“Larks,” said Bragg, “it’s time to wake up.”
“Try?”
Try Again Bragg smiled his big, genial smile. “Time to wake up,” he said.
Larkin blinked and sat up quickly. The movement made him dizzy and he felt nausea rise through him. The hind part of his brain felt like someone was repeatedly clubbing it with a nine-seventy, spike first. At the edges of his vision, obscure lights danced and fire crackers burst.
He was on the dirty mattress in a damp bedroom of the Manse. Rain sheeted down outside, accompanied by lightning. It was late afternoon.
Bragg wasn’t there anymore.
“See you later,” said Larkin.
Apart from the rainstorm, things had been quiet since they’d driven the assault back first thing. They’d repaired the defences, and added a few more at Mkvenner’s suggestion.
The scout explained how he and Jajjo had run across the Blood Pact unit late the previous night. A fair-sized patrol force, which Mkvenner was certain was just the spearhead of a larger advance. Shadik had been reinforced from off-world by the elite infantry of the arch-enemy, and the first action of that elite had been to pave the way for an invasion through the Montorq Forest.
Ironic, Caffran thought, that both Chaos and Imperial elements had brought the same advice to the warring nations of Aexe Cardinal.
Rerval was stable, thanks to the deserter’s field aid, though weak from loss of blood. They put him in the drawing room out of the way, and Caffran asked Peterik to look after him. No one complained that Peterik wasn’t tied up anymore. The old woman sat with them and banked up the drawing room fire.
With Rerval out of commission, Mkvenner operated the vox-caster, and sent a more detailed repeat of the original message. Again, there was no reply. There was still no way of telling if anyone had heard either warning.
“We’re done here now, anyway,” announced Feygor. “I mean, now Ven and Jajjo are back. We know the situation. So we can get out of here now. Just get up and go.”
“And how far would we get?” asked Mkvenner. “With an old lady and a man who can’t walk?”
Feygor shrugged. “Then we fething well leave them! I know, tough. I don’t like it. But aren’t we obliged to carry a warning back now? I mean, the vox is probably down. We’d be failing in our duty if we didn’t get off our arses and try to get word back to company command.”
Mkvenner frowned. He didn’t want to get into his thoughts on the subject of Murtan Feygor and failure of duty.
“He’s right,” he said instead, surprising them all, including Feygor. “Up to a point, anyway. We have to assume the vox is dead. We have to get a warning through to Ins Arbor, or this could turn into a first class feth-up. But even without the old lady and Rerval, even moving as fast as we can, I don’t think we’d outrun them. They’re swift, they’re good and they’re right on us.”
“So?” asked Cuu.
“So, we maintain the defence of this place. For as long as we can. We keep the Blood Pact busy right here.”
“Because?”
“Because we’ll be buying time for someone to get word back. Someone fast might have a chance if the enemy push was delayed here.”
Caffran, Muril and Jajjo looked solemn. Feygor shook his head. Gutes sat down, tutting. Brostin growled an unhappy curse.
Cuu asked the obvious question. “Who goes?”
“Who’s fast?” Mkvenner replied. “You,” said Feygor.
“I’ll be staying here,” said Mkvenner. He’d suggested the plan. He wouldn’t leave the hard part to them.
“Then Muril or Jajjo,” said Feygor. “Maybe Cuu. He’s light on his toes.”
“Who’s going to decide?” asked Caffran.
“I am,” said Mkvenner, and no one argued. “Jajjo. You’re up. Take the bare minimum so you move light. Don’t stop for anything.”
The young Vervunhiver nodded. He was swallowing hard. The weight of responsibility scared him. So did Mkvenner’s trust. Worst of all was the idea he was leaving them behind. They were going to die to buy him time.
“Come on,” said Mkvenner. “Get going. There’s no time to waste.”
They all said their goodbyes to Jajjo in turn. Caffran and Gutes helped him pare down his kit and wished him well.
Feygor tried to say something and then just nodded, lost for words. Brostin slapped him on the back and told him not to feth up. Muril filled a pair of water canteens for Jajjo to take with him. “Good luck,” she said.
“I wish he’d picked you,” Jajjo told her.
“Me too,” she smiled, “but not for the reason you think.”
“You can do it, Jaj,” Cuu said, winking at the cadet scout. “Sure as sure, you can.”
Jajjo left by the front door, into the rain and the bad light.
He turned back once, to look at Mkvenner. “Sir, I—”
“Go,” said Mkvenner.
And Jajjo was gone.
Mkvenner shut and bolted the front door. Feygor was already deploying the remaining members of the detail to fire positions. He sent Muril to the first floor, to check what shape Larkin was in and take up a sniping position. “Use Larkin’s long-las if he’s out of it,” Feygor instructed.
In the hallway, she passed Mkvenner heading back from the front door.
“Sir,” she said.
“Trooper?”
“I know things have gone… bad,” she began. “But for the record… for what that’s worth… I wish you’d taken me more seriously during this patrol.”
“You don’t think I’ve taken you seriously?”
“I want to be a scout, sir. All the way along, you’ve given the opportunities to Jajjo, brought him along. Even now, even this. He gets trusted with the break out run.”
“You know why I chose him over you?”
“No sir.”
“You’re a better shot, Muril. We need you here. When we… if we get back, I’ll be making a recommendation to Mkoll. Scout advancement.”
“For Jajjo?”
“For both of you. I’ve been impressed with your work from the moment you signed up. Jajjo needed a bit of extra coaching to make the grade.”
She opened her mouth, then closed it again. She wasn’t quite sure what to say.
Then the opportunity was gone anyway. They both started as they heard a flurry of explosions from the back of the house.
Nineteen detail had set half their tube-charges in the undergrowth and outbuildings along the back of the rear plot. Brostin had found some bales of fence twine in the cellar and they’d rigged tripwires.
The first intruders into the garden, moving clumsily in the heavy rain, found the wires with their boots. A whole cluster of charges had gone off along the ragged rear wall and demolished it completely. Two more had been triggered at the top of the ditch on the east side of the garden. The Blood Pact troopers, so far invisible in the downpour, began shooting at the house. The defenders at the manse fired back a few discouraging blasts. After a minute or so there was another flash and boom from the left side of the property line as another set of charges was tripped.
The firing stopped. The Blood Part had fallen back again.
Muril went to fetch Larkin’s long-las, but found it in his hands. He was crouched by one of the bedroom windows, scanning the rain outside. “You all right?” she asked.
“Yeah,” he said. He didn’t look it. He looked dreadful. His thin face was almost white except for the livid bruising, and his eyes were dark hollows.
“I feel better,” he said. “Really. I feel better for not… taking that shot.”
“Good,” she said. “We’ll get Cuu, Larks. We’ll get out of this and get him. I saw him try to kill you, remember? We’ll talk to Corbec. Tell him everything.”
“Okay,” said Larkin.
“I mean… Cuu, Feygor, Brostin… Gutes too, I guess. They’re going to be up on charges for what they did here. Feygor as good as deserted for a few days. I can’t believe Ven won’t make a f
ull report. And we’ll make a full report of our own about Cuu.”
“Good,” he said.
“So… you fit to do some hunting?”
“I’m fit,” he nodded, settling his long-las.
“I’ll be down the landing in the end bedroom.”
“Okay.”
She disappeared. He turned back to his scope. For a moment, he couldn’t see the garden or the fringe of woods at all. Just oblong pink stars and firecrackers.
He blinked, then blinked again, until his vision cleared.
Half an hour later, the Blood Pact returned. In the makeshift pillbox of the greenhouse, Caffran thought he saw movement in the rain, and craned his head up over the edge of the old bedstead and the sacking.
He heard a noise. A hollow puff followed by a whine. Then another. Then yet another.
He knew that sound.
“Incoming!” he yelled.
The first mortar shell blew a hole in the middle of the lawn and threw clods of torn earth into the air Another made a fireball halfway down the garden’s east wall and stone chips rattled down with the rain. A third hit the roofless coal bunker.
The shells kept coming, pounding the rear lawn with fierce explosions. Then autocannons opened up in the tree-line, stitching the back of the house.
Mkvenner was down at the barricade with Cuu. Any moment now, and a mortar round would flatten the greenhouse and Caffran with it.
“Fall back! Caff, fall back!” he shouted. The heavy structure of the house itself at least offered some protection.
Caffran was curled up protectively, trying to keep an eye out. A shell went off right outside, shaking the greenhouse and spraying him with dirt.
“Caffran!”
“Wait!” he shouted back.
Under cover of the furious mortar and cannon fire, the troopers began their assault. Caffran glimpsed red-dad figures pouring in through the rubble at the back of the lawn, some crawling along the side ditches or below what was left of the back wall. Now small-arms fire came their way too.
He waited as long as he dared, until enemy shapes had almost reached the sundial half-way down the lawn.
He yanked the twine in his hand. The cord was tied off to the det-tapes of their remaining tubes, buried in the lawn itself. They went off in rapid series, hurling two or three bodies into the air.
Satisfied, Caffran leapt up, and scrambled out through the back of the greenhouse into the yard. Las-rounds flew past him. A mortar bomb exploded in the kitchen garden off to his left, and then another hit the greenhouse squarely.
The blast threw him onto his face. Mkvenner dashed across to him and dragged him back towards the kitchen doorway where Brostin was covering them. Cuu had already run inside out of the deluge.
Mkvenner got Caffran into the kitchen as two more mortar shells hit the barricade and the remains of the coal bunker. Stone fragments peppered the back wall of the manse. Everyone firing from a window ducked. A further shell hit the west side of the wall and brought the roof down into the pantry with a terrible crash.
“Okay?” Mkvenner snapped at Caffran. Caffran was dazed, and his shoulders and the backs of his legs were covered in shrapnel cuts.
“Fine!” he gasped, and got up to join Brostin at the door. “Get that flamer up!” Mkvenner said. “They’ll be in range soon!”
The house shook as another mortar struck it. Broken tiles avalanched down into the yard. There were Blood Pact troopers all over the rear lawn now, coming in low on the far side of the barricade and the shredded greenhouse. Thick smoke and the flash of explosions fogged most of the view. The Ghosts fired at every target they could make out. From the first floor, Muril and Larkin were making the best of the kills.
“Somebody else get upstairs!” Feygor bellowed, blasting from the main kitchen window. Cuu leapt up and ran.
“The right! They’re getting round from the fething right!” Gutes yelled over the link from the dining room. Mkvenner moved to the kitchen door and peered out east. Over the burning vestiges of the coal bunker, he could see Gutes’ las-fire hammering at the hedge-veiled ditch running up the side of the manse.
“Keep that up, Gutes!” he snarled. “Keep them ducking! I’ll come around the front and set up a crossfire!”
“Read that!” Gutes sang back.
Mkvenner ran back along the hall from the kitchen, and unbolted the front door. The house vibrated with the rattle of gunfire and the batter of the mortars. The pots and pans on the stairs were quivering and spilling their contents as the whole manse shook. He felt a particularly loud bang that sounded like a mortar had taken the roof in. Mkvenner realised it was simply the thunder splitting right overhead.
He got the door open and edged out into the rain, weapon up, moving round the eastern side of the building. The roar of battle floated round from the rear.
The Blood Pact was already tearing through the ditch hedge into the front lawn area. One spotted Mkvenner, but the scout shot him dead before he could raise either weapon or cry. He fired again. Two more toppled backwards into the hedge, arms flailing.
Three more opened fire, and Mkvenner was forced to dodge back into the cover of the porch. Las-rounds whirred off the stone porch posts. From cover, he managed to hit two of the attackers and then made a dash for the hedge, hoping to cut off the ditch with an enfilade.
A grenade tumbled through the rain. Mkvenner threw himself out of the way, but still the blast lifted him and slammed him into the long, wet grass of the lawn.
He came round again moments later to see an iron mask leering at him, and a blade striking at his throat.
Mkvenner rolled and kicked his legs round, smashing the Blood Pact trooper over. Another one lunged at the Tanith with his bayonet, but Mkvenner grabbed the barrel, wrenched it out of the enemy’s hands, and killed him with a savage blow using the stock. A las-round cracked at him from point-blank range, but Mkvenner had crouched low, and came up, scything the bayonet of the captured weapon through the belly of the third attacker. Without looking, he planted a kick backwards, breaking the neck of the first man, who was now trying to get up from the grass.
But there were more of them, so many more. Almost a dozen, rushing him, some firing. He sidestepped another bayonet, and a las-round ripped through his right thigh. Fuelled with pain, he rammed the blade of his borrowed rifle through the neck of the closest invader.
Full auto las-fire tore across the lawn, making trails of steam in the downpour. Three Blood Pacters fell immediately, then a fourth. Mkvenner opened fire with his lasrifle and took out two more before turning and sprinting for the porch.
In the porch doorway, Peterik stood, blasting furiously with Rerval’s lasgun. Full auto.
The remaining Blood Pact exposed on the lawn either died or fled.
Mkvenner tumbled in beside him. “Thank you,” he said.
“You need to get that leg wound treated,” said Peterik. “I’ll do it later, if there’s a later,” said Mkvenner. “Right now, we have to hold the front of the house You up to that?” Peterik nodded. “Yes, sir. I am.”
At the rear, a series of mortar rounds had struck the yard and blown paving slabs through the kitchen wall. Another two shells had slammed into the pantry, already a ruin. Caffran and Feygor were down behind the cast-iron bulk of the stove, firing through the shattered hole that had once been the main window. The kitchen door had been blown off its hinges, but Brostin was in the doorway, revving his flamer.
A trio of Blood Pact troops leapt the barricade and charged the kitchen. Brostin hosed them and they torched in their tracks, the grenades they carried blowing out and showering the fractured yard with metal chips, pieces of gristle and burning scraps of fabric. Brostin nursed the flamer, and sent a second flare right over the barricade, sizzling in the rain. They could hear screams. An enemy trooper, burning across his back and legs, ran hopelessly towards the greenhouse and fell when Feygor shot him.
Brostin had an infamous affinity with fire. Now the enemy was in r
ange, he started bursting sprays of liquid flame up over the barricade and the wall of the kitchen garden, sliding it round angles that las-rounds couldn’t touch. He washed the jumbled wood of the felled green house with a blanket of warm, orange fire, blistering the old paint and cooking the wood, and then ignited the toasted kindling with a spear of blue, super-hot fire. Another enemy voice rose up in a scream. A blizzard of touched-off grenades added to the raging fire.
The mortar rounds still thumped in. Caffran flinched as he heard one go through the roof. Cannon fire raked the back wall, splitting exposed brickwork and stone. The manse’s original lime wash render had long since been shot away.
Feygor looked across at Caffran as they ducked another salvo.
“This what you wanted to stay here for?” he asked, sarcastically. Feygor always sounded sarcastic, but this was the real thing.
“No,” said Caffran. He pointed to the Tanith regimental badge on his jacket. “I wanted to stay for this.”
Brostin’s flamer spluttered and whooshed again. The stink of burning promethium filled the kitchen.
“They’re rushing us!” Brostin yelled. “They’re rushing us!”
It was over, Larkin knew. The manse was falling apart under the mortar rounds, and the back of the house was under assault from a battalion-strength enemy unit. The Blood Pact was in the side ditch too, he could hear that, and round the front.
He made what shots he could, knocking down scarlet shapes on the lawn and behind the barricade. But one thing was for sure. There were more enemy troopers outside than he had hot-shots left in his satchel.
He wondered if they’d bought enough time. He wondered where Jajjo was. He wondered if anyone would ever know what a thing they’d done there this day. That handful of them, against an army.
His vision was going again. The lights were dancing. He blinked hard and shook his head, trying to clear his eyes. Shaking his head made it feel like he was sloshing his brains around.
He wondered if the pain would overcome him before the Blood Pact reached him. Which would be quicker? Which would hurt less?