[Gaunt''s Ghosts 08] - Traitor General

  He looked over his shoulder. Plower and Purchason were long gone. Brostin looked like he might just follow them.

  “Coming?” Landerson asked. “If you’re not, let me take the heavy. They’re going to need it.”

  Brostin glared at him. “Feth you. Feth you, you stupid gak. Are you all fething crazy?”

  Streaming ribbons of light in their wake, the wirewolves leapt the perimeter walls of Wheathead and swept down into the fields. Rawne turned again and saw them coming.

  “Move! Move!” he yelled at Bonin and Criid as they stumbled with Feygor. The treeline was so far away. They’d never make it. Rawne swivelled the tube-charge in his hand like a baton and decided that this was the moment to stand his ground. The field’s dry grasses swished around his legs.

  The wirewolves came for him, wailing.

  Cirk was struggling up the rise towards the treeline when she saw Gaunt and Mkvenner leap past her, dashing the other way.

  “Where are you going?” she cried. “In the name of Terra, run, you idiots!”

  They ignored her.

  Fools, Cirk decided, and ran on. She tripped over a root and fell hard. Getting up again, she looked back down the field and saw Rawne, isolated amid the dry grasses, facing down the warp monsters that were bounding towards him.

  Rawne could smell their fury. Taste their evil. The wire-wolves thrashed through the spent corn to meet him, daemons bottled in clanking suits of metal.

  Rawne pulled out the det-tape, raised the charge, and threw it.

  The blast knocked him off his feet. His timing had been perfect. The tube had gone off right under the leading wire-wolf. It disappeared in a volcano of fire and exploded earth.

  The dust cleared. The wirewolf came on. He hadn’t even slowed it down. Not even slightly.

  Rawne’s fingers slid into his jacket and grabbed his last tube-charge.

  The wirewolf pounced at him, its claws slicing the air.

  No time. No time. No-Bolt rounds hit the monster in mid-leap and blew it back into the grass. It got up again immediately, and then was felled a second time by sustained bolter fire that thumped off its chest plating like hailstones off a tin roof.

  Rawne looked up. Gaunt ran past him up the field, firing a bolt pistol in each hand. Every round slammed home, twisting the daemon back again and again, buckling its armour sleeve.

  But it refused to die.

  And the second one was right on them. It reared up, its claws unfurled.

  Rapid las-fire knocked it over into the grass. Mkvenner arrived, right on Gaunt’s heels, blasting at the thing with relentless rifle shots.

  The second wirewolf shrugged, rising again. Where it had fallen, it had burned a patch of dry grass black and scorched the earth. It flew at Mkvenner.

  His mag was spent. He spun the lasrifle like a staff and hit the attacking daemon in the face plate with the butt-end of his weapon, jerking it back. Then he ducked and jumped sideways as the claws cut for him. Another jab with the butt-stock into the crackling breastplate and the wirewolf recoiled again.

  Darting back, legs wide and braced, Mkvenner drew his warknife and fixed it to his rifle’s muzzle. As Rawne looked on, awe-struck, Mkvenner spun the weapon a second time, the straight silver gleaming in the dull light, and speared it at the wirewolf s renewed attack. Lunge, stab, block, sweep, another blow with the stock.

  It had been rumoured that Mkvenner had somehow received training in the ancient art of cwlwhl, the martial art of the long-vanished Tanith wood-warriors, the Nalsheen. In the old days, it was said, the Nalsheen had banded together in the oblique forests of Tanith and, armed only with fighting staves tipped with silver knives, had overthrown the corrupt Huhlhwch Dynasty, ushering in the age of modern, free Tanith.

  A lot of old balls, Rawne had thought. All part of some mythic and patriotic legend from Tanith’s past. There were no Nalsheen any more, no wood-warriors. It was all a load of old crap and Mkvenner played it for all he was worth to boost his rep as the mysterious, quiet type.

  Rawne rapidly revised his opinion. He watched in quiet wonder as a lone man, armed only with an exhausted rifle, fought hand to hand with a daemon from the warp, blocking, striking, sweeping, stabbing. Mkvenner’s movements were like some violent ballet. He was matching the thing’s every blow, every slice, fending it off, driving it back, avoiding every lethal hook it swung at him with sheer agility and grace.

  Until his luck ran out.

  The wirewolf ripped, and Mkvenner tumbled over, legs pinioning, his lasrifle staff shorn in two by the murderous claws.

  The wirewolf leapt at the sprawling scout.

  Rawne reached for his last tube-charge, knowing he would be too late.

  A hotshot round hit the monster in the jaw plating and blew it sideways violently. It rolled and writhed, burning the ground.

  Up at the treeline, Larkin reloaded and re-aimed.

  “Wanna go again?” he breathed, and fired his second shot. Beside him, Mkoll and Beltayn opened up too.

  The other wirewolf had launched itself at Gaunt again, howling fit to break the sky apart. His bolters spent, Gaunt holstered them and unslung the weapon he had asked Beltayn to care for during his mission into Ineuron Town.

  The power sword of Hieronymo Sondar.

  He triggered the ignition stud. It lit up like a firebrand in his hands. Gaunt swung it at the wirewolf and sent the creature staggering away, a deep gouge hacked into its chest plate.

  But that was nothing like enough to kill it. It came back at him with renewed fury.

  Gaunt knew he wasn’t going to get his sword up to block in time.

  “My master,” Virag said, and handed the printout wafer to Uexkull. The warrior read it.

  “Is this correct?” he asked, his voice creaking like a dry tree in a slow wind.

  “Yes, lord,” said Virag. “Intelligence reports that the wirewolves have woken at Wheathead.”

  “That’s what… ten kilometres from here?”

  “A dozen at most.”

  Uexkull hurried towards the waiting deathships. “We have them now. I just hope something’s still alive by the time we get there.”

  The wirewolf’s arm swept round, its luminous claws whistling towards Gaunt’s throat. But the blow didn’t land.

  A bright stream of heavy cannonfire ripped into the wirewolf, hurling it backwards a good three metres. Some of the hammerblow shots broke the metal threads articulating the daemon’s arm, and its claws and wrist-guard ripped away. Blinding energy began to spit and bleed out of the broken limb.

  In the treeline, close to Larkin, Beltayn and Mkoll, Landerson squeezed the autocannon’s stirrup trigger again and hit the stricken wirewolf for a second time.

  It juddered backwards, weeping warp-power out of its stump in a flurry like welding sparks.

  “You’ll probably need these,” a voice said.

  Landerson looked up. Brostin hunkered down beside him, pulling feeder belts out of his ammunition hoppers.

  “Load me,” said Landerson.

  Heavy fire was streaking out of the trees, along with las-blasts and devastating shots from a long-las. But the wirewolves weren’t beaten. Shuddering from the impact of incoming fire, shrugging off hard rounds and las-bolts alike, they drove themselves forward to get at Rawne, Gaunt and Mkvenner.

  Gaunt had seen what the cannon shots had done to the arm of one of them. Already, the wirewolf seemed to be moving more sluggishly, its inner light dimmer. Gaunt remembered Landerson saying, back in Ineuron Town, that the things used up their power quickly. The precious sword held in a two-handed grip, Gaunt swung at the damaged wirewolf. The powered blade slashed into the metal threads of the thing’s neck.

  The taut wires snapped. Its containment armour now entirely broken open, the wirewolf released its channelled energy.

  It ignited, blasting ferocious white flame out in a wide Shockwave that smashed Gaunt, Rawne and Mkvenner to the ground.

  Struggling up from the detonation, Gaun
t shook his head. His ears were ringing. The grass around them was burned and scorched, and littered with pieces of the daemon’s metal suit. The flesh of Gaunt’s face tingled. It felt like sunburn.

  He shook his head again and his hearing began to return.

  That was when he heard a rumbling sound.

  SEVENTEEN

  A military truck was thundering across the field towards them. It was an Occupation force troop transport, painted matt green, churning up the rough surface of the field with its six big tyres. It had come from the outskirts of the village, and demolished at least one low wall in its urgent effort to reach them.

  Great. Now they had troops closing on them too.

  Gaunt tried to get Rawne and Mkvenner up. Both were badly dazed, concussed, and had red heat burns on their faces.

  “Come on!” Gaunt urged. He was none too steady on his feet himself.

  The second wirewolf was still intact. As the smoke from the blast drifted around it, it halted for a second, as if trying to work out what had happened to its twin. Then it lifted its iron-cased head, its eyeslits blazing pits of light, and began to stride towards the stumbling Ghosts. Its pace increased. In a moment it was bounding along, closing fast.

  Rawne still had hold of his last tube-charge. He threw it behind them, and the charging wirewolf vanished in a veil of grit and flame.

  Rawne, Gaunt and Mkvenner ran towards the trees. Back on its feet, the wirewolf leapt through the thick black smoke from Rawne’s munition and gave chase.

  The truck slammed through the smoke behind it and drove straight into the wirewolf, mashing it down. It vanished under the bellowing transport. Gaunt heard metal screech and grind.

  The truck swung round and came to a halt. There was a figure standing in the open back. It was Curth.

  “Get on!” she yelled.

  They ran towards her. She helped Rawne and Mkvenner clamber up into the back. Gaunt struggled into the cab to find Varl behind the wheel.

  “What the feth are you doing?” Gaunt said.

  “Improvising,” Varl replied, and threw the vehicle in gear. “It was the doc’s idea, actually. The others were giving you cover-fire, and she had no weapon, so she said, Varl, she said—”

  “Spare me the details,” Gaunt said.

  Varl slammed the heavy machine forward. Criid and Bonin were ahead, approaching the treeline with Feygor slumped between them.

  “Pick them up first. Then we have to g—”

  There was a rending noise, metal on metal, and the truck lurched as a savage shudder ran through it.

  “What the feth—” Varl began.

  Electric discharge lit up the cab, crackling across the metal dash in lambent blue, jellyfish patterns.

  The wirewolf wrenched its way up over the tailgate, its talons gouging the bodywork, and landed in the back. Its armour was buckled and dented, and power spurted out of the cracks. It swung its claws at Rawne. Mkvenner threw himself forward and tackled the major out of its way. But the force of the desperate bodyslam carried them over the side of the still-moving truck, and they hung there, scrabbling for handholds. Rawne slipped. Mkvenner had one leg and one arm hooked over the truck’s sideboarding and managed to grab Rawne’s wrist. If he let go, the Tanith officer would disappear under the rear wheels.

  Curth stumbled back away from the advancing wire-wolf. “Feth you!” she yelled and hurled her narthecium case at it. The daemon-thing swatted it aside, and the case bounced across the cargo space, its contents spilling. The truck lurched violently again, and even the wirewolf staggered. Curth fell, knocked her shoulder, and reached for something—anything—to use as a weapon.

  Her hand closed over something small and hard. A flask of inhibitor suspension from her case. She hurled it.

  It smashed against the wirewolf s dented chest plate. The inhibitor solution contained a number of compounds manufactured by the Departmento Medicae to counteract the effects of warp-contact on the human metabolism. The fluid they were suspended in was blessed water from the Balneary Shrine of Herodor.

  The wirewolf screamed. It staggered backwards, clawing at its face and chest, wounding itself with its own claws. The inhibitor solution ate into the thing’s armour where it had sprayed, gnawing like molecular acid.

  Eyes wide, Curth looked round, found another flask, and threw that too.

  The wirewolf screamed again.

  Curth saw her dermo-needle gun. It had fallen out of the spilled narthecium. She grabbed it and loaded a third flask into the gun’s dose reservoir.

  Fuelled by a stubborn courage that surprised even herself, Curth lunged forward and jammed the dermo-needle tip into the wirewolf s left eyeslit. Her finger squeezed the activator.

  The wirewolf shook, as if it were suffering from a grand mal seizure. Liquid energy, terribly bright and sickeningly viscous, bubbled and frothed out of its eye-slits. Its face plate began to fester and melt like paper in the rain.

  It staggered backwards, limbs twitching, and fell back over the tailgate.

  Then it exploded.

  The blast threw Curth back down the length of the cargo space. The truck itself was almost thrown over. It skidded to a halt, spraying up soil.

  Silence. Smoke billowed.

  Still half-hanging over the sidewall of the transport, Mkvenner gasped and let go of Rawne’s wrist. The major dropped down onto his feet and looked back up at Mkvenner.

  “Thanks,” he said.

  The Ghosts in the treeline were running down towards them. Cirk and Landerson were with them. Gaunt climbed up into the back of the truck and helped Curth to her feet.

  “You all right?”

  She nodded. She was still holding the dermo-needle. It was broken and smoking.

  “What did you do?” he asked.

  “I… I think I used up our entire medical supply in about thirty seconds,” she said ruefully.

  “Right now, I don’t think that matters,” he replied.

  Varl got the truck restarted and the mission team hauled themselves aboard. There was no sign of Plower or Purchason.

  “Do you want us to wait?” Gaunt asked Cirk. To look for them?”

  She shook her head. From across the field, the horns of Wheathead were blowing, and troopers were emerging, fanning out into the grass.

  “We have to get out of here now,” she decided.

  Varl drove the battered truck up the slope and into the trees, zigzagging them through brambles and brushcover until they reached a narrow trackway.

  East or west? There was no choice now. The enemy forces were closing from the east. In the distance, they could hear the drone of deathship engines. West was the only way now.

  Varl put his foot down and they rattled away along the track.

  Sitting in the cab beside Varl, Gaunt turned round and opened the small window through to the cargo bay.

  “Cirk?” he called.

  She made her way over, and leaned close to the other side of the window.

  “We’ll use this ride as far as we can, to put some distance between us and that place. Earlier, you told me west wasn’t an option. Something called the Untill. What is that?”

  “Marshland,” she said. “We’re heading into the deep forests now, and that marks the boundary. Beyond it lie the marshes themselves. Vast areas, un-navigable. The word ‘Untill’ comes from the earliest maps of Gereon, the colonists’ maps. Gereon was found to be a fecund, fertile place, hence its reputation as one of the chief agri-worlds in the cluster. But some regions, like the marshes, were unfarmable. ‘Untillable’. That’s what the name means.”

  “So there’s no way through?”

  Cirk shook her head. She seemed tired and edgy, and the stigma on her cheek more raw than ever. It pained Gaunt to see her beauty so irretrievably spoiled.

  “I’m afraid, sir,” she said, “that your mission is now over. There’s no way to achieve it. Not for a long time, at least. We might be able to hide in the Untill, I suppose. Right now, it’s as good a
place as any. Even the forces of the Occupation avoid the Untill. A few months lying low, maybe, and we might risk coming out. Once the fuss has died down. Maybe start trying to hook up with a resistance cell.”

  “A few months,” Gaunt echoed. He knew they had nothing like that. The mission was desperately time-sensitive. And besides, a few months and they would all have succumbed to Gereon’s taint. Especially now Curth’s medicines had gone.

  “We’ll see,” he said.

  “We won’t,” she replied. “You asked me to face up to hard truths when you enlisted my help, sir. I did that. Now face up to hard truths yourself. Your mission has failed. There is no chance now we can accomplish it.”

  “We’ll see,” Gaunt repeated.

  Sleek and unlovely, like carrion birds, the two deathships circled Wheathead. Wan smoke drifted from the dry fields under the trees where patches of grass were burning. Uexkull used a scope to scan. Below, squads of troopers and excubitors were extending out in a wide search pattern into the forests. They had packs of fetch-hounds, and some rode in half-tracks. On Uexkull’s orders, a full brigade strength was moving in on the village to bolster the units.

  He turned back to the report Gurgoy had given him. The Wheathead wirewolves had been woken, but they had not returned to their gibbet when their power was spent. That made no sense. They always returned to sleep again, unless they were destroyed.

  And nothing could destroy a wirewolf, surely?

  Uexkull felt uneasy, as if the nature of the cosmos was out of balance. He hated impossibilities.

  Was it plausible that the False Emperor had sent warriors to this world who were actually capable of destroying the merciless implements of Chaos?

  “My lord?” said Virag suddenly. His face was alarmed. He was staring at Uexkull.

  “What?”

  “Are you unwell, lord? Have you ingested poison?”

  Uexkull blinked. “Of course not! Why do you ask me that?”

  “Your face, great lord. It was twisted into a rictus, a grimace, as if toxins infected you. And you were gurgling and choking, like you were dying of some foul—”