“I’m working on that,” Gaunt assured him.
Mkoll shrugged, and then winced and wished he hadn’t. “I don’t know. Something new. Something different or unexpected. Something from a new angle. We’d better find out what. Before they do.”
“I know something,” said Mkvenner quietly. “These new super-guns they’ve got. They might have been developing them for years, but don’t you think it’s funny they first use them a day or two after we arrive? They must’ve seen our ships coming in. They must know the Guard is here and that the Alliance has off-world reinforcements at last. They’re afraid the Alliance has got the edge. They want the edge back.”
“I’ll give ’em the edge back,” Caober chuckled, testing the sharpness of his straight silver warknife.
“Hold that thought,” Gaunt told him with a smile. He looked at Mkoll. “Write me up a full report. Everything and anything.”
“Will do, sir.”
Gaunt was about to say something else when angry voices broke into the mill hall. Ana Curth burst in. “Dorden, where the feth are — Oh! My apologies, sir.”
Gaunt stood. “As you were, Surgeon Curth. I believe you were about to cuss again.”
“Fething right,” she said. “I can’t find our fething supplies and the supplies should be there and the Krassians are blaming—”
“Whoa, whoa!” said Dorden. “From the top and remember to breathe this time.”
Ana Curth took a deep breath. She’d been a well-respected and well-paid civilian medic on Verghast before the Zoican War and, to the amazement of Dorden and Gaunt, had elected to join the Tanith regiment at the Act of Consolation. No one had ever found out why she’d cast aside a comfortable, rewarding lifestyle in favour of the thankless miseries of an Imperial Guard medicae posting. Gaunt believed it was because she had a sense of duty that probably put them all to shame.
They were fething lucky to have her.
“Our supplies are missing,” she said. “All of them. Everything we shipped in from the Munitorium vessels. I looked for them at embarkation and was told they had been trained ahead. But they’re not here.”
“No, no,” said Chayker. “I saw them. Piled up in the lean-to behind the mill.”
“Oh, there are plenty of gakking crates there, Chayks,” said Curth. “And they’re all marked with the Tanith and Krassian symbols. But they’ve got nothing in them except dirty cotton wool and straw. The Krassian medics are trying to give their men field shots, and there’s nothing to use, and they’re claiming we pinched them all—”
“All right, all right…” Gaunt said. “What have we got?”
“About thirty cases of one-shot mire-fever doses and about the same in anti-toxin pills,” said Lesp. “Everything we brought up the line ourselves, sir.”
“Give them to the Krassians.”
“Gaunt!” Curth started.
“Do it. I won’t have bad feeling with good allies like the Krassians. I’ll find our supplies, and the Krassians’ supplies too. We’ll make do until then.”
“Ever the diplomat, eh, Ibram?” smiled Dorden.
“They once invited me to join the Imperial diplomatic officium,” said Gaunt. “I told them to feth off.”
There was laughter ringing from the old wool mill. His driver had told him this was the place set aside for the Imperial Guard medicae units. Laughter seemed a strange sound to hear. He walked in from the car, entering a large hall where eight men and a woman stood around, hooting and chuckling. It seemed like the officer had just told a really good joke. Four of the men and the woman were medics. The others, apart from the officer in his stem cap, were black-tunicked troopers, all of them injured.
He cleared his throat and the laughter stopped. They all looked round.
“I believe you were asking for me,” he said. “I am Count Iaco Bousar Fep Golke.”
Count Golke was a quiet, silver-haired Aexegarian dressed in a dark green uniform that showed no decoration apart from the insignia of Aexegary on the collar and shoulder boards, and the golden aquila medal pinned at his throat. He walked with a slight limp, and Gaunt could see that his neatly trimmed silver beard had been grown, in part, to disguise old burns on his cheek and throat. He introduced himself as chief of staff/liaison.
They walked together across the yard outside the mill.
“We’ve met already,” Gaunt said. “In passing. I was one of the Imperial officers presented to you that night at the high sezar’s palace.”
“I thought so,” replied Golke. “I confess that night I was rather distant. Forgive me if I was distracted. The surprise news of the Imperial arrival, my unexpected decoration…” He patted the gold eagle medal. Gaunt knew Golke wasn’t mentioning the fact that he had just been stripped of rank too. That night had marked the end of Golke’s four year tenure as supreme commander of the Aexe Alliance forces. A blow to his pride, Gaunt imagined. Another little puffed up aristo general, who’d made his rank by dint of noble blood rather than command merit, now drummed out of office to make way for the newcomers. Gaunt expected bitterness and resentment. He was surprised when he detected none. Golke seemed to be nothing except tired and disenchanted.
“My new role,” said Golke, leaning against a gatepost to ease his leg, “as I understand it at least, is to facilitate communication between the Alliance and the Imperial expedition. It’s all rather formless and vague, so I have to thank you.”
“How so?”
“Giving me something decent to do, colonel-commissar. Something other than the futile round of cocktail welcome parties and handshaking. You’ve quite rattled Redjacq Ankre.”
“If I may speak freely?”
Golke made an ushering sweep with his hand. “Colonel Ankre displayed to me a real ignorance of modem warfare methods. He is blinkered, clinging to outmoded and discredited principles and strategies. Indeed, this whole war—” Gaunt stopped. “Go on, colonel-commissar.”
“I should not, sir. I barely know you and I don’t feel it is my place to deliver a critique of your nation’s war-making.”
Golke smiled. It was quite a winning smile, even if one corner of his mouth, fused by scar tissue, refused to bend. “Colonel-Commissar Gaunt, I was twenty-nine years old when this bloody war began. I served as a front-line infantry officer for twelve years, then joined the Office of Strategy for another fifteen, then some time in the east, then five years as area general in sector 59, then four as supreme commander. Never in that time was I one hundred per cent happy about the way Aexegary prosecuted this war. I criticised, objected, used my rank to try to make changes I thought would be beneficial. It was like pushing water uphill. So let’s make a deal. Speak freely and speak your mind. If I am offended, we’ll agree to disagree.”
Gaunt nodded. “Then I’d say this war would have been over thirty years ago if the Alliance had for one moment overhauled their martial philosophies. You’re fighting this like a pre-firearm campaign, like something from the days of antiquity. The use of infantry and cavalry, the dependence on cannon, the expenditure of manpower. And, forgive me, the reliance on the nobility for command personnel.”
Golke chuckled ruefully.
“There is a concept that we in the Guard hold true. Total war. The prosecution of an enemy that takes no account of national boundaries or political structure. War with a single, unswerving objective, to defeat the foe. War that never stays still but is constantly looking for new opportunities. True to such a concept, the Imperial Guard has triumphed over the enemies of the Emperor in all theatres. We advance, both physically and mentally. You have stagnated, intellectually, as truly and deeply as your front line.”
“You don’t pull punches, do you, Gaunt?”
“Not when I’m invited to throw one for free. Look, sir, I know Aexegary has a long and illustrious history of military success, but you’re still fighting wars the way your ancestors did. Shadik is not a bellicose neighbour state to be bested on the field and then invited over for diplomatic reparations.
It is a cancer, a spreading evil of Chaos that will not, ever, play by the old rules. It will grind you down, invade you and consume you.”
“I know that.”
“Then you seem to be alone. Ankre doesn’t know it. Not at all.”
“Ankre is old school. He’s a Kottmarker. They’re anxious to prove their worth in the Alliance. What am I saying? We’re all old school.” Golke looked over at the roofscape of Rhonforq, squinting as if the afternoon light hurt his eyes. “Enlighten me, then.”
“In the first place, the Tanith are stealth experts. They’ll fight like bastards in a front line, but that’d be wasting them. They need to be used, not as cannon fodder, but as the incisive weapons they are.”
“That makes sense.”
“Second… dispersal of information. I know that it’s vital to guard dispositional data from enemy eyes, but this is plainly ridiculous.”
Gaunt pulled out the scrappy map Ankre had given him. “I think I speak for every Imperial officer when I say that we need an overall perspective. How can I press any advantages I might make if I have no clear idea of the bigger picture?”
“Ankre told me you were after general charts. The idea appalled him. Our way of warmaking revolves around individual commanders performing their appointed tasks and leaving the concerns of general strategy to the staff chiefs.”
“That’s like fighting blindfold, or at least fighting with just a narrow view through a little slit.”
Golke put his hand in his jacket pocket and produced a data-slate. “Copy everything on this,” he said. “These are the full charts you wanted. But be circumspect. Ankre and the Alliance generals would have me shot if they thought I’d given these to you.”
“I’ll be careful.”
“Give me time, and I’ll get the idea accepted by the GSC. If we can prove the advantage, it’ll make it easier for them to swallow. Your commander, Van Voytz, is working on them too. I don’t believe he’s terribly happy with the situation either.”
“I didn’t expect he would be,” smiled Gaunt.
“Now do me a favour. Advance your regiment to the appointed stations. Show willing. I’ll go back to the supreme commander and petition him to act on your advice. A day or two, perhaps three. Then we might see results.”
Gaunt nodded, and shook the count’s hand. “You have the chance to win this war, sir,” he said. “Don’t let the Alliance waste it.”
FOUR
287-311
“Sergeant Tona Criid? Sergeant Tona Criid? I like the sound of that. No other gak-face will, though.”
—Tona Criid, sergeant
It was the Ghosts’ third day on the line. They’d got used to the routines: the patrol circuits, the wire-expeditions, the bilge-pumping, the observations, the manhandling of latrine buckets out up the communication trench, the man-handling of food buckets back down from the cookhouse (“I swear they get those fething buckets mixed up most times,” Rawne was heard to say). They’d even got used to what Corbec called the “trench walk”—stooped, head down, so nothing projected above the parapet.
The tension remained. Since the night of Mkoll’s advance party, there’d been no bombardment. On day two, the enemy had assaulted the line twenty-five kilometres north at station 317, but otherwise it had been quiet.
One-third of the regiment had advanced to the line, leaving the other two-thirds in reserve at Rhonforq. At the end of the first week, they were to rotate, and begin a pattern that meant no trooper stayed on the line for more than a week, and every trooper got two weeks’ rest in reserve in every three. Gaunt, of course, hoped the Tanith wouldn’t be staying at the front for anything like that long.
At the line, the Ghosts were caked in mud after the first few hours, and crawling with lice after the first day. They slept, as best they could, curled up under the lip of the parapet or in hand-scooped dugouts.
Criid had become so muddy she’d decided not to fight it any more. She’d plastered mud across her face and matted it into her hair.
“What the feth are you doing, sarge?” Skeen had asked. “Camouflage,” she said.
Fifteen minutes later, all but two of her platoon had followed suit and daubed themselves with mud. Kolea hadn’t, because he hadn’t understood what was going on.
Cuu hadn’t, because, well, he was Cuu.
Still, Criid congratulated herself, I seem to have most of the platoon pulling together. Maybe I can do this.
Ten platoon occupied station 290, with eleven platoon, Obel’s, to their north, and sixteen platoon, Maroy’s, to their south.
Each station represented about a kilometre of fire trench, broken in twenty metre intervals by traverses. They had a dugout bunker with a field telephone and vox, but the Ghosts’ personal vox-links had made that obsolete most of the time.
Three times a day, Criid did her tour, accompanied by Hwlan and DaFelbe. She checked trench integrity, she checked that food was getting through, she checked the obs stations. She individually inspected each trooper’s kit, ammo supply, and feet for trench foot.
The third day was dismal. Rain blew in from the west angled in such a manner that the trench sides offered absolutely no shelter. The rain also tasted of something, something faintly metallic, faintly chemical. Someone said that blister gas had been used the day before up north in the Meiseq Box, and some troopers put on their breather hoods or tied cloth over their mouths. The sky was low and oppressive, churning with fast-moving cloud that was almost black.
It sapped the colour from the day. Faces became pale, eye sockets shadowed.
Some of the trench’s previous incumbents — the Seventy-seventh Lunsgatte Rifle Brigade — had stayed behind. A detachment of thirty had been remaindered to man the trench mortars in the pocket dugouts spaced behind the main fire trench. Their fire-officer, a sergeant called Hartwig, joined Criid when she toured the mortar dens. He was tall and humourless, huddled in a mud-flecked grey oilskin, toque and a green kepi with a metal badge that showed some sort of bear-like animal. His men didn’t mix much with the Tanith. They seemed content to live in the cramped hollows of the dens. Criid got the impression Hartwig and his men didn’t think much of a unit that included women, let alone one that was led by one.
The mortars were squat, blue-metal machines called feldwerfers, and used compressed gas to fire the three kilo shells pneumatically. The crews kept the weapons spotlessly clean, they were forever polishing and oiling them. In contrast, the men themselves were filthy and their uniforms piecemeal. Most wore toques or loose hoods, with sleeveless leather jackets or fleeces, and many had flat sheets of armour tied or strung across their chests. Dirt caked their hands and faces black.
Interspersed with the mortars were Favell-pattern spring guns, a heavy little catapult engine that looked to Criid like some kind of pipe organ. It took two men to operate the double windlass and crank back the long throwing arm to the cock-stop. When the trigger lanyard was pulled, the cluster of massive springs in the main body of the weapon slammed the arm up and lobbed grenades or ball bombs out over the fire trench and into the battlefield.
Hartwig assured Criid that the Favell could send a grenade over two hundred and fifty metres. The trick was to set the grenade’s fuse so that it didn’t detonate high in its arc. They needed to blow on the ground, or near it, but if the grenadiers left the fuse too long, there was a risk that the enemy would have time to gather them up and toss them back. One member of each spring gun team had a clay pipe on the go at all times, an ignition source ready and waiting to start fuses that was a lot less fiddly than matches or gun-string.
The Seventy-seventh Lunsgatte weren’t the only prior inhabitants who had stayed in the fire trench. Shrunken, eroded body parts protruded from the trench floor and sometimes the wall, usually where the rain had exposed them. During a heavy period of action three years before, Criid learned, the troops at these stations had been obliged to bury their dead in the trench itself. Water damage was slowly raising them back into the daylig
ht.
During her midday tour on the third day, Criid found Lubba and Vril trying to shore up a section of revetment that was falling in thanks to the rain. Part of the parapet overhang had become a gutter for the rainwater, which was now gushing into the trench in a thick stream. The task was made all the more unpleasant because where the timber had come away, ancient cadavers had been exposed, curled and almost mummified.
“Gak,” she said, viewing the scene.
“We need more planks,” said Lubba. “Even if we get these back in place, they’re rotten through.” Criid looked at Hartwig. “Planking? Flakboard?” He laughed at her. “You’re joking.”
“Any suggestions, then?” she said. She was quickly becoming tired with Hartwig’s dreary resignation.
“There’s sometimes some brushwood at station 282. They bring it forward along the supply trench there when its available.”
“Brushwood?”
“Anything will do,” said Vril.
Criid turned to Hwlan. “Go on down to 282 and see if you can get your hands on some.”
“Yes, sarge.”
“What about damming that stream?” DaFelbe suggested, pointing at the liquid mud gushing down over the lip.
“We’d have to get up over the parapet. So I’d rather be wet than dead,” said Vril.
“After dark, then?” Criid ventured.
“Sure, sarge. Once it’s dark.”
There was a wet, loose gurgle and another section of the revet slumped into the trench where Lubba was trying to force it back in. Greasy mud slithered out, shedding another vile body with it. The corpse was staring, its jaws open in a scream, but its eyes and mouth were full of mud.
“Oh gak… Hwlan!” Criid called after the scout. He stopped and looked back.
“See if you can find Zweil too.”