“Look at this jolly fellow! Look at him, eh?” Varl bantered. “We call him the Major, because he’s nasty as all feth!”
The Ghosts in the crowd laughed at this.
“Look at his foot-claws! Look here!” Varl grabbed one of the bird’s pistoning feet and splayed the vicious claws for the crowd to admire. Three centimetres long, sharp as straight silver! “What more do you want?”
A Krassian shouted something.
“Beak? Beak?” Varl replied, looking over and swinging the squirming struthid round. “I’ll give you beak! Mr Brostin, if you’d be so kind?”
Brostin, the heavy-set flame-trooper from Varl’s platoon, strode out into the straw-strewn ring and held out a spent brass case from a .30. The bird lunged and cracked the case in two with its scissoring beak.
The crowd roared. Brostin retrieved the broken parts and threw them into the press. Men huddled and fought for them.
“He’s tough, all right! Yes, sir! The Major is a tough old bird! We all saw what he did to the Captain just now, didn’t we?”
More shouting.
“The Captain?” called Daur.
Varl saw Daur and balked. “Ah… hello there, sir! How are you? The Captain I refer to… rest his poor soul… was named after another captain who in no way was meant to resemble you… uh…”
“I’m sure. How much on the Major?”
Varl’s smile returned. “Perhaps you’d care to place your wager with one of my friendly assistants, sir?” Daur saw Baen, Mkfeyd, Ifvan and Rafflan moving through the crowd, collecting cash and quoting odds.
“What’s he up against, this Major?” Daur shouted.
“Three rounds, no holding, first bleeds, first pays…” said Varl, “…against Mighty Ibram here!”
There was a throaty bellow of approval. Trooper Etton appeared on the other side of the stage, clutching a white-plumed struthid juvenile with a silvery beak. He was having trouble holding on to it. Feather fibres drifted in the warm air.
“No, thanks,” smiled Daur. “My money’s on Mighty Ibram every time.”
“This is fixed! You fix this!” some of the Kottmarkers were yelling.
“Calm yourselves, friends,” said Varl. “We have our own fighter!” called the tallest of the Ostlund Shielders.
Varl addressed the crowd. “A new contender, gents and gents, trained by our worthy Kottland allies here… what’s the bird’s name?”
The clique of Kottmakers had brought a snapping, scarred struthid fledgling forward. “Redjacq!” their leader hollered.
“Redjacq indeed! He’s a fine looking beak-brain, and no mistake!” Varl yelled. “Place your bets, folks… next round is the Major, Tanith-reared and hard as feth, facing off against Redjacq, trained and maintained by our delightful Kottmark allies there! Ante up! Who’s for the Major?”
“Ten!” shouted a Verghastite.
“Twenty on Redjacq!” howled a Krassian.
“My warknife says the Major guts him.”
Daur peered through the crowd to identify the source of the voice. It was Mkoll. The chief scout was standing, arms folded, in the middle of the frenzy.
“We spit on your knife!” cried one of the Kottmarkers.
“I… uh… wouldn’t do that if I were you,” said Daur, but the Kottmarkers weren’t listening.
“Gendemen! All bets now stand!” Varl said, taking a nod from Baen. “Round one! Release your fighters!”
The juvenile struthids exploded into the ring from either side to a cacophony of jeers and taunts. Feathers fluttered up from them. Redjacq sliced and chopped at the Major and more plumage flew. Then the Major lunged in and broke Redjacq’s neck with a clean bite of its formidable beak.
The tannery’s roof tiles rattled with the uproar that followed. Tanith — and some Krassians — were shouting and dancing. Wagers were paid out, back and forth: local currency, Imperial coin, trophies, badges, mementos…
Up on the loading dock, Varl did a strutting chicken walk, back and forth, his head bobbing in and out, his elbows beating chicken wings.
Caught up in the middle of it all, Daur laughed. For a moment, he almost managed to forget how bad things were.
A firm hand gripped his arm. It was Mkoll.
“Stay sharp, sir,” the chief scout said softly. He nodded towards the door. “Over there.”
Daur looked. Varl’s lackey Ifvan was trying to get a group of Kottmarkers to pay out. Daur couldn’t hear the exchange, but he could read the body language. More Kottmarkers were closing in through the oblivious, dancing Tanith.
“Back me up,” Daur said.
“I will,” said Mkoll.
Daur pushed through the dancing men. Nine or ten Kottmarkers were gathered around Ifvan now, and others looked like they were bang out of sportsmanship.
One of the Ostlund troops started shoving Ifvan in the chest. They were all a lot taller than him. They were all a lot taller than Daur.
Daur cleared his throat and prepared to intervene. At that moment, the Kottmarker behind Ifvan suddenly produced a trench club. It was a thick cylinder of hardwood with a metal boss, the size of a stick grenade.
Daur lunged forward. The club came down—
—and stopped. There was a solid, meaty thunk that shut the room up suddenly.
The Kottmarker had dropped the dub. His sleeve was pinned to the doorpost by a Tanith warknife. There was a terrible, pregnant silence.
Daur glanced back at Mkoll, but the scout chief simply shrugged in bemusement.
“I hate a bad loser,” said Varl, from the stage ten metres away. He was staring at the Kottmarkers surrounding Ifvan. “This is an entertainment. Sport. It isn’t war. We come in here in the spirit of friendly competition and leave the killing at the door. You’re pissed off. Well, tough. In the spirit of this place, I say take your money. We don’t want it. Your bets are wiped. Take your money and get out.”
Some of the Kottmarkers took a step towards the stage.
“Or,” said Varl, sharply, “I start chucking a few more warknives. Someone give me some straight silver.”
Daur blinked. An extraordinary thing happened. There was a ripple of thuds, and a semi-circle of Tanith blades appeared around Varl’s feet, tips buried in the wood, thrown without hesitation and with complete accuracy from the crowd.
Varl bent down and plucked out one of the still vibrating blades.
He tossed it up in the air without even looking at it, and caught it again by the grip. “Well?”
The Kottmarkers fled. So did some of the Krassians. The owner of the dub left part of his sleeve pinned to the doorpost.
The men of the First began to cheer and dap. Varl did a little bow and then balanced the knife on his nose, tip down.
“That’s enough!” Daur raised his voice. “Let’s clear out and get ready for kit inspection!”
The Ghosts filed out, chattering and laughing. One by one, the knives were retrieved from the stage planks. Brostin recovered Varl’s blade from the doorpost and tossed it back to the sergeant. Varl returned Brostin’s. The knives passed in midair. Neither man was looking as he deftly caught his weapon.
The shed was almost empty. Mkoll lingered. Daur climbed up onto the loading dock next to Varl.
“I’m impressed,” said Daur. “You kept control.”
“You don’t start something like this if you can’t police it,” Varl said. “First rule of showmanship.”
“Still, it was magnanimous of you to let them go without paying.”
Varl smiled. “All part of the show. Besides, Ifvan and Baen picked their pockets on the way out.”
“Captain?”
Daur looked down into the body of the shed. Mkoll stood in the doorway.
“Signal’s come through,” Mkoll said. “They’re moving the wounded back up the line.”
The first wounded had begun to filter back during the late afternoon, and by the time the bombardment ended and the assault had subsided, they were streaming into the field
stations. Some came walking, others carried by stretcher bearers or supported by their comrades, some were borne on barrows or on shellcarts.
Dorden, the First’s chief medic, had moved his team up to a triage station just after lunch. The station, designated 4077, was just four kilometres to the rear of the front line. They endured the later stages of the bombardment while they prepped the area. The ground shook. Tent canvas flapped. Surgical tools rattled on their trays.
“There’s no mains water supply,” reported Mtane, one of the regiment’s three qualified medics.
“None at all?” asked Curth, laying out clean blades on a cloth-covered tray.
Mtane shook his head. “There’s a bowser. About half-full. The Alliance orderlies can’t promise it’s clean.”
“Lesp!” Dorden called. The lean orderly ran up. “Set up some stoves and start boiling water. Wait!” Lesp paused as he prepared to dash off again. Dorden handed him a small paper packet. “Sterilising tablets. Do your best.”
Curth broke open a box of anti-bacterial gel packed in fat metal tubes and passed them around. “Use them sparingly,” she admonished. “It’s the only carton we’ve got.”
The triage station was a collection of dirty, long-frame tents pitched to the west of a dead woodland. The access ramps into the first dugouts of the 55th sector workings began just fifty metres east of them. They were terribly exposed, the first above-ground features this side of the Peinforq Line. The wood — Hambley Wood, apparently — was proof of their vulnerability. It was a sea of soft mud and old craters, stubbled with the burnt stumps of thousands of trees. The whole area smelled of wet-rot and mulch.
The First’s medicae team shared the station with a Krassian detail and a gang of Alliance corpsmen. When Curth went outside the Ghosts’ tent for a final lho-stick before the real work began, she was surprised and disgusted at the filthy state of the locals. Their scrubs and — worse — their hands, were soiled. Many were ill. Some were intoxicated, probably from drinking neat rubbing alcohol.
Foskin, the most junior orderly, joined her for a smoke.
“How many are they going to kill by transmitting infection?” she asked.
“Let’s just make sure all the Ghosts come to us,” he said.
It was nothing like that simple. The bodies and the walking wounded that began to pass back to the triage station were so drenched in mud it was impossible to distinguish rank or regiment or even gender.
Curth spent five minutes sewing up a thigh wound before she realised it was Flame-Trooper Lubba she was treating.
One of Kolea’s old mob, from nine platoon.
She rinsed his face and smiled when the tattoos were revealed. “How’s Gol?” she asked.
“He’s okay, ma’am. Came through it, last I saw.”
“And how’s Tona shaping up?”
“The sarge? She was fine.”
Curth was pleased. They were calling Tona Criid “the sarge” already. Ana Curth was the only person in the First who knew the secret. Kolea had known, but it had been lost along with his identity. There was a madam called Aleksa who knew too, but Curth hadn’t seen her since Phantine. The two children Criid and Caffran had “adopted”, two kids who now waited with the camp followers at Rhonforq, were, in truth, Kolea’s. He’d presumed them lost. When he’d found out they were alive after all, it was too late. Orphans, they’d bonded with Criid. It was too late to wreck their world again.
That’s what Kolea had believed anyway, before injury had robbed them of his character.
Curth felt it was her responsibility to watch over them all.
The anonymous wounded plodded in, through the late afternoon. Dorden found cases of shrapnel wounding, concussive damage and several chronic examples of harm done by gas, both caustic and lachrymatory. He extracted a five centimetre piece of hand-bomb casing from DaFelbe’s jaw, twenty-two nails from the foot and leg of Trooper Charel, and a broken length of bayonet from the ribcage of Jessi Banda.
She came round on the table as he was cleaning the wound prior to excising the foreign body.
“Rawne!” she gasped. “Rawne!”
“Easy there,” he scolded. He looked at Lesp. “Any morphosia?” Lesp shook his head.
“How’s Major Rawne?” Banda called out, convulsing. “Easy,” said Dorden. “You’ll be okay”
“Rawne…” she murmured. “Was he hurt?” Dorden asked. Banda had passed out.
“No breath sounds on the left,” Lesp reported. “We’re losing her.”
“Her lung’s collapsed,” said Dorden matter-of-factly, and set to work.
Some of the most terribly wounded came from sixteen platoon, though there weren’t many of them. One of the Krassians told Curth that sixteen had been virtually wiped out by shellfire.
“Trooper Kuren, who’d made it through the horrors of Operation Larisel on Phantine unscathed, had lost part of his leg. They’re all dead,” he told Curth. “Maroy’s dead.”
She shivered. “Dead?”
“Almost all of us. The fething shells, like murder…”
She looked across the station. Mtane was trying to pull together a Krassian’s gaping chest. Foskin and Chayker were holding down a man who was going into a grand mal seizure and vomiting blood. Dorden was fighting to save Banda’s life.
“Sergeant Maroy’s dead,” said Curth.
Dorden nodded sadly. “Rawne may be too,” he said.
Around 17.00 hours, the tide of wounded ebbed. Dorden’s triage station alone had dealt with nearly five hundred bodies.
The light was bad, choked by the shell-smoke. Drizzle pattered in. The ground inside and outside of the tents was awash with blood, and pieces of discarded uniform and equipment were scattered everywhere.
Light wounded had been sent along the road to Rhonforq and the other reserve stations. The really sick and injured were being ferried by cart and stretcher to the main field hospitals. Dorden made sure that all the seriously wounded Ghosts were labelled so they would be conveyed to his mill infirmary at Rhonforq.
Curth and Dorden exited their triage tent during the lull, complaining to each other about their parlous lack of supplies. Curth smoked another lho-stick, which Dorden shared briefly, though it made him cough. She was afraid she was teaching him bad habits.
“Hey,” she said, nudging him. “Over there.” Across the churned mud of the station. Alliance orderlies were conveying medical supplies to their tents on sack-barrows.
Curth ran over, tossing her stick-butt into the mud. “Hey!”
Dorden tried to stop her “No, Ana! Don’t!”
It was too late. Curth had reached the sack-barrows. She grabbed a box off the nearest and ripped open the lid, the Alliance orderlies objecting angrily.
“Imperial supplies! This stuff is stamped for use by the First-and-Only! You bastards! You stole this!”
“Be off!” growled an Aexegarian.
“I will not! Our supplies went missing, and we’ve been fighting to survive without them! You had them diverted, didn’t you? You fething well stole our med supplies!”
“Ana! Please! It’s not worth it!” Dorden cried as he came over. He’d seen this kind of despair-induced corruption too many times before. The Alliance was running painfully short of essential supplies. A big shipment of fresh medical goods must have seemed too choice a treasure to ignore. He’d get some more, he’d get some more shipped in from the Munitorium vessels. It wasn’t worth confronting these miserable, desperate wretches.
“Hell, no!” Curth exclaimed, and tried to gather up some of the cartons.
A thuggish Alliance trooper with a dirty bandage around his head struck out at her, and knocked her over into the mud. The cartons went flying.
“No, oh no… no you don’t!” Dorden yelled and leapt at the Alliance orderlies, pulling them back off the fallen Curth, who was hunched in a foetal position in the mud to protect herself from their toecaps.
They turned on him. One punched him in the mouth, another kick
ed him in the hip. Dorden yelped, and then threw a jab that laid one of the Aexegarians out. Then they really started to pound on him. Curth got up and threw herself back into the fray, clawing and punching and kicking.
A bolt-round went off, very loud in the close air.
The brawling figures broke away from Curth and Dorden at the sound. Ibram Gaunt walked across the muck, white smoke escaping through the vents of his bolt pistol’s flash retarder. He was splashed from head to toe in mud and blood, and powder burns marked his cheeks.
“I am Imperial Commissar Gaunt,” he said. “I am known to be a fair man, until I am pushed. You’ve just pushed me.”
Gaunt lowered his weapon and shot two of the Aexegarians dead where they stood. The rest fled. For good measure, Gaunt sighted and shot down one of the escapees too. Guardsmen, medics and Aexe personnel all around the field station stood and gawped in shock.
Gaunt helped Dorden and Curth to their feet.
“No one does that to my medicae core,” he said.
Curth looked at him in frank fear. She’d never seen him like this.
“I’m a commissar,” he said to her. “I don’t think you realise what a commissar is, Ana. Get used to it.”
Gaunt looked away. “You men!” he shouted at a group of stunned onlookers. “Gather up these supplies and distribute them evenly between the Guard and Alliance medical teams at this station. Surgeon Curth here will supervise.”
She nodded.
“Dorden?” Gaunt turned to the old medicae. He had a swollen eye and his lip was split.
“All right?”
“I’ll survive,” said Dorden. Gaunt could tell he was more angry than hurt. Angry that the fight had started at all, angry that he’d been stupid enough to get involved. And more than anything else, angry at the way Gaunt had just demonstrated the bleak side of Imperial Guard discipline. Dorden had vowed never to kill. He’d broken that vow once, on Menazoid Epsilon, in order to save Gaunt’s life. Now he saw Gaunt take life wantonly, in the name of iron discipline.