He led his children away, up the climbing street. They crossed three more blocks, ignored by the Imperial defenders, and then turned directly south. Sin put his hands flat on the tops of his psykers’ heads. They both winced and murmured.
Sin felt his way. He was close enough now.
He hurried the pair of them off the roadway into a covered market. The produce shops were all closed up and shuttered, and wooden screens had been partially raised to protect the glass roof.
He led the runts down the tiled walkway of one of the marketplace’s aisles, and then crouched them down behind a buttonmaker’s cart.
Sin soothed them with his low, sweet moaning, and lulled them into a calm, trance state by repeated use of their ritual command words.
They both became motionless. Even the waving stopped.
“Reach out,” he whispered. “Find the instrument…”
His tattooed skin flushed and prickled as he felt their nightmarish minds seethe and boil. The low buzzing began. Slowly, a street at a time, they reached out, hunting.
Hunting for the flawed. The dangerous. The suitable.
There was one. No, too strong.
There! Another, weaker… but, no. Injured.
Another… and it recoiled, too fragile to be imprinted.
“More, more…” he soothed.
There…
Rawne blinked. He put his hand to his mouth, coughed, and when he brought the hand away again, the palm was wet with aspirated blood.
“You all right?” Banda asked.
Rawne didn’t answer her. He started to walk away towards the exit that led out from the hab into the street.
“Major?” Banda called, more urgently.
“Major Rawne?” Caffran said, getting up out of cover at a broken window to hurry after his platoon leader.
“As you were, trooper,” Rawne said sharply, and coughed again.
Outside, tank rounds from the latest wave of Blood Pact assault whizzed and thumped into the nearby manufactories. Small-arms fire rattled and cracked up the open street.
Leyr, three platoon’s scout, was watching the door, head down, and looked in dismay as Rawne started to walk past him.
“Sir!”
“Get out of my way,” said Rawne.
“Sir!” Leyr cried, more insistently. “You’ll be dead in five seconds if you stick your head out of that d—”
He reached out a hand to grab Rawne’s arm. Rawne lashed around, blood dripping from his nose. His fist caught Leyr around the side of the head and smacked the scout to the ground.
Feygor lunged, leaping over the sprawled Leyr and crashing into Rawne. He brought the major down hard in the doorway, nudging the wooden door open. Enemy fire, fierce and unabating, smashed into the door and its surround, filling the air with wood chips and dust.
Rawne had landed on his back. Prone, he lashed out a kick with both legs that propelled Feygor, doubled up, right across the room, and also flipped Rawne back onto his feet. Caffran came in fast from the side, throwing a punch that Rawne blocked with a raised forearm. Caffran rallied with another smash, and Rawne turned that away with a hard, open palm, sidestepping Caffran’s third blow, and elbowed the trooper in the throat.
Caffran fell down on all fours, gasping. Leyr was up again by then, swinging a hook at the side of Rawne’s head. Rawne grabbed the scout’s wrist and twisted so hard it almost broke. Leyr cried out in pain, and fell to his knees. Feygor dubbed Rawne across the shoulders and neck with both fists locked together.
Rawne staggered, blood flying from his nose. He swung out with a side kick that threw Feygor back against the wall, and then turned and staggered towards the door.
Banda brought him down.
She rolled Rawne over under her, and pressed her straight silver to his neck. Desperate, she glared down into his face.
“Elim! Elim! What the gak are you trying to do?”
He looked up at her, and then went limp, his unfocused eyes refocusing.
“Feth…” he stammered.
She climbed off him, keeping her warknife raised, point towards him. Rawne got up as Caffran, Feygor and Leyr closed in again.
Rawne blinked at them all.
“Caff? Jessi? Murt? What the feth was I just doing…?”
No! Too strong. Too willful. Too beloved by other souls that anchored him and dragged him back.
The twins were upset. They started to howl and whimper, and the buzzing leaked out of their open mouths.
“Sssshhh!” Sin cooed at them. “There’ll be another. Find him. Find the instrument. Reach out.”
Calming, they sent out their minds again.
There was one… no, too agitated.
Another… useless, about to be killed by the Blood Pact.
“Find one, find one… find the one who will serve and mark him out. Imprint him. Brand him with the purpose. Make him the instrument…”
The twin minds stopped with a sudden jolt. For a moment, Sin thought he’d have to start again, but then he realised they had stopped because they had found exactly what they were looking for.
Without doubt.
Pater Sin smiled. Through his empathic rapport with the runts, he could taste the chosen instrument’s mind. It was delicious. Perfect.
“Brand that one!” he hissed, and the imprinting began.
Brin Milo bunked. His head hurt and he was beyond any fatigue he had ever known.
“You need to sleep,” she said.
Milo looked up. He wasn’t sure if it had been an instruction or an assessment. He couldn’t tell with her.
“I’m tired,” he said.
Sabbat smiled. “We’re all tired, Milo. But it won’t be much longer now. Fate has made its decision. It’s coming.”
He wondered if she meant the overwhelming assault that was falling on their position at the second line, but she seemed to be gazing at the sky for some reason.
Milo was caked in dust and cut in a dozen places from shrapnel. Most of Domor’s platoon, moving with them, were the same. The Bead was unmarked and unblemished. If anything, her pale skin and golden armour seemed brighter and cleaner than ever.
“How will this end?” he asked.
“The way fate wishes it,” she replied.
“You seem to trust in fate,” he said. “I thought you’d trust in the God-Emperor.”
“If there is any law, any justice to this cosmos, Milo, they’re the same thing. I have found my way, and the way is set.”
Rocket grenades slammed into the buildings west of them, and in their wake came a ripple of mortar rounds. Milo heard Domor yelling for his platoon to fall back. Milo got up and led the Beati after them.
All around the vaunted second line, the Imperials were withdrawing now. Before nightfall, it would be street righting right back through the Guild Slope towards the hives. They were losing.
Fighting hard, fighting well, but losing anyway.
Milo and Sabbat got into cover, hearing the dank of advancing enemy tanks and the crunch of broken walls driven over under churning treads.
“I knew someone once who said that,” Milo said.
“Said what?” she asked, wiping dust from her sword blade.
“That she was looking for her way. That she had found her way.”
“Had she?”
“I don’t know. She said that she thought her way was in war… but I didn’t believe her.”
Sabbat frowned. “Why? Wasn’t she telling the truth?”
Milo laughed and shook his head. “Nothing like that. I just don’t know if she realised what war means.”
“What was her name?”
“Sanian. Her name was Sanian. I knew her for a while on Hagia. We were protecting y—”
“I know what you were doing on Hagia, Milo.”
Milo shrugged. “I think I was in love with her. She was very strong. Very beautiful. I would have stayed with her if I could.”
“What stopped you?” asked the Beati. She turned and
waved Domor’s .50 crew up to a spot where they could crossfire the advancing death-brigade push.
“Duty?” Milo suggested.
“Duty is its own reward,” she said.
“So they say,” he replied.
“Who am I?” she asked, leaning close to him.
“You are Sabbat. You are the Beati,” he answered.
She nodded. “He’ll soon be coming.”
“So?”
“The reason I’m here and not elsewhere. The reason we’re all here.”
“I don’t understand.”
“You will,” she said. Another RPG fell close to them and blew in a wall ten paces from where they were concealed. Milo gasped.
“Are you hurt?” she asked.
“My head. I have the worst headache.”
The Beati nodded. She crawled back under the firing line and called to Domor.
“Shoggy!” She was delighted by the way his smile lit up when he heard her use his nickname.
“Pull them back to Saenz Crossing. Get them dug in. Armour support is coming.”
“How do you know that, Holiness?” Domor called back. “The vox is down!”
“Trust me,” she said. “Do it. I won’t be long.”
Somehow oblivious to — or invulnerable to — the shells and crossfire drumming around them, she led Milo through the devastated streets to a small Civitas chapel whose roof had been taken off by the recent efforts of the archenemy. The chapel had been dedicated to Faltomus.
The cracked rafters smouldered, and the floor was littered with chafstone tiles and broken pews. She beckoned him forward across the debris until they were standing in front of the aquila altarblock. Milo’s head throbbed and rolled. He could hear how close to the bloody front of the fight they were. Why had she brought him here? She was so vital, so valuable. She was taking such a risk. This was crazy…
With gentle hands, she turned his dirty face towards the altar and pressed the middle three fingers of her right hand against his brow.
In a second, a single wonderful second of glass-cold clarity, his headache cleared and he saw everything.
Everything.
“You know it all now. Will you stand with me?”
“I would have done anyway.”
“I know. But I mean it. Gaunt does not understand. Will you stand with me, even in the face of his displeasure? I know you love him like a father.”
“This is too important, Sabbat. I will. And Gaunt will understand.”
Sabbat nodded. A golden glow seemed to back-light her eyes. “Let us—”
“I think we should make observance first,” Milo said. “I mean, this undertaking is so dangerous, we should offer a prayer to the God-Emperor… to fate… while we still have a chance.”
“You’re right. You’re here to remind me such things are right,” she said. They settled to their knees before the altar.
Saul sucked in his breath. The tagger points of his scope now blinked on empty space. Just a second before, he’d had a near-perfect shot. The broken lancet window looking into the Chapel of Faltornus, five hundred metres, negligible cross-wind… no adjustment he couldn’t make.
For a while, she’d been screened by the boy, the young Guard trooper, who’d kept getting in the line of sight. Saul was confident one of his custom rounds would penetrate the boy’s body and waste the Beati too, but he didn’t want to risk it. Neither did he want the impurity. He wanted a clean head-shot The Beati. In his sights. As the Magister would have wanted it. One shot.
But the bloody boy would not get out of the way. Not until the last minute, when he had disappeared suddenly below the level of the broken sill. Kneeling, presumably.
For one brief moment, the Beati was exposed, a clear shot through the broken lancet.
Then she too dropped from view beside the boy. What were they doing? Praying, he supposed. As if that would do any good now.
Saul slid his long-las back from the gap. The hab he was in was almost a kilometre long, bridging over six Guild Slope streets, and there were windows all along it. He could easily slip down to another firing position and get her on the way back up.
Saul started to gather his kit up and paused. He suddenly felt that rush only a sniper ever feels. He ducked.
Six hundred plus metres west, Hlaine Larkin raised his aim and sighed. He could have sworn he’d seen something at that hab window. A shooter lining up. Gone now.
Sliding quietly to one side, he touched his micro-bead.
“See him?”
A pause. “No.”
“Keep her looking,” Larkin said. “He’s there. I swear.”
Saul snuggled up against a window five arches down and took the scope off his gun. He peered out, using the device free, like a telescope. There was the chapel. Still no movement.
He waited. How long does a prayer last?
He couldn’t shake off that feeling, that six sense rush.
Just to be safe, he dropped back to the next window.
He scoped again. This time, a movement. The briefest suggestion of heads.
He fitted his scope back onto his long-las and rolled over to the window’s far corner, lining up.
The prayer finished, Milo and Sabbat rose back into view. He saw her nod to him and say something. Saul had his shot. Clean… no, the boy was in the way again. If he leant out further…
There he was! Larkin tensed and then slumped back. He saw movement in the hab window, but a chimney stack was blocking direct shot from his position.
“Have you got it? Tell me you’ve got it!” he snarled into his vox-link.
Saul’s unscarred finger began to squeeze the trigger. There was a crack-whine, a distant echo, and for one glorious moment Saul thought he’d fired.
But the counter on his lasgun still read full.
Exploded by a hot-shot round, Saul’s head came away entirely. His corpse, smoking at the neck, fell back into the hab. The long-las clattered from his hands, unfired.
“She got him, Larks!” Jajjo voxed gleefully.
Kneeling beside him, in the shelter of the dorm window, Nessa Bourah raised her smoking long-las and grinned.
The recirculated air in the Tarif Street triage was clammy, and stank of chemicals. A stream of trucks, driven by civilian volunteers, nosed into the yard, shirting the mobile wounded back to the infirmaries in the hives. Gaunt pushed his way in through the crowds of casualties. Screams and moans and frantic voices came at him from all sides.
“Where’s Dorden?” Gaunt yelled.
Foskin, his smock spattered with blood, glanced up from a thrashing life company trooper on a stretcher and pointed down the hall.
“Doctor?”
Dorden appeared through a makeshift screen made from a plastic sheet nailed to a door frame. He too was soiled in blood, and his face was sunk with fatigue.
“In here,” he said.
Several orderlies were lifting Hark onto a trolley for evacuation to the hives. Gaunt could barely see the commissar under the plastic hood of the medical respirator and the sterile packing wadded to his left side. Thick IV drips and other tubes snaked out of his body, hooked up to fluid packs hanging from a wire stand at the head of the gurney, and to a resuscitrex unit and a haemopump stowed underneath.
“Feth…” said Gaunt. He glanced at Dorden.
“Massive trauma to the left body. Lost his arm, his left eye, his ear, and a lot of bone mass and tissue, dell’s boys found him, got him back here. He’d almost bled out.”
“Will he make it?”
The floor shook.
“Will any of us?” Dorden asked darkly.
“You know what I mean!”
Dorden sighed. “He’s strong. Determined. He might. We’re shipping him back for intensive. Ibram…”
“What?”
“When Grell found him, Hark was surrounded by the corpses of Mkendrick and his entire platoon.”
“All… all dead?”
“Yes. Grell said it was like a but
cher’s shop. Something really did a number on them.”
“The Blood Pact are—”
Dorden shook his head, and picked up a little stainless steel surgical dish. He held it out. Several objects lay in it, matted with blood. Gaunt reached in to take one, curious.
“Don’t,” Dorden said. “Unless you want to slice off your finger tips.”
“Are they what I think they are?”
Dorden nodded. “Blade slivers from a loxatl flechette round. I dug them out of Hark’s shoulder.”
“God-Emperor, they’ve throwing everything at us.”
“It’s the only report I’ve had of loxatl injuries, but I thought you should know.”
“Thanks,” Gaunt said. “I need to get back out there.”
“One more I want you to see,” said Dorden.
The ward room was reserved for the most seriously injured, including those that Dorden didn’t dare move. The doctor led Gaunt over to a corner bunk where a Tanith trooper lay on vital support. It was Costin, the drunk whose carelessness had damaged Raglon’s platoon so badly on Aexe.
“You heard what Raglon’s platoon did this afternoon?” Dorden asked.
Gaunt nodded. He was proud of them. They’d improvised a cover action when Daur had been cut off, and in doing so had saved more than seventy men.
“Raglon brought Costin in. Gut-shot in the fight. Probably won’t last the day. But Raglon wanted him cared for particularly. The cover action was Costin’s work. Raglon told me this himself. Raglon got pinned down, so Costin took point and led the platoon in. Set up some fierce cover. Got all those men out. Raglon wants to recommend him for valour.”
Gaunt looked at Dorden. Weariness had robbed the medic of his usual subtlety.
“So if I’d had my way and executed Costin on Aexe, all these lives would have been forfeit. You’re saying I should thank you for—”
“Don’t be an arse, Gaunt!” Dorden snarled, turning away. “I was just telling you how it was.”
“You’re right,” said Gaunt. Dorden stopped. “I’m a commissar, and you’re a medic. There are always going to be times when our first duties clash… dash in the worst ways. Hard discipline and selfless care do not overlap comfortably. I suppose it’s a problem two friends on either side of that divide have to live with.”