It saw Gaunt, spread-eagled on his back.
Gaunt tried to rise. He saw the iron quarrels, eight of them, stuck in the beast’s pink flesh. Eszrah hadn’t lied. He’d put eight reynbow darts into the thing, loaded with Untill toxin, and still it was moving.
With another roar, the stalker came at Gaunt.
Gaunt had lost his grip on one of his bolt pistols, but, still on his back, he fired the other one at the hideous thing as it bore down.
Gaunt rolled hard, to his left. One of the stalker’s huge paws, claws extruded, dug up a bucketful of mud as it struck at the place where Gaunt had been lying.
Gaunt leapt onto his feet. Just three rounds left in the clip. He put them all into the side of the beast’s skull as he backed away.
Shaking its long, armoured head, the stalker turned to look at him with its glinting, piggy eyes.
Clip out. Another in his coat pocket. Two seconds to load, maybe? Three? Nothing like enough time for that.
Holy Throne, Gaunt thought. I’m afraid. Great God-Emperor, I’m actually afraid!
“Well done, you son of a bitch!” he cried into the monster’s face.
It lunged forward at him, raising an arm so thick, so corded with reinforced muscle, Gaunt knew his bones would be pulped.
Before the blow could land, the stalker winced away, blinking. Las-rounds were striking it in the ribs. Heavy, hard, a sustained and serious assault.
“That’s right, you bastard!” Ludd shouted. This way! This way!” He fired again.
With a raging, phlegmy rattle, the wrought one turned aside and went for the new target instead.
“Oh! Bugger…” Ludd said.
The empty bolt pistol flew up into the air, discarded. Gaunt ran forward, drawing the power sword of Heironymo Sondar. He lit it up and felt the crackle of ignition.
He sliced at the wrought one.
The amplified blade cut clean through the monster’s body. If he’d hit the backbone, Gaunt was sure he’d have severed it and crippled or killed the beast. But he didn’t quite manage that.
The wrought one let out a huge howl of pain that shook its flapping throat tubes. It turned back to find out what had hurt it so. A copious amount of black, stinking blood gushed out of the deep slice Gaunt’s sword had put through its torso.
It swung at him. Gaunt guarded and sliced back, his blow deflecting off the monster’s reaching claws. Several talons flew off into the air, sizzling from their cut ends.
The beast opened its mouth. The stink of it hit Gaunt like a body slam. It was going to lunge forward, a biting strike. Gaunt braced his blade in both hands. He was certain he could impale it, kill it, maybe. Of course, he would be dead in the same exchange, as the huge killing jaws snapped forward and closed.
There would be a symmetry to that, at least. To die, killing your killer. That might be enough. After all this time, all these battles, after the unremitting horrors of Gereon, it might be enough. Enough to die with. He almost welcomed it.
“Finally…” he sighed.
The wrought one fell on its face at his feet.
It gurgled once, then the breathing stopped. It was dead. Really dead, this time.
“Holy…” Gaunt said. He sank to his knees, leaning on his sword.
The potent toxins of Eszrah’s bolts, quite enough to kill a regular human with the slightest scratch, had finally worked through the stalker’s system.
“Sir? Are you all right? Sir?” Ludd called, coming closer.
“I’m fine. I’m alive,” Gaunt replied. He rose upright again. “I’m alive. Still, I’m alive!” he shouted the words at the dark woods around them. Ludd took a step back. “You hear me? I’m alive, you bastards! You can’t kill me! You just can’t kill me, can you?”
Gaunt held his arms up, holding the sword aloft, and slowly turned in a circle. “I’m alive, even now! You bastards! What have you got left?”
He began to laugh, violently, full-throatedly, his head back, almost manic.
Nahum Ludd had seen plenty during that day that had scared him, and the stalker had almost topped the list. But Gaunt’s defiant laughter was the scariest thing of all.
Eszrah Night loomed out of the dark and placed a hand on Gaunt’s shoulder.
“Restye, soule,” he whispered.
Gaunt nodded. “It’s all right, my friend. I’m all right. Ludd?”
“Yes, sir?”
“Good work there. I won’t forget it. Get Ironmeadow cleaned up.”
“How exactly, sir?”
“Find a stream or a pool. Make him stand in it.”
“Yes, sir.”
Gaunt looked back at the partisan. “Howe camyt be, soule? Sow suddan, sow vyle?”
Eszrah shrugged. “Stynk offyt I hadd. Thissen steppe.”
The Nihtgane led Gaunt into the undergrowth. Away from the track, and the lights of the truck, huge slabs of granite loomed in the dark between the trees. They were slumped and fallen askew, like a monolith that had been sunk and toppled by the measures of eternity.
“Histye,” Eszrah said, touching parts of the stone and the foliage as he led the way. “Herein, herein y twane. Thissen spoor, here alswer, yt maketh spoor, alswer, alswer over.”
He came to a stop before a massive slab of quartz, as big as a superheavy tank. The lump of rock reclined among the draping, sickly trees. Gaunt had to feel for its shape in the dark.
“And here’s where the track stopped?” he asked.
“Namore stynk, namore spoor yt leaf. Comen fram Urth yt dyd.”
“Are you sure?” Gaunt asked, feeling the rock. Eszrah did not reply. Gaunt could feel the Nihtgane’s reproach. Of course Eszrah was sure. He was partisan, a Nihtgane of the Untill. What he couldn’t track was beyond the limit of measure.
Gaunt looked up at the night sky. In the cold, hard frieze of the air, stars twinkled beyond the trees. Somewhere out there, across the dim, distances of space, the proper face of this war was being fought, by experienced, determined men.
But it would be lost here. If he was right, and Gaunt was pretty sure he was, the Sabbat Worlds Crusade would be lost right here, in the step-cities of Ancreon Sextus. The Warmaster was going to get stabbed in the back.
He would get stabbed in the back and die.
And there was nothing Gaunt could do about it. After all, he was a loose cannon, a suspect officer, regarded as so dubious in his loyalties, he’d been issued with an observer to keep an eye on him. Regarded as so untrustworthy, he hadn’t even been given back a command of men.
Just because they thought he was tainted. Well, it was that very poison essence in his blood that made him know this now. Know it for sure.
Somehow, despite all the odds against him, he had to find a way of getting the senior staff to take him seriously.
And there was one way he could think of…
“Let’s get back to the transport,” Gaunt said to Eszrah. On the trackway below them, the cargo-4’s engine was still running, and its lights were burning. The distant cries of hunting stalkers flooded the night.
“Ludd? Ironmeadow?” Gaunt yelled as he scrambled back down to the transport, Eszrah behind him. “We’re leaving. Now.”
FIFTEEN
04.02 hrs, 197.776.M41
Fifth Compartment
Sparshad Mons, Ancreon Sextus
Rawne’s team had been back amongst them for nearly two days, and Wilder was now convinced they should never have returned. It wasn’t that he didn’t know them—and by the Throne, he didn’t—but he had been counting on the Tanith men to absorb them back into the company, to smooth over the transition, to welcome the squad’s return. And that just wasn’t happening.
There’d been an attempt at greeting on the first afternoon. Once they’d cheered and applauded their arrival, the Ghosts had mobbed forward around their long-lost comrades, shaking their hands, embracing them, asking the first of a thousand questions. Rawne’s team had, for the most part, simply suffered this attention. They’d sm
iled back thinly, accepted the handshakes and embraces stiffly, quietly said hello to old faces.
Gol Kolea had marched straight up to his old friend Varl and squeezed the smaller man in a big hug. Varl had grinned an empty grin and patted Kolea on the back until he stopped.
“All that, and they still didn’t get you?” Kolea said.
“So it seems,” said Varl. “I suggested they tried harder, but their heart wasn’t in it.”
“Holy Throne, it’s good to see you,” Kolea admitted.
“Yeah,” Varl seemed to agree. He was simply looking around at the camp, anywhere but at Kolea’s face.
“So… when do we hear all about it?” Kolea asked.
“Not much to tell,” Varl replied.
The Tanith scouts had surrounded Mkoll and Bonin. From what Wilder could overhear, those greetings were oddly muted too.
“What did you see, sir?”
“What happened?”
“Gaunt’s alive, right?”
“What happened to Ven?”
“Good to see you all still breathing,” Mkoll had replied. This Mkoll, the famous Mkoll the scouts had boasted proudly about, didn’t look like much to Wilder. Small, unprepossessing, tightly wound.
“But what did you see out there?” Leyr asked.
“Not much worth speaking of,” Bonin replied.
“Somebody give me a sit rep,” Mkoll had said, as if he’d just wandered in from a routine, half-hour sortie.
Trooper Caffran had pushed his way through the huddle towards Tona Criid, and stopped short in front of her. He started to move to embrace her, but there was something in her manner that seemed to persuade him not to.
“Tona,” he said.
“Caff.”
“I knew… I knew you’d make it back.”
“Glad someone did.” Then she’d moved on past him, heading towards the billets, leaving him alone, a puzzled expression on his face, the muscle in the corner of his jawline working tightly.
Only Brostin, Rawne’s flame-trooper, had seemed in a remotely expansive mood. Greeted by company flame-troopers like Lubba, Dremmond, Neskon and Lyse, Brostin had accepted a lho-stick from a proffered pack.
“What was it like, Bros?” Dremmond asked.
“Well,” Brostin had replied, looking down at his smoke, “there weren’t enough of these for a start.”
A despondency had settled in. The returning “heroes” appeared to want nothing more than to be left on their own. The day’s celebratory mood ended up fizzling away as pathetically as a badly connected det-tape.
The following morning, Wilder had called them all to a briefing at his field tent. He summoned other officers too, including Baskevyl, Kolosim, Meryn and Kolea. The down country squabble with the Blood Pact was still grumbling away inconclusively, the spat holding over from the previous day. Daylight in the compartment was a patchy grey that seemed as shiftless as the mood. According to the post advisors, DeBray was likely to order an infantry advance in the next thirty-six hours. This made sense to Wilder. The enemy armour wouldn’t have been gripping on so tightly if they weren’t trying to hold a door open for a ground troop push.
“Chances are we’ll be moving into the compartment again tomorrow,” Wilder had said. “Maybe even as soon as later today. Details to follow, but I’ll be looking at a firm foot advance from the main companies, with scout units combing ahead. A secondary issue is getting you fixed into place neatly” By “you” he had meant Rawne’s team. The major nodded.
“I’ve got various ideas about where to slot you,” Wilder said, “but I think a little familiarisation is needed first. This is odd fighting country—”
“We’re used to odd,” Rawne said.
Wilder paused. He wasn’t accustomed to being interrupted, certainly not by a man he didn’t know.
“Noted, Rawne. Thank you. I’m going to divide you up and post you with three forces. Sergeant Mkoll and Trooper Bonin, given your speciality, I want you moving in with the recon force, to get a good feel of the way we like to run scouting operations. Captain Kolosim is one of our recon leaders, so you’ll be with him.”
Kolosim nodded a greeting to Mkoll and Bonin that was only just acknowledged.
“Varl, Criid, Brostin and Larkin. I’m sorry I don’t yet know any of you better. I’m going to put you with C Company, that’s Kolea’s bunch, so you’ll be in with the main infantry advance. Try and find your feet. I don’t think you’ll have much trouble doing that.”
“I’ll keep them in line if they don’t,” Kolea remarked, shooting for a good-natured quip. It fell flat.
“Major Rawne, I’d like to attach you to E Company, along with Feygor and Beltayn. E Company is Captain’s Meryn’s unit. If I can be frank for a moment, I know that might be a little strange, as Meryn was very much your junior when you left. Rub along, please. This is simply about acclimatisation. Meryn, you know Major Rawne is a seasoned and experienced officer. I think we all know we’re lucky to have him back with us. I won’t lie—there’s every chance I’ll be moving E Company to him before long. I know that’ll feel like a demotion to you, but suck it up. If it happens, it’ll be no reflection on you, Meryn. There will be other opportunities.”
“I understand perfectly, sir,” Meryn said. There was not even a hint that he was put out by the suggestion. He must have seen that coming, Wilder thought. Wilder saw how Kolea looked briefly unhappy that Wilder didn’t seem to be following his recommendation about Meryn and Rawne.
“All right, that’s it,” Wilder said, rising to his feet. “Major Rawne, I’m sure you’ll remind your team that this is all about getting to know your old comrades again, and getting to know your new ones as fast as possible.”
“Of course,” said Rawne.
“And may I take this opportunity to say that the Eighty-First First has nothing but admiration for what you’ve accomplished in the last eighteen months. We haven’t been told everything, naturally. Parts of your mission details remain classified. But you don’t have to prove anything to us… except that you can fit back into company level operations.”
Now another dawn was on the way. Wilder woke and immediately felt uneasy again. It wasn’t just the cold. The cool, aloof attitude of Rawne’s team still bothered him deeply. There were only nine of them, but that was enough to unsettle the entire balance of the regiment. The Belladon didn’t know what to make of these surly newcomers and their hard-as-nails reputation. For the Tanith and the Verghastites, it was just a huge disappointment. These people were heroes, back from the dead. They’d built them up so much in their minds, the reality was like a cold shower.
The Eighty-First First and the Kolstec Fortieth had mobilised in the pitch dark. The eerie hoots of stalkers echoed up from the blackness of the compartment.
Baskevyl brought the signals up from the command station. A pre-dawn advance, just as Wilder had suspected, the Eighty-First First leading off the Kolstec into the eastern side of the compartment. By oh-nine hundred, DeBray wanted Wilder’s regiment secure along Hill 56, preferably having made contact with the Rothberg armour.
Down on the trackway, and on the assembly areas, the companies were forming up: men, numb and cold from their billets, canteens full, adjusting webbing and the fit of battledress, checking weapons. The sky overhead was as clear as glass, and only the bright pattern of the stars showed where the black sky ended and the black shape of the high compartment walls began.
Twenty minutes to the go. Wilder buttoned up his fleece-lined coat, did a quick intercom test, and went to check a carbine out of the stores. He normally only carried the powerful laspistol strapped to his thigh, but today he had a feeling, and it wasn’t pleasant.
On his way back out of the post, he saw Hark and Novobazky talking to Dorden.
“Morning,” he said, joining them.
“Just off to join the ranks, sir,” Novobazky said.
“Problem?” Wilder asked.
“We were just discussing Rawne and the others,??
? Hark said.
“Anything you’d like to share?”
Hark shrugged and looked at the old medicae. “I can’t imagine what they’ve been through,” Dorden said. “I can’t imagine, and therefore I have no real idea, because none of them are at all willing to talk about it. I checked each of them over yesterday, just the expected routine exam. I’d been so looking forward to seeing each one again, and they were like strangers. Not actually unfriendly, but… distant.”
Hark nodded. “That’d be my reading too, sir.”
“Any conclusions?” Wilder asked.
Dorden frowned. “They’ve been on their own for so long, it may take them a while to settle back into company. I mean, they’re just not used to being around people they can trust. I think they’ve had to ditch a lot in order to survive as long as they have. In fact, that’s all they have left. Survival. I don’t know if they’ll ever be the people we knew again.”
Wilder knew the old doctor was bitterly disappointed his beloved colleague, Curth, hadn’t returned with the team. “Are they fit?” Wilder asked.
“Physically, they’re supremely fit. Even Larkin, who’s the oldest one of them. And Larks is the one who gave me most pause, I suppose. He was never—”
“Go on,” said Wilder.
“Dorden is diplomatically trying to say that Larkin was a little poorly wired in the head department,” Hark said. “He had personal issues, edgy and nervous. The only reason he made the cut for the Gereon mission was that there’s no better marksman in the Tanith First.”
“Larks has got a hard edge to him now,” Dorden said. A lot of the old shakes and tics have gone. I’d have expected a horror show like Gereon to push him right over the edge. Maybe it did, and he got pushed so far, he came back the other way. Point is, if that’s what it’s done to the most psychologically weak member of the team…” his voice trailed off.
Wilder sighed. He checked his watch. “All right, gentlemen, let’s get this circus moving.”