“Say again! Say again!” he yelled. The signal in his ear was little more than whooping static noise.
“Contact in the house!” Arcuda shouted, and set off in the direction of the gate hatch.
Hark turned back towards the work crews. “Stop work! Stop work! Back into the gatehouse!”
The men could barely hear him over the wind. Some looked up, puzzled, sacks and entrenching tools lowered.
Hark waved his arms as he ran towards them. “Come on! Stop what you’re doing and get back!”
Some of them began to move, understanding his meaning at last. They grabbed tools and bundles of sacking, and started to hurry in the direction of the gatehouse.
One of them fell over.
“Get up! Come on, get up!” Hark yelled as he reached the man. Five metres away, Wes Maggs started firing.
“Maggs? What the feth are you—”
Hark looked down at the fallen man and understood what Maggs had already realised.
The fallen man was caked white with dust, but the wind hadn’t yet obscured the wet, red mess in the small of his back.
“Contact!” Hark yelled. “Contact, main gate!”
V
Baskevyl could hear the scratching in the dark. He could hear the slither of knotted skin and twisted bone, scraping on the rocks.
“Can’t you go any faster?” Criid complained from behind him.
No, he couldn’t. It was all Baskevyl could do to stop himself turning around and knocking them out of his way in a frantic effort to return to the workshops.
He told himself it was his imagination. He told himself it was the wind, or the oddly echoed noise of the gunfire outside, or the scrape of his boots curiously magnified by the claustrophobic little tunnel he was squeezing his way down.
But if it was boots, or wind, or gunfire, why could he hear snuffling? Why could he hear a slick, mucus noise of wet tissue on dry rock? Why—in the Emperor’s name—could he hear breathing?
“You keep slowing down. For feth’s sake!” Criid exclaimed.
“All right, all right!” Baskevyl replied. He pushed his way forwards with renewed speed.
He was going to meet the daemon-worm, sooner or later, he reasoned. It was going to find him eventually, and when it did, well, that would be that.
He might as well get it over with.
VI
Hark pulled out his plasma weapon as he ran up to Maggs.
“Where?”
“All around us!” Maggs replied. “I can’t get gun sound or muzzle flash in this wind… I can’t see anything. But they’re there, all right!”
“Drop back. Now!” Hark ordered. “We’re too exposed!”
They started to run. Odd, truncated sounds buzzed past them: stray, passing shots they could hear for only a split-second. Hark glimpsed the bright barb of a las-bolt as it exploded the dusty ground ahead of them.
Most of the bagging crews had reached the safety of the gatehouse and bundled inside, but enemy fire had picked off two more on the way. Arcuda and Bonin were standing outside the curtain, firing off into the wind. Maggs and Hark dropped in beside them. The arch of the hatch offered them a little better cover at least.
“You see anything?” Hark demanded.
“Not a damned thing,” replied Bonin with a shake of his head. “I think it’s snipers, up in the rocks.”
“On the basis of what?” asked Hark.
“The way our guys fell down,” Bonin replied simply. “The way they jerked and dropped… they were hit from high angles.”
“I’ve voxed for marksman support,” said Arcuda. “Larkin’s coming.”
“He won’t be able to see anything either!” complained Maggs.
“Sometimes he doesn’t have to,” replied Hark.
“Are all our boys inside?” Bonin asked.
“Yes,” replied Arcuda.
“Then who the feth is that?” asked Bonin.
Fifty metres beyond the gate, the figures of men were shambling and lurching out of the gritty storm towards them, moving as fast as they could across the thick, loose dunes of dust. Dozens of figures, charging, yelling. Hark heard the raw war cries of feral voices, and the harsh blare of battle horns.
“We’re about to have a busy day,” he said.
VII
The fire fight in upper east twelve was a mad, brief affair. Afterwards, Ludd wondered why everyone wasn’t just killed in a second. Shots spanged and spattered in all directions, a lethal combination of directed fire and hopeless deflections. Smoke swirled around with nowhere to go. Muzzle flash made the light and shadow flicker and dart. There was nothing except a battering concussion, the kind of noise you’d hear if you stuck your head in a marching drum while someone played a rapid, endless roll. Rawne was shouting orders, as if a situation like that could be tempered or controlled by orders.
“Cease! Cease fire!” Varl cried.
They stopped shooting. The Ghosts were all crowded in against the hallway walls, or lay flat on the floor where they had been firing prone. Bars of smoke rolled lazily through the quietened air.
“Either we killed them…” Varl whispered.
“Or they’ve fled,” Rawne finished. He voxed to the other teams on upper east twelve, warning them to guard against hostiles moving east.
Three teams acknowledged in quick succession.
“Straight silver,” Rawne ordered. They fixed their blades to the lugs under their hot barrels. Two of Rawne’s fire-team were dead, and one of Varl’s—Twenzet—was wounded. “Help him,” Rawne told Ludd.
Twenzet had been hit in the ribs, a grazing but bloody wound. He grinned sheepishly as Ludd helped support him, but his brave grin was punctuated by sharp flinches of pain.
At a wave of Rawne’s hand, the team advanced.
“Looky, look, look,” whispered Varl.
Now there were bodies. In contrast with Meryn’s similarly tight and brutal encounter the night before, the enemy dead had not vanished this time. Four corpses sprawled, twisted and limp, on the hallway deck twenty-five metres away. Each one wore filthy, mismatched Guard fatigues and webbing. Each face was hidden behind a leering black metal mask.
Blood Pact.
“Four of them,” muttered Cant. “I counted more than that.”
“Me too,” said Varl.
Rawne clicked his microbead and repeated his warning to the other teams further along the spur. He listened to their responses, and then glanced at Varl.
“Next team east of us is Caober’s, at the top of the next stairhead. There’re no exits or ladder wells between him and us, so we’ve got the rest of them boxed.”
Varl had been listening to his own vox-link. “Major, there’s… I’m hearing there’s an attack underway at the main gatehouse. Full-on assault.”
Rawne made an ugly face, his lips curled. “Feth! Well, somebody else is going to have to be enough of a big boy to handle that. We’re committed here.”
Varl nodded. “Close file,” he told the men. “Slow advance.”
Rawne snap-voxed Caober’s group to warn them they were coming.
“Nice and slow,” Varl repeated, his voice a whisper. “When we find “em, it’s going to get all sudden and messy.”
“Trail us,” Rawne told Ludd.
Ludd tried to shift his grip on Twenzet so he could support him more comfortably.
“Take my las,” Twenzet whispered to him.
“No, I—”
“Take my las. I can’t shoot it one-handed, and your pop gun isn’t going to be worth shit when this happens. You heard Varl. We’ve got them cornered and it’s going to be a riot.”
Reluctantly, Ludd put his sidearm away and hung Twenzet’s rifle over his left shoulder.
“Blood,” reported Cant.
Spatters on the floor. A trail, winding away from them.
“Got to be close now,” whispered Varl. “Why can’t we see them?”
Rawne touched his microbead. “Caober? Anything?”
/> “Negative, sir.”
Varl held up a hand. They halted.
“Forty metres,” Varl hissed, head down. “I see movement.” He brought his rifle up to his cheek and took aim. “Fire on three.”
The Ghosts raised their weapons and aimed.
“Three, two—”
“Wait!” said Rawne.
“What’s the matter?” Varl whispered.
Rawne called out, “Caober?”
There was movement far ahead. “Major?” a voice floated back.
“Throne, we nearly opened up on Caober’s mob!” said Kabry.
“Then where the feth did they go?” asked Rawne. “I mean, where the feth did they fething well go?”
VIII
Baskevyl felt a breeze on his skin and heard a rattle of gunfire from close by. It almost, but not quite, obscured the scraping slither of the thing waiting for him in the dark.
“Get ready” he heard Criid instruct the men behind them.
Baskevyl swallowed hard. His lamp-pack was shaking in his hand. He drew his laspistol. Treading carefully over the rough black earth of the tunnel floor, a treacherous surface almost invisible in the dark, he edged on. The tunnel dropped a little more, and then widened out.
And he could see it at last.
His breath sucked in with a little gasp. It was right in front of him, rearing up in the gloom: a giant, twisted column of white bone and gristle, uncoiling from a writhing mound on the floor. Its knotted body segments—scabby, glistening flesh the colour of pale fat—dragged against the dry black rocks as it uncoiled, smearing with dust and mould. It let out a dry, bony rattle, like a bead in a husk. He felt its worm-breath strike his face, an exhalation of cold, ammoniac vapour.
“Major?” Criid called, pushing at him.
Why couldn’t she see it? Why wasn’t she shooting at it? Was it just a daemon spectre meant only for him?
“Major Baskevyl!” Criid shouted.
And, just like that, there was no daemon-worm: no daemon-worm, no rearing column of ghastly white flesh like a gigantic, animated spinal cord.
There was simply an opening to the outside world, a jagged, vertical slit of white daylight against the black cave shadow.
“The mind,” Baskevyl whispered. “It plays such tricks.”
“What?” Criid asked.
He didn’t answer. He ran towards the slit of daylight. “Move up close, two at a time,” he called out. “Make ready to provide suppressing fire. Follow me.”
Baskevyl ducked down in the cave entrance and peered out. The bright air outside was a dancing haze of white dust, but he could see down across the rock spoil and boulders below the cave.
“One, this is Three. Come back,” he said into his bead.
“Three, One. Good to hear from you. Position?”
“Cave mouth, so above you, I’m guessing.”
“Three, we’re under you and to your left.”
“There,” said Criid, crawling in beside Baskevyl and pointing down.
Gaunt, Kolea and Mkoll were pinned behind a pile of stones about twenty metres below and to the left of the cave fissure. Streaks of fire—tracer and las—spat horizontally out of the rocky plain beyond them and struck against the cliff wall with a sound like slapped flesh.
Baskevyl looked around. Two large boulders provided immediate cover in front of the cave. Tactically, he knew he had to get as many guns out and firing as he could. The cave mouth was only really wide enough for two shooters, side by side. He wanted all eight of them, if it was humanly possible.
“Go right of the big rock,” he told Criid. “Take Kazel and Vivvo with you. Don’t fire until you hear me tell you.”
Criid nodded, and bellied her long, lean body away from him; very much like a serpent, he thought, and quickly shook the idea away. Vivvo and Kazel followed her. Baskevyl signed Starck and Orrin to take the gap between the two rocks. He glanced to Pabst and Mkteal, and beckoned them to follow him.
Baskevyl crawled up on the left side of the left-hand rock. He took a look from this improved vantage. Now he could see what they were dealing with. Belches of muzzle flash from a heavy gun, something on a tripod he presumed, winked a hundred metres beyond the chiefs position. Snap shots from shooters scattered in the surface rocks added their support.
“Heavy stub, one hundred left and out,” he voxed quietly.
“I see it,” replied Criid. “There was another one, fifty right of it. It’s stopped firing now. Changing boxes or barrels, is my guess.”
“Fifteen… no sixteen… other guns,” reported Vivvo.
“Eighteen,” came Mkoll’s voice over the link. “I’ve been listening. Two sources to my right stopped blasting about five minutes ago. Watch for them, they’re probably trying to flank us.”
“That’s your task for the day, Criid,” Baskevyl voxed. “We’ll hit the firing cannon. Starck, Orrin? lust make sure everybody else ducks, please.”
“Got it,” came the vox-clipped answer.
“First and only,” said Baskevyl.
They all started firing. Baskevyl, Pabst and Mkteal trained their shots directly on the source of the heavy fire, peppering the rocks around the origin point of the chunky muzzle flash. Starck and Orrin raked punishing rapid fire across the whole area. Baskevyl saw a figure rise, twist and fall. One kill, at least, probably Orrin’s to claim. Criid, Vivvo and Kazel began taking speculative, selective shots down at the right-hand portion of the scree slope, trying to flush something out.
After about a minute of sustained shots from Baskevyl’s group, the heavy gun stopped firing. The sporadic shots from the rock waste around it were now coming up at the two big rocks where the newcomers were sheltering.
“Hello,” said Pabst, and squeezed off a double-snap of las. “Well, he’s dead, then,” he remarked. A few moments later, Orrin made another kill.
Then fresh gunfire began to zip in from the right. Criid hunched down, hunting the flash source. Two flanking shooters, down in the bed of the ravine. She grinned to herself. Mkoll had been right, as usual. She snuggled in her aim and waited. One muzzle flash, a burp of burning gas. That determined location and range. A second, to confirm. A slug round whined past her ear. A third.
“Bang,” she said, and unloaded a stream of six tightly grouped las-shots that blew the shooter out of cover and left him sprawled across the rock litter.
Immediately, she rolled, to prevent the shooter’s partner replicating the same trick on her. Two las-bolts clipped off the side of the boulder where she had just been crouching.
“Be advised,” she voxed. “They’re good.”
“Maybe, but they’re one fewer now,” Starck voxed back, flush from a kill of his own.
“Don’t get over confident,” Gaunt cut in over the link.
“Oh, as if,” Criid retorted, hunting for the give-away flashes of the other flanker.
The second heavy gun started up again abruptly, mowing fire up at the boulder shielding Baskevyl, Pabst and Mkteal, forcing them to duck. Coughing bursts of dust and rock chips stitched up across the boulder and then continued to smack a line up the face of the cliff above the cave mouth as its aim was frantically over-adjusted. The bulk of the enemy fire was now targeting the cave mouth area.
“Shall we?” Kolea asked Gaunt, hearing the distinct change in the whine of gunfire.
“Of course.”
They scrambled up the pile of stones, bellied down, and began firing, bolt pistol and lasrifle side by side. Gaunt saw dark shapes moving amongst the rocks, and checked his aim. He fired again, and saw a red and black figure smash backwards against the face of a boulder and slump.
“Uh, when did you last see Mkoll?” Kolea asked suddenly.
Gaunt smiled and fired again.
IX
Out of the dust, like howling beasts, the Blood Pact assaulted the main gatehouse of Hinzerhaus.
“We’re going to need support here,” Hark voxed. “As much as you can spare.” His plasma gun beamed
out from the doorway, incinerating the torsos and heads of three oncoming assault troops in quick succession. Their ruined bodies dropped like bundles of sticks into the dust. Beside Hark, Maggs, Arcuda and Bonin were sowing out las-fire in tight, chattering bursts.
“I knew this was going to be a bad rock,” Arcuda complained.
“Love the Guard and it’ll love you back,” chastised Bonin.
Maggs was oddly silent, as if uncharacteristically cowed by the extremity of the situation.
“Support! Support to the main entrance for the love of the Throne!” Arcuda yelled impatiently into his mic.
The Blood Pact came in like a tide along a shore. As they loomed out of the dust storm’s soft white blanket, they seemed shockingly black and ragged, as if they had been cut out of some dark, dirty matter utterly inimical to Jago, where everything was stained white by the eternal dust.
They were screaming, shrieking and bellowing through the slit mouths of their awful iron masks. Torn strands of fabric, leather and chainmail trailed out behind their stumbling forms. Several of them bore vile standards: obscene, graven totems or painted banners mounted on long poles, adorned with long black flagtails that fluttered back in the wind. Others blasted raucous notes on huge brass trumpets that curled around their bodies. Some brandished pikes, or halberds, or trench axes; others lugged heavy flamers with long, stave lances. The majority fired rifles as they came on.
“You know,” muttered Hark, quite matter of factly, “we could learn a lot from these heathens.”
“In terms of what?” Arcuda snapped, pumping out shots.
“Oh, in terms of, you know, terror.”
“I’ve learned more than I need already” said Bonin, crimping off a double-snap that felled a charging standard bearer.
Wes Maggs said nothing. He aimed and fired, aimed and fired, with mechanical efficiency. He was watching for her in the enemy ranks, quite certain she would be there, that old dam in the black lace dress. He knew her, oh he knew her all right. He knew her business, the oldest business of all. She’d be coming, of that he had no doubt. She’d been lurking about in this rat-hole place—he’d glimpsed her coming and going ever since they’d arrived, out of the corner of his eye. She wouldn’t miss a chance like this. She’d come, and then they’d all be—