[Gaunt's Ghosts 04] - Honour Guard

  “If I may,” said ayatani Zweil, rising up from his floor mat to take one. With a surprised grin, Corbec lit it for him.

  “Haven’t had one for years,” smiled Zweil, enjoying the first few puffs. “What’s the worst it could do? Kill me?”

  “Least of your worries now, father,” said Rawne.

  “Too true.”

  “I’m waiting, Colm,” said Gaunt.

  “I… ah… let me see… how best to put it… I… well, the thing of it was… at first…”

  “The saint spoke to him,” said Dorden abruptly.

  Zweil exploded in a coughing fit. Corbec leaned forward to thump the old priest on the back.

  “Corbec?” growled Gaunt.

  “Well, she did, didn’t she?” said Dorden. He turned to Gaunt and Rawne. “Don’t look at me like that either of you. I know how mad it sounds. That’s how I felt when Colm told it to me. But answer me this… What in the name of the good God-Emperor would make an old man like me come all this way too? Eh? It almost killed me. The fething Ladder of Heaven! It nearly killed all of us. But none of us are mad. None of us. Not even Colm.”

  “Oh, thanks for that,” said Corbec.

  “I need more,” began Gaunt.

  “A whole fething lot more,” agreed Rawne, helping himself to a stiff drink after all.

  “I had these dreams. About my old dad. Back on Tanith, Pryze County,” said Corbec.

  “Aha. Here we go…” said Rawne.

  “Get out if you don’t want to listen!” spat Dorden. Rawne shrugged and sat. The mild old medic had never spoken to him like that before.

  “He was trying to tell me something,” Corbec went on. “This was right after I’d been through the clutches of that Pater Sin.”

  “Trauma, then?” suggested Gaunt.

  “Oh, very probably. If it makes it easier for you, we can pretend I slogged three hundred fething kilometres just because I wanted to be with you at the last stand of the Ghosts. And these people were fool enough to follow me.”

  “That is easier to pretend,” said Rawne.

  “Agreed, major,” said Gaunt. “But humour us, Corbec, and tell us the rest.”

  “Through my father, in my dreams, the saint called me. I can’t prove it, but it’s a fact. She called me. I didn’t know what to do. I thought I was cracking up. Then I discovered Daur felt the same way. From the moment he was injured, he’d been taken by this niggle, this itch that wouldn’t go away, no matter how hard he tried to scratch it.”

  “Captain?” asked Gaunt. Daur sat over in the corner and so far he’d said nothing. The cold and fatigue of his hard journey had played hell with his wound-weakened state.

  “It’s as the colonel describes. I had a… a feeling.”

  “Right,” said Gaunt. He turned back to Corbec. “And then what? This feeling was so strong you and Daur broke orders, deserted, and took the others with you?”

  “About that,” admitted Corbec.

  “Breaking orders… Where have I heard that recently?” murmured Zweil, relighting his cigar. “Shut up, father,” said Gaunt.

  “Corbec told me what was going on,” said Dorden quietly. “He told me what was in his head and what he planned to do. I knew he was trying to rope in able-bodied troopers to go with him. I tried to argue him out of it. But…”

  “But?”

  “But by then the saint had spoken to me too.”

  “Feth me!” Rawne exclaimed.

  “She’d spoken to you too, Tolin?” asked Gaunt steadily.

  Dorden nodded. “I know how it sounds. But I’d been having these dreams. About my son, Mikal.”

  “That’s understandable, doctor. That was a terrible loss for the Ghosts and for you.”

  “Thank you, sir. But the more Corbec talked to me about his own dreams, the more I realised they were like mine. His dead father. My dead son. Coming to each of us with a message. Captain Daur was the same, but in a different way. Someone… something… was trying to communicate with us.”

  “And so the three of you deserted?”

  “Yes sir,” said Daur.

  “I’m sorry about that, sir,” said Corbec.

  Gaunt breathed deeply in contemplation. “And the others? Were they spoken to?”

  “Not as far as I know,” said Corbec. “We just recruited them. Milo had come back with the wounded and desperately wanted to rejoin the company, so he was easy to convince. He brought in the girl, Sanian, her name is. She’s esholi. We knew we needed local knowledge. But for her guidance we’d have been dead many times over by now. Shot, or frozen on the mountainside.”

  “She found our way for us,” joked Dorden darkly. “I pray to the Golden Throne she finds her own now.”

  “Bragg, well, you know Try Again. He’d do any damn thing I tell him,” said Corbec. “He was so eager to help. Derin, too. Vamberfeld, Nessa. When you’ve got a colonel, a captain and a chief medic asking you to break the rules and help them out life or death, I think you go for it. None of them are to blame. None should be punished. They gave their all. For you, really.”

  “For me?” asked Gaunt.

  “That’s why they were doing it. We’d convinced them it was a life or death mission above and beyond orders. That you’d have approved. That you’d have wanted it. That it was for the good of the Ghosts and for the Imperium.”

  “You say you had to convince them, Corbec,” said Rawne. “That implies you had to lie.”

  “None of us lied, major,” said Dorden bluntly. “We knew what we had to do and we told them about it. They followed, because they’re loyal Ghosts.”

  “What about the Pardus… Sergeant Greer is it?”

  “We needed a driver, sir,” Daur said. “I’d met Greer a little while before. He didn’t need much convincing.”

  “You told him about the saint and her messages?”

  “Yes, sir. He didn’t believe them, obviously.”

  “Obviously,” echoed Rawne.

  “So I…” Daur faltered, ashamed. “I told him we were deserting to go and liberate a trove of ayatani gold from the Sacred Hills. Then he went along willingly, just like that.” Daur clicked his fingers.

  “At last!” said Rawne, refilling his shot glass. “A motivation I can believe.”

  “Is there a trove of ayatani gold in the Sacred Hills?” Zweil asked, blowing casual but perfect smoke rings.

  “I don’t believe so, father,” said Daur miserably.

  “Oh good. I’d hate to be the last to know.”

  Gaunt sat down on a stool by the door, ruminated, and stood up again almost at once. Corbec could tell he was nervous, edgy.

  “I’m sorry, Ibram…” he began.

  Gaunt held up a commanding hand. “Save it, Colm. Tell me this… If I believe this miraculous story one millimetre… What happens now? What are you all here for?”

  Corbec looked at Dorden, who shrugged. Daur put his head in his hands.

  “That’s where we all kind of run out of credibility, sir,” said Corbec.

  “That’s where it happens?” Rawne chuckled. “Excuse me, Gaunt, but I thought that moment had passed long ago!”

  “Perhaps, major. So… none of you have any idea what you’re supposed to do now you’re here?”

  “No, sir,” said Daur.

  “Not a clue,” said Corbec.

  “I’m sorry,” said Dorden.

  “Very well,” said Gaunt. “You should return to the billets arranged for you and get some sleep.”

  The three members of the Wounded Wagon party nodded and began to get up.

  “Oh no, no, no!” said Zweil suddenly. “That’s not an end to it! Not at all!”

  “Father,” Gaunt began. “It’s late and we’re all going to die in the morning. Let it go.”

  “I won’t,” said Zweil. He stubbed out his cigar butt in a saucer. “A good smoke, colonel. Thank you. Now sit down and tell me more.”

  “This isn’t the time, father,” said Gaunt.

  ??
?It is the time. If this isn’t the time, I don’t bloody know what is! The saint spoke to these men, and sent them out after us on a holy cause!”

  “Please,” said Rawne sourly.

  “A holy cause! Like it or not, believe it or not, these men are Infardi!”

  “They’re what?” cried Rawne, reaching for his laspistol as he leapt up.

  “Infardi! Infardi! What’s your word for it…? Pilgrims! They’re bloody pilgrims! They have come all this way in the name of the hallowed beati! Don’t spurn them now!”

  “Sit down, Rawne, and put the sidearm away. What do you suggest we do, Father Zweil?”

  “Ask them the obvious question, colonel-commissar.”

  “Which is?”

  “What did the saint say to them?”

  Gaunt ran his splayed hands back though his cropped blond hair. His left arm throbbed. “Fine. For the record… What did the saint say to you?”

  “Sabbat Martyr,” Dorden, Corbec and Daur replied in unison.

  Gaunt sat down sharply.

  “Oh sacred feth,” he murmured.

  “Sir?” queried Rawne, getting up. “What does that mean?”

  “That means she’s probably been speaking to me too.”

  “Sanian?” Milo called her name as he edged down the dim corridors of the Shrinehold.

  The wind outside wailed down the flues of the airshafts. Bizarre reflections of light from the warp storm outside spilled across the tiled floor from the casements. He saw a figure sitting on one of the hallway benches.

  “Sanian?”

  “Hello, Milo.”

  “What are you doing?”

  He could see what she was doing. Clumsily and inexpertly, she was field-stripping and loading an Imperial lasrifle.

  She looked around at him as he approached, put down the chamber block and the dirty vizzy-cloth, and kissed him impetuously on the cheek. Her fingers left a smudge of oil on his chin.

  “What was that for?”

  “For helping me.”

  “Helping you to do what?”

  She didn’t reply immediately. She was trying to screw in the rifle’s barrel the wrong way.

  “Let me,” said Milo, reaching around her to grip the weapon. “So what have I helped you to do?”

  She watched as his expert hands locked the rifle system together.

  “Praise you to the saint Brin. Praise you.”

  “Why? What have I done?” he asked as she took the weapon from his hands.

  “You,” she smiled. “You and your Ghosts. From them, I have found my way. I am esholi no longer. I see the future. I see my way at last.”

  “Your way? So… what is it?”

  Outside, the warp storm blistered across the night sky. “It’s the only way there is,” she said.

  “I’m sorry, but this is crazy!” Rawne cried, hurrying to catch up with Gaunt, Dorden, Corbec, Zweil and Daur as they strode down the long cloisters of the Shrinehold heading for the holy sepulchre.

  “What is this commotion?” asked an ayatani, coming out of a pair of inner doors.

  “Go back to bed,” Zweil told him as they rushed past.

  Gaunt stopped dead and they slammed into him from behind.

  He turned around. “Rawne’s right! This is fething stupid! There’s nothing in it!”

  “You said yourself some voice has murmured ‘Sabbat Martyr’ to you several times,” reminded Dorden.

  “It did! I thought it did! Feth! This is madness!”

  “How long have we been thinking that?” Dorden looked aside at Corbec.

  “It doesn’t matter how stupid it feels,” Zweil said. “Get in there. Into the sepulchre! Test it!”

  “I’ve already been there! You know that!” said Gaunt.

  “On your own, maybe. Not with these other Infardi.”

  “I wish you’d stop using that word,” said Rawne.

  “And I wish you’d bugger off,” Zweil told him.

  “Stop it! All of you!” cried Gaunt. “Let’s just go and see what happens…”

  “Vambs?” whispered Bragg, pushing open the heavy, red door of the sepulchre. He wasn’t sure where he was, but it looked a feth of a lot like a place he shouldn’t be.

  The chamber was dark, the air was smoky and the floor was squeaky. Bragg edged across the shiny tiles carefully. They looked valuable. Too valuable for his big boots. “Vambs? Mate?”

  Scary holos of Space Marines loomed out of alcoves in the black walls.

  “For feth’s sake! Vambs?”

  Behind the polished altar and under a big hood of what looked to Bragg like bone, he saw Vamberfeld, bending over a small hardwood casket in the shadows.

  “Vambs?” Bragg approached the altar. “What are you doing in here?”

  “Look, Bragg!” Vamberfeld held up an object he had taken from the casket. “It’s her jiddi-stick! The cane used by Sabbat herself to drive her chelon to market.”

  “Great. Uhm… I reckon you oughta put that back…” Bragg said.

  “Should I? Maybe. Anyway, look at this, Bragg! Remember that broken crook I found? See? It matches exactly the broken haft they have here! Can you believe it? Exactly! I think I found a piece of the saint’s actual crook!”

  “I think I should get you to the doc, mate,” Bragg said carefully. “We shouldn’t be in here.”

  “I think we should. I think I should.”

  The sepulchre door creaked open behind them.

  “Feth! Someone’s coming in,” said Bragg, worried. “Stay here. Don’t touch anything else, okay? Not a thing.” He walked back into the main area of the sepulchre.

  “What the feth are you doing here?” Vamberfeld heard Bragg ask a few seconds later.

  He turned and stared out of the gloomy reliquary. His friend Bragg was talking to someone.

  “Same as you, Tanith. I’ve come for the gold.”

  “The gold? What fething gold?” Vamberfeld heard Bragg reply.

  “Don’t screw with me, big guy!” the other voice said.

  “I have no intention of screwing with you. Put that auto down, Greer. It’s not funny anymore.”

  Don’t. Not in here, Vamberfeld thought. Please not in here. His hand was starting to shake.

  He got up and came out of the reliquary. Greer was standing inside the big red door, which he’d closed behind him. He looked sick and desperate and twitchy. His skin was haggard and blotchy from the ordeal they’d all been through. He was pointing a guard-issue autopistol at Bragg.

  The moment Vamberfeld appeared, Greer flicked the muzzle to cover him as well.

  “Two of you, huh? I expected as much, that’s why I came down here. Trying to cheat me out of my cut, huh? Did Daur put you up to this or are you stabbing him in the back too?”

  “What the good feth are you talking about?” asked Bragg.

  “The gold! The damn gold! Stop playing innocent!”

  “There is no gold,” said Vamberfeld, trying to stop his hand shaking. “I told you that.”

  “Shut up! You’re not right in the head, you psycho! You’ve got nothing I wanna hear!”

  “Why don’t you put the gun down, Greer?” asked Bragg, taking a step forward. The gun switched back to cover him.

  “Don’t move. Don’t try that crap. Show me the gold! Now! You got here before me, you must’ve found it!”

  “There is no gold,” Vamberfeld repeated.

  “Shut the hell up!” spat Greer, swinging the gun back to cover the Verghastite.

  “This is getting out of hand,” said Bragg. “We gotta calm down…”

  “Okay, okay,” Greer seemed to agree. “Look, we’ll split it three ways. Gold’s heavy. I can’t carry it all, and there’s no way I’m staying here tonight. Chaos is going to be all over this shithole any rime. Three way split. As much as we can take. You help me carry it back down the Ladder to the Chimera. What do you say?”

  “I’d say… One, you know we’d never make it back all that way, especially laden down…
Two, the whole planet’s falling to Chaos, so there’s nowhere to run to… And three, there is no fething gold.”

  “Screw you, then! I’ll take what I can myself! As much gold as I can carry!”

  “There is no gold,” said Vamberfeld.

  “Shut up, you head-job!” screamed Greer, aiming the gun at Vamberfeld. “Make him shut up, Tanith! Make him stop saying that!”

  “But it’s true,” said Vamberfeld. His hand was shaking so much. So hard. Trying to make it stop, he pushed it into his pocket.

  “What the hell? Are you going for a weapon?” Greer aimed the gun straight-armed at Vamberfeld, his finger squeezing.

  “No!” Bragg lunged at Greer, grappling frantically at his weapon.

  The pistol discharged. The round hit Vamberfeld in the chest and threw him over onto his back.

  “Vambs!” Bragg raged in horror. “God-Emperor feth you, you bastard!” His massive left fist crashed into Greer’s face, hurling the Pardus back across the sepulchre with blood spurting from his broken nose and teeth. The gun fired again twice, sending one bullet through Bragg’s right thigh and the other explosively through the front of the chelon-shell altar in a spray of lustrous shards.

  Bragg lunged at Greer again, big hands clawing.

  The Pardus sergeant’s first shot didn’t even slow Bragg down, even though it went right through his torso. Neither did the second. The third finally brought Bragg down, hard on his face, at Greer’s feet.

  “You stupid pair of bastards!” Greer snarled contemptuously at the fallen men, trying to staunch the blood pouring out of his smashed face.

  The Verghastite lay on the floor beside Bragg, face up, staring at the roof shadows high above through sightless eyes. Bragg was face down. A wide and spreading lake of blood seeped out across the ancient, precious tiles from each of them. The Pardus sergeant strode in towards the sepulchre.

  “What the feth! Did you hear that?” Corbec cried.

  “Shooting! From the sepulchre,” said Gaunt. He pulled his bolt pistol out and started to run. The others raced after him, Dorden lagging, his weary legs too leaden.

  They burst into the sepulchre, Gaunt’s boot slamming the massive door wide.

  “Oh, feth me, no! Doc!” bellowed Corbec, gazing at the bodies and the blood.

  “Who would do this?” Zweil gasped.