She dragged Jajjo over against the shed wall. He was in a bad way, thin, pale and dehydrated.
“Report!” she hissed.
“W-where’s Ven?” he asked.
She shrugged. “Haven’t seen him.”
“He should be here already! He was ahead of me!”
“Slow down! Slow down! Tell me about your contact. What did you find out there?”
“Shit, Muril,” he said, and clambered over the window slit. He peered out. Twenty, maybe thirty of them. They’re right behind me.
“Didn’t you get my call?”
“Just the signal. Comeuppance.”
“Gak, I knew the link was bad! I-He shut up and ducked down. They’re here!” he hissed.
She wasn’t about to cower with him. She got up to the shed’s window and looked out.
Figures, three or four of them, were approaching through the mist and the trees. Big men, in battledress.
Carrying lasrifles.
She recognized their blood-red tunics and their leering iron face masks at once. Not Shadik. Not Shadik at all. Blood Pact.
As if they had smelled her sudden fear, three of the Chaos infantry swung round and opened fire on the outhouses. Laser rounds chopped into the roof tiles and shattered old brick and chafstone. Support fire — three or four more lasrifles and then what felt like an autocannon — whickered out of the trees.
Muril yelped and covered Jajjo’s head with her arms as las-rounds punched in through the woodwork of the window and tore apart the leading edge of the roof.
“Contact!” she yelled into her bead. “Contact!”
“Golden Throne!” said Feygor, peering out of the window. “That’s las-fire! Eight, maybe nine shooters.”
Brostin was on his feet. He took a glance round at Peterik, who was shielding the old woman in the corner of the pantry.
“Shadik don’t have las weapons,” he said, in gruff confusion. “Murt? How come they have las weapons?”
“I don’t know!” snapped Feygor. “Muril! Muril! Report!”
The bead-link crackled, “—od Pact! I say again, contact is Blood Pact!”
“Oh, sacred feth!” Feygor said.
Caffran heard the signal too and his blood ran cold. They’d met the Blood Part before, on Phantine. The Part was the devoted vanguard of the arch-enemy. Not cultists, not rebels. Drilled and trained infantry, highly motivated, highly skilled and well equipped. If they were here, fighting for the Republic… well, that meant a forty year old war had just changed as radically as it had done when the Guard arrived in support of the Alliance. This had ceased to be a global matter. Now it was well and truly part of the Crusade.
From his position, all he could see was the back of the outhouse and the sprays of tile and stone smashing off it under the heavy fire. He yearned for a target.
“Keep it close! Wait until they commit!” Feygor urged over the link. The hell with that! Muril and Jajjo were dead meat if no one took up the fight. Feygor clearly didn’t want to give away the fact that a unit was dug-in here. Not until he had to.
A slightly different noise now rose from the beleaguered outhouse. The whine-crack, higher-pitched, of first one Imperial lasrifle, then another. Muril and Jajjo were returning fire.
That was play, as far as Caffran was concerned.
“Larkin!” he voxed. “You got a target?”
“Yes, Caff. At least two.”
“I’ve got an angle on one too,” reported Gutes.
“I think it’s time for us to go to work,” Caffran said.
“Hold fire!” Feygor snarled over the link. “They don’t know we’re here yet! Hold fire!”
“Feth that,” said Larkin and took his first shot.
The overcharged sniper-round zapped off up the length of the garden and blew out the head of one Blood Part trooper in a sideways spray of blood, tissue and metal. His almost headless body toppled over into the ferns. The others started running for cover. From the dining room, Gutes took one out with hits to the hip and the side of the neck.
“Holy Feth!” Feygor was screaming. “I didn’t give the fire order! Who’s firing? Who the feth is firing?”
“I am,” said Larkin and did it again. Target-fix. Seventy-three metres.
Another head shot. The Blood Part trooper flew off his feet, his legs kicking slackly up into the air as he cartwheeled.
“I think we’re in this now,” said Rerval and started to clip las-shots up over the lawn.
“Sure as sure,” agreed Cuu, opening fire alongside him.
“Holy Feth! Won’t any of you take a fething order?” Feygor shouted over the vox, almost apoplectic.
In the perimeter outhouse, Muril and Jajjo were blasting away and rejoiced as first one Pacter dropped, then two more thanks to fire from the house. Muril recognised and admired the work of a long-las.
She tracked another one into the trees as he sought cover, and sprayed the area on full auto, kicking up a fuss of torn leaves and stalks.
Jajjo was firing on single shot. His gun followed a Blood Pact trooper who was dashing back into the misty shadows of the pines. Jajjo squeezed the trigger.
The dazzling round hit the figure in the spine and tumbled him over.
Autocannon fire continued to strafe the sheds where Jajjo and Muril hid. After a couple more fierce bursts, the side wall came down in a tumble of dislodged chafstone, and the two Ghosts had to crawl out from under the slumped roof and move in a rapid crouch back along the garden wall.
“Can’t someone tag that fething cannon?” Muril barked.
“Negative, can’t see it,” Caffran voxed, his opinion swiftly agreed with by Gutes.
“Larks? You see it?” Muril called.
“Too deep in the woods,” Larkin replied. “Can’t even see a snout flash.”
“Gak that!” said Muril. She and Jajjo were pinned down behind the narrow stone wall, and cannon fire was gradually creeping their way. They needed a break, enough time to run back down the lawn to the main house.
It didn’t look like they were going to get it.
“Hold tight and wait for my word,” said Larkin over the link. “Wait for it…”
He couldn’t see the cannon crew, even from his raised vantage, and he couldn’t see any muzzle flash. But he watched the dipping line of the cannon’s tracer rounds as they tore out of the woodland. The high calibre shots punished the garden wall and made sappy steam out of the undergrowth.
Another few seconds and it would be punching through the wall where Muril and Jajjo were sheltering.
Larkin rolled his aim back, following the line of tracers until it vanished at its mysterious source. He made an educated adjustment to his aim, and fired into the woods.
The cannon fire stopped abruptly.
“Go! Muril! Go!” he cried, as he reloaded and fired another shot exactly where he’d placed the first.
Muril and Jajjo fled down the garden towards the barricade. A few loose las-rounds from rifles chased them, chewing up the turf.
The cannon started up again, but it was lacking confidence now, as if someone else had taken over. Its shots bombarded the back wall of the garden or shot clear over it, smacking into the rear face of the house. A window smashed.
By then, Muril and Jajjo had reached the barricade and had hurled themselves over it.
The cannon continued to spray.
“First thing you learn,” Larkin said to himself, “is move if someone knows where you are.”
He fired another shot, aiming exactly at the point he’d placed the last two. For the second time in thirty seconds, the cannon fell suddenly silent.
“Nice bit of shooting that, Larks,” voxed Gutes.
Now Caffran felt exposed. With Muril and Jajjo dropping back, he now occupied point position in the defence.
He kept scanning the end of the garden, the wall, the chokes of undergrowth leading into the trees.
He didn’t have to wait long.
At least two doze
n Blood Pact troopers came out of the tree-line and assaulted the rear wall, sheeting fire at the manse. All of the Ghosts, even Larkin, had to drop down to avoid the ferocity. The attackers were now using the rear garden wall and the mined sheds abandoned by Muril and Jajjo as cover.
Caffran was the first to begin return fire. He lanced shots along the back of the wall that hit at least one attacker and caused several more to duck. This interruption in firing gave Cuu and Larkin an opening. Cuu sprayed the back of the outhouses with fire, and Larkin fired another hot-shot that took a Blood Pact trooper in the chest.
To the east, from the dining room window, Gutes took up the slack, firing his trademark way: slow, methodical, jaggedly. Two Blood Pact troopers tried to flank by sprinting down the side wall of the property, following the hedges into the ditch. Gutes got them both. Then a third that he didn’t kill outright. Then a fourth who emerged, trying to drag the injured man back into cover.
As an afterthought, Gutes picked off the wounded bastard too.
A flurry of fire was hitting down at the manse and the barricade from the central portion of the rear wall. Cuu and Rerval replied, supplemented by Jajjo and Muril, who were now up the barricade with them. Feygor added his own support from the kitchen window, and Brostin suddenly broke from the kitchen doorway and ran up the yard to the side of Caffran’s station, leaving his flamer behind. The big thug wriggled in beside Caffran and started to fire his pistols, one in each meaty hand.
“What I wouldn’t give for a tread-fether right now,” Brostin grumbled. “I hear that!” said Caffran.
A shot spat across them from the left. Blood Pacters moving west to flank them from the other side. Brostin rolled to his feet and slid out of Caffran’s greenhouse, swung round behind it and came up over the low wall to meet the three Pacters rushing them across the kitchen garden. His laspistols chattered as he raked them back and forth. He killed two and winged a third.
Down at the barricade, Cuu deselected rapid fire and switched his Mark III to single shot. He hunted the garden wall, waiting for Blood Pacters to pop up for a shot. Every time they did, he shot them in the face. Three in a row. Four. The fifth one was smacked over by one of Larkin’s shots before Cuu could fire.
Ducking round the kitchen doorway for cover, Feygor dared the yard and ran for the barricade as a welter of shots rained down, exploding plaster, brick, gutters, tiles.
He ducked in beside Muril.
“Get up with Larkin!” he said. “I know you don’t have a long-las anymore, but you’ll do more good up there.”
She nodded and ran back for the kitchen door Feygor got up and started firing. He looked over at Jajjo. “Where’s Ven?” Jajjo shook his head.
Beside Jajjo, Rerval fired and scored a killshot. He distinctly saw the Blood Pact trooper fall.
He turned to grin triumphantly at Feygor and a las-round hit the side of his head.
Jajjo ducked down to help him, but Rerval was getting up without assistance. “I’m okay,” he said, but it didn’t sound like that. From the corner of his mouth back to his jaw-line, his cheek was flopped open and blood was streaming out down his neck. Rerval fired one more shot, then reached up and felt the rip in his face.
“Feth—” he slurred and fell over.
Jajjo dragged him back into the kitchen. The amount of blood pouring out of Rerval’s torn face was extraordinary. “Help me!” Jajjo shouted to the old woman and the young boy he saw cowering in the corner He had no idea who they were.
Las-fire smacked and punched through the kitchen window and covered the tiles with glass shards. Several more shots exploded fibres from the kitchen door Jajjo tried to hold Rerval’s face together.
The old woman ran across the kitchen, her head down, and took over. She pinched the wound tight and started to wrap it with her shawl.
“Let me free! Let me free, for god’s sake! I can help!” bellowed the young man. Jajjo realised the youth was tied to his chair Jajjo got up, went across to the boy, and cut his bonds with his dagger. “I don’t know why you’re tied up,” he said, “but don’t gak with me.”
The young man — Jajjo realised how dirty and unshaven he was — darted across to the field dressing kit Gutes had left on the bench seat. He recovered it and ran over to join the old woman cradling Rerval. An astonishingly wide pool of blood had spread out under her.
“Do you know what you’re doing?” Jajjo asked.
“I was a corpsman. I know field aid,” replied the boy.
“Don’t let him bleed out,” said Jajjo, and ran out into the fight again.
Las-fire flickered up and down the lawn, fierce and heavy. Caffran thought he’d scored another hit but it was hard to tell. There were at least a dozen shooters up there.
Muril arrived on the first floor, and tried to find the window with the best sweep.
She could hear the hot-shot whine of Larkin’s weapon from nearby.
Larkin reloaded again and took aim. He’d switched bedrooms three rimes since the fight had begun so his shots didn’t come from the same place each time. In the far end bedroom, he knelt and sighted.
A steel helmet over a grotesque iron mask.
Bang!
The Blood Pact trooper fell. Larkin reloaded.
He hunted for targets. The back of his skull hurt worse than ever, and he could taste blood. Every now and then, his vision faltered. The blizzard of las-fire coming down at them was almost overwhelming. Middle of combat, all crap flying this way and that…
Larkin stroked his long-las and tilted the aim down. Lijah Cuu was below him in the yard, firing away up hill.
The scope’s crosshairs made a luminous frame around the back of Cuu’s head.
Larkin paused. He breathed carefully. His head was really aching now, that terrible stabbing migraine that had haunted him all his life.
He blinked away sweat. He would fething do this.
Cuu, right in his sights. Lijah Cuu. His nemesis. The embodiment of his fear. The man who had killed Try Again Bragg.
One shot.
Pop.
Easy.
Larkin’s finger tightened on the trigger. Target-fix. Cuu. Nine point seven metres. Larkin whined aloud, a pitiful sound. He wanted to do it, yet he couldn’t. He was a sniper, a marksman, a killer. But not a murderer. He couldn’t shoot one of their own in the back, even if it was Lijah fething Cuu.
He wanted to. He had to. It was the only way. It was why he’d come.
But…
Cuu would have done it without hesitation, Larkin thought. That thought and that thought alone convinced him to take his finger off the trigger.
“Larks! What the gak are you doing?”
Larkin looked up from his carefully laid gun. Muril stood behind him, appalled.
“Don’t do it,” she said. “Please. I know you want to. I know he deserves it. But don’t…”
“Sehra,” he said quietly. “I can’t anyway.”
“That’s good,” she said. “Really, Larks. Don’t descend to that animal’s level.”
“Oh, feth,” sighed Larkin. His head was truly spinning now. His vision was closing in with flashes and lumps of colour. She was right. He was so fething glad he hadn’t stained his soul the way Cuu had stained his. There was honour. There was morality. There was sleeping at night without waking up screaming. Bragg would understand. Wherever he was, Bragg would understand.
Larkin turned and took a last look out of his scope. Cuu was looking right back at them.
Lijah Cuu saw the aimed rifle.
And smiled.
Brostin and Caffran finally drove the last of the Pacters back from the left hand flank of the house. Feygor and Gutes smacked shots against the rear wall, and Feygor hit another body.
Then the Blood Pact fell silent.
The Ghosts waited. No contact. No sound. The rain got heavier and washed the traces of Rerval’s blood out of the yard.
“Stand down,” said Feygor, at last. “They’ll be back,” said Caffran
.
“Lie down,” Muril advised him.
“My head really hurts.”
“Cuu smacked you a good one with that skillet, Larks. I’ve been worried.”
Larkin lay back on the dirty mattress in the upstairs room. “It’s not that. I get headaches. Really bad ones. I’ve always had them.”
“Whatever,” said Muril. “I think it’s that headwound. Cuu really hurt you. I don’t want to worry you, Hlaine, but it needs to be looked at. I wish for gak’s sake Curth or Dorden was here.”
Larkin had already passed out on the mattress. Watery blood wept into the padding behind his head.
“Gak,” said Muril. “You really need a doc fast…”
She froze. Down below, she could hear Feygor and the others repairing defences and reloading for the next wave.
She’d heard a sound from the front of the house.
She took up her lasgun and went out onto the landing. Another tiny sound, a movement at the porch.
She went down the staircase slowly, gun raised.
At the foot of the stairs, she wheeled round, and found herself aiming at Cuu. He winked at her.
“Careful, girl.”
“What are you doing here?”
“I heard something out the front,” he said. She covered him with her weapon. “Check it out,” she said.
“Why the hostility?” he asked.
“You know why, you bastard. Now… check it out.” Cuu went down to the front door, Muril watching him every centimetre of the way. He drew his blade. Cuu threw open the door.
The dagger flew from his hand as a tall figure took him in a choke hold.
“Do you realise how easy it was to get round the front of this place?” asked Mkvenner.
FIFTEEN
THE MONSTERS
“In the long run, a man with a brain is more dangerous than a man with brawn.”
—Warmaster Slaydo,
from A Treatise on the Nature of Warfare
Firebreathing, like the giant creatures of old myth, the monsters lay before them.
When the monsters roared, the ground shook and the air came past hot and acrid, in a pressurised Shockwave. The light flashes were painful and immense, like grounded stars being switched on and off in the night. The sound shook teeth and bone and marrow.