“Feth,” muttered Criid.
“Who is that?” asked Lovely.
“Just my—” Criid began. “My supervising officer, come to fetch me. Tomorrow, all right?”
“Same time, same pain, Holy!” Fourbox laughed out as Criid hurried away.
“Holy?” the woman asked as Criid joined her.
“I won a nickname.”
“Is that a bruise?” she asked, reaching out to touch Criid’s face.
“Don’t!” Criid hissed, slapping her hand away.
“Who did that to you?”
“I fell. During an exercise.”
“You’re limping.”
“Leave it alone. What are you doing here?”
“I came to see how you’d got on. First day and everything.”
“Well, I wish you hadn’t.” Criid pushed past her and limped on down the service way.
“Dalin!” she growled.
Nearly eighteen years old, tall and strong, Dalin Criid was afraid of nothing in the cosmos apart from the sound of her voice. He halted.
“Someone beat you?” she asked.
“The driller was making a point. That there are no favourites in RIP.”
“Bastard. I should kill him,” Tona Criid said. “Want me to kill him?”
“No,” he replied, “but if you come here to find me again, ma, I want you to be sure and kill me.”
III
Food cycle. The swelter decks were heaving. Grease smoke and steam wallowed out of the mess wells, and rolled along the roof above the milling crowd. The grilles of the vent ducts were matted with ropes of solidified fat. There was a smell of boiled greens, mashed squash and pith oil. Hand bells were ringing. Various vendors called out their bills of fare to the passing tide.
For an issue scrip, a trooper could eat basic heated rations in the Munitorum halls, but the promise of something different drew hundreds of them to the swelter decks at the end of every day cycle. That, and the fact you could get drink here, and indulge other vices, if you knew who to ask.
The swelter decks existed because of the “followers on the strength”. Every Guard regiment trailed after it an entourage of attendant personnel: wives, children, girlfriends, whores, faith healers, preachers, beggars, tinkers, hucksters, tooth-pullers, contrabandeers, scribes, loan-sharks and a whole panoply of shadowy souls who lived, like parasites, like fleas, on the coat-tails of the military. Hark had been told that some regiments doubled in size when you factored in the hangers-on.
The swelter decks were where they lived and ate, and dealt and traded. He’d once heard a junior commissar suggest the camp followers be purged from the fleet. “It would reduce Munitorum costs by nearly fifty per cent,” the junior had announced brightly.
“Yes,” Hark had smiled, “and the following day, every Guardsman in the quadrant would desert.”
As they wandered down through the press of the main gangway, Viktor Hark noted with some satisfaction that his companion showed no signs of voicing any similarly naive comments. Ludd’s eyes were wide, for this was Junior Commissar Nahum Ludd’s first experience of a carrier’s fringe areas. But he was bright and sharp, and Hark could see why his superior had arranged Ludd’s formal transfer to the re-formed First-and-Only.
They ducked under a gibbet rack of swinging, salted waterfowls, and then sidestepped to avoid the steam outflow from a rack of broiling vats. Eager voices were raised as dirty hands held out currency to be exchanged for fried meat on wooden sticks and parcels of spiced mince wrapped in cabbage leaves.
“Hungry?” Hark asked.
“I’ve eaten, sir,” replied Ludd, raising his voice over the din.
“Munitorum basics?” Hark wondered.
“I ate at the early shift. It comes out of our pay, after all.”
“What was it tonight?”
“Ah, some kind of pickled fish, and a starch pudding.”
“Nice?”
“The, ah, fish was piquant, you might say,” Ludd said.
A tender hurried by with a shoulder paddle laden with steaming pies. Ludd turned and watched them go past. Hark could almost see the young man salivate.
Viktor Hark was powerfully built with thick dark hair and a clean-shaven face. His head rose from his thick neck like the tip of a bullet. He had an easy, casual manner about him that Ludd found disquieting, particularly as Ludd knew Hark could be a savage and ruthless disciplinarian. At some point in his life—Ludd had never had the balls to ask about it—Hark had lost his left arm and had received an augmetic replacement.
Hark raised that augmetic now and clicked the fingers. The flick of the mechanical digits sounded like a boltgun being racked.
The tender stopped in his tracks.
“Sir?”
“Two of those,” Hark said, pointing a V-fork of his real fingers.
“Sweet or sour, sir?” the tender asked, sweeping his wooden paddle round to proffer his wares.
“What is it?”
“Spiced fowl, or sugar ploin, sir.”
“Ludd?”
“Ah, ploin, sir?”
“One of each, then,” Hark said, fetching coins from his coat pocket.
They took the hot pies. The tender gave them sheets of grease paper to fold them in.
They began to walk and eat. Ludd was evidently hungry. He was enjoying his pie so much his eyes were watering.
“Thank you, sir,” he said.
Brushing crumbs from his mouth, Hark made a dismissive gesture. “What are we now, Ludd?” he asked.
Ludd had to hurriedly swallow a hot mouthful to answer. He winced. “I… ah, I’m not sure I know what you mean, sir.”
“Well, Nahum, what were we before I bought the pies?”
“Ah… two commissars patrolling the rude quarters?”
“Swelter decks, Ludd. That’s what the camp followers call them. I know “low quarters” is the official term, but for Throne’s sake, it sounds like the start of a barrack room joke.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Eat up.” Hark took another bite of his pie. He had to chew and wait until his mouth was clear enough to continue. “You’re right, anyway. Two commissars, wandering the swelter decks. You’re a ne’er-do-well trooper with something to hide. You see the likes of us, you know we’re looking. But two commissars, eating pies… and, by the way, getting crumbs and juice down the front of his uniform…”
“Mhm! Sorry!”
“Now what does that say?”
“That we’re here for food cycle? And therefore… not on any official duty?”
Hark bowed his head. “Exactly. A trick of the trade, Nahum. If you can’t hide, hide in plain sight.”
There was a sound of music, of reed pipes. Hark looked around with a start. A troupe of entertainers capered past, playing pipes and viols and hand drums. Five acrobats were turning handsprings in their wake along the main aisle. Jugglers ran like skirmishers around the fringes, snatching hats, fruit and other items like spoons and half-eaten skewers from unsuspecting passers-by, and were spinning them in the air once or twice before returning them to their laughing, baffled owners. A small child followed the troupe, her eyes huge in a face smeared lime green with camo-paint, collecting coins in a battered Guardsman’s helmet that she held out, like a bucket, by the chinstrap.
Hark drew Ludd back to let them go by. Junior Ecclesiarchy adepts with ink-stained fingers were moving through the crowd, circulating Lectitio Divinitatus texts still damp from the block-presses. Beggars and invalids offered wares of candle stubs and balls of bootblack. At a nearby cook stand, two Guardsmen, one a Kolstec, the other a heavy-set Hauberkan, were arguing over who was next to be served. It looked like a brawl was about to start.
“Ignore it,” Hark said to Ludd. “Break it up and we show our hand. We’re here on other business.”
Lucid nodded, scoffing down the last of his pie. He wiped his mouth on his cuff.
The press around them was getting thicker. Ludd could smell liquor. A s
crawny preacher, either half-mad or half-cut, had got up on a handmade pushcart pulpit, and was yelling to any who might care to listen about the “jubilation of the dying soul”.
Hark wasn’t listening. He could still hear the sound of the pipes, fading through the crowd as the troupe moved away. It reminded him of something, in the way that a dream forgotten from the night before sometimes catches up suddenly and becomes memory again. As with such dreams, Hark couldn’t define or reconnect the memory. But there was a feeling buried there. Sadness. Regret.
“Sir?”
“What?”
“Sir?” Ludd asked.
Hark blinked. Foolish to be so distracted. That just wouldn’t do. Glory Road was always a long walk, and a commissar had the best of his work there. “Well,” he said, quietly and carefully, “what did your source say again?”
“Pawer’s Place,” Ludd replied. “It’s where Merrt’s been seen most. My source says he’s over three hundred in the hole.”
“You have to wonder why he keeps going back,” said Hark.
“You do have to wonder,” Ludd said. “I think there may be more to it than the money.”
Hark nodded. He knew Rhen Merrt of old, one of the original Tanith foundees. War had been cruel to him, and dealt him a bad hand. Seemed like fortune was continuing the spell.
“Are we to execute him?” Ludd asked bluntly.
“What? No!” Hark said. Throne, no! You think I’m that hardline, Ludd?”
“I don’t know you, sir,” said Ludd. “I wanted to understand your thinking.”
Hark nodded. “Sound, then. Decent question. No, I won’t shoot him. Unless he gives me real cause. He’s one of our own, Ludd, and we’ve come to save him before he tips over the brink. For the good of Trooper Merrt and the regiment. Morale and discipline dance a delicately balanced polka, Ludd. You know what a polka is?”
“Like a… leopard?”
“No. Is that Pawer’s Place?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Good. Give me your cap and coat,” Hark said.
“My cap and coat?”
“Come along. Take this.” Hark held out a fold of dirty bills. “Go and take a look.”
Ludd handed over his cap and coat. Without them, he looked like a junior trooper in his grubby fatigues. He took the fold, tucked it in his hip pocket, and headed towards Pawer’s Place.
Pawer’s Place liked to think of itself as some kind of “establishment”. In truth, it wasn’t. It lay a few steps down from the deck gangway, a dark, smoky gaming den fashioned into the stanchion holes between hull supports. Most of the roof was a tent made of stolen tarpaulin. There was a charge pending in that alone, Ludd thought.
Music was playing, loud “pound” music issuing from battered vox-horns wired up in the tent roof. Several lightly clad girls sashayed through the crowd, hoisting trays of drinks, moving their skinny hips in time to the beat. There was no joy in their eyes, nor any bounce in their step. Pawer paid them to swing their bodies to the music as part of their jobs.
Ludd entered, crossed to the makeshift bar, and ordered an amasec.
The barkeep regarded his apparent youthfulness dubiously, until Ludd slapped a bill on the counter. His drink was served in a little, thick-milled, dirty glass.
Without looking around, Ludd had made out Trooper Merrt at a side table, amongst a card school. There was no mistaking him. A round to the mouth on Monthax years ago had blown his jaw out, and he now sported a crude augmetic implant. Merrt had once been a sniper, one of the Tanith’s better marksmen, but the injury had put paid to that career speciality. Since the forests of Monthax, Merrt had tried six times to rejoin the sniper cadre. Every time he’d been unsuccessful.
He was scowling as the cards came down, though he always scowled with his face. Around the table with him were four other players: two Kolstec, a Binar and, Ludd noticed, a Belladon. Sipping his drink, Ludd fought to remember the Belladon’s name. Maggs. That was it. Recon Trooper Maggs. Bonin spoke highly of him. What the feth was he doing here?
Merrt seemed distracted. The flop clearly hadn’t gone his way, but he was raising anyway.
Ludd looked around the place. There, in the corner, was Pawer, with four of his strong-arms. “Pander” Pawer, lean and nasty, with a thick, crusty fork of beard and a glassy eye. Ex-Guard. In “the strength”, ex-Guard were usually the worst kinds of predator. Pawer and his lackeys were watching Merrt, and talking low. Another loss to the house, another loss Merrt couldn’t cover, and they’d skin him.
Ludd reached into his trouser pocket and felt the comfortable grip of his auto-snub. This was going to get ugly. Uglier than Rhen Merrt himself.
He wanted to be ready.
Outside, Viktor Hark thought about another pie. Ludd was taking his time. The heavy-set Hauberkan loomed into his field of vision.
“You Hark?” asked the trooper.
Hark narrowed his eyes. “I think you’ll find I’m referred to as commissar, trooper,” he said.
“Yeah, yeah. Commissar Hark, right?”
“What do you want?” Hark asked. “I’m bus.”
“We’ve got a problem, Commissar Hark. I think you’ll want to deal with it,” the trooper said, ushering Hark on.
Hark sighed and followed. He folded Ludd’s coat and hat under his arm. “What sort of problem?” he asked.
The Hauberkan trooper led Hark down some grille steps behind the mess wells. It was dark and steamy down there. Molten fat dribbled down the walls.
“I said what sort of problem?” Hark demanded.
There were suddenly five Hauberkan troopers around him. One held a knife.
“You’re the bastard who executed Gadovin,” said one of them. “You’re gonna pay.”
“Oh, you stupid boys,” Hark said.
It was about to go off. Finishing his drink, Ludd made a hasty exit onto the gangway. There was no sign of Hark.
“Sir?” he called out. Some of the passing crowd cast him curious looks.
Ludd turned and ran back down into Pawer’s place. There was a small pocket of frantic activity that every one else, even the girls, was trying to ignore. Pawer’s men were dragging Merrt out through the back door. Merrt had raised on a bet that even the house refused to cover. He was crying out, but his cries, strangulated through that awful augmetic jaw, seemed comical.
What was he saying? “Sarat”? “Sabbat”? Something.
Patrons in the vicinity were laughing at him. Just some poor old damaged fool, risking too much.
One of the serving girls, a pretty thing with short black hair, was urgently following Merrt out.
“What are you going to do?” she was yelling. “What are you going to do?”
“Get away and serve!” spat one of the strong-arms, kicking out at her.
Merrt cried out again as he disappeared through the back doors.
Ludd pushed through the crowd. He saw the other men who had been players at Merrt’s table. They were on their feet. Wes Maggs, the Belladon, looked like he was about to follow Merrt. When he saw Ludd, he halted, and sat back down sharply.
“Stay there!” Ludd yelled at him, and ran on towards the back doors.
They were still ajar when he reached them. He peered out. Beyond was an undercroft, a dank box of dead space that stank of piss and rotten vegetables. Against the far wall, the strong-arms were already busy beating Merrt to a pulp. Ludd took a deep breath and stepped out.
“That’s enough!” he yelled.
The strong-arms stopped hitting Merrt. Glazed and semi-conscious, the Tanith trooper sagged and slid slowly down the wall. The four pieces of muscle turned to regard Ludd with narrow eyes.
“Who the hell are you supposed to be?” one of them asked.
Ludd knew they weren’t about to wait for an answer.
IV
The knife came first, a glint of steel.
It was early. If the Hauberkans had been drinking at all, they hadn’t been drinking much. They were still sharp,
quick, confident. It was also likely they had been planning this ambush for a long while, and were therefore coiled tight like clip-springs.
The knife came first, and Hark simply caught its blade in his augmetic grip. He squeezed. It snapped with a sound like a dull bell.
“Well, that broke,” said Hark. He let go of Ludd’s coat and hat, and punched the knife wielder in the face with his real hand. The man dropped hard. The impact was satisfyingly dense, even though it hurt his knuckles.
This again. This was old news. Since Ancreon Sextus, Hark had found himself in three brawls with Hauberkan troopers, all of whom hated him for his execution of their incompetent leader, Gadovin.
Well, tough feth to them.
The moment unspooled. They were on fight time now, that unreal measure of passing moments that seemed an eternity while it lasted but in reality was just a handful of seconds. Fight time. Instinct time. One of the others swung at him. Hark sidestepped the telegraphed blow, and thumped his augmetic fist into the man’s chest, breaking ribs. The fool stumbled away, gasping, aspirating blood. The rest were on his back. Hark used his elbows. He heard a nose crack, and felt something soft give. He was released.
Hark rotated on the balls of his feet, the tails of his leather storm coat floating out. It was a surprisingly graceful move for someone so solid. He surveyed his work.
One Hauberkan was on his knees, his hands clamped to a ruptured nose from which blood was pouring. The other was on his back, curled up, hands clamped to his throat gasping. Hark tutted, then kicked the first one in the head and laid him out on his back. He looked at the second and decided he’d done enough there.
The fifth Hauberkan was off to his left. Hark had presumed the man would bottle and run, seeing as how all his cronies were down and broken. Mob mentality worked that way.
But it wasn’t going to happen, Hark realised. Fight time was still unravelling the moment according to its own curious tempo. The fifth man was wearing a chain fist. It had undoubtedly cost him a great deal on the black trade. He’d bought it to do Hark, and he was going to use it. It started snarling as it swung towards H ark’s face.