“Daur’s seeing if he can find any others crazy enough to come. We’ll need able men. It won’t be an easy ride.”
“It’ll be hell. A small unit, moving west. The Infardi are everywhere. They didn’t think twice about hitting a target the size of the taskforce.”
“We could so do with a scout. Local knowledge, maybe. I don’t know.”
“Assuming we make it through, all the way to the Shrinehold. What then?”
“Feth me! I hope by then me dad will have told me more! Or maybe Daur will have figured it out. Or it’ll be obvious…”
“It sure isn’t obvious now, sir. Whatever it is, if Gaunt and the taskforce can’t do it, how could we hope to?”
“Maybe they don’t know. Maybe… they need to do something else.”
Corbec turned and smiled at Milo. “You realise you’ve been saying ‘We’, don’t you?”
“I guess I have.”
“Good lad. It wouldn’t be the same without you.”
“Well, feth bless my good soul!” said Colm Corbec. He was so touched by the sight before him, he felt he might cry. “Did you all… I mean, are you all…?”
Bragg got up from the base of the pillar he was sitting against and stuck out his hand. “We’re all as crazy as you, chief,” he smiled.
Corbec gripped his meaty paw hard.
“Daur and Milo asked around. We’re the only takers. I hope we’ll do.”
“You’ll do me fine.”
They stood in the shadows of the Munitorium warehouse on Pavane Street, off the main thoroughfare, out of sight. The contents of the warehouse had been evacuated that morning. It had been arranged as the rendezvous point. It was now close to six o’clock.
Somewhere, a troop ship was waiting for them. Somewhere, their names were being flagged on the commissariat discipline lists.
Corbec moved down the line as the assembled troopers got up to greet him. “Derin! How’s the chest?”
“Don’t expect me to run anywhere,” smiled Trooper Derin. There was no sign of injury about him, but his arms moved stiffly. Corbec knew a whole lot of suturing and bandages lay under his black Tanith field jacket.
“Nessa… my girl.”
She threw him a salute, her long-las resting against her hip. Ready to move out, colonel sir, she signed.
“Trooper Vamberfeld, sir,” said the next in line. Corbec grinned at the pale, slightly out of condition Verghastite.
“I know who you are, Vamberfeld. Good to see you.”
“You said you needed local knowledge,” Milo said as Corbec reached him. “This is Sanian. She’s esholi, one of the student body.”
“Miss,” Corbec saluted her.
Sanian looked up at Corbec and appraised him frankly. “Trooper Milo described your mission as almost spiritual, colonel. I will probably lose my privileges and status for absconding with you.”
“We’re absconding now, are we?” The troopers around them laughed.
“The saint herself is in your mind, colonel. I can see that much. I have made my choice. If I can help by coming with you, I am happy to do it.”
“It won’t be easy, Miss Sanian. I hope Milo’s told you that much.”
“Sanian. I am just Sanian. Or esholi Sanian if you prefer to be formal. And yes, Milo has explained the danger. I feel it will be an education.”
“Safer ways of getting an education…” Derin began.
“Life itself is the education for the esholi,” said Milo smartly.
Sanian smiled. “I think Milo has been paying too much attention to me.”
“Well, I can see why,” said Corbec, putting on the charm. “You’re welcome here with us. Do you know much about the land west of here?”
“I was raised in Bhavnager. And the western territories of the Sacred Hills and the Pilgrim’s Way are fundamental knowledge for any esholi.”
“Well, didn’t we just win the top prize?” grinned Corbec. “So,” he said, turning to face the six of them. “I guess we wait for Daur. He’s in charge of transport.”
The group broke up into idle chatter for a minute or two. Suddenly, they all heard the clatter of tracks in the street outside. All of them froze, snatching up weapons, expecting the worst.
“What do you see?” Vamberfeld hissed to Bragg. “It’s the commissariat, isn’t it?” said Derin. “They’re fething on to us!”
An ancient, battered Chimera rumbled into the warehouse. Its turbines coughed and rasped as they shut down. It was the oldest and worst kept piece of Munitorium armour Milo had ever seen, and that included the junk piles that had been given to the honour guard convoy.
The back hatch opened, and Daur edged out as gracefully as his aching wound allowed.
“Best I could do,” he said. “It was one from the motorpool they’re going to abandon in the evacuation.”
“Feth!” said Corbec, walking around the dirty green hulk. “But it goes, right?”
“It goes for now,” replied Daur. “What do you want, Corbec, miracles?”
A second man climbed out of the Chimera. He was a tall, blond, freckled individual in Pardus uniform. His head was bandaged.
“This is Sergeant Greer, Pardus Eighth Mobile Flak Company. I knew none of us could handle this beast, so I co-opted a driver. Greer here… kind of owes me.”
“That’s what he says,” Greer said sulkily. “I’m just along for the ride.”
“Where’d you get the hurt?” Corbec asked him.
Greer touched his bandage. “Glancing shot. During the action to take the census hall a few days back.”
Corbec nodded. The same action Daur had been hurt in. He shook Greer’s hand.
“Welcome to the Wounded,” he said.
At around half past six the names of troopers Derin, Vamberfeld, Nessa and Bragg, and of Captain Daur and Colonel Corbec, were noted in the log of the evacuation office as overdue. The lift shuttle left without them.
At a muster point further east across the Doctrinopolis, the Pardus chief surgeon noted the absence of Driver-Sergeant Greer.
Both reports were sent to Evacuation command and entered into the night log. The officer of the watch wasn’t unduly taxed by this. He had over three hundred names on his list of absentees by then, and it was growing with each passing shuttle call. There were many reasons for missed muster: badly relayed orders; confusion as to the correct muster point; delays because of traffic in the holy city; untagged deaths from the guard infirmaries. Indeed, some names on the evacuation lists were of troopers who had died in the liberation fight and as yet lay undiscovered and unidentified in the rubble.
Some, a very few, were deserters. Such names were passed to the discipline offices and the lord general’s staff.
The officer of the watch passed these latest names on. It was unusual for senior officers like a colonel to fail to report.
By eight o’clock, the list had dropped onto the desk of Commissar Hychas, who was away at dinner. His aide passed it to the punishment detail, who by nine thirty had sent a four-man team led by a commissar-cadet down to the Scholam Medicae Hagias to investigate. A report was copied to Lord General Lugo’s staff, where it was read by a senior adjutant shortly before midnight. He immediately voxed the punishment detail, and was told by the commissar-cadet that no trace of the missing personnel could be found at the Scholam Medicae.
At one in the morning, a warrant was issued for the arrest of Colonel Colm Corbec of the Tanith First-and-Only, along with six of his men. No one thought or knew to tally this with the warrant out for Sergeant-Driver Denic Greer of the Pardus Eighth. Or the theft report of a class gamma transport Chimera from the Munitorium motorpool.
By then, Corbec’s Chimera was long gone, heading west down the Tembarong Road, five hours out from the city perimeter, thundering into the night.
It had made one stop, in the half-empty, wartorn suburb streets just short of the Pilgrim Gate. That had been around seven at night, with deep, starless dusk falling.
At
the helm, Greer had seen a figure in the road ahead, waving at them. Corbec had popped the turret hatch and looked out, almost immediately calling down at Greer to pull over.
Corbec had dropped down from the waiting Chimera, his boots kissing the road dust, and had walked to meet the figure face to face.
“Sabbat martyr,” Dorden had said, tears in his eyes. “My boy told me to. Don’t think for a minute you’re going without me.”
NINE
APPROACHING BHAVNAGER
“If the road is easy, the destination is worthless.”
—Saint Sabbat, proverbs
From Mukret, the highway ran due west to the Nusera Crossing where the holy river twisted across it. North of the crossing, the river’s course snaked up to the headwaters in the hills, one hundred and fifty kilometres away.
The second day of the mission dawned soft and bright, with the lowland plains of the river valley dressed in thick white fogs. The scout spearhead under Mkoll left Mukret through the early fogs, travelling at a moderate rate because of the reduced visibility.
Gaunt and Kleopas had assembled three scout Salamanders carrying a dozen Ghost troopers between them, two Conqueror tanks and one of the two Destroyer tank hunters in the Pardus complement. The main taskforce set out from Mukret an hour behind them.
Gaunt’s intention was to reach the farming community of Bhavnager by the second night. This meant a run of nearly ninety-five kilometres, on decent roads. But already the mists were slowing their progress. At Bhavnager, so intelligence reported, they could refuel for the later stages of the journey. Bhavnager was the last settlement of appreciable size on the north-west spur of the highway. It marked the end of the arable lowlands and the start of the rainwood districts that dressed the climbing edges of the Sacred Hills. From Bhavnager, the going would become a lot tougher.
Ayatani Zweil had agreed to accompany the main task-force, and rode with Gaunt in his command Salamander at the colonel-commissar’s personal invitation. He seemed intrigued by the Imperial mission: no one had told him of the intended destination, but he clearly had ideas of his own, and once they took the north-west fork at Limata, there would be no disguising where they were heading.
“How long do these fogs last, father?” Gaunt asked him as the convoy ran through the pale, smoke-like mists. It was bright and the fogs glowed with the sunlight beyond, but they could see only a few dozen metres ahead of themselves. The sounds of the convoy engines, amplified, were thrown back on them by the heavy vapour.
Zweil toyed with his long, white beard.
“In this part of the season, sometimes until noon. These, I think, are lighter. They will lift. And when they lift, they go suddenly.”
“You’re not much like the other ayatani I’ve met here, if you’ll forgive me saying so. They all seemed tied to a particular shrine and places of worship.”
Zweil chuckled. “They are tempelum ayatani, devoted to their shrine places. I am imhava ayatani, which means ‘roving priest’. Our order celebrates the saint by worshipping the routes of her journeys.”
“Her journeys here?”
“Yes, and beyond. Some of my kind are up there.” He pointed a gnarled finger at the sky, and Gaunt realised he meant space itself, space beyond Hagia.
“They travel the stars?”
“Indeed. They pace out the route of her Great Crusade, her war pilgrimage to Harkalon, her wide circuit of return. It can take a lifetime, longer than a lifetime. Few make the entire circuit and return to Hagia.”
“Especially in these times, I imagine.”
Zweil nodded thoughtfully. “The return of the arch-enemy to the Sabbat Worlds has made such roving a more lethal undertaking.”
“But you are content to make your holy journeys here?”
Zweil smiled his broad, gap-toothed smile. “These days, yes. But in my youth, I walked her path in the stars. To Frenghold, before Hagia called me back.”
Gaunt was a little surprised. “You’ve travelled off this world?”
“We’re not all parochial little peasants, Colonel-Commissar Gaunt. I’ve seen my share of the stars and other worlds. A few wonders on the way. Nothing I’d care to stay for. Space is overrated.”
“I tend to find that too,” Gaunt grinned.
“The main purpose of the imhava ayatani is to retread the routes of the saint and offer assistance to the believers and pilgrims we find making their way. Guardians of the route. It is, I think, small-minded for a priest to stay at a shrine or temple to offer aid to the pilgrims who arrive. The journey is the hardest part. It is on the journey that most would have need of a priest.”
“That’s why you agreed to come with us, isn’t it?”
“I came because you asked. Politely, I might add. But you’re right. You are pilgrims after all.”
“I wouldn’t call us pilgrims quite—”
“I would. With devotion and resolve, you are following one of the saint’s paths. You are going to the Shrinehold, after all.”
“I never said—”
“No, you didn’t. But pilgrims usually travel east.” He gestured behind them in the vague direction of the Doctrinopolis. “There’s only one reason for heading this way.”
The vox squawked and Gaunt slid down into the driving well to answer it. Mkoll was checking in. The spearhead had just forded the holy river at Nusera and was making good speed to Limata. The fogs, Mkoll reported, were beginning to lift.
When Gaunt resumed his seat, he found Zweil looking through his ragged copy of Sabbat’s gospel.
“A well-thumbed book,” said Zweil, making no attempt to set it aside. “Always a good sign. I never trust a pilgrim with a clean and pristine copy. The texts you’ve marked are interesting. You can tell much of a man’s character by what he chooses to read.”
“What can you tell about me?”
“You are burdened… hence the numerous annotations in the Devotional Creeds… and burdened by responsibility and the demands of office in particular… these three selections in the Epistles of Duty show that you seek answers, or perhaps ways of fighting internal daemons… that is plain from the number of paper strips you’ve used to mark the pages of the Doctrines and Revelations. You appreciate battle and courage… the Annals of War, here… and you are sentimental when it comes to fine devotional poetry…”
He held the book out open to show the Psalms of Sabbat.
“Very good,” said Gaunt.
“You smile, Colonel-Commissar Gaunt.”
“I am an Imperial commander leading a taskforce of war on a mission. You could have surmised all that about me without even looking at the bookmarks.”
“I did,” laughed Zweil. He carefully closed the gospel and handed it back to Gaunt.
“If I might say, colonel-commissar… the gospel of our saint does contain answers. But the answers are often not literal ones. Simply reading the book from cover to cover will not reveal them. One has to… feel. To look around the bare meanings of the words.”
“I studied textual interpretation at Scholam Progenium…”
“Oh, but I’m sure you did. And from that I’m sure you can tell me that when the saint talks of the ‘flower incarnadine’ she means battle, and when she refers to ‘the fast-flowing river of pure water’ she means true human faith. What I mean to say is the lessons of Saint Sabbat are oblique mysteries, to be unlocked by experience and innate belief. I’m not sure you have those. The answers you seek would have come to you by now if you had.”
“I see.”
“I meant no disrespect. There are high ayatani in the holy city who do no more than read and reread this work and fancy themselves enlightened.”
Gaunt didn’t reply. He looked out of the rocking tank and saw how the fog was beginning to burn off with remarkable haste. Already the tree-lines at the river were becoming visible.
“Then how do I begin?” Gaunt asked darkly. “For, truth be told, father, I have need of answers. Now more than ever before.”
&nbs
p; “I can’t help you there. Except to say, start with yourself. It is a journey you must make, standing still. I told you you were a pilgrim.”
Half an hour later, they reached the crossing at Nusera. The highway came down to a wide, shallow pan of shingle that broke the fast flowing water in a broad fording place. Groves of ghylum trees clustered at either bank, and hundreds of forkbills broke upwards into the sky in an explosive fan at the sound of the motors, their wings beating the air with the sound of ornithopter gunships.
A lone peasant with an ancient cow chelon on a pull-rein waved them past. One by one, the vehicles of the honour guard ploughed over the ford, spraying up water so hard and high that rainbows marked their wake.
Limata was another dead town. Mkoll’s spearhead reached it just before eleven thirty. The fogs had vanished. The sun was climbing and the air was still. This day was going to be even hotter than the last.
The baking roofs of Limata lay ahead, dusty and forlorn, their tiles bright pink in the sunlight. No breeze, no sounds, no telltale fingers of cookfire smoke rising above the village. Here, the Tembarong Road divided, one spur heading southwest towards Hylophon and Tembarong itself. The other broke north-west into the highlands and the steaming tracts of the rainwoods. Forty-plus kilometres in that direction lay Bhavnager.
“Slow to steady,” Mkoll snapped into his vox. “Troopers arm. Load main weapons. Let’s crawl in.”
Captain Siras, commanding the Pardus elements, voxed in immediately from his Conqueror. “Allow us, Tanith. We’ll drive ’em down.”
“Negative. Full stop.”
The vehicles came to a halt six hundred metres short of the town perimeter. The Ghosts dismounted from the Salamanders. Idling engines rumbled in the hot, dry air.
“What’s the delay?” Sims snapped over the vox.
“Stand by,” replied Mkoll. He glanced around at Trooper Domor, one of the disembarked troopers. “You sure?”
“Sure as they call me Shoggy,” Domor nodded, carefully using a felt cloth to wipe dust grit from the lenses of his augmetic eyes. “You can see the way the road surface there is broken and repacked.”