This was the Ghosts’ final show.
And, feth him, Corbec should be here.
Mad Larkin sat, hot and edgy, in the rear of a vacated truck, his long-pattern las resting on the bodywork. Kolea had left him and Cuu on point while the others ran to the river to cool down and blow off steam.
Larkin searched the far side of the road with his usual obsessive methods, sectioning the tree-line and the expanse of water-field by eye and then scanning each section in turn sequentially. Thorough, careful, faultless.
Each movement made him tense, but each movement turned out to be flapping forkbills or scampering spider-rats or even just the breeze-sway of the fronded leaves.
He passed the time with target practice, searching out a target and then following it through his scope’s crosshairs. The red-crested forkbills were fine enough, but they were an easy target because of their white plumage and size. The spider-rats were better creepy eight-limbed mammals the size of Larkin’s hand that jinked up and down the tree trunks in skittering stop-start trajectories so fast they made a sport out of it.
“What you up to?”
Larkin looked round and up into Trooper Cuu’s arrogant eyes.
“Just… spotting,” Larkin said. He didn’t like Cuu at all. Cuu made him nervous. People called Larkin mad, but he wasn’t mad like Cuu. Cuu was a cold killer. A psycho. He was covered in gang tatts and had a long scar that bisected his narrow face.
Cuu folded his lean limbs down next to Larkin. Larkin thought of himself as thin and small amongst the Ghosts but Cuu was smaller. There was, however, a suggestion of the most formidable energy in his wiry frame.
“You could hit them?” he asked.
“What?”
“The white birds with the stupid beaks?”
“Yeah, easy. I was hunting the rats.”
“What rats?”
Larkin pointed. “Those things. Creepy fething bugs.”
“Oh yeah. Didn’t see them before. Sharp eyes you got. Sharp as sharp.”
“Goes with the territory,” Larkin said, patting his sniper weapon.
“Sure it does. Sure as sure.” Cuu reached into his pocket and produced a couple of hand-rolled white smokes which he offered in a vee to Larkin.
“No thanks.”
Cuu put one away and lit the other, drawing deep. Larkin could smell the scent of obscura. He’d used it occasionally back on Tanith, but it was one of Gaunt’s banned substances. Feth, but it smelled strong.
“Colonel-commissar’U have you for that stuff,” he said. Cuu grinned and exhaled ostentatiously. “Gaunt don’t frighten me,” he said. “You sure you won’t…?”
“No thanks.”
“Those gakking white birds,” Cuu said after a long interval. “You reckon you could hit them easy?”
“Yeah.”
“I’m betting they could be good in the pot. Bulk up standard rations, a few of them.”
It was a decent enough idea. Larkin keyed his link. “Three, this is Larks. Cuu and I are going off the track to nab a few waterbirds for eating. Okay with you?”
“Good idea. I’ll advise the convoy you’re going to be shooting. Bag one for me.”
Larkin and Cuu dropped off the side of the truck and wandered across the road. They slithered down the field embankment into an irrigation ditch where the watery mud sloshed up around their calves. Forkbills warbled and clacked in the cycad grove ahead. Larkin could already see the telltale dots of white amongst the dark green foliage.
Skeeter flies buzzed around them, and sap-wasps droned over their heads. Larkin slid his sound suppressor out of his uniform’s thigh pouch and carefully screwed it onto the muzzle of his long-las.
They came up around a clump of fallen palms and Larkin nestled down in the exposed root system to take aim. He scope-chased a spider-rat up and down a tree bole for a moment to get his eye in and then settled on a plump fork-bill.
The trick wasn’t to hit it. The trick was to knock its head off. A las-round would explode a forkbill into feathers and mush if it hit the body, like taking a man out by jamming a tube-charge down his waistband. Shoot the inedible head off and you’d have a ready-to-pluck carcass.
Larkin squared up, shook his head and shoulders out and fired. There was a slight flash and virtually no noise. The forkbill, now with nothing but a scorched ring of flesh and feathers where its head should have joined on, dropped off into the shallow water.
In short order, Larkin pinked off five more. He and Cuu sloshed out to gather them up, hooking them by the webbed feet into their belts.
“You’re gakking good,” Cuu said.
“Thanks.”
“That’s a hell of a gun.”
“Sniper variant long-las. My very best friend.”
Cuu nodded. “I believe that. You mind if I take a try?”
Cuu held his hand out and Larkin reluctantly handed the long-las to him, taking Cuu’s standard lasrifle in return. Cuu grinned at the new toy, and eased the nalwood stock against his shoulder.
“Nice,” he sighed. “Nice as nice.”
He fired suddenly and a forkbill exploded in a mass of white feathers and blood. “Not bad, but—”
Cuu ignored Larkin and fired again. And again. And again. Three more forkbills detonated off their perches.
“We can’t cook them if you hit them square,” Larkin said.
“I know. We’ve got enough for eating now. This is just fun.”
Larkin wanted to complain, but Cuu swung the long-las round quick fare and destroyed two more birds. The water under the trees was thick with blood stains and floating white feathers.
“That’s enough,” said Larkin.
Cuu shook his head, and aimed again. He’d switched the long-las to rapid fire and when he pulled the trigger, pulse after pulse whined into the canopy.
Larkin was alarmed. Alarmed at the misuse of his beloved weapon, alarmed at Cuu’s psychopathic glee…
…and most of all, alarmed at the way Cuu’s wildfire blasted and crisped a half dozen spider-rats off the surrounding tree trunks. Not a shot was wasted or went wide. Skittering targets even he’d have to think twice about hitting were reduced to seared, blood-leaking impacts on the trees.
Cuu handed the weapon back to Larkin.
“Nice gun,” said Cuu, and turned back to rejoin the road.
Larkin hurried after him. He shivered despite the sun’s heat that baked down over the highway. Cold killer. Larkin knew he’d be watching his back from now on.
At the front end of the immobile convoy, Gaunt, Kleopas and Herodas stood watching the tech-priests and engineers of the Pardus regiment as they struggled to retrack the defective Chimera. A workteam of Pardus and Tanith personnel had already unloaded the armoured transport by hand to reduce its payload weight. The Trojan throbbed and idled nearby like a watchful parent.
Gaunt glanced at his chronometer. “Another ten minutes and we’ll move on regardless.”
“I might object sir,” Kleopas ventured. “This unit was carrying shells for the Conquerors.” He gestured to the massive stack of munitions the workteam had removed from the Chimera to get it upright. “We can’t just leave this stuff.”
“We can if we have to,” said Gaunt.
“If this was a payload of lasgun powercells, you’d say different.”
“You’re right,” Gaunt nodded to Kleopas. “But we’re on the tightest of clocks, major. I’ll give them twenty minutes. But only twenty.”
Captain Herodas moved away to shout encouraging orders at the engineer teams.
Gaunt pulled out a silver hip flask. It was engraved with the name “Delane Oktar”. He offered it to Kleopas.
“Thank you, colonel-commissar, no. A little early in the day for me.”
Gaunt shrugged and took a swig. He was screwing up the cap when a voice from behind them said, “I hear shooting.”
Gaunt and Kleopas looked around at Commissar Hark as he approached them.
“Just a little authori
sed foraging,” Gaunt told him.
“Do the squad leaders know? It might trigger a panic.”
“They know. I told them. Regulation 11-0-119 gamma.”
Hark made an open-handed shrug. “You don’t need to cite it to me, colonel. I believe you.”
“Good. Major Kleopas… perhaps you’d explain to the commissar here what is happening. In intricate detail.”
Kleopas glared at Gaunt and then turned to smile at Hark. “We’re retracking the Chimera, sir, and that involves a heavy lifter as you can see…”
Gaunt slipped away, removing himself from the commissar’s presence. He walked back down the line of vehicles, taking another swig from the flask.
Hark watched him go. “What are your thoughts on the legendary colonel-commissar?” he asked Kleopas, interrupting a lecture on mechanised track repair.
“He’s as sound a commander as ever I knew. Lives for his men. Don’t ask me again, sir. I won’t have my words added to any official report of censure.”
“Don’t worry, Kleopas,” said Hark. “Gaunt’s damned any way you look at it. Lord General Lugo has him in his sights. I was just making conversation.”
Gaunt walked back a hundred metres and found Medic Curth and her orderlies sitting in the shade cast by their transport.
Curth got up. “Sir?”
“Everything fine here?” Gaunt asked. He was unhappy with the fact that Dorden had stayed behind in the Doctrinopolis to see to the wounded. Curth was a fine medic, but he wasn’t used to her being in charge of the taskforce’s surgical team. Dorden had always been his chief medic, since the foundation of the Ghosts. Curth would take a little getting used to.
“Everything’s fine,” she said, her smile as appealing as her heart-shaped face.
“Good,” said Gaunt. “Good.” He took another swig.
“Any of that going spare?” Curth asked.
Surprised, he turned and handed her the flask. She took a hefty slug.
“I didn’t think you’d approve.”
“This waiting makes me nervous,” she said, wiping her mouth and handing the hip flask back to Gaunt. “Me too,” Gaunt said.
“Anyway,” said Curth. “Trust me. It’s medicinal.”
Alpha-AR pulled into Mukret in the late afternoon. The Salamander rolled down to a crawl and Mkoll, Mkvenner and Bonin leapt out, lasguns raised, trailing the light tank down the main highway as it passed through the jumble of stilt houses and raised halls. A slight breeze had picked up with the approach of evening, and it lifted dust and leaf-litter across the bright sunlit road and the dark spaces of shadow between and under the dwellings.
The sun itself, big and yellowing, shone sideways through a stiff break of palms and cypresses towards the river.
The township was deserted. Doors flapped open and epiphytic creepers roiled around window frames and stack posts. There was broken crockery on the house-walks, and litters of ragged clothing in the gutters. At the far end of the town sat long, brick and tile smokehouses. Mukret’s main industry was the smoke-drying of fish and meats. The Tanith could still pick out the tangy background scent of woodsmoke in the air.
Behind the rolling tank, the three scouts prowled forward, lasguns held in loose, fluid grips. Bonin swung and aimed abruptly as forkbills mobbed out of a tree.
The Salamander rumbled.
Mkoll moved ahead and switched Bonin left down a jetty walk to the river itself with a coded gesture.
Ahead, something stirred. It was a chelon, an immature calf, wandering out into the main road, dragging its reins in the dust. A short-form clutch saddle was lashed to its back.
It wandered past Mkoll and Mkvenner, trailing its bridle. Mkoll could hear sporadic knocking now. Mkoll signalled for Mkvenner to hold back as cover and walked forward towards the noise.
An old man, skinny and gnarled, was hammering panels into place on an old and ransacked stilt-chapel. It looked like he was trying to board up broken windows using only a length of tree-limb as a hammer.
He was dressed in blue silk robes. Ayatani, Mkoll realised. The local priesthood.
“Father!”
The old man turned and lowered his tree-limb. He was bald, but had a triumphantly long, tapering white beard. It was so long, in fact, that he’d tucked it over his shoulder to keep it out of the way.
“Not now,” he said in a crotchety tone, “I’m busy. This holy shrine won’t just repair itself.”
“Maybe I can help you?”
The old man clambered back down to the roadway and faced Mkoll. “I don’t know. You’re a man with a gun… and a tank, it appears. You may be intending to kill me and steal my chelon which, personally speaking, I would not find helpful. Are you a murderer?”
“I’m a member of the Imperial liberation force,” Mkoll replied, looking the old man up and down.
“Really? Well now…” the old man mused, using the up of his long beard to mop his face.
“What’s your name?”
“Ayatani Zweil,” said the old man. “And yours?”
“Scout Sergeant Mkoll.”
“Scout Sergeant Mkoll, eh? Very impressive. Well, Scout Sergeant Mkoll, the Ershul have fouled this shrine, this sacred house of our thrice-beloved saint, and I intend to rebuild it stick by stick. If you assist me, I will be grateful. And I’m sure the saint will be too. In her way.”
“Father, we’re heading west. I need to know if you’ve seen any Infardi on the road.”
“Of course I have. Hundreds of them.”
Mkoll reached for his vox link but the old man stopped him.
“Infardi I’ve seen plenty of. Pilgrims. Flocking back to the Doctrinopolis. Yes, yes… plenty of Infardi. But no Ershul.”
“I’m confused.”
The ayatani gestured up and down the sunlit road through Mukret. “Do you know what you’re standing on?”
“The Tembarong Road,” said Mkoll.
“Also known in the old texts of Irimrita as the Ayolta Amad Infardiri, which literally means the ‘approved route of Infardi procession’ or more colloquially the Pilgrim’s Way. The road may go to Tembarong. That way. Eventually. Who wants to go there? A dull little city where the women have fat legs. But that way—” He pointed the direction Mkoll had appeared from.
“In that direction, pilgrims travel. To the shrines of the Doctrinopolis Citadel. To the Tempelum Infarfarid Sabbat. To a hundred places of devotion. They have done for many hundreds of years. It is a pilgrim’s way. And our name for pilgrims is ‘Infardi’. That is its proper sense and I use it as such.”
Mkoll coughed politely. “So when you say Infardi you mean real pilgrims?”
“Yes.”
“Coming this way?”
“Positively flocking, Scout Sergeant Mkoll. The Doctrinopolis is open again, so they come to give thanks. And they come to prostrate themselves before the desecrated Citadel.”
“You’re not referring to soldiers of the enemy then?”
“They stole the name Infardi. I won’t let them have it! I won’t! If they want a name, let them be Ershul!”
“Ershul?”
“It is a word from the Ylath, the herdsman dialect. It refers to a chelon that consumes its own dung or the dung of others.”
“And have you seen… uhm… Ershul? On your travels?”
“No.”
“I see.”
“But I’ve heard them.” Zweil suddenly took Mkoll by the arm and pointed him west, over the roofscape of Mukret, towards the distant edges of the rainwoods, which were becoming hazed and misty in the late afternoon. A dark stain of stormclouds was gathering over the neighbouring hills.
“Up there, Scout Sergeant Mkoll. Beyond Bhavnager, in the Sacred Hills. They lurk, they prowl, they wait.”
Mkoll involuntarily wanted to pull away from the old man’s tight grip but it was strangely reassuring. It reminded him of the way Archdeacon Mkere used to steer him to the lectern to read the lesson at church school back on Tanith, years ago.
“Are you a devout man, Scout Sergeant Mkoll?”
“I hope I am, father. I believe the Emperor is god in flesh, and I live to serve him in peace and war.”
“That’s good, that’s good. Contact your fellows. Tell them to expect trouble on their pilgrimage.”
Twenty kilometres east, the main convoy was moving again. The munitions Chimera had been repaired well enough for the time being, though Intendant Elthan had warned Gaunt it would need a proper overhaul during the night rest.
They were making good time again. Gaunt sat in the open cab of his command Salamander, reviewing the charts and hoping they’d make it to Mukret before nightfall. Mkoll had just checked in. Alpha-AR had reached Mukret and found it deserted, though the dour scout had repeated his warning about Infardi sightings.
Gaunt put the maps aside and turned to his battered, annotated copy of Saint Sabbat’s gospel, as he had done many times that day. Trying to read the text in the jolting Salamander made his head hurt, but he persisted. He flicked through to the most recent of the paper place-markers he’d left. The mid-section, the Psalms of Sabbat. Virtually impenetrable, their language both antique and mysteriously coded with symbols. He could read everything and nothing into them as meaning, but nothing was all he took away.
Except that it was the most beautiful religious verse he’d ever read. Warmaster Slaydo had thought so too. It was from him that Gaunt had got his love of the Sabbat psalms. His hands lowered the book to his knees as he looked up and remembered Slaydo for a moment.
He felt a lurch as the tank slowed suddenly, and stood up to look. His mount was third from the front of the convoy, and the two scout Salamanders ahead had dropped speed sharply. Red brake lights came on behind their metal grilles, stark and bright in the twilight.
A large herd of massive chelons was coming towards them, driven by several beige-robed peasants. It was half blocking the road. The convoy leaders were being forced to pull into tight single file against the riverwards edge of the highway.