Before Milo could answer, the shutter slammed open again and Kreff entered, a slate in his hand. He saluted again. “We’ve got our orders, sir,” he said.
Distant, rumbling explosions seemed a constant feature of the deadzone on Blackshard. The persistent crump of heavy gunnery drummed the low, leaden sky over the ridgeline. An earthwork had been built up along the ridge’s spine and, under hardened bunkers, a detachment of Imperial Guard — six units of the 10th Royal Sloka — were readying to mobilise.
Colonel Thoren walked the line. The men looked like world-killers in their ornate battledress: crested, enamelled scarlet and silver warsuits built by the artisans of Sloka to inspire terror in the enemy.
But perhaps not this enemy. General Hadrak’s orders had been precise, but Thoren’s heart was heavy. He had no relish for the approaching push. He had no doubt at all it would cost him dearly. To push blind, unsupported, into treacherous unknown territory in the hope of finding a wormhole into the enemy positions that might not even be there. The prospect made him feel sick.
Thoren’s subaltern drew his attention suddenly to the double file of sixty men moving down the covered transit trench towards them. Scrawny ruffians, dressed in black, camo-cloaks draped over them, plastered to their bodies by the rain.
“Who in the name of Balor’s blood…?” Thorne began.
Halting his column, the leader, a huge blackguard with a mess of tangled beard and a tattoo — a tattoo!—marched up to Thoren and saluted.
“Colonel Corbec, 1st Tanith. First-and-Only. General Hadrak has ordered us forward to assist you.”
“Tanith? Where the hell is that?” asked Thoren.
“It isn’t,” replied the big man genially. “The general said you were set to advance on the enemy positions over the deadzone. Suggested you might need a covert scouting force seeing as how your boys’ scarlet armour stands out like a baboon’s arse.”
Thoren felt his face flush. “Now listen to me, you piece—”
A shadow fell across them. “Colonel Thoren, I presume?”
Gaunt dropped down into the dugout from the trench boarding. “My regiment arrived here on Blackshard yesterday night, with orders to reinforce General Hadrak’s efforts to seize the Chaos stronghold. That presupposes co-operative efforts between our units.”
Thoren nodded. This was Gaunt, the upstart colonel-commissar, it had to be. He’d heard stories.
“Appraise me, please,” said Gaunt.
Thoren waved up an aide who flipped up a map-projector, and displayed a fuzzy image of the deadzone. “The foe are dug in deep in the old citadel ruins. The citadel had a sizeable standing defence force, so they’re well equipped. Chaos cultists, mostly, about seventeen thousand able fighting men. We also…” he paused.
Gaunt raised a questioning eyebrow.
“We believe there may be other abominations in there. Chaos spawn.”
Thoren breathed heavily. “Most of the main fighting is contained in this area here, while artillery duels blight the other fronts.”
Gaunt nodded. “Most of my strength is deployed along the front line. But General Hadrak also directed us to this second front.”
Thoren indicated the map again. “The foe are up to more than simply holding us out. They know sooner or later we’ll break through, so they must be up to something — trying to complete something, perhaps. Recon showed that this flank of the city might be vulnerable to a smaller force. There are channels and ducts leading in under the old walls, a rat-maze, really.”
“My boys specialise in rat-mazes,” Gaunt said.
“You want to go in first?” Thoren asked.
“It’s mud and tunnels. The Tanith are light infantry, you’re armoured and heavy. Let us lead through and then follow us in support when we’ve secured a beachhead. Bring up some support weapons.”
Thoren nodded. “Very well, colonel-commissar.”
Gaunt and Corbec withdrew to their men.
“This will be the first blooding for this regiment, for the Tanith First-and-Only,” began Gaunt.
“For Gaunt’s Ghosts,” someone murmured. Mad Larkin, Corbec was sure.
Gaunt smiled. “Gaunt’s Ghosts. Don’t disappoint me.”
They needed no other instructions. At Corbec’s gesture, they hurried forward in pairs, slipping their camo-cloaks down as shrouds around them, lasguns held loose and ready. The hybrid weave of the hooded cloaks blurred to match the dark grey mud of the ridgeway, and each man stooped to smear his cheeks and brow with wet mud before slipping over the earthwork.
Thoren watched the last one disappear and then span the trench macro-periscope around. He looked out, but of the sixty plus men who had just passed his position, there was no sign.
“Where in the name of Solan did they go?” he breathed.
Gaunt was amazed. He’d seen them practise and train in the belly holds of the big carrier ships, but now here, in the wild of a real deadzone, their skills startled him. They were all but invisible in the stinking mire, just tiny blurs of movement edging between stacks of debris and over mounds of wreckage towards the slumped but massive curtain walls of the citadel.
He pulled his own Tanith camo-cloak around him. It had been part of his deal with Corbec: he insisted on leading them in to assure loyalty, they insisted he didn’t give their position away.
The micro-bead in his ear tickled. It was Corbec. “First units at the tunnels now. Move up close in pairs.”
Gaunt touched his throat mike. “Hostiles?” he asked.
“A little light knife work,” crackled the reply.
A few moment later he was entering the dripping, dark mouth of the rubble tunnel. Five Chaos-bred warriors in the orange robes of their cult lay dead. Before him, the Tanith were forming up. Corbec was wiping blood from the blade of his long, silver knife.
“Let’s go,” said Gaunt.
The Elector of Tanith, may his soul rest, had not lied about anything, Gaunt decided. The Ghosts had proved their cunning stealth crossing the open waste of the deadzone, and he had no clue as to how they threaded their way through the crazy lightless warren of the tunnels so surely. “They do not get lost,” the Elector had boasted, and it was true. Gaunt suspected that the foe had assumed nothing bigger than a cockroach would ever find its way through those half-collapsed, deathtrap tunnels.
But Corbec’s men had, effortlessly, in scant minutes. Rising from the tunnels’ ends inside the curtain wall of the city, and taking long, silver Tanith knives to pallid, blotchy throats, they had burned their way in through the enemy’s hindquarters. Now the Tanith First-and-Only were proving they could fight. Just like the Elector had said.
From behind a shattered pillar, Gaunt blasted with his bolter, blowing two cultists apart and destroying a doorway. Around him, the advancing Tanith lacerated the air with precise shots from five dozen lasguns.
Near to Gaunt, a sharp-faced, older Tanith Gaunt had heard the men call Larkin was sniping cultists off the top of the nearest balconies. His eye was tremendous. A little further on, a huge man, a gentle giant called Bragg, was shouldering the heavy bolter and taking down walls and columns. The big weapon had originally been pintle-mounted on a sled, but Bragg had torn it off its mount and slung it up like a rifle. Gaunt had never seen a heavy bolter carried by an unarmoured man before. The Tanith called Bragg “Try Again” Bragg. He was a terrible shot, admittedly, but with firepower like that he could afford to be sloppy.
Just ahead, a six man fire-team led by Corbec gained the entrance to a temple building complex, grenaded the doorway and went in with lasguns, paired off to give bounding cover.
“Heavy fire in my section!” Corbec radioed to Gaunt. “Some kind of church or temple. Could be a primary target.” Gaunt acknowledged. He would move more teams up.
Creeping down the aisle of the massive temple, Corbec edged through rubble and heavy crossfire. He nodded a pair past him — Rawne and Suth — and then the next. His own cover partner, Forgal, bellied up close i
n the mica dust of the temple floor and unslung his lasgun.
“Down there,” he hissed, his eyes as sharp as ever. “There’s a lower storey down behind the altar. They’ve got a lot of defence around that doorway. The big arch under the stained-glass.”
It was true.
“You smell that?” Rawne asked over the radio.
Corbec did. Decay, stale sweat, dead blood. Rank and harsh, oozing from the crypt.
Forgal began to crawl forward. A lucky shot vaporised the top of his head.
“Sacred Feth!” Corbec howled and opened up in rage, bringing the entire stained glass window down in a sheet onto the altar.
Rawne and Suth took advantage of the confusion to grab a few more yards. Rawne unwrapped a tube-charge and hurled it over-arm into the archway.
The blast was deafening.
Gaunt heard Corbec’s call in his ear-piece. “Get in here!” He scrambled into the smoky interior of the temple. At the door, he paused. “Larkin! Bragg! Orcha! Varl! With me! You three, cordon the door! Cluggan, take two teams down the flank of the building and scout!”
Gaunt entered the chapel, mashing broken glass under foot. He could smell the stink.
Corbec and Rawne were waiting for him, their other men stood around, watching with lasguns ready.
“Something down here,” Rawne said and led Gaunt on down the littered steps. Gaunt slammed fresh rounds home into his boltgun, then holstered it and picked up Forgal’s fallen las-gun.
Beneath the chapel was an undercroft. Dead cultists were strewn like rag dolls around the smouldering floor. In the centre of the chamber stood a rusty, metallic box, two metres square, its lid etched with twisted sigils of Chaos.
Gaunt reached out. The metal was warm. It pulsed.
He snatched his hand back.
“What is it?” asked Corbec.
“I don’t think any of us want to know,” Gaunt said. “Some relic of the enemy, some unholy object, an icon… Whatever, it’s something valuable to these monsters, something they’re defending to the last.”
“That Sloka colonel was sure there was a reason they were holding on,” Corbec said. “Maybe they’re hoping support will arrive in time to save this.”
“Let’s spoil those chances. I want a systematic withdrawal from this point, back out under the wall. Each man is to leave his tube-charges here. Rawne, collect them and rig them — you seem to be good with explosives.”
Within minutes, the Ghosts had withdrawn. Rawne crouched and connected the firing pins of the small but potent anti-personnel charges. Gaunt watched him and the door.
“Pick it up, Rawne. We haven’t much time. The enemy aren’t going to leave this area open for long.”
“Nearly done,” Rawne said. “Check the door again, sir. I thought I heard something.”
The “sir” should have warned him. As Gaunt turned, Rawne rose and clubbed him around the back of the head with his fist. Gaunt dropped, stunned, and Rawne rolled him over next to the charges.
“A fitting place for scum like you to die, ghost maker!” he murmured. “Down here amongst the vermin and the filth. It’s so tragic that the brave commissar didn’t make it out, but the cultists were all over us.” Rawne drew his laspistol and lowered it towards Gaunt’s head.
Gaunt kicked out and brought Rawne down. He rolled and slammed into him, punching him once, twice. Blood marked Rawne’s mouth.
He tried to hit again but Gaunt was so much bigger. He struck Rawne so hard he was afraid he’d broken his neck. The Tanith lolled in the dust.
Gaunt got up, and eyed the timer setting. It was just dropping under two minutes. Time to leave.
Gaunt turned. But in the doorway of the room, the warriors of Chaos moved towards him.
The blast sent a column of dirt and fire up into the sky that could be seen from the Guard trenches across the deadzone. Six minutes later, the defenders’ big guns stopped and fell silent. Then all firing ceased completely from the enemy lines.
Guard units moved in, cautiously at first. They found the cultists dead at their positions. Each one had, in unison, taken his own life, as if in response to some great loss. In the conclusion of his report on the victory at Blackshard, General Hadrak surmised that the destruction of the Chaos relic, which had given meaning to the cult defence, robbed them of the will or need to continue. Hadrak also noted the significant role in the victory played by the newly founded Tanith 1st, which had supplemented his own forces. Though as C-in-C of the Blackshard action, he took overall credit for the victory, he was magnanimous in acknowledging the work of “Gaunt’s Ghosts”, and particularly recommended their stealth and scouting abilities.
Colonel-Commissar Gaunt, wounded in the stomach and shoulder, emerged alive from the deadzone twenty minutes after the blast and was treated by medical teams before returning to his frigate. He might have made his way out of the enemy lines faster, had he not carried the unconscious body of one of his officers, a Major Rawne, back to safety.
Stiff with drug-dulled pain, Gaunt walked down the companion way of the troop carrier and into the holding bay. Nearly nine hundred of the Tanith were billeted here. They looked up from their weapons drills and Gaunt felt the silence on him.
“First blood to you,” he said to them. “First blood to Tanith. The first wound of vengeance. Savour it.”
By his side, Corbec began to clap. The men picked it up, more and more, until the hold shook with applause.
Gaunt eyed the crowd. Maybe there was a future here, after all. A regiment worth the leading, a prize worth chasing all the way to glory.
His eyes found Major Rawne in the crowd. Their eyes fixed. Rawne was not applauding.
That made Gaunt laugh. He turned to Milo and gestured to the Tanith pipes cradled in his aide’s hands.
“Now you can play something,” he told him.
Gaunt walked the line through the early morning, the stink of the Monthax jungle swards filling and sickening his senses. Tanith, working stripped to the waists, digging the wet ooze with entrenching tools to fill sacking, paused to nod at his greetings, exchange a few words with him, or ask cautious questions about the fight to come.
Gaunt answered as best he could. As a commissar, a political officer, charged with morale and propaganda, he could turn a good, pompous phrase. But as a colonel, he felt a duty of truth to his men. And the truth was, he knew little of what to expect. It would be bitter, he knew that much, though the commissar part of him spared the men that thought. Gaunt spoke of courage and glory in general, uplifting terms, talking softly and firmly as his mentor, Commissar-General Oktar, had taught him all those years ago when he was just a raw cadet with the Hyrkans. “Save the yelling and screaming for battle, Ibram. Before that comes, build their morale with gentle encouragement. Make it look like you haven’t a care in the world.”
Gaunt prided himself on knowing not only the names of all his men, but a little about each of them too. A private joke here, a common interest there. Oktar’s way, tried and tested, Emperor rest his soul these long years. Gaunt tried to memorise each muddy, smiling face as he passed along. He knew his soul would be damned the day he was told Trooper so-and-so had fallen and he couldn’t bring the man’s face to mind. “The dead will always haunt you,” Oktar had told him, “so make certain the ghosts are friendly.” If only Oktar had known the literal truth of that advice.
Gaunt paused at the edge of a dispersal gully and smiled to himself at the memory. Beyond, some troopers were kicking a balled sack of mud around in an impromptu off-watch game. The “ball” came his way, and he hoisted it back to them on the point of his boot. Let them have their fun while it lasts. How many would be alive to play the game again tomorrow?
How many indeed? There were losses and losses. Some worthy, some dreadful, and some plain unnecessary. Still the memories dogged his mind in these crawling hours of waiting. Praise be the Emperor that Gaunt’s losses of brave, common troopers would never be as great, as wholesale or as senseless as that
day on Voltemand, a year before…
TWO
A BLOODING
They were a good two hours into the dark, black-trunked forests of the Voltemand Mirewoods, tracks churning the filthy ooze and the roar of their engines resonating from the sickly canopy of leaves above, when Colonel Ortiz saw death.
It wore red, and stood in the trees to the right of the track, in plain sight, unmoving, watching his column of Basilisks as they passed along the trackway. It was the lack of movement that chilled Ortiz. He did a double take, first seeing the figure as they passed it before realising what it was.
Almost twice a man’s height, frighteningly broad, armour the colour of rusty blood, crested by recurve brass antlers. The face was a graven death’s head. Daemon. Chaos Warrior. World Eater.
Ortiz snapped his gaze back to it and felt his blood drain away. He fumbled for his radio link.
“Alarm! Alarm! Ambush to the right!” he yelled into the set. Gears slammed and whined, and hundreds of tons of mechanised steel shuddered, foundered and slithered on the muddy track, penned, trapped, too cumbersome to react quickly.
By then the Chaos Space Marine had begun to move. So had its six comrades, each emerging from the woods around them.
Panic seized Ortiz’s convoy cluster: the ten-vehicle forward portion of a heavy column of eighty flame-and-feather painted Basilisk tanks of the “Serpents”, the Ketzok 17th Armoured Regiment, sent in to support the frontal push of the Royal Volpone 50th, the so-called “Bluebloods”. The Ketzok had the firepower to flatten a city, but caught on a strangled trackway, in a thick woodland, with no room to turn or traverse, and with monstrous enemies at close quarters, far too close to bring the main guns to bear, they were all but helpless. Panic alarms spread backwards down the straggled column, from convoy portion to portion. Ortiz heard tree trunks shatter as some commanders tried to haul their machines off the track.