“Go away!” he said.
“Uh, I did knock,” said the shell.
But it wasn’t the shell. It was Commissar Hark.
The commissar peered in at Soric, holding the gas curtain back.
“Sergeant?”
“Oh, oh! Come in.”
Hark entered.
Soric felt hugely exposed. He tried to keep his mouth clamped shut so he wouldn’t exude the smell of liquor. Gaunt might have forgiven him. Hark was a different matter. Hark was a commissar, unqualified, unalloyed.
“Everything all right?” Hark asked. He seemed suspicious.
“Fine, fine,” said Soric, breathing through his nose.
Hark looked at him. “You could relax, sergeant.”
Mouth clamped shut Soric grinned and shrugged.
Hark sat down on the stool, removing his cap. “Good work today, sergeant. Excellent in fact. How did you guess the Shadik’s approach route?”
Soric shrugged again.
“Lucky, huh?” Hark nodded. “Shrewd is a better word. You’re very shrewd. You know your stuff, Agun. Can I call you Agun? It doesn’t offend your sense of rank?”
“Not at all, sir,” Soric muttered, trying not breathe as he spoke.
“The bombardment’s stopped,” Hark said. Soric realised he hadn’t noticed.
“We’ve held them off for the most part,” Hark added. “Tough stuff around 293 and 294, and also with Criid, Obel and Theiss. And Maro’s dead.”
“Shit, no!” said Soric, despite himself.
“Yeah, it’s too bad. Good soldier. But his section took seventy per cent losses. Shells caught them hard. Lasko, Fewtin, Bisroya, Mkdil. All gone. Not you, though, eh?”
“Sir.”
Hark gestured expansively. “I don’t have the full picture yet, but I’m pretty sure your platoon gave the best today, unit for unit. A hell of a job, Agun. Good work. Smart to pick up on their route of attack. I’m impressed.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“I’ll be commending your unit to Gaunt. Any one you want to pick out?”
“I’ll… Vivvo and Kazel.”
Hark nodded. “I tell you what you could do now.”
“Sir?”
“I don’t know about you, Agun, but I’m shaking fit to drop. Man like you must have some hard stuff hereabouts.”
“Oh,” said Soric. He rattled round on the shelf. “Forgive my inhospitality, commissar.”
He poured sacra into two of the least chipped shot glasses cluttering his shelf and handed one to Hark.
“Excellent. Knew I could count on a trusty Vervunhiver like you.”
Hark knocked back the shot. Soric sipped his own. He refilled Hark’s glass and breathed more naturally.
Hark finished the second shot. “Takes a while, but that Tanith stuff is good, isn’t it?”
“Becoming a favourite, sir,” said Soric.
“You’ll have to tell me how you did it some time,” said Hark.
“Did what, sir?”
“Outguessed the Shadik. Good work, though. Excellent. The regiment is proud of you.” Hark got up.
“I have to get down the line now. Rawne’s been hit. His section is a mess.”
“Hit bad?”
“I’m going to find out. Again, good work, Agun. My compliments to your boys.”
Hark pulled back the gas curtain to leave.
“Thanks for the drink,” he added, and disappeared.
Soric sat down hard as soon as the commissar had gone. He played with his shot glass, and then finished the dregs.
Vivvo stuck his head through the curtain.
“Boss? Do you w—”
“Go away,” said Soric.
“Yes, boss.”
Alone, Soric picked up the message shell and unscrewed the top. He had to thump the base of the canister twice to get the fold of blue paper out. The message was written in his own handwriting, just like before. It said: “Don’t drink. Commissar Hark is coming.”
FIVE
SILVER, RED AND BLACK
“Waiting is crap. It’s crap for a hungry man in a canteen line, it’s shit for a groom at his wedding supper, and it’s double triple quadrilateral crap for a soldier boy like yours truly.”
—Colm Corbec, colonel
It had been a bad day at the front. The Tanith First reserves at Rhonforq could tell that just from the false dusk caused by the wall of black smoke rising in the distance. They waited for news, hoping for good, steeled for bad.
Gaunt had left Captain Ban Daur in command of the First’s reserve section, a full two-thirds of the regiment’s strength, and Daur fretted miserably throughout the afternoon. Every ten, twenty minutes he wandered outside and watched the flickering lights and puffing smogs of the distant battle. At first, the thump of the shells had been like the thunder of a distant storm; muffled, remote, lagging behind the flashes. Then the sound had become continuous, without break or breath or pause. A constant rumble, as if the earth was slowly faulting and tearing. Sometimes, the ground shook, even this far away.
Once in a while, there came a blast roar so loud and plangent that it rose out of the rumble. Daur couldn’t work out if these noises came from shells that had landed closer to his position, or bigger shells landing with the rest. They’d been told the enemy had brought up some big-reach, huge calibre weapons. All the men were talking about “super-siege” guns.
Daur tried to occupy himself, but the rumble was too distracting. At around 14.00, he went to eat at one of the pensions, and got a curious look from the matronly owner when he ordered scrambled eggs. Only when it arrived did he remember that he’d already taken lunch — scrambled eggs — just an hour before.
He thought of visiting Zweil. The unit’s chaplain was refreshing company sometimes, and good at distracting a man’s mind with provocative conversation. But he was told that Zweil had gone to the front that morning with Gaunt, as if he’d known he’d be needed today.
Daur toured the billets instead. The Ghosts had occupied the stableblocks and barns of a pair of farmsteads in the south of the town, their overspill camped out in a sea of tents pitched in the paddocks behind. The paddocks adjoined an old tannery occupied by a company of Krassians, and a little vee of derelict shops and outbuildings at the junction of the two southern roads, which was the billet of a local brigade, the Twelfth Ostlund “Shielders”.
Daur wandered into the muddy yard of one of the stable-blocks. Burone, Bray and Ewler had taken the long, left-hand bam for their platoons. The men mostly lurked around, dejected in the light rain, like prisoners of war in a blockhouse pen. Daur saw the coals of burning lho-sticks in the shadows of the high-loft hatches. Under the slope of a lean-to roof, Polio from seven platoon was trying to teach card tricks to a crowd of onlookers. Polio had been bodyguard for a noble house back on Verghast, and his nerves were augmented by extravagantly expensive neural enhancers, so his fingers split and spread the cards faster than the eye could follow. It was a little piece of magic to watch, and the men around him were captivated. Daur watched for a little while, until Polio had exhausted his repertoire of tricks and produced three cups and a shell case instead. The audience groaned.
“Who wants a try?” Polio asked, his hands circling the upturned cups in a blur. He caught Daur’s eye and winked. “You, sir?”
Daur smiled. “You see my rank pins, Trooper Polio? I get those for being smart. No thanks.” Polio grinned. “Your loss.”
“I don’t think so,” said Daur and wandered on. At the back end of the yard, Haller’s men were kicking a ball around with some of the Krassians. It was a lively, muddy game. Noa Vadim was running circles around the Krassians, his squad mates urging him on. Daur was sure they were really shouting and whooping to shut out the distant growl of the battle.
Daur heard low-level gunfire coming from one of the stable pens and went to investigate. He found Trooper Merrt practising his aim against old bottles ranged on the crossbeams of the end wall.
&nb
sp; Merrt looked up as Daur appeared. “Sorry, sir,” he said. “Just gn… gn… practising. I’ve set it to gn… gn… low-charge.” He looked a little shame-faced, though it was hard to tell. Merrt’s jaw and one side of his face were crude metal implants, poorly disguised by a flesh-coloured mask. Daur knew why he was practising. Merrt practised every chance he got. A Tanith, he’d been one of the regiment’s original snipers, with a hit rate lower than Larkin’s or Rilke’s but still impressive. Then, on Monthax, he’d taken a horrific head wound and his aim had gone to hell. Gaunt had kept him as sniper for a time — too generous a time, according to Hark — but Merrt’s lack of success on Phantine had finally obliged Gaunt, reluctantly, to reassign him back to a standard trooper role.
Daur knew Merrt hated his loss of status even more than he hated the loss of his face. Merrt practised and practised, striving to regain his prowess and win back his marksman’s lanyard.
“How’s it going?” Daur asked.
Merrt shrugged. “I’d like to be working with a gn… gn… long-las, but they took it off me and gn… gn… gave it to some girl,” he said bleakly, indicating the standard-pattern lasrifle he was holding. His speech was distorted by the rebuilt portions of his head. Merit seemed to gnaw the words out. He stammered a lot, thanks to that ugly replacement jaw.
“Some of those girls are good shots,” said Daur smoothly. He knew too well a lot of the Tanith resented the Verghastite volunteers, particularly the females, and especially the females like Banda, Muril and Nessa who excelled at shooting.
Daur wouldn’t hear them bad-mouthed. They were the Verghastites’ one claim to excellence in the regiment.
Merrt stammered particularly badly, realising he’d spoken out of turn to the senior Verghastite officer. “I didn’t mean anything gn… gn… by that, sir.”
“I know,” said Daur. There was no real anti-Verghast or misogynistic rancour in Merit. He was just a damaged man struggling with his own failure.
“Gn… gn… sorry.”
Daur nodded. “You carry on,” he said.
Daur felt wretched as he walked away from the stall. There had been plenty of scorch marks on the end wall, but precious few broken bottles.
Daur crossed the end of the back paddock, passing the time with a few soldiers there. Then he followed a quaggy path up onto a bank that ran down through what had once been an orchard, before the men in the billets had felled most of it for firewood. Arcuda and Raglon were sheltering from the rain by a low wall, their capes pulled up around them.
Daur knew they were both nervous. Both had been promoted, along with Criid, to platoon command just prior to Aexe. Both were anticipating their first taste of field command.
But both had reason to be proud, in Daur’s book. Arcuda, a Verghastite with a long, thin doleful face, had proved himself in the ranks and won his pins. Raglon had made his way to squad command through distinguished service in company signals. It was odd not to see Raglon with his vox-set. Daur was pleased to find them together; Verghastite and Tanith, on equal footing, counting on each other.
They greeted him and he squatted down beside them.
“Action at the front,” Daur said.
“We noticed,” said Raglon.
“Chances are, we may move forward early,” Daur added.
Arcuda nodded. “I want to get up there, sir,” he said. “I just want to get in it. Sort of… get it over with. Did you feel that way on your first command?”
Daur smiled. “My first command was a sentry detail at Hass West, Vervunhive. Very pedestrian,” he said. “I was nineteen. I didn’t see action for four years. Not until… the War.”
Someone sniggered. Daur looked up and saw Sergeant Meryn leaning over the wall and listening in.
“Something funny, Meryn?”
Meryn shook his head. “No, captain. I’m just always amused the way you Verghasts refer to Vervunhive as ‘The War’, capital emphasis and all. It was a big do, certainly, and hard as fething bastardy for everyone involved. But it wasn’t ‘The War’. The War’s what we’re fighting now. We were fighting it before Verghast and we’ll be fighting it still in years to come.”
Daur got up and faced Meryn. The man was young, one of the youngest Tanith-born officers, several years junior to Daur. He was trim, compact, good-looking, and had recently taken to cultivating a moustache that made him look sinister in Daur’s opinion. Meryn had charm, and a fine record, and his brevet-ranking to sergeant as part of Operation Larisel on Phantine had become a permanent thing. His pins were as new as Arcuda’s and Raglon’s.
“I know there’s war and there’s war, sergeant,” Daur said. “You’ll have to excuse a Verghast his memories.” Daur deliberately used the word Meryn had used. “Verghast” not “Verghastite”. All the Tanith did that. To them, it was a contraction. To Verghastites, it was insulting slang. “We know we’re fighting The War now. But you’ll forgive us if we tend to focus on the fight that saw our home-hive ransacked.”
Meryn shrugged. “And Tanith died. We all have our memories. We all have our wars.”
Daur frowned and looked away, the drizzle splashing off his face. He didn’t like Meryn much. He’d been an obvious choice for platoon command, some said an overdue choice, but he’d become unpleasantly hard-edged and cocky. Sometimes, he reminded Daur of Caffran. Both Tanith were of a similar age, a similar build even. But where Caffran was young and eager and good-natured, Meryn was young and ruthless and arrogant.
Colm Corbec had a private theory about that. The theory was called Major Rawne. According to Corbec, Meryn had been “a fine, honest lad” for some time until he’d made corporal and, thanks to the vagaries of regimental structure, fallen under Rawne’s wing. Rawne was Meryn’s mentor now, and Meryn was learning well. The fresh-faced attitude had vanished, and been replaced by a bitter, hostile air. The stain of Rawne’s corrosive influence, Daur believed. Rawne was grooming Meryn. Unofficially, the rumour was that Meryn had ordered, or performed, some excessively brutal actions during Operation Larisel. Certainly Larkin and Mkvenner were tight-lipped about him. Meryn had been zealous to achieve his Larisel mission targets and prove himself for promotion.
Too zealous, maybe.
“So, any word from the line yet?” Meryn asked. Daur wished Meryn would go away so he could spend some time bolstering Arcuda and Raglon without an audience.
“No,” said Daur “Not yet.”
“If there are casualties, you can figure we’ll be moving up before tonight,” Meryn said.
“If there are casualties…” Daur admitted.
Meryn made a sarcastic gesture at the smoke rising from the front. “There’ll be casualties,” he said.
“You’d wish that, would you?” snapped Daur.
“Not for a moment,” said Meryn, his face turning stony. “But I’m a realist. That’s bad feth up there. ‘The War’, you know? Someone’s going to get hurt.”
Daur wanted to tell Meryn to go away, but Raglon and Arcuda had got to their feet, shaking the water off their capes.
“We’re going to check on our units, sir,” said Raglon.
“Get them ready, if and when,” Arcuda added.
“Good idea,” said Daur.
The two novice sergeants walked away down the bank towards the village and the tower of the Chapel St Avigns. As soon as they were out of earshot, Daur turned on Meryn.
“Do you understand the concept of morale, Meryn?”
Meryn shrugged.
“Those two are on the verge of their first field command. They’re scared. They need building up, not knocking down.”
“It’s a crime to be realistic now, is it, captain?” Meryn asked, insolently. “This is my first action as sergeant too, if you’ll recall.”
“You’ve had command, Meryn. At Ouranberg. You did all right there. Too well, maybe.”
“What does that mean?”
“Whatever you like,” said Daur, walking away. He uttered a silent prayer of thanks that within a week o
r so, Meryn would be Rawne’s responsibility again.
There was a lot of noise coming from the end sheds of the tannery. Daur pushed his way into a bam space that stank of sweat and bodies. The place was full of Ghosts and Krassians and a good number of the red-tunicked Ostlunders.
The Ostlunders were from Kottmark, the country that bordered Aexegary to the east. They were a fair-skinned, hardy breed, generally much taller than the Imperials.
Daur peered through the crowd, trying to establish the source of the commotion.
“Varl,” he sighed to himself. “Why am I surprised?”
Sergeant Varl, head of nine platoon, had found himself a new game to bet on. Varl, a likeable, handsome rogue, had come up through the ranks and earned his sergeant pins with sweat and blood. His own, for a start. On Fortis Binary, he’d taken an upper torso wound that had resulted in serious augmetic work to his shoulder, collarbone and upper arm. Not long after that, Gaunt had made him sergeant. He’d done it to prove there was no pecking order in the Tanith. Varl was one of the boys, common as grox muck, but he had attitude and charisma in bucket loads, and that made him an ideal leader of men.
You couldn’t help but like Varl. All the men did. He was a joker, a prankster, a troublemaker. He also proved that a dog-grunt could have the mettle to lead.
Gaunt had hoped he’d bring a common touch to the command echelon of the First. Varl had brought it in spades.
Daur knew that Varl had made sergeant long before the more upstanding and clean-cut Meryn. Maybe that was why Meryn was such an insufferable feth-head.
Ceglan Varl was playing ringmaster here. His men had made a pit from straw bales, and they appeared to be orchestrating fights between chickens.
Daur moved his way to the front of the press. No, not chickens…
“Struthids! Lovely young struthids, fit to fight and tough as hell!” Varl was declaiming from the wooden loading dock above the pit. He lofted one of the birds by the scruff of its neck, expertly avoiding its clacking blade of a beak and its windmilling, clawed feet. Expertly, that was the word. Daur chuckled. They’d only been on this world five minutes, and Varl was suddenly an expert handler of the local wildlife.