunt agreed. Brostin, Varl, Feygor and Bonin began hefting the corpses away down the track.
“What about the transport?” Landerson asked. That’s not so easy to hide.”
“We could use a transport,” Mkoll said quietly. Gaunt looked at him.
“It’s big enough,” Mkoll added. “And they’re less likely to stop a military vehicle.”
Gaunt paused thoughtfully and glanced sidelong at Cirk. She shrugged. “It’s a risk, but then so’s everything. It would certainly shave some time off our journey. Edrian Province is a good sixty kilometres away. I was anticipating a couple of days to reach it on foot.”
“We’ll take the transport,” Gaunt decided. “At least for now. We can ditch it if needs be. Varl and Feygor both have some experience handling heavy rides.” He turned and called out down the track towards the men sliding bodies into the pit. Varl! Save two sets of armour. Helmet and shoulder guards at least!”
“Sir!” Varl called back. “Can we wash them first?”
“Do what you have to.”
Gaunt walked across the yard and joined Curth. She was seated on the cross-spar of an abandoned mould-board plough, checking her narthecium. “Good to have you back,” she said. There was real feeling in her voice.
“Any trouble?” he asked.
“Apart from the obvious?” she said, with a nod to the dead.
“I mean the sort of thing a military surgeon shares with her mission commander.”
“Ague’s taking a hold. Beltayn and Criid are both complaining of head colds, like pollen fever. Feygor’s running a temperature, though he won’t admit it, and he seems to be developing an infection in the flesh around his augmetic voicebox. I’ve given him another shot, and I’m keeping an eye on it. Larkin says he’s fine, but he’s sleeping badly. Nightmares. I heard him. He was talking to Bragg in his sleep. Talking to the dead. Can’t be a good sign.”
“With Larks, that’s borderline normal.”
She smiled at his cruelty. “Brostin’s just edgy. Bad-tempered.”
“Again, borderline normal. That’s just withdrawal. Brostin would be chain-smoking lho-sticks under usual circumstances.”
“Ah,” she said. A pause. “I know the feeling.”
“Anything else?”
“Everyone’s tired. More than ordinary fatigue. And everyone’s got this.” She pulled back her cuff. Her pale forearm was dotted with a prickle pattern like angry heat rash. “Allergic reaction. I was wondering if it was the spores in those damn silos.”
Gaunt shook his head. He yanked down his own collar and showed her a comparable rash along the base of his neck and collarbone. “We’ve all got it. It’s an allergic reaction, all right. To this world, lb the taint here. Major Cirk says it afflicted everyone on Gereon in the first few weeks after the invasion. When it fades… that’s when I’ll worry. Because that’s when we’re acclimatised.”
“When we’ve become tainted?” she asked.
He shrugged.
“Major Cirk,” Curth said, squinting across the yard at the resistance officer, who was standing in conference with her men and Landerson. “She’s… a good looking woman, don’t you think?”
“Can’t say I gave it any thought,” Gaunt replied.
“I’d better check you over,” Curth said, getting up. “It would appear the taint of Gereon is suppressing your hormones.”
He chuckled. “Check yourself too, Ana. Gereon may have a contagious strain of jealousy.”
She smacked him on the arm. “In your dreams, colonel-commissar,” she smirked, and walked away.
Gaunt watched her go. He thought about his dreams. For so long now, they had been haunted by the beati, by Saint Sabbat. It felt as if she’d been in his mind forever, from the aching alpine vistas of Hagia to that small, neglected chapel in the woods on Aexe Cardinal. Guiding him, leading him, confusing him. Sometimes he dreamed of Sanian, and sometimes poor Vamberfeld appeared, bleeding from the nine holy wounds he had taken at the Shrinehold as the Saint’s proxy.
Gaunt’s life and his destiny was tied to the Saint now, he knew that. It had been ordained by some higher power, and he hoped with all his soul that power sat upon a golden throne.
Herodor, bloody Herodor, just a year gone by now, had been a watershed. Gaunt had presumed that a face to face encounter with the Saint Incarnate might have exorcised his dreams. But, if anything, the dreams had grown worse in the time since then. His sleep was visited by the Saint in her glory, so beautiful it made him weep and awake with tears streaking his face. Figures attended her, half-seen in the mists of his swirling visions, people he missed dearly. Old Slaydo sometimes, hunched and pale. Bragg, dear Try Again Bragg, looking around himself in wonder at the enfolding darkness. Sometimes, very occasionally, Colm Corbec, laughing and calling to Gaunt to join him. Behind Corbec, every time he came, a proud honour guard of ghosts waited, rifles shouldered… Baffels, Adare, Lerod, Blane, Doyl, Cocoer, Cluggan, Gutes, Muril…
Gaunt shook the memory away. Despite the stifling heat in the silo yard, he felt cold sweat leak down his spine. Ghosts. Ghosts he had made, and then made ghosts.
Most chilling of all, he remembered, was the screaming. The dream where there was only darkness and a man’s voice screaming piteously through it. Who was that? Who was that? He seemed to recognise the voice, but…
It seemed so helpless and so far away.
And not once, not once since Herodor, had he dreamed of the one face he missed more than any other, more even than Colm. Brin Milo had never featured in any of his dreams.
There was one final fact that nagged at his mind. From the moment he had set foot on Gereon, he had not dreamed at all. Months of dreams and faces and hauntings, and now not one, as if the watchful spirits could no longer reach him on this poisoned planet.
That was why he had responded so strongly to Cirk. To Sabbatine Cirk.
It had been the first clue he’d had since his arrival that the Saint had not forgotten him.
“Do we really have to go through this again today?” the pheguth sighed.
“We do,” said Desolane, walking him down the stone hallway. “You do, pheguth.”
“I’m tired,” the pheguth said.
“I know,” Desolane replied. There was something close to compassion in the life-ward’s musical voice. “But demands are being made. Plenipotentiary Isidor is under pressure from host-command. It is said that the Anarch himself, whose word we serve and whose word drowns out all others, is frustrated at the lack of progress. As a resource, you promise much, pheguth, but you have yet to deliver. Great Sek may yet regard you as a waste of energy and have you executed if you don’t yield up your secrets.”
The pheguth considered this, a slight smile creasing his face. His conversation with Mabbon Etogaur had revealed much about Magister Sek’s plans. Too much, perhaps. It was clear to the pheguth now that Magister Anakwanar Sek, lord of hosts, Anarch, chosen warlord of the Archon Urlock Gaur himself, had ideas above his station. Sek wanted power. Control. Command. And the bastard considered the traitor general a key instrument in obtaining that power.
The pheguth remembered some of the briefings he had sat through as a high commander of the Imperial Guard. At Balhaut, the Crusade had destroyed Nadzybar, who had been the Archon of the Chaos host. Broken in retreat, the archenemy forces had been riven by a success
ion struggle as Chaos factions warred to elect a new Archon. Many of the notorious magister-warlords had been in contention—Nokad the Blighted, Sholen Skara, Qux of the Eyeless, Heritor Asphodel, Enok Innokenti. Rumour had it that more of the archenemy numbers were killed in that internecine war of succession than had been lost to the Crusade armada at that time.
Of all the contenders, Nokad had the charisma, Asphodel the temperament, and Qux the sheer weight of loyal servants. But Sek, Anakwanar Sek (whose word we serve, the pheguth reminded himself, and whose word drowns out all others) was the obvious choice. No other magister was quite so brilliant a battlefield technician. Sek’s command of tactics and leadership was peerless, better than Slaydo, better than Macaroth himself.
Damn the Warmaster’s life and name.
But Gaur, an obscure warlord from the fringes of the Sabbat Worlds, had become Archon. Why? Because he possessed the one thing that all the other magisters lacked. Even the great and blasphemous Sek.
What Urlock Gaur brought to the table was a refined, trained and disciplined military force. All the other magisters commanded vast legions of zealot cultists and insane worshippers. Hideous forces, but utterly without focus, and vulnerable to the rigid drive of the Imperial Guard.
Urlock Gaur’s host was known as the Blood Pact. They were sworn to him, utterly loyal, their bodies ritually scarred by the serrated edges of Gaur’s own armour. They had discipline, armour, tactical ability and great combat skill. They were, in fact, an army, not a host.
The pheguth had never encountered the Blood Pact in action, but he knew of them from intelligence reports. They were mankind’s worst fear, a force of the Ruinous Powers guided and orchestrated on military models. They could meet with and defeat the Imperial Guard on its own terms, out-fighting them.
For the simple reason that the Blood Pact was modelled directly on the structure of the Imperial Guard.
They borrowed their weapons and armour, they stole their uniforms, they seduced Guardsmen into their ranks and made them traitors, stealing their skills. They were a force the Imperium must reckon with, and they had secured Gaur the rank of Archon.