“Are no longer viable or appropriate. As field commander, judging things as they stand here on the ground, it is within my purview.”
Intendant Elthan rose, quivering with rage. “But we’ll be killed! We have to return to the Doctrinopolis landing fields by the timetable or we will not be evacuated! You know what’s coming, colonel-commissar! How dare you suggest this!”
“Sit down, Elthan. If it helps, I’m sorry that non-combatants such as yourself and your driver crews have been caught in this. But you are servants of the Emperor. Sometimes your duty is as hard as ours. You will obey. The Emperor protects.”
A few officers and all the ayatani echoed the refrain.
“Sir, you can’t just break orders.” Lieutenant Pauk voice was full of alarm. Kleopas nodded urgently at his junior officer’s words. “We’ll all face the strictest discipline. Lord General Lugo’s orders were simple and precise. We can’t just disobey them!”
“Have you seen what’s coming up the pass behind us, Pauk?” Everyone turned. Captain LeGuin was standing at the back of the room, leaning against the wall. “In terms of necessity alone, I’d say the colonel-commissar was making a sound decision. We can’t get back to the Doctrinopolis now even if we wanted to.”
“Thank you, captain,” nodded Gaunt.
“Stuff your opinions, LeGuin!” cried Captain Marchese, commander of the Conqueror P48J. “We can always try! That’s what the lord general and the Warmaster would expect! If we stay here and fight it out we might resist for the next week or so. But once that fleet arrives, we’re dead anyway!”
Several officers, Ghosts among them, applauded Marchese’s words.
“We follow orders! We take up the relics and we break out now! Let’s take our chances in a stand-up fight against the Infardi! If we fail, we fail! Better to die like that, in glory, than to wait it out for certain death!”
Much more support now.
“Captain Marchese, you should have been a commissar. You turn a good, rousing phrase.” Gaunt smiled. “But I am commissar. And I am commander here. We stay, as I have instructed. We stay and fight.”
“Please reconsider, Gaunt!” cried Kleopas.
“But we’ll die, sir,” said Sergeant Meryn.
“And die badly, come to that,” growled Feygor.
“Don’t we deserve a chance, sir?” asked Sergeant Soric, pulling his stout frame upright his cap clasped in his hands.
“Every chance in the cosmos, Soric,” said Gaunt. “I’ve considered all our options carefully. This is the right way.”
“You’re insane!” squealed Elthan. He turned and gazed imploringly at Hark. “Commissar! For the Emperor’s sake, do something!”
Hark stepped forward. The room went quiet. “Gaunt. I know you’ve considered me an enemy all along. I can see why, but God-Emperor knows I’m not. I’ve admired you for years. I’ve studied how you’ve made command choices that would have been beyond lesser men. You’ve never been afraid of questioning the demands of high command.”
Hark looked round at the silent room and then his gaze returned to Gaunt.
“I got you this mission, Gaunt. I’ve been with the lord general’s staff for a year now, and I know what kind of man he is. He wants you to shoulder the blame for the Doctrinopolis to cover his own lack of command finesse.
“After the disaster at the Citadel, he would have had you drummed out on the spot. But I knew damn well you were worth more than that. I suggested a final mission, this honour guard. I thought it might give you a chance to redeem yourself, or at least finish your career on a note of respectability. I even thought it might give Lugo time to reconsider and change his mind. A successful salvation of the shrineworld relics from under the nose of an overwhelming enemy force could even be turned into a famous victory with the right spin. Lugo might come out a hero, and you, consequently, might come out with your command intact.”
Hark sighed and straightened the front of his waistcoat. “You break orders now, there’s no coming back. You’ll put yourself right where Lugo wants you. You’ll turn yourself into the scapegoat he needs. Furthermore, as an officer of his personal commissariate, I cannot allow it. I cannot allow you to continue in command. I’m sorry, Gaunt. All the way along, I’ve been on your side. You’ve just forced my hand. I hereby assume control of the honour guard, as per general order 145.f. The mission will continue to the letter of our orders. I wish it could have been different, Gaunt. Major Rawne, relieve Colonel-Commissar Gaunt of his weapons.”
Rawne rose slowly. He walked across the packed room to Gaunt and then stood at his side, facing Hark. “I don’t think that’s going to happen, Hark,” he said.
“That’s insubordination, major,” murmured Hark. “Follow my instructions and relieve Gaunt of his weapons now or I’ll have you up on charges.”
“I can’t have been clear,” said Rawne. “Go feth yourself.”
Hark closed his eyes, paused, opened them again and drew his plasma pistol.
He raised it slowly and aimed it at Rawne. “Last chance, major.”
“Who for, Hark? Look around.”
Hark looked around. A dozen sidearms were pointing at him, aimed by Ghost officers and a few Pardus, including LeGuin and Kleopas.
Hark holstered his weapon. “I see you give me no choice. If we survive, this incident will be brought to the attention of the Crusade commissariate, in full and frank detail.”
“If we survive, I’ll look forward to that,” said Gaunt. “Now let’s make ready.”
Out in the blizzarding night, at waymark 00.02 at the head of the pass, Scout-trooper Bonin and Troopers Larkin and Lillo were dug into an ice bunker. They had a chemical heater puffing away in the base of the dug-out, but it was still bitterly cold. Bonin was watching the portable auspex unit while Larkin hunted the flurrying darkness with the night scope of his long-las. Lillo chaffed his hands, waiting by the tripod-mounted autocannon. “Movement,” Larkin said quietly.
“Nothing on the screen,” replied Bonin, checking the glowing glass plate of the auspex.
“See for yourself,” said Larkin, moving aside so that Bonin could slide in to view through the scope of the positioned sniper weapon.
“Where?”
“Left a touch.”
“Oh feth,” murmured Bonin. Illuminated in ghostly green, he could see blurs of light on the pass below. Hundreds of lights were moving up the precipitous track towards them. Headlamps glaring in the falling snow.
“There’s lots of them,” said Bonin, moving back.
“You haven’t seen the half of it,” mumbled Lillo, staring at the auspex screen. Bright yellow sigils wobbled around the contour lines of the holo-map. The tactical counter had identified at least three hundred contacts, but the number was rising as they watched.
“Get on the vox,” said Larkin. “Tell Gaunt all fething hell is coming up the pass.”
FIFTEEN
THE WAITING
“Actual combat is a fleeting part of war. The bulk of soldiering is waiting.”
—Warmaster Slaydo,
from A Treatise on the
Nature of Warfare
When the snowing stopped just before dawn, the Infardi advance guard began their first assault up the top of the pass. A bombardment was launched by their reserve tanks and self-propelled guns, but most of it fell short of the Shrinehold walls. Six SteGs and eight Reavers churned through the snow towards the promontory, and a hurrying line of four hundred troops followed them.
They were met by the Pardus armour and the dug-in sections of the Tanith First-and-Only. Hull-down, Grey Venger picked off the first four armour units before they were even clear of the spur. Their burning carcasses dirtied the snow-field with blackened debris and fire.
Heavy weapon emplacements opened up to meet the infantry. In a quarter of an hour, the white slopes were scattered with green-robed dead.
A SteG and an AT70 pushed in past the outer defence, behind Grey Venger’s field of fire. They were m
et and destroyed by Kleopas’ Heart of Destruction and Marchese’s P48J.
The Infardi fell back.
Gaunt strode into the tent where Ghost troopers were guarding the Infardi officer taken prisoner at Bhavnager. The wretch was shivering and broken.
Gaunt ordered him to be released and handed him a small data-slate.
“Take this back to your brethren,” he said firmly.
The Infardi rose, facing Gaunt, and spat in his face.
Gaunt’s punch broke his nose and sent him tumbling onto the snowy ground.
“Take this back to your brethren,” he repeated, holding out the slate.
“What is it?”
“A demand for them to surrender.” The Infardi laughed. “Last chance… Go.”
The Infardi got up, blood from his nose spattering the snow, and took the slate. He went out through the gate and disappeared down the slope.
The next time the Imperials saw him, he was strung spread-eagled across the front of an AT70 that was ploughing up the approach to the outer line. The tank waited, stationary, as if daring the Imperials to shoot or at least daring them to notice.
Then it fired its main gun. The screaming Infardi officer had been tied with his torso over the muzzle of the tank cannon.
A conical spray of red gore covered the snow. The AT70 turned and trundled back to its lines. “An answer of sorts, I suppose,” Gaunt said to Rawne.
On the Ladder, barely a quarter of the way up, Corbec’s team woke in the chill of dawn to find themselves half buried in the overnight snow. Each of them had lain down on a step in their bedroll. Shaking and slow, they got up, cold to the marrow. Corbec looked up the winding stairs. This was going to be murder.
For five straight days, the Infardi made no attempt to attack again. Gaunt was beginning to believe they were stalling until the fleet’s arrival. For the Imperials dug in behind the Shrinehold defences, the waiting was becoming intolerable.
Then, at noon on the fourteenth day of the mission, the enemy tried again.
Armour ploughed up out of the gorge, and shells wailed at the Shrinehold. Caught in the initial rush, the Conqueror Say Your Prayers and two Chimera were lost. Smoke from the wreck of the dead Conqueror trailed up into the blue.
The rest of the Pardus armour met the assault and slugged it out. Ghosts under Soric and Mkoll ran forward from their ice trenches and countered the enemy push on foot up the pass.
From their dug-outs, the Tanith snipers began to compete, Larkin could outscore Luhan easily enough, but Banda was something else. Seeing a competition, Cuu put money on it. His wager, Larkin was furious to discover, was on the Verghastite loom-girl.
It took two straight hours for the Imperials to repulse the attack. They were exhausted by the end of it.
On the sixteenth day, the Infardi tried yet again, in major force. Shells hit the Shrinehold’s walls and tower. A blizzard of las-fire streaked the air, raining on the Imperial lines. Once they could see they were hurting their enemy, the Infardi charged, five or maybe six thousand cultist-warriors, pouring in through the advancing files of their war machines. From the wall, Gaunt saw them coming. It was going to be bloody.
High up on the punishing Ladder of Heaven which seemed to go on forever, Corbec stopped to get his breath back. He’d never known exhaustion like this, or pain, or breathlessness. He knelt down on the snow-covered step.
“Don’t… don’t you dare go… go quitting on me now!” Dorden exclaimed, vapour gusting from his lips, as he tried to pull Corbec to his feet. The chief medic was thin and haggard, his skin drawn and pale, and he was struggling for breath.
“But doc… we should never… never have even tried…”
“Don’t you dare, Corbec! Don’t you dare!”
“Listen! Listen!” Daur called back to them. He and Derin were about forty steps above them, silhouetted against the bright white sky.
They heard a rolling roar that wasn’t the constant wind. A buffeting, thunderous drone, mixed over what they slowly realised were the voices of thousands of howling, chanting men.
Corbec got up. He wanted to just lie down and die. He couldn’t feel his feet anymore. But he got up and leaned against Dorden.
“I think, my old friend, we might be there at last. And I think we’ve arrived at a particularly busy time.”
A few steps behind them, the others had caught up, all except Greer who was now lagging a long, long way behind. Bragg and Nessa sat down in the snow to catch their breaths. Vamberfeld stood panting with his eyes closed. Milo looked at Sanian, whose weary face was clouded by what he supposed to be grief.
It wasn’t. It was anger.
“That’s the sound of war,” she wheezed, fighting her desperate fatigue. “I know it. Not enough that war comes to my world, that it tears through my home town. Now it comes here, to the most sacred place of all, where only peace should be!”
She looked up at Dorden. “I was right you see, doctor? War consumes everything and everyone. There is only war. Nothing else even matters.”
They clambered on, up the last few hundred metres of curling staircase soul-weary and delirious with cold and hunger. But to know the end was at hand lifted them up for that last effort.
The sounds of the combat grew louder, magnified by the echoes that came off the mountain faces and the gorge.
They readied their weapons with trembling, clumsy hands, and advanced. Corbec and Bragg covered the way ahead, taking one step at a time.
The steps ended in a wide snow-covered platform of rock, the cliff edge of which showed the ancient traces of a retaining wall. They were climbing up onto a great promontory of rock, a flat-topped buttress of mountain that stuck out from the mountainside above a vast gorge. A walled, keep-like structure that could only be the Shrinehold itself lay to their left, dominating the promontory. Between it and the place where the wide promontory extended out from the top of the pass, full-scale battle raged. They were bystanders, hidden from view half a kilometre from the edge of the righting. Banks of sooty smoke and ash rolled through the freezing mountain air.
A tide of Infardi war machines and troops, inexorable as a glacier, was moving forward from the head of the pass and up the promontory past them. In the sloping snowfield in front of the Shrinehold, the Chaos forces were being met head-on by the Imperial defenders. Shell holes had been torn in the Shrinehold’s outer wall, and vehicles were on fire. The fighting was so thick they could barely make sense of it.
“Come on,” said Corbec.
“We’re going into that?” moaned Greer. “We can barely walk anymore, you crazy bastard!”
“That’s Colonel Crazy Bastard to you, pal. No, we’re not going into that. Not directly. We’ll follow the edge of this promontory around. But that’s where we’re going, and we’ve got to get in there sooner or later. Dead on my damned feet I may be, but I’ve come a fething long way to be part of this.”
Gaunt was in the thick of the fighting at the foot of the outer wall. He hadn’t been in a stand-up fight this fierce since Bal-haut. It was so concentrated, so direct. The noise was bewildering.
Nearby, Lieutenant Pauk’s Executioner was firing beam after beam of superheated plasma into the charging ranks, leaving lines of mangled corpses in the half-melted snow. Both the Heart of Destruction and the Lucky Bastard had run out of main gun shells, and were reduced to bringing in their bulk and coaxial weapons in support of the Ghosts. Brostin, Neskon and the other flame troopers were out on the right flank, spitting gouts of yellow flame down the field that turned the hard-packed snow to slush and sent Infardi troops screaming back, their clothes and flesh on fire.
The Imperials were holding, but in this hellish confusion, there was a chance that command coherency could be lost as wave after wave of the Chaos-breed stormed forward.
Gaunt saw the first couple of enemy officers. Just energised blurs moving amongst their troops, each one protected in the shimmering orb of a refractor shield. Nothing short of a point-blank tank ro
und could touch them. He counted five of them amid the thick echelons of advancing enemy. Any one of them might be the notorious Pater Sin, come all this way to snatch his final triumph.
“Support me!” Gaunt cried to the fireteam at his heels, and they pushed out in assault tackling the Infardi, sometimes hand to hand. Gaunt’s bolt pistol fired shot after shot, and the power sword of Heironymo Sondar whispered in his fist.
Two Ghosts beside him were cut down. Another stumbled and fell, his left arm gone at the elbow.
“For Tanith! For Verghast! For Sabbat!” Gaunt yelled, his breath steaming the air. “First-and-Only! First-and-Only!”
There was good support to his immediate left. Caffran, Criid, Beltayn, Adare, Memmo and Mkillian. Flanking them, Sergeant Bray’s section, and the remains of a fireteam led by Corporal Maroy.
Scything with his sword, Gaunt worried about the right flank. He was pretty sure Corporal Mkteeg was dead, and there was no sign of Obel’s section, or of Soric who, with Mkoll, had operational command of that quarter.
One of the Infardi officers was close now, cackling aloud, invisible in his ball of shield energy against which the Imperial las-fire twinkled harmlessly. Using him as mobile cover, the Ershul foot troops were pounding at the Ghosts. Memmo tumbled, headshot gone, and Mkillian dropped a second later, hit in the thigh and hip.
“Caffran! Tube him!” Gaunt yelled.
“It won’t breach the shield, sir!”
“Put it at his feet then! Knock the fether over!”
Caffran hurled a tube-charge, spinning it end over end. It bounced in the thick snowpack right at the Infardi officer’s feet and went off brightly.
The blasts didn’t hurt the Ershul officer, but it effectively blew the ground out from under him and he fell, his refractor shield hissing in the snow.
Gaunt was immediately on him, yelling out, stabbing down two-handed with his power blade. Criid, Beltayn and Adare were right at his heels, gunning down the Ershul-lord’s bodyguard.