Gaunt led Brostin out through the shop front onto the empty street. The public lighting was poor in this area, though streetlamps glowed beyond the street corner, flooding the boulevard that the station house fronted. They could hear motor traffic and, somewhere, a gong beating.
That was all right. There were several sounds Gaunt didn’t want to hear, and foremost amongst them was the howling of wirewolves. He never wanted to hear that particular noise ever again.
“What’s the plan?” Brostin whispered.
Gaunt was about to reply when a figure came up behind them. He wheeled round, his silenced auto aimed.
It was Eszrah.
“Go back!” Gaunt hissed. “Go back with the others!”
The Sleepwalker frowned, not comprehending. Clearly his bond was with Gaunt specifically, not with the party in general. Gaunt owned Eszrah ap Niht, and therefore Eszrah ap Niht would go wherever Gaunt went.
“Preyathee, soule… uh…” Gaunt began. “Ah, feth it. Come on. Aversye wherall!”
Eszrah nodded. Gaunt didn’t bother trying to say “and be quiet”. The partisan seemed incapable of being anything else.
The trio hurried up the street. As they passed the open gateway of the yard, they peered in and saw the troopers loading the truck by the light of the vehicle’s stablight.
Gaunt waved Brostin and Eszrah on and they dashed across the opening and up towards the main boulevard.
“That one,” said Gaunt, pointing to another derelict shop that faced the station house across the street.
“That one what?” Brostin asked.
“I want you to burn it down, Brostin.”
A huge smile split Brostin’s face. “Sir, that’s the nicest thing anyone’s ever said to me.”
They went over to the shop’s doorway, and Gaunt forced the door. It was a cloth merchant’s—evidently, this was the haberdashers’ quarter of the town.
“All right?” he asked.
“Perfect,” replied Brostin. “Plenty of ignition sources, plenty of wick.”
“Wick?”
“It’s an arsonist thing. Don’t worry. Just be set to go when I say.”
Gaunt grabbed Eszrah by the arm and pulled him back to the doorway. Brostin circled the shop front, touching bales of cloth and dusty bolts of material as if assessing them for value. He settled on a thick, velvet fabric.
“Here we go,” he said.
He nursed the feed trigger of his flamer so that liquid promethium spilled out of the snout and dribbled the fuel across the bale, and the others beside it. Almost daintily, he dabbed spots of fuel on other bundles, and trailed it down the shop’s walls.
Then he backed off to the doorway, leaving a track of liquid fuel across the floor behind him. He pushed his flamer around behind his back, pulled out his tinderbox and crouched down.
“You’re not going to use the flamer?” Gaunt asked from behind him.
“A burst of flamer would take this place up like a furnace. I was assuming you wanted it to look like an accident.”
Gaunt nodded.
“Say hello to Mister Yellow,” Brostin murmured, and struck his match. It fizzled between his fingers. “And get ready to run like hell.”
Brostin flicked his hairy, tattooed arm, not so hard that it would extinguish the match, but hard enough to send it flying. It landed on the prom trail on the shop floor. And took immediately.
Crackling, flames leapt up and raced along the fuel path towards the bales of soaked fabric.
“I’d love to stay and watch,” Brostin muttered. “But we should go. Running will help.”
They ran back down the street towards the mouth of the alley behind the yard. Behind them, there was a sucking sound and then a hard bang that blew the glass out of the shop front. A swirl of fire engulfed the shop’s ground floor, and rippled up into the night air through the broken windows.
Gaunt, Brostin and Eszrah slid into cover behind the wall end. Already they could hear shouting above the crackle of the fierce flames. Figures rushed out of the yard, shouting cries of alarm. Two, three, five. The obese sirdar was the last to emerge.
“Silver,” Gaunt voxed.
Firebells began to ring. Brostin stood at the wall end and watched the conflagration eating into the facade of the old shop.
“Now isn’t that just lovely,” he breathed.
“Will you come the feth on?” Gaunt barked.
Regrouped, the mission team ran through the dark alleys, leaving the furious fire behind them. More fire-bells were ringing now, and the glow lit up the night sky.
“You got it?” Gaunt asked Rawne.
“We got it. But there are three bodies back there that will raise some questions.”
“Understood. Cirk? Where’s this temple?”
“This way!” she called.
They crossed two more side-streets, and then ran down an empty boulevard for twenty metres. Abruptly, Cirk and Varl pulled them into cover. They cowered in the shadows, pulses thumping. Half-seen, a glyf drifted past the head of the road, its obscene light reflecting off the polished flagstones. Curth had to jam her hands across Feygor’s mouth to stop him crying out.
The glyf was gone. They started to move again, footsteps clattering over the hard cobbles.
“Oh, crap!” said Varl.
Five excubitors had suddenly rounded the end of the street. They blinked at the gang of figures before them and then began to raise their las-locks.
“Cover!” Gaunt cried. Everyone split left and right.
Everyone except Eszrah ap Niht. He’d seen these creatures before. He raised his reynbow and planted an iron dart through the forehead of the lead figure. The excubitor flew backwards and fell down. Eszrah reloaded. The iron quarrel made a clinking noise as it rattled backwards down the bow’s barrel, pulled into place by the powerful magnets. He fired again.
A second excubitor tumbled down, its arms flailing. It made a heavy sound as it hit the flagstones, and its las-lock snapped under its weight.
Calmly, the partisan reloaded again. Sklink-ptup.
The remaining excubitors were firing now. Their weapons cracked and sizzling lock-bolts kissed past the tall grey figure. He didn’t even flinch.
Criid and Varl, enjoying the best of the street-side cover, leaned out and let go with their auto-pistols. The stammering, silenced bursts slammed two more excubitors over on their backs.
The last excubitor started to run. Eszrah took a step or two forward, settled his aim and fired.
It was a long shot. The excubitor had all but disappeared around the street corner. The poisoned quarrel smacked into the back of its shaved skull and dropped it on its face with a bone-breaking crack.
“The temple?” Gaunt urged Cirk.
“Down here,” she said.
The temple was empty and silent. It was the saddest thing Gaunt had yet seen on Gereon. Labour gangs from the local Iconoclave had rendered its icons to debris and shattered the statuary. The murals had been defaced with obscenities.
Guns ready, the team prowled in through the shadows. Ragged bodies, long decayed, lay on the marble floor of the inner shrine where they had been killed months before. Women and children, craving sanctuary from the Saint. Gaunt closed his eyes.
That was exactly what they were doing now.
He walked towards the ruined altar and sank to his knees. The face of the Beati was just visible through the daubings and smears the Occupation forces had inscribed.
“Please,” Gaunt whispered to the defaced image. “Please.”
“She’s not listening,” Cirk snapped, and walked past him. “I’m the only one here.” Cirk took hold of a battered golden candelabrum, and swung it so it faced north.
“Now we hide and we wait,” she said.
A temple priest came in just after midnight, to perform his furtive, unconsented worship. When he saw the candelabrum, he made the sign of the aquila and retreated fast.
An hour later, he returned.
“He
llo?” he called. He was hunched and old, and his voice was thin. “Hello? Is anyone here?”
Gaunt rose to his feet and slid out of the shadows.
“Hello,” he said.
TWENTY-SIX
“This is unacceptable,” said Colonel Noth. “Quite simply unacceptable.”
“Well, I’m sure you’re going somewhere with this,” Gaunt replied. “But I wish you’d get there fast.”
They were in the basement of a municipal store in the north-west of Leafering. The local cell, fifty-strong and surprisingly well armed, had brought them out of the temple into hiding. The mission team was all around, relaxing, sleeping or drinking the broth that had been prepared over the basement’s crackling drumfires.
Maxel Noth was a short, well-built man in his late forties. His black hair was long and dank, and tied back in a ponytail.
“You come here with this incredible story. Incredible. And you have the gall to ask me to believe you?”
“You might want to have a word with Major Cirk there,” Gaunt suggested. “She’s cell too.”
“So she says. Of the Ineuron cell. But it’s common knowledge that the Ineuron cell was exposed and annihilated over a week ago. You could be anyone. You could be well-briefed informers.”
“Noth,” Gaunt said wearily. “I need your help. I am here to do the Emperor’s work. I need friends.”
“To do what?” the cell leader asked bluntly. You claim to be Guard. Are you here to liberate my world?”
“Not this again…” Gaunt sighed.
Landerson came over. “Colonel Noth? I think we should square this away. The colonel-commissar and his squad are here on a mission of extreme priority.”
“What sort of mission?” Noth asked.
“I have no idea. I haven’t been told. But I trust him, sir. Ballerat himself ordered me to bring him and his team in.”
“Ballerat, eh? A good man.”
“He’s dead, sir,” Landerson said.
“Is he? Dead?”
“Died getting Gaunt’s people in, so that should tell you something of the importance he placed on them.”
Noth shrugged. “That’s not the point. We’re on the anvil here in Leafering as it is. We can’t be expected to—”
“The Emperor expects, sir,” Gaunt said.
Noth glared at him. “Understand this, sir. We have been engaged in covert fighting these last months. We have used our anonymity to target grain stores, trackway junctions and power plants. Nothing we have done has been… vulgar or visible. Vulgarity and visibility lead to discovery and death. Now, tonight, you have blundered into Leafering, set fires, killed Occupation officers by your own admission. It’s a wonder the wolves are still slumbering. Throne, sir! You’ll reveal us all.”
“Maybe he will,” said Cirk, sitting down beside Gaunt. “Colonel, it’s hard to hear… believe me, I know… but you have to understand that the colonel-commissar is here for a reason that’s much bigger than you or me. Much bigger than this cell. Much bigger than Gereon. By the Emperor’s will, we might all go to our deaths, and it would still be worth it if Gaunt succeeds. Please, take this seriously. This is about the Imperium, and if Gereon burns to make it happen, then so be it.”
Noth frowned. “I’ve been taking things seriously since the archenemy came to my planet. Everything is about life and death. Don’t lecture me on responsibility.” He looked at Gaunt. “What would you need from me?” he asked.
“Some supplies. Rations, field dressings, hard rounds, grenades if you have them. I understand your resources are thin to begin with. After that, transportation. You must have covert ways to move personnel from place to place.”
“Transportation to where?” Noth asked.
“I hope to be able to tell you that shortly,” Gaunt replied.
“Anything else?” asked Noth.
“He’ll probably ask you for a diversion too,” said Cirk snidely. “He’s very fond of them.”
“That’s quite likely,” said Gaunt.
Nearby, Mkoll sat beside one of the drum-fires, carefully sliding the power cells of the team’s lasrifles into the flames. Every team member was low on energy munitions, and though cells were simple enough to recharge, the local power supply was less than reliable. Exposing a cell’s thermal receptor to heat in a fire was a drastic but effective method of recharging. However, it shortened the life of the power packs badly. Mkoll was resigned to that. He had a feeling their life expectancy was down to days now, if not hours.
Mkvenner came over with the last few packs he had collected up from Criid and Varl. He helped Mkoll feed them into the fire.
“That shouldn’t have happened,” Mkoll said.
“What?”
“That nonsense with Rawne. I can’t believe I did that. It wasn’t me there for a moment, you know, Ven? Not me at all.”
“Curth says we should all expect it. We’ve been exposed to this world for long enough, and its blight’s soaked into us now. She says our personalities will change. Our moods will switch. You’ve seen it.”
Mkoll sighed. “I have. I just thought I’d escaped its touch so far.” He looked at his own hands as he dropped the last pack into the fire. Like all of them, his skin was speckled with a rash, and his fingernails had started to mottle. “We’re not coming out of this one, Ven. Our bodies are falling apart and we’re losing our minds.”
“But on the bright side…” said Mkvenner.
Mkoll smiled. That Nalsheen fortitude…
“I don’t think it does destroy us,” Mkvenner said thoughtfully, after a long pause.
“What?” Mkoll asked.
“Chaos. We’re warned so often that the taint of the Ruinous Powers destroys a man like a disease. But that’s not what it feels like, is it?”
“What are you talking about, Ven? I feel sick to my bones.”
“It’s changing us,” Mkvenner said. That’s what it does. That’s why it’s so… dangerous. Look at Rawne.”
“Do I have to?”
“Rawne’s never trusted anyone. Now the taint’s got to him, it’s brought that part of him to the forefront. Magnified it. He’s paranoid now. You can see that. So jumpy. And Doctor Curth. She was always hard-nosed, but she also always kept her outrage at the cost of war shut away, so she could concentrate on saving lives. Chaos is letting all that hidden anger out like a flash flood. Beltayn too. The lad’s always had a cocky streak he works to keep in check. Now he’s answering back and wising off. And you…”
“Me?” replied Mkoll.
“You’re finally saying to Rawne all the things you always wanted to. Chaos doesn’t destroy us, it finds the things that were always there inside us and brings them out. The ugliness, the flaws, the worst parts of us. That’s why mankind should really fear it. It brings out the worst in us, but the worst is already there.”
“You could be right,” said Mkoll.
“I could be,” agreed Mkvenner. “Or that idea might just have been Chaos bringing out the worst in me.”
On the other side of the basement, Beltayn was working on his vox-set. Larkin sat down next to him.
“How’s it going?” he asked.
“Slow. There’s so much stuff to sort through. It’s killing my eyes.” Beltayn was scrolling through the transmission log he’d copied out of the archenemy’s voxcaster. The set’s display screen was small, and he was straining to make out the data. “It’s decrypted, but I’m still having to run everything through the set’s translator system, and you know how hopeless that is. Only a rudimentary grasp of the enemy language forms. Loads of words are coming up as not found!
“How much did you get?” Larkin asked.
“Just the last week’s worth, but that alone is thousands of transcripts. I’m going through the record of the enemy’s primary data-broadcasts first. That seemed the most likely place to start.”
“Want a hand?” Larkin asked.
Beltayn glanced at him.
“Sharpest eyes in the Ghosts
, me,” Larkin grinned. “Go get yourself some of that vile broth and let me have a go.”
Gaunt had been asleep for about three hours. The sleep had been dreamless at first, then the pictures had begun to come. He saw ice and snow, which may have been Hagia, the Shrineworld. A silver wolf ran across the snow fields, leaving no trace behind it. It reached a stand of lonely black timbers and looked back. The wolf had Rawne’s eyes.
From somewhere, the screaming started up. Distant, but clear. A man’s voice, screaming and screaming in such pitiful pain. He knew that voice. Who was it?
The wolf had vanished. For reasons of dream-logic, a door opened in the middle of the trees and a figure stepped out. It was the Beati, but it was also Cirk. The stigma on her cheek was an aquila.
Her mouth moved as she spoke, but the sounds were oddly out of synch with her lips.
She said, “Under the skin. What matters is on the inside.”
Then she backed away through the door again, like a pict-feed running in reverse, and the door closed.
That was when the screaming began to get louder, until there was no snow, no ice, no door, no trees, no dream at all. Just screaming.
Then Beltayn woke him up, which suited Gaunt just fine.
He yawned and stretched. Larkin was beside Beltayn.
“Well?”
“I think we’ve got it,” Beltayn said. “Larkin spotted it.”
“And?”
“It was on the primary command channel. Several transmissions yesterday and the day before. Activity at the Lectica Bastion. As best as I can make out, a lot of senior ordinals are gathering there. The transmissions use code-names for VIPs. Some sort of high level security meeting.”
“Right,” said Gaunt. “But the bastion is one of the chief fortresses on Gereon. A meeting of senior ordinals would not be an unusual event.”
Beltayn nodded. “One of the codenames is ‘eresht’. That means parcel or package. Whoever is codenamed ‘eresht’ seems to be there at the bastion already. The others are coming to see him. They’ve been summoned to see him. Sir, in some of the early intel gathered prior to the mission, ‘eresht’ was used as a codeword for our target.”