He peppered those in range with shots. “Fire support here!” he called out. “I need shooters at this slot!”
“You’re on your own, Tanith,” said the voice.
Larkin turned around. He knew what he would see.
Lijah Cuu stood in the doorway of the gunbox facing him. His thin, scar-split face was drawn in a leer. His uniform was filthy and marked with rot and smears of soil.
Cuu had his warblade in his hand.
“All alone, sure as sure.”
Larkin shivered. Sheet ice was creeping across the inside walls of the overlook, creaking like flexing glass. Larkin could smell rich putrefaction and decay.
“I’ve killed you once, you son of a bitch,” Larkin whispered. “I can do it all over again.”
“It doesn’t work like that, Tanith,” said Cuu. “Not this time around.”
“I’ll tell you how it fething works,” Larkin replied. “You’re just a phantom from my crazy old brain. You’re not real, so get the feth away from me! I’m busy!”
He turned his back on Cuu and began to fire out of the slot.
Slowly, steadily, the footsteps came up behind him.
VII
Zweil hobbled into the field chamber. He had been drawn from his prayers by curious sounds, sounds that were more than the usual moans and cries of anguish.
In disarray, the chamber had come to an odd halt. The wounded men, in their cots, were staring out in bewilderment. Corpsmen and stretcher bearers, bringing in the latest casualties from the repulse, had also stopped in their tracks, open-mouthed. Some were making the sign of the aquila. Others had dropped to their knees.
Zweil felt his guts turn to ice.
The dead had come back to them. The lost were all around them, thin grey shapes, shadows made of dust, transparent spectral figures cut from twilight. They lingered by bedsides, or hovered in the central aisle of the chamber, like silent mourners gathering for a funeral.
Some men were speaking to them out loud, crying out in fear or wonder, greeting old friends and fallen comrades, weeping at the sight of long lost loved ones. To them, the vague figures were wives and sweethearts, parents and children, brothers and sister, warriors of Tanith, Verghast and Belladon who had fallen on the long march to this dismal last battle.
Zweil saw men close their eyes or cover their faces with their arms, saw others open their arms wide for embraces that would never come. Some of the wounded men were trying to get out of their beds to reach the shades standing over them.
“No,” Zweil whispered. “No, no, no…”
Dorden was beside him, his eyes streaming with tears. He gripped Zweil’s arm tightly. “My son,” he gasped. “Mikal, my son.” Dorden pointed. Zweil saw nothing except a shadow that should not have been.
Zweil stepped forwards, pulling free of the old medicae’s grasp. He raised his rod and held up the heavy silver eagle he wore on a chain around his reedy neck.
“I abjure thee,” he began. “I command thee, be gone hence and be at peace—”
Voices rose in protest all around him, calling him a fool, a meddler, begging him to stop.
“I abjure thee now, by the light that is the Golden Throne of Terra,” Zweil cried.
“It’s my son!” Dorden yelled.
“No, it isn’t,” said Zweil firmly. Hark had been right, feth him, and Zweil had been a fool not to pay heed. Hinzerhaus was a place of damned souls, where the dead gathered to drag the living down into the lightless places.
“I command thee, daemons, be gone from here!” Dorden clawed at Zweil, and the old priest pushed him away. Someone was screaming. The shadows were thickening, becoming darker. Blood, not dust at all, was streaming down the chamber walls.
VIII
They had held on to the gulley ridge for fifteen minutes, a period that had felt like centuries. Only eighteen members of E Company remained, and most of them were wounded. Unable to maintain a viable line, the survivors had drawn back into the throat of the gulley, until they were in amongst the wreckage of the crashed transport.
Dalin was down to his last clip. He fired his rifle with one hand, holding Meryn upright with his other arm. Meryn was almost comatose from blood loss.
He dragged the captain across the scree, shots lacing the air around him. The Blood Pact was streaming in over the top of the ridge, crashing down across the bank of loose stones, sliding and running. The warriors were uttering loud war cries and brandishing pikes and axes.
Cullwoe closed in beside Dalin, snapping off rounds from the hip. He nailed two of the charging warriors and sent them sliding down the loose stone slope on their faces.
“You know what this is, right?” Cullwoe cried.
Dalin didn’t have time to reply. The bolt from a las-lock exploded Khet Cullwoe’s midriff. He collapsed in a spatter of his own blood, ribs poking from his smouldering abdomen.
“I know what this is,” snarled Neskon. “It’s a fething bastard way to die!” His flamer roared and enveloped six enemy troopers in a sheet of white-hot combustion. They ignited, thrashed, and fell. One wandered a long way on fire before falling to the ground.
“Come on, boy!” Neskon shouted, ripping off another cone of fire. His flamer was beginning to splutter, its tanks all but done.
Dalin emptied the last of his clip and threw his rifle aside. Steadying Meryn, he bent down and took Cullwoe’s rifle, and the last fresh clip Cullwoe had tucked into his belt loop.
“Come the feth on!” Neskon yelled. His flamer dried. He pumped it and worked the feed, but it was dead.
“Help me with the captain!” Dalin cried.
Neskon turned, pulling off his tanks and dropping them with a clatter. A las-round hit him in the hip.
“Fething hell!” he barked. Neskon did not fall down. He drew his service pistol and showed himself to be a damn good shot with a regular firearm. No one ever expected subtlety from a flame-trooper. Neskon banged off two rounds and blew a warrior with a pike over onto his back.
Neskon grabbed hold of Meryn and slung the man over his shoulder.
“Back to the gate!” he said, his voice hoarse with pain.
“There is no gate, Nesk!”
“Oh, we can pretend,” Neskon advised him. Together, they backed away through the burning wreckage of the Destrier, firing at the oncoming line of raiders.
“You can do this,” Caffran said.
Dalin glanced around. His father smiled and nodded to him. Then he was gone, and Caober, Preed and Wheln were beside him, adding their firepower to the hopeless retreat.
“First-and-Only!” Wheln yelled.
All four of them sang out a response, blasting their last shots into the faces of the enemy. In all the noise and fury, it sounded to Dalin as if the entire regiment was with them, shouting the war cry at the top of their lungs.
“Come on! Make for the hatch! The hatch!”
Dalin glanced over his shoulder. He saw Ban Daur and an awful lot of Ghosts behind him.
“Sacred feth!” he whispered in disbelief.
“Come on!” Daur yelled to them. “Have I got to come and get you?”
The Blood Pact surged down the gulley G Company came pouring out of the second gate and waited there to greet them, weapons raised.
IX
Trying to ignore the sheet ice slowly caking the power room walls, the scratching from under the floor and the fizzle of corposant scudding over the ceiling, Baskevyl tried to lift the lid off the power hub.
“There’s a gn… gn… gn…” Merrt said.
“A what? A bloody what? Spit it out, man!”
“A latch! There!”
“Yes, all right. I’ve got it. Now lift.”
The lid came up, It was heavy, and they struggled with it as they lifted it clear. Hot, fetid air, as musty as-dry skulls in a dusty valley
—the most barren, sun-baked desert, wafted out of the kettle.
“Now what?” Merrt asked.
Baskevyl looked into the hub.
br /> It was a deep, hemispheric cavity. The bowl of it was covered in a rind of dust that looked like limescale or some mineral deposit manufactured alchemically deep under the earth.
The worm was inside the kettle.
It was a circular band of machinery, about two metres in diameter, segmented like a snake’s scaled body, and it sat inside the waist of the cavity. It was rotating very slowly, pausing and juddering hesitantly, emitting a soft glow. Each pause and judder corresponded to a dip in the brightness of the wall lights.
Baskevyl stared at it. Where the segmented hoop was joined, there was a metal clasp that looked for all the world like a snake biting the tip of its own tail. It matched exactly the embossed emblem on the spine of the book.
Baskevyl reached into the kettle and felt the slowly moving hoop brush his fingertips.
“It’s dry,” he said.
“This entire fething bad rock is gn… gn… gn… dry,” Merrt retorted.
“No, the kettle’s dry. It’s run dry, after centuries, used up its… I don’t know… fuel. Its working on the very last of its reserves.”
“How do you know all this?” Merrt asked.
“I don’t,” said Baskevyl, “but Domor, he can read schematics. Apparently, this is essentially a basic cold fusion plant.”
“What’s that?” Merrt asked.
“Fethed if I know.” Baskevyl walked over to his kit bag. “Help me with this,” he said.
“With what?”
Baskevyl started to pull canteen bottles from the bag. Merrt approached.
“What’s in the bottles?” he asked.
“Water,” said Baskevyl.
They heard a sound behind them and turned.
Ludd came down the steps into the power room, aiming his pistol at Baskevyl.
“Major Baskevyl,” he began, “you are found derelict of your post, and have acted contrary to the express orders of the commander…”
Elikon M.P., Elikon M.P., this is Nalwood, this
is Nalwood. Please respond. Please respond. We
are under sustained and massive attack. Cannot
hold out much longer. Casualties high. No ammu-
nition remaining. Please, Elikon, can you hear us?
Nalwood out. (transmission ends)
—Transcript of vox message, fifth month, 778.
TWENTY-ONE
The Worm Turns
I
It was a camp, all right. In the dwindling daylight, with the mauve cast of evening covering the sky and lengthening the shadows, they watched the flickering fires from the cover of a salt-lick three quarters of a kilometre away.
“I see tents, prefabs,” said Mkoll, slowly scanning with his scope, “about fifteen vehicles. There must be, I dunno, a hundred or more of the bastards in there.”
“Y haf an score bow shottes,” Eszrah replied.
“So do the maths.”
“Then thissen sword Y haf, afftyr bow shottes dun.”
Mkoll shook his head and laughed. “You think we can take them? I admire your confidence, Eszrah.”
“Hwat seyathee, sidthe soule?”
Mkoll went back to his scope. “Wait now,” he muttered, panning it around. “That’s a vox mast they’ve got set up there. High gain amp. You don’t need a UHF voxcaster unless you’re giving orders out, long range. This has got to be a command station. Someone pretty important, maybe a sirdar commander. An etogaur, even.”
“Hwat seyathee?”
Mkoll looked at Eszrah. “You want your payback, don’t you?”
Eszrah nodded. “Paye bak,” he smiled.
“And I just want to do something useful before I die.” Mkoll pulled off his musette bag and sorted through the contents: two clips, four tube charges, one small-pattern cell spare for his pistol, a spool of det-tape, a grenade. He placed the items one by one into his webbing and pouches for easy access.
Eszrah watched him closely, intrigued.
Mkoll scooped up a handful of dust from the rim of the lick and wiped it across his cheeks and forehead. Eszrah laughed, and took out a gourd flask.
“You can do better?” Mkoll asked.
Carefully, ritually, the Nihtgane smeared grey paste across Mkoll’s thin, dirty face. Then he nodded.
“Are we done?”
Eszrah pointed to Mkoll’s warknife and held out his hand. Mkoll gave him the knife. Eszrah wiped concentrated moth venom along the edges of the thirty-centimetre silver blade.
“Dun,” he said, handing it back to Mkoll.
“Let’s do it, then,” Mkoll said. He held out his hand. Eszrah looked at the proffered hand and then clasped it, bemused.
“It’s been good knowing you, Eszrah ap Niht,” Mkoll said.
“Seyathee true, soule.”
They got up, heads down and hunched, and tracked off across the dust towards the distant fires.
II
The Valkyrie was burning. It was just a shell, a cage of black metal wrapped in a turmoil of fire.
Hark got to his feet. He assumed he had been thrown clear at the point of impact. If so, the dust, the benighted dust of bad rock )ago, had saved him. He could remember plunging down, and then tumbling over in the thick, soft cushion of the regolith.
He was not quite intact, though. His back throbbed mercilessly, and he could feel blood weeping down his legs. His head was gashed. Something, Hark had no idea what, had severed his augmetic arm at the elbow, leaving a sparking stump of wires that dribbled lubricant instead of blood.
He limped towards the wreck. Several of the kit bags had fallen clear. Two had split open, and ancient pages were fluttering away in the wind. He knelt down and tried to gather them together.
“Need a hand?”
Hark looked up. Twenzet, his face covered in blood, stood behind him. When Twenzet saw the snapped stump of H ark’s mechanical arm, he baulked.
“I honestly didn’t mean anything by that, sir,” he said.
“I never thought you did, trooper,” Hark said. “Help me.”
Twenzet dropped to his knees and started to gather the loose pages in, stuffing them back into the kit bags.
“Thrown clear?” Hark asked him.
Twenzet shrugged. “I woke up over there, if that’s what you mean,” he said.
He looked at Hark. “Where are we?”
“Couldn’t say.”
“Are the others dead?”
Hark sat back on his heels and looked at the blazing wreck. Heat-stiffened, black silhouettes sat in their restraints in the heart of the fire. Hark looked away.
“Yes,” he said.
“Not all of them,” said Tona Criid, limping up behind them. She was clutching a lasrifle across her belly with her left hand. Her right arm hung limp and mangled. Most of her right hand was missing. Blood dripped out onto the dust.
“We came in hard,” she said.
“I remember that much,” said Hark.
“I threw you clear,” she told Twenzet. “I tried to get back for Swaythe and Klydo, but—”
Her voice faltered. She sank down onto her knees.
Hark got up. They were in a broad valley, a pass surrounded by soaring walls of rock. Night was falling, giving everything a violet cast.
“Listen,” Twenzet said.
Hark heard nothing at first, then made out a sound like the hum of a voxcaster on standby. The hum became the grumble of faraway thunder, and then the thunder became the rumble of turbine power plants. Lights were approaching down the gut of the pass. Heavy, full beam lamps, shone in the dusk.
“Pick up the bags,” he said.
“Sir?” Twenzet asked.
“Pick up the bags and move,” Hark growled.
Twenzet hauled the bags onto his back. Hark helped Criid to her feet. They skirted the burning wreck of the flier, and headed up the shallow incline of boulders and drifted dust.
“Where are we going?” Twenzet asked, panting from the effort of carrying the heavy bags.
“Away from the w
reck,” Hark replied.
The noise behind them grew louder. They could hear the clanking rattle of track sections.
“Up here,” Hark told them. They’d gone a decent way from the crash site. At his urgings, they clambered up onto a shelving outcrop of rock and got down.
Down below, two Leman Russ battle tanks rolled into view, lamps blazing. Dust wafted from their churning treads. Behind them, a Hydra flak tank, its quartet of long autocannons raised to the sky, clattered to a halt. Figures moved in the dust, infantrymen escorting the armour on foot.
“Fifty-two,” Twenzet said. “Look, on the hull! Fifty-two. It’s a Cadogus unit. Bless the Throne!” He started to get up. Hark pulled him down flat.
“Look again,” Hark whispered.
The hull plating on the two large tanks was gouged and scorched in places. Neither vehicle seemed to be in the best repair. They appeared to have kit bags or sacking strapped to their prows.
Twenzet peered more closely.
The objects weren’t kit bags. They were the brutalised corpses of men in khaki battledress, strung across the front fenders of the tanks with barbed wire, like trophies. The bodies lolled and jerked as the tanks ground to a standstill.
The infantry moved on, past the waiting tanks, towards the burning shell of the Valkyrie. The twilight made their long coats and fatigue jackets look mauve.
Twenzet saw the iron masks covering their faces.
III
G Company held its ground for ten minutes until the Blood Pact advancing down the gulley realised the futility of charge tactics. They began to pull back and take up static firing positions, intending to clear Daur’s men out of the way with prolonged and concentrated shooting. They left dozens of their kind dead in the bottom of the gulley, or littering the slopes.
As soon as the pressure of the assault waves broke, Daur ordered his company to pull back under bounding fire towards the gate.
The gate hatch had not survived the demise of the Destrier, and the opening had been buried by rock debris. Daur’s men had cleared the way to get out, and now Daur intended to bury it again.
“There’s no door to shut in their faces,” he said to Caober as they clambered in through the ruined doorway, “and we don’t have the ammo to hold them off.” Vivvo, Haller and Vadim were busy setting tube-charges in the portico of the gatehouse.