[Gaunt's Ghosts 10] - The Armour of Contempt

  “Get me up!” he said to Leyr.

  Leyr cupped his hands and boosted Caffran up a wall. He scrambled onto the roof of an outbuilding, ran along it and leapt onto an adjacent roof. He saw a figure darting along the crookback alleys to his left.

  Caffran turned and shouted down to Neskon, “Fire up the left-hand turn!”

  Neskon hurried forwards, nursed his coughing flamer for a moment, and then sent a spear of fire down the left-hand path of the alley junction. The boiling flames filled five metres of alleyway for several seconds. There was a stifled cry. Driven back by the surging flames, the excubitor reappeared, running back the way he’d come.

  Standing on the flat roof, legs braced firmly, Caffran fired from the chest. Two shots and the vile figure dropped.

  “Hostile is down,” Caffran said. “Pull this place apart and make sure he was alone.”

  Caffran sat down on a kerbstone and pulled off his left boot. The dust and grit got into everything. He ached. His limbs were sore. The sky over the town was turning to evening and looked like marble.

  Nearby, the rest of his section was resting. Leclan was checking the dressing on the grazing wound Kalen had taken from the excubitor.

  Caffran leaned back against a wall and closed his eyes. He scooped out the silver aquila he wore on a chain around his neck and said a silent prayer. Two prayers. One for each of them, wherever they were.

  “Caff?”

  He opened his eyes and looked up. It was Kolea.

  “Major?” he said, rising.

  “Bask said I’d find you here. Busy afternoon?”

  “Yeah. The work of the Emperor never ends.”

  “Praise be to that.”

  “Can I help you?”

  Kolea nodded. He fished something out of his pocket. It was a Tanith cap badge. “I’ll make this simple. I was going to give this to the lad when he finished RIP, and I never got the chance. My mistake. I’d like him to have it.”

  Caffran nodded. “That’d be good.”

  Kolea held it out. “Please, could you give it to him? When you see him?”

  “You can do that,” Caffran said.

  “I just got this feeling, Caff. Like I’m tempting fate by hoping on this. His fate and mine. All the while I’m hoping I can give him this, I’m daring fate to stop it happening. So here’s an end to it. I don’t have to think about it any more. If you don’t mind?”

  Caffran smiled and took the cap badge. “I don’t mind,” he said.

  “Thanks.” Kolea managed a smile too. Thanks. That’s a relief. Feels like it… improves our chances a bit.”

  “Major?”

  At Baskevyl’s call, Rawne left the map tent and hurried over to the entrenchment that the Ghosts had built across the ruins of Cantible’s main gate.

  “What is it?”

  Baskevyl pointed. “They’re here,” he said.

  Out across the moors, three black landers were speeding in towards the town, riding low, hugging the rolling terrain in formation.

  As they came closer, Rawne could see the insignia on the hull of each one.

  The stylised “I” of the Inquisition.

  VIII

  The air-mill smelled of old dust and starch. The slowly turning vanes made a low creaking that came and went with a dying fall. The shadow of the vanes passed over them at each sweep, like clouds across the sun.

  Gaunt held off for a second. Mktass and Fiko appeared from around the side of the mill and Fiko nodded. Burone and Posetine held cover from across the dry yard in front of the mill.

  Gaunt went inside. Mkoll followed, and then Derin and Nirriam. The floor was well-laid stone, but the structure was wood. The turning gears of the mill system made a painful, heavy rhythm through the floor above, like solid furniture being moved. Violet mould had infested the plasterwork and bleached some of the exposed beams. The place had been stripped, and nothing had been left except for some pieces of sacking and a litter of rope scraps. Mkoll crossed to the turning post of the mill.

  “Deliberate,” he said. The mill’s vanes weren’t just rotating because the wind had picked up. Mkoll pointed to a heavy iron handle that had been thrown to release the bearings. Gaunt nodded, and walked slowly around, looking upwards. Through slots and grooves in the plank flooring, he glimpsed the cob-webbed upper spaces of the mill: shadows and shafts of thin sunlight.

  “Check upstairs,” he told Mkoll and Nirriam. He turned to Derin. “Bring Cirk in.”

  “Sir,” said Derin, and ducked out.

  “Nothing upstairs,” Mkoll voxed. “Unless you’re interested in seeing more dust.”

  “Sweep the nearby buildings,” Gaunt voxed back. “Whoever set this going can’t be long gone. They may be watching us.”

  “They’re gone,” said Cirk, stepping in through the door. Faragut came in behind her.

  “They’re gone?” Gaunt asked.

  “They wouldn’t stay around to be followed or discovered. Far too cautious for that.”

  “But this is a sign? A… signal?”

  Cirk started looking around. What clues or evidence she was searching for was beyond Gaunt. She had far more experience than he did of the esoteric practices of the Gereon resistance.

  “It’s got to look accidental so the enemy won’t notice it, but it will also be very precise. There—”

  She pointed to a part of the floor where several handfuls of rope off-cuts lay in the dust.

  “I don’t see,” said Gaunt.

  “Compare,” she said, raising her pointing finger and aiming it at a part of the mould-covered wall. Random marks had been scratched in the mould. Gaunt would never have noticed it, but now she showed him, he saw that the pattern of scratches matched exactly the pattern of the scattered rope strands.

  “They repeat the pattern so we know it’s not random,” she said. She crouched down beside the rope strands and began to examine them, turning her head to one side, and then the other. Mkoll and Nirriam returned from the floor above.

  “It’s a map,” she said at last.

  “Of what?” Faragut asked.

  “This area, I would imagine, but it’s encrypted.”

  “Encrypted?” laughed Faragut. “It’s just bits of string…”

  “It’s encrypted. We’re not meant to use all of it. Some of the rope used has a blueish fleck in the weave. The rest has red. Please look around. Can you find more examples of either?”

  “Here,” said Mkoll immediately. He indicated the heavy iron handle. There was a short tuft of rope tied around the metal spoke. It had a red fleck to it.

  Cirk smiled. She reached down and quickly picked up all the blue-flecked strands and threw them to one side.

  “There. The red is all that matters. There’s our map.”

  “I still don’t see…” Faragut began. Gaunt shushed him and took out his pocket book. He quickly copied the lines and shapes down.

  “The aspect will be accurate, won’t it?” he asked Cirk as he drew.

  “I would think so. This is aligned the way it is in the real world.”

  Gaunt finished drawing and put his stylus away. He hurried up the creaking wooden steps onto the boarded first floor, and then up a quivering ladder into the second, a dusty loft in the narrower upper part of the structure. Ducking under part of the noisy, rotating vane assembly, he found another ladder and clambered up. Cirk, Mkoll and Faragut were following him.

  The third storey was a very cramped space, and there was a real danger of being snagged by the turning wheels, and dragged into the crushing embrace of the mill’s machinery. Gaunt poked around cautiously until he located some metal rungs bolted to the wall. The rungs led up to a small trapdoor in the roof.

  He climbed out onto the roof. It was a precarious, small space, a rough platform of pitch-treated wood with no guard rail. The air-mill seemed very much taller outside than in. Gaunt had a good head for heights, but he steadied himself. The sloping sides of the mill dropped away, and below them, the roofs of t
he hamlet, the sides of the hill and the spread of the countryside beyond. He had a commanding view of the area, and that was deliberate. This vantage point was why the resistance had led him to the mill and left the map there.

  Cirk and Mkoll clambered out beside him. Both showed no alarm at the height, and moved about casually. The wind was quite considerable now, and buffeted at all three of them. Every few seconds, another of the mill’s vanes would swish past like a scything blade, which Gaunt found disconcerting. He took his hurried sketch out of his pocket and tried to align himself.

  “About… so?” he asked, holding the map out and orienting his body. Mkoll nodded, and took out his scope. He began to play it over the distances.

  The sky was blotchy and very threatening. The thunder that had been grumbling ever closer was now a regular rumble, and the clouds along the western skyline had an underbelly full of hazy, ugly light.

  Cirk stood by Gaunt’s shoulder, comparing the map lines with the landscape. “That’s the line of the hill, and that’s the large escarpment,” she said, her pointing finger moving between map and distance. “That’s the stand of trees to the right, and that’s got to be the line of the watercourse.”

  Mkoll agreed. He didn’t seem to need to look at Gaunt’s sketch. The lines of the map were already imprinted on his mind. “I think the intention is to get us to head north-east. About three kilometres takes us to the edge of that woodland. Whatever is marked by that cross would seem to be about another kilometre further on.”

  “Would they expect us to make that by nightfall?” Gaunt asked.

  Cirk shook her head. “I doubt it. The original message told us to be here by tonight.”

  “But this fits with our expectations,” Gaunt mused. Mkoll knelt down and slid his copy of the mission chart from his thigh pocket. He unfolded it enough to study the section covering their location. The Departmento Tacticae had produced their charts using orbital scans, supplemented by detailed governance surveys of Gereon held on file by the Administratum.

  “Yeah, it does. Untill,” he said, looking up at Gaunt. “Eszrah will be pleased.”

  “I’m sure he will,” Gaunt replied. During his time on Gereon, and thanks to his efforts, the partisans of the Untill had linked with the struggling underground resistance, and the fathomless wastes of the Untill itself had been a vital hiding place. Even the Archenemy found it difficult to penetrate those untillable swamps and marshes. “So we’re really that close?” he asked Mkoll.

  “Well, the main tracts of the Untill are two, three hundred kilometres further east, but the limits of it extend out this far. That woodland we can see is the borderland. A day’s march beyond it, you get into Sleepwalker territory.”

  Mkoll got up and put the chart away. “What do you think? Stay here overnight, or move—”

  He cut off. Gaunt had raised his hand for quiet, and Mkoll knew that sign. Gaunt was staring west, down across the hamlet of Cayfer, down the hillside, onto the rippling pink moorland.

  “We’re about to have a problem,” he said.

  “What?” Cirk asked.

  Down below, half a kilometre from the hamlet at the base of the hill, the beast was back.

  IX

  Gaunt was about to trigger his link when the vox net came alive. Three of the troopers left on look out—Larkin, Brostin and Spakus—had spotted the tank and called it in.

  “Hold your positions,” Gaunt sent back. “Keep your eyes on it. Criid, get Gonry front and centre, and for feth’s sake, keep him covered and safe.”

  “Understood.”

  Gaunt, Mkoll and Cirk scurried back down the ladders into the mill.

  With Gonry running, head down, behind her, Criid crossed the inner yards of the hamlet and moved down through the derelict outbuildings. A sagging length of old wall fenced the sloping backfield from the rest of the hillside. Larkin was snuggled up there, long-las resting on the lip of the wall. He was calmly watching the tank through his scope. Brostin was nearby, smoking a lho-stick as if he was waiting for his discharge papers. His flamer and its tanks lay on the grass next to him.

  Brostin was a phlegmatic type. He knew when his area of expertise wasn’t going to be called on. A flamer was no weapon to use against armour. Even the “airburst special”, a little party trick he and Larkin had improvised during their previous stay on Gereon, had no application here.

  Criid dropped in beside Larkin. Gonry, a scrawny little Belladon, fell over beside her. “Load that tube,” Criid told him. “I’ll stand by with the spares for cut and come again.” The satchel Gonry was carrying contained five rockets. That was their lot. He nodded to Criid and set to work setting the launcher and slipping the first rocket into place. Gonry was a sweet sort, and she knew he had a little bit of a crush on her. That helped. He did everything she told him as quickly as he could.

  “Larks?”

  “Just taking the evening air,” he replied.

  “What?”

  “Not me, lady. The tank,” Larkin snorted. He passed her the scope. “Take a look.”

  She swung up and panned the scope, being careful not to knock it against the wall top. This was Larkin’s scope, after all. The master sniper had trusted her with a lend of his precious instrument.

  She looked down the hill slope, past two runs of wall and several dead trees, skeletal-white in the changing light. The tank was down in the vale bottom, close to the place where it had played cat and mouse with Gaunt and the others earlier in the day. It was entirely visible to them, but it had decided to go hull-down in the grass, gun lowered, headlamps off. This attitude seemed insouciant to her. Something that big couldn’t hide in open landscape, but it seemed to be pretending to do just that, as if all that really mattered was if the wind changed and its prey caught its scent and scattered.

  She could hear its idling engine throbbing. No… panting.

  “Two fifty metres,” she said, slipping back into cover and giving Larkin back his scope.

  “Two sixty-two, with crosswind making the effective range three plus,” Larkin replied.

  “Too far for a rocket either way,” Gonry said. “I wouldn’t waste anything over a hundred.”

  He was right, but cautious. Criid bridled. “Caff would smack it at three,” she said. She was boasting, but not much. Caffran was the best rocket lobber in the regiment.

  “Caffs not here,” Gonry said. He said it with a smile that made Criid understand that he was happy about that fact.

  “More’s the fething pity,” she said, letting him know the score. She touched her link. “Boss? We need to buy a little range to kill that gakker. Permission to sting it?”

  “Refused,” Gaunt came back. “Keep holding.”

  “But sir—”

  “Tona, that big thing on its topside is a high-calibre cannon. If it decides to start firing, it has the range and force to wipe us out. Don’t go taunting it.”

  “Understood.”

  There was a repeated clicking sound. Larkin, Criid and Gonry looked around.

  Brostin was playing with his igniter. “Feth,” he said blithely, shaking it. “Anyone got a light?”

  Gaunt, Cirk and Mkoll emerged from the mill.

  “Shall I issue orders to retreat?” Faragut asked.

  “Retreat?”

  “We are overcome by armour,” Faragut said. “We should withdraw and regroup. For the good of the mission.”

  “Throne, you’re scared,” Gaunt said, turning from his path to look at the young commissar. He stepped up until they were face to face.

  “I’m not. How dare y—”

  “Before with Criid, and now… it makes sense. Faragut, how much action have you actually seen?”

  “I served on Ancreon Sextus and—”

  “Yes, but how much?”

  “Sir, I—”

  “How much?” Gaunt snarled. “Nothing? You haven’t seen any real combat, have you? Not like this. Not in the thick of it?”

  Faragut stared at Gaunt, so angry h
e was trembling slightly. “How dare you question my courage, Gaunt.”

  Gaunt took a step back. “Holy Terra, I’m not. That’s not what I’m doing. I’m questioning your humanity, Faragut. If this is new to you, tell me! I need to know. It’s all right to be scared, but I need to know!”

  Hadrian Faragut blinked. “I… I’ve not yet… I mean…”

  Gaunt took hold of Faragut’s upper arm tightly and stared into his eyes. “Faragut. Get down and get ready. Believe in yourself, and, for the sake of us all, believe in me. I’ll keep you alive. Do you believe me?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Gaunt slapped him on the upper arm and turned away, running. “Larks?” he voxed. “What’s it doing?”

  The beast had been still for a good ten minutes. Dug down in the shuffling grass, it had grumbled its engines and kicked up the occasional spurt of noisy exhaust, as if clearing its throat.

  Thunder stomped in the distance, and then a spear of lightning stabbed at a nearby hilltop for one brilliant second.

  With an grinding whir, the main gun came up, and then the turret traversed, the raised gun chasing the source of the sudden sound. The turret almost turned back on itself before returning to face front.

  The engine revved. Once, twice, three times.

  “Feth on a stick,” Larkin whispered.

  The yellow headlamps flicked on like eyes opening wide. The beast engaged drive and thundered forwards. It came out of its scrape like a hunting dog, and began to charge up the slope. Black smoke squirted out of its exhaust pipes as it made the surge.

  “Here it comes,” Criid said to Gonry. “You’re about to get your range.”

  The beast came up the hillside, driving a wake through the long, pink grass. It reached a wall, and the wall went over under its clattering treads.

  “I would like to be somewhere else,” Brostin remarked, lighting another smoke.

  “Relax,” Criid said. “Gonry’s got the bastard. Haven’t you, Gon?”

  Gonry hefted the tube up onto his shoulder and grinned at Criid.

  The beast came on. The second stone wall collapsed beneath it, and a tree folded over as it was sideswiped by the machine’s track guard.