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

They had tall trunks and crowning caps of black vapour. They were evidently huge, because they were hundreds of kilometres away, and they stayed there for hours, unsmudged by the wind. Two other giant mushroom clouds elevated themselves in the far north-west.

  Lost in the heart of K’ethdrac, he stumbled through the ash-white streets alone. The city skyline was smouldering, and to the south-east of him, several huge spires were burning up, consumed by extraordinarily ferocious fires that seemed to blaze with unnatural power. The silent, sentinel mushroom clouds formed a backdrop to these intense combustions.

  Near at hand, the city was dry and still and empty, so caked in ash it looked like a town after a snowstorm. The bones of buildings rose above him like old, dry coral.

  Dalin had killed the Sons of Sek. This thought alone contented him. He had killed three of them, single-handed. He had no idea what had happened to the rest of them.

  He’d shot down the first two as they emerged from the building. They had been running, not expecting their quarry to turn and fight. He’d put three shots into each one, spilling them flat on the ground. The vaunted soldiers, the dreaded Sons, brought down so easily! Dalin felt elated. He felt as if he had passed some advanced test. Not only had he tasted battle and killed the enemy, he had killed the best of the enemy.

  That was when Caff had spoken to him again. “Watch yourself,” was all he had said. Immediately, Dalin got a picture in his head of the other Sons of Sek inside the ruin. He saw them hearing the shots outside, and coming to a halt. He imagined how they would sneak out of the building, now that they had been forewarned, and get the drop on him.

  He stepped back into the cover of the old iron portico, and got down, panning his weapon around. Little zephyrs of ash were dancing through the rubble, conjured by the ragged wind. Shredded plasterwork flapped in the breeze. Dalin remembered his breathing and his visual checking.

  Sly and well-trained, the third of the Sons of Sek emerged from a window-hole twenty metres along the face of the building from the doorway, and slipped down into the shadows and the rubble. Dalin watched him for a minute or two, admiring the man’s noise discipline and use of cover. The Son was moving around to flank any shooter covering the doorway.

  Dalin watched and waited. He waited until the Son of Sek had drawn in close and entered a very reliable range band. Then he shot him through the forehead.

  The enemy warrior grunted and fell face down onto the rubble. Dalin waited a while longer, but nothing else stirred.

  He withdrew. He moved silently for a while, but after the flashes of light announced the crop of mushroom clouds in the sky, he relaxed. There was no sign of anybody around. He’d given Merrt, Four-box and Wash enough time to get clear of pursuit. They were long gone. He called out a few times, shouting their names across the rubble and demolished lots.

  His voice echoed, but the echoes were the only answers he got.

  * * * * *

  II

  He wondered why it was Caff’s voice he had heard.

  Obviously, it wasn’t really Caff’s voice. Dalin understood that well enough, and though he was as superstitious as the next Guardsman, he didn’t believe in phantom voices or clairaudience. It was all in his own mind, and he was content with that fact. He’d been through a sensory onslaught in the past days, and he was exhausted, and stretched to the edges of his nerves. His combat instincts were pulled as taut as they could go. In the thick of the moment, his own mind had sent him subconscious warnings, and he had heard them as if they’d been spoken by Caff.

  It was no big deal—men went an awful lot madder than that on the battlefield—and it was no mystery.

  What vaguely puzzled Dalin wasn’t that he heard a voice, but that it happened to be Caffran’s.

  He sat down to rest for a while, and thought about it a little longer. The light over the city had gone an odd, glazed colour, and the wind was chasing clouds across the sky, so that a rapidly moving pattern of shade and light dappled the landscape.

  Why had his imagination chosen Caffran’s voice? Why not his ma’s, or his real father’s? Technically, they were both more important to him. Dalin wished he had some water to drink. His throat was dry and he had a headache. He tried sucking on a small piece of one of his last ration bricks, but it didn’t help.

  He decided that his relationship with Caff was a particular thing. He had a bond with Tona of course, as close a bond as a real mother and son, as close as the harsh life of the Guard permitted. He and his sibling had come into her care on Verghast years before. Chance had thrown them together. He’d always assumed she’d never had much choice in the matter. They were small children, Yoncy a babe in arms, in the middle of a hive war, and she’d taken care of them. Without her, or someone like her, they would have died.

  She hadn’t been that old, probably not much older than he was now. She’d simply coped.

  Sitting there, in the ruins, under the racing sky, he realised, properly for the first time in his life, how selfless her decision had been. Fate had given them into her care, and she hadn’t hesitated. She hadn’t hesitated in the rubble of Vervunhive, and she hadn’t hesitated since. Perhaps it hadn’t been fate. Throne, he saw that now. Perhaps it had been the strange ministry of the God-Emperor. Watching the chasing clouds, he felt a strong, unbidden sensation of the divine, stronger than he’d ever known it in temple worship, or daily blessing, or even during one of old Zweil’s sermons. For a few minutes in that desolate place, he had an oddly intense feeling that the God-Emperor was watching over him.

  He wondered if Tona had ever resented the responsibility she’d been landed with at Vervunhive. Certainly, she’d become a proxy parent for him and his sister, because there was no other option. Necessity had manufactured their relationship. She’d looked after them as fiercely as a she-wolf protecting her young.

  His father, his real father, was different. Gol Kolea had believed his children dead for a long time until chance had revealed the strange twist of fortune that had kept them close to him. Kolea had never tried to remake his relationship with Dalin or Yoncy. Tona had explained on several occasions that Kolea had decided it best, for the childrens’ sake, not to upset their lives any further by stepping back into them. Dalin had little patience for this excuse. It felt like Kolea was washing his hands of them. He didn’t understand it, and he’d never approached Kolea directly about it, because it made him angry. It wasn’t as if you could have too many parents, especially in an odd social structure like the regiment. Plenty of Ghosts had been surrogate fathers and uncles and mothers and aunts over the years—Varl, Domor, Larkin, Aleksa, Bonin, Curth. His real blood father taking a role wouldn’t have fethed up anything worse than it was already fethed up.

  But Caff… Caff had chosen, where Tona had been offered no choice, and Kolea had backed off. Caffran had chosen to be a father figure to Dalin. Caffran could have stepped back at any time, the way Kolea had stepped back, and, unlike Kolea, no one would have thought badly of him for it. For the last eight years or so, Caffran had raised him. Caffran had been there.

  This was why it was Caff’s voice he had heard, he decided. He had been the one who had chosen, without duress, to care.

  Caffran said, “Don’t be a fool, Dal. It’s not a big deal. I wanted to be with Tona. It’s not a thing. In the Guard, you just get on and you do it. You play it as it lays, that’s what Varl says, am I right? If we don’t look out for one another, what’s the point?”

  “Who’s ‘we’?” Dalin asked.

  “People,” said Caffran. His uniform was tightly pressed and funny looking, like he’d had an accident with the starch. He looked awkward, as if he was gussied up for dress review. He sat down beside Dalin in the dust and leant back against the wall.

  “Clouds are fast,” he said.

  “Really running by,” Dalin agreed. “See how they paint the city. Like sunlight on running water.”

  Caffran nodded.

  “I’m thirsty,” Dalin said.

  Caffr
an reached down and unhooked his water bottle. He passed it to Dalin.

  The bottle felt light. Dalin unstoppered it. Something tugged at his right foot.

  “Stop that,” Dalin said.

  “What?” Caffran asked.

  “Stop it with my foot.”

  Caffran didn’t answer. The water bottle was empty.

  III

  The water bottle was empty. It was his own water bottle. He let go of it and it fell off his chest.

  The light had gone. The sky was petrochemical black. Cloaked by it, the half-seen sun glowed like a dirty lamp. His lips were dry and cracked, and his throat was like dry vizzy cloth.

  He wondered how long he had been dead, and then realised he had only been asleep. He’d known little sleep since the drop, little of quality anyway. Just stopping for a moment, resting, it had stormed him and conquered him, like a drop ship invasion. He’d been unable to resist.

  He wiped his parched mouth, but the back of his hand was as rough as sandpaper from the ash. His lips bled. He sucked at the hot moisture. He looked around in the darkness for Caffran, but there was no Caffran, and there never had been any Caffran. Fatigue hallucinations had segued into dreams.

  He was alone. Even the presence of the God-Emperor had withdrawn. Something tugged at his right foot.

  That was no hallucination.

  The dogs were big things. Scrawny dark shapes in the enveloping night, they closed their jaws around his right boot and worried. They were vermin dogs, scavengers loose in the ruins.

  “Get off. Get away,” he said.

  They looked at him reproachfully and whined.

  “Get away!” he snapped, reaching for his rifle.

  “Looking for this?” a third dog asked. It was sitting close by him, his rifle clamped under its paws.

  “Give me my gun,” he said.

  The dogs laughed. They rolled him over and started to search his pockets.

  He felt hands on him. He was face down in the ash dust.

  “Nothing. Just some food,” a voice said.

  “His flask’s empty,” someone replied.

  Dalin groaned and rolled over.

  “Shit! He’s alive!”

  Dalin opened his eyes. Three dirt-caked Krassians bent over him. They’d been stripping his body. Night had fallen when he hadn’t been paying attention. The black sky was rimmed with orange fires around the horizon.

  “What are you doing?” Dalin mumbled, but the words came out as another groan.

  “He’s bloody alive!” one of the Krassians said, and pushed Dalin back down.

  “Croak him then, for Throne’s sake,” said another.

  Dalin saw the first Krassian reach for a long sword bayonet and draw it.

  “Imperial Guard!” Dalin cried in alarm.

  “Yeah, yeah,” said the Krassian. “Welcome to the bloody war.”

  The sword bayonet stabbed down at him, and Dalin rolled. The blade almost missed him. He felt the slick, hot pain of it as it sliced through the meat of his left hip.

  “Bastard!” he cried.

  “Hold the little shit!” exclaimed the Krassian with the knife.

  Dalin kicked the man’s legs out from under him, and the Krassian fell with a curse. Dalin’s right boot, half undone, flew off with the effort. The other two Krassians pounced on him.

  “What are you doing? What are you doing to me?” Dalin wailed. They struck at him. He felt their knuckles batter at his ribcage. He rolled the way Caff had taught him when they practised hand-to-hand on the billet decks. He broke free from one, and planted his fist in the other man’s face. The Krassian lurched backwards, blood and mucus spraying from his crunched nose. He set up a loud cursing.

  Dalin sprang up. The Krassian with the sword bayonet came at him. Dalin dipped to one side, caught the man’s wrist, and broke it. Taking hold of the long blade, he slid it across the man’s throat in a single, unsentimental sweep. Arterial blood squirted out and covered one of the others in such quantities that the man began yowling and spitting in disgust.

  Dalin dropped the twitching corpse and slammed the sword bayonet down between the shoulders of the gasping spitter. Impaled, the man fell on his face.

  “You little bastard,” sputtered the one with the broken nose. He was standing again, and aiming his lasrifle at Dalin with shaking hands.

  A las round hit him square in the back with such force that it cannoned his body into Dalin. Their heads struck hard with a crack, and they both went down.

  Dazed, unable to move, Dalin watched as a fireteam of Sons of Sek approached out of the gloom to inspect the bodies.

  The ochre clad figures moved slowly, stopping to check and examine each corpse in turn.

  One of them got hold of Dalin’s shoulder and rolled him. Dalin could smell the mysterious perfumes and oils that the Son had anointed his body with.

  “A’vas shet voi shenj,” the Son said.

  * * * * *

  IV

  “Please, get up.”

  Dalin played dead.

  “Get up, Holy. Get up, get up, get up…”

  It was Fourbox.

  Dalin opened his eyes.

  It was still dark, and the only illumination came from the burning towers in the distance.

  “There you go! Come on, Holy!”

  “Fourbox?”

  “We were looking for you.”

  “Fourbox?”

  “Yes, wake up.”

  Dalin sat upright. There was a stinging pain in his left hip, and he felt a damp warmth around the side of his fatigue breeches and the side of his body.

  “He all right?” Merrt asked from nearby.

  “He’s fine. Aren’t you, Holy?” Fourbox said.

  “But the Sons of Sek…”

  “No Sons of Sek around here,” said Fourbox. He helped Dalin up. Dalin felt more bruises and pains that seemed fresh.

  “But…?”he said.

  “We gn… gn… gn… got to move,” said Merrt.

  “Where’s my boot?” Dalin asked. He looked down. His right boot was missing.

  “Here,” said Merrt, tossing it to him.

  Dalin sat back down, wincing from the pain in his left hip, and started to lace his boot on.

  “Hurry it up,” said Merrt.

  Dalin stopped lacing. He slowly looked around and saw the three dead Krassians crumpled in the white dust around him.

  “What the feth is—?” he began, pointing.

  “Deserters. They were trying to loot your body,” said Merrt. “You’d stiffed two of them by the time we arrived.”

  “What… what time is it?”

  Fourbox waggled his chron. “Who knows?”

  “He’s blowing for us,” Wash said, looming into vision. Dalin could hear whistles in the distance.

  “Who is?” he asked.

  “Sobile,” said Merrt. “We found Sobile. Now get your boot on.”

  Sobile was waiting with AT 137 in a neighbouring street. There were about ten men left, all told, all of them wounded or scraped in some minor way. They looked like beggars, like lepers in some underhive commercia. Kexie, more stringy and raw than ever, was blowing his confounded whistle.

  Sobile stood on his own away from the huddle of exhausted men. His clothes were dirty, and there were tear stains on his soot-caked face where the dust had made his eyes run. He looked like the tragic clown prince in the Imperial mystery plays. His face was utterly without expression. He slouched. He seemed bored, or dismissively weary. Most of the men had lash marks on their scalps or shoulders. The cord of Sobile’s whip was caked in blood.

  Sobile stared at Dalin as he rejoined the section with Merrt, Wash and Fourbox. There was not a hint of recognition. There wasn’t even a spark to show that Sobile was pleased to see that another of his charges had survived.

  “Get in line, you moron,” he said. It was as if Dalin had only been out of the commissar’s sight for a few minutes. The whole world had ended around them, but Sobile was acting li
ke they were on routine manoeuvres. He was acting like there were more important things on his mind.

  He glared at Dalin, but Dalin made no effort to hurry. Sobile let the cord of the whip flop free into the dust on the ground, its length played out to crack. Dalin held Sobile’s gaze as he got in line. He stared back, defiantly He knew that if Sobile used his whip on him now, he would shoot Sobile. He was sure of this fact, and quite reconciled to it.

  Sobile rewound his whip and looked away. Perhaps he had seen the look in Dalin’s eyes. Perhaps it was a particular look that he always watched for. When a trooper glares back so hard you know he will shoot you if you strike him, then the trooper is ready and needs no further beating. Maybe that rule was somewhere in the odious fething book the Commissariat worked from. Watch for the look of a beaten dog, then refrain from punishment.

  “Check your loads,” Kexie said, walking down the line. “Anyone choking?”

  One of the men raised a hand.

  “Share him some clips, you others. Anyone thirsty?”

  Dalin raised his hand.

  “Share him a bottle.”

  Brickmaker passed Dalin a half-empty canteen.

  “Ech, fit and square,” sad Kexie. He turned to look at Sobile. “Fit and square, commissar. Awaiting yours.”

  Screwing the cap back on Brickmaker’s canteen, Dalin braced himself for Sobile’s next utterance. It was as wholly inevitable as it was insane.

  “Forwards,” the commissar said.

  UNKYNDE

  I

  “Start your explanation now,” Gaunt growled. He had shouldered his way past several Inquisition troopers to reach Faragut. The troopers, visored and quiet, were rounding everybody up, partisans and Ghosts alike.

  “Nobody do anything provocative until I’ve got to the heart of this,” Gaunt had told Mkoll.

  “Once you have, it’ll be too late,” Mkoll replied. They had looked at one another, and both had known Mkoll’s words to be an untruth. Despite the reputation of the Inquisition’s soldiery, the Gereon partisans were never to be underestimated, even when disarmed and “restrained”.