Desolane pushed the junior aside and began to run across the inner yard towards the keep.
“Get the feth down!” Brostin bellowed and squeezed the trigger-spoon of his captured flamer. The weapon gurgled, coughed and then sent a dazzling spear of liquid flame out through the doorway into the stairwell. Voices began to scream.
Mkoll, Criid and Landerson had now rejoined them, still duelling hard with the archenemy troopers coming in through the gallery’s far end.
“I’ll clear us a way,” Brostin said, firing through the doorway again.
“Make it fast!” Mkoll snapped. Shots were raining down around them, ripping into the walls and carpet. Mkoll saw Beltayn lying on his face, Bonin crouching over him.
“Oh, feth! No!” the scout-sergeant cried.
“It’s all right,” said Bonin. “He’s alive.”
Beltayn rolled over, gagging. The potent las-lock shot had hit him squarely in the vox-caster strapped to his back. The sheer force had winded him badly, but he was completely intact.
The same could not be said for his vox-set. Bonin pulled it off him. It was a blackened ruin, smoke wisping out of the shattered cover.
“I need that…” Beltayn gasped.
“Not any more, Bel,” Bonin said. “It’s junked. Come on, on your feet.”
With Criid, Varl and Landerson forming a rearguard, blazing away down the now devastated gallery, Brostin led them through the doorway. The stone stairwell radiated heat from the torching and soot caked every surface. Smouldering bodies, most of them so reduced by fire they were charcoal lumps, littered the stairs. Brostin sent another searing blast down the stairwell for good measure.
“Let’s shift!” he cried.
From somewhere overhead, they felt the thump from another of Varl’s charges.
There was smoke in the air. It drifted lazily along the empty hallways of the bastion. From far below echoed the sounds of the battle outside, and the pandemonium amongst the ordinals cowering in the main halls.
But this smoke, up here… It was coming from inside the fortress, from higher up. Desolane paused as a tremble ran through the stone floor. Something had just exploded, a few levels above.
The life-ward swept out its ketra blades.
“Rawne!” Gaunt yelled. “Take the squad and drive those bastards back! Ven and I will go in after Sturm!”
There was no time to argue. The hammer of gunfire from the battle with the bastion detail made it almost impossible to hear anyway. Rawne nodded and rolled to his feet. Cirk, Feygor, Curth and Larkin had taken up firing positions along the sixteenth floor’s main hallway, and were trying to keep the troopers at bay. The partisan was backing them up, thumping quarrels at the ceremonially-attired enemy soldiers. One of the iron darts hit a man in the face, and he toppled over, his huge helmet-plume of white feathers swishing like a game-bird brought down in flight.
Rawne edged forward. Somehow, Cirk had ended up in charge of the defence, and Rawne had to admit she was doing a good job. She’d arranged the Ghosts into a decent cover formation using doorways and pillars as shields, and they were, for now, holding the enemy back.
Only Curth—inexperienced in combat—was ignoring Cirk’s instructions. Curth’s anger had broken loose again. She was blasting away wildly with her pistol. It pained Rawne to see the strong, wilful medicae so broken and mad.
“Cirk!” he yelled. “I want to try and drive them back through the stair head doorway! We can hold that much more securely!”
“Agreed!” she shouted.
Rawne dropped down, and pointed to Cirk, Feygor and Larkin in turn, indicating each position of cover he wanted them to move up to when he gave the order. He and Cirk would move first.
“Larks!” he called. “Smack a hotshot down through the centre of them and get them ducking!”
Larkin nodded, and loaded a fresh cell into his long-las. The powerful hotshot clips each delivered one super-heated shot before they were spent. He was down to his last three. After that, he’d be using his pistol.
“Set!”he yelled.
“Go!” Rawne cried.
The long-las cracked and the gleaming bolt stung down the passageway. Rawne and Cirk were already moving.
But as he came out of cover, Rawne hesitated. The smoke swirling in the air in front of him had formed the precise shape of the stigma mark, and behind it, the figures of the regal enemy troopers somehow matched it perfectly. The creeping madness was on him again, the paranoia. They were going to fail and die and—
A shot tore through his left thigh and he went down on one knee with a grunt. Confused for a moment by Rawne’s hesitation, Larkin wavered too, and was smacked over onto his back by a shot that broke his collarbone.
Larkin writhed on the floor, wailing, blood soaking out of him into the hall carpet.
“Larks!” Feygor bawled, and ran through the hailing fire, head-down. He grabbed Larkin by the straps of his webbing and began to drag him back towards the cover of a doorway, oblivious to his own safety. A shot ripped through his left triceps, another cut the flesh above his right knee, a third glanced off his forehead so savagely it almost scalped him. Blood pouring into his eyes, Feygor screamed out and continued to drag the helpless sniper backwards. At every jolt, Larkin shrieked as his broken bones twisted and ground together.
Rawne crawled into cover, cursing his own frailty. Their effort had been completely unsuccessful.
Worse than that, Cirk had dashed forward ahead, assuming they were all behind her. Now she was pinned down, alone and entirely helpless.
Thirty metres behind them, Gaunt and Mkvenner edged back to the corner. The shooting had stopped. Gaunt risked a glance, in time to see the two warriors in ochre rushing Sturm away around the next hallway turn. A curious little hominid in long robes was waddling after them.
“Come on!” Gaunt yelled. With Mkvenner at his side, he began to run after the man he had crossed light-years and risked everything to eliminate.
On the next landing, Desolane paused again. The smoke was thicker now. Somewhere in the bastion there was a considerable fire. The life-ward felt yet another vibration. Another explosion. How many was that now? Six? Seven?
Who was doing this? Surely this was beyond the scope of the local resistance. All they ever seemed to manage to do was blow up roads or set fire to granaries.
Desolane thought of Lord Uexkull. He and his band of warriors were now long overdue, along with Ordinal Sthenelus. In his last report, Uexkull had spoken of “Imperial killers’, specialist soldiers who had fought off everything the Occupation had thrown at them. Were they here now? Were they the ones who had so entirely shamed the life-ward and the bastion’s regiments?
There could be only one reason an elite squad of the False Emperor’s soldiers was here on occupied Gereon. Desolane knew it. That reason was the pheguth. Desolane’s beloved pheguth. The life-ward had sworn before Isidor himself to protect the life of the Anarch’s precious eresht. Other life-wards had refused the duty, spurning it. A traitor, they believed, an enemy, hardly deserved the sort of protection usually reserved for the most high-ranking ordinals. But Desolane had not. Desolane had seen it as a true challenge of its abilities. Life-wards were bred from birth to be the ultimate protectors. Nothing was more important than the safety of the charges they pledged themselves to.
And Desolane was the very best. It had been a mark of pride to accept this task from the Anarch, whose word drowns out all others, and to carry it out faultlessly.
There was another side to it too. Over the months they had spent in close company, often just the two of them alone for days at a time, Desolane had come to care for the pheguth. A bond had grown between them. The pheguth had seemed to Desolane a kindly, sorrowful man, broken down by the harsh hand fortune had dealt him, always respectful of the life-ward, always appreciative of every special attention Desolane paid to make his incarceration more bearable. When the attempt had been made on his life, the pheguth hadn’t blamed Desolane. He??
?d actually refused to dish out the ritual punishment. It had been then that Desolane had realised the pheguth cared for the life-ward too.
Of course, it had been difficult when the mindlock collapsed, and the pheguth had become Sturm again. Sturm was a pompous, arrogant soul, and he had shown far less respect for the life-ward. But even then, Desolane had been able to see the man it had sworn to protect. The humble pheguth, in his slippers and gown, shackled to a steel bed, smiling as he sipped a cup of weak black tea as if it was the most precious thing in the galaxy.
Desolane would protect its pheguth now. Against anything. The life-ward took a little golden scanner-wand out from under its smoke-cloak. The pheguth didn’t know, but early on a tracker had been embedded in his right buttock, so that Desolane would always know his location.
Desolane checked the wand’s reading and then leapt up the staircase, four steps at a time.
The resistance was at the bulwark. Thresher reported that one of the gates was about to break. Gunfire licked in all directions, most of it coming off the top of the bulwark itself. Around Noth, cell fighters were dying, cut to pieces by the lethal defences.
But they were still advancing. If there had been any time to consider it, Noth would have marvelled at their success so far. There was still a chance. If the bulwark could be breached, they would be into the inner yards of the bastion. In amongst the damned ordinals and the other dignitaries, killing the bastards in the name of a free Gereon.
“Move in!” Noth yelled above the gunfire, his own weapon chattering in his hands as he ran forward. Take the gate! Tube launchers! Come on, we’ve got them! Gereon resists! Gereon resists!”
Noth staggered as the backwash of an explosion struck him from the left-hand side. Grit flew into the air and pattered onto the yard. Through the smoke, Noth saw movement. One of the other bulwark gates had opened from the inside, and troops were charging out to counter-attack them.
They were daemons, dressed in ochre. Noth had never seen anything like them before.
A cell fighter to his left folded as gunfire ripped through her belly. Another man went down howling his leg shot off below the knee. Still more collapsed under the streaming fire.
“Rally! Rally!” Noth yelled. “Come about! Line order!”
He turned himself, firing his rifle on auto, and saw at least one of the ochre figures shudder and fall.
“Form on me! Resist!”
The man beside him reeled sideways, as if caught by a whip. A shot had destroyed his jaw. Others ran to take his place. Thresher’s cell turned back from the vulnerable gate and laid down fire too.
“Form a line! A line!” Noth yelled. “Gereon resists!”
To his left, he heard Major Planterson bellowing as he tried to control his formation. Colonel Stocker was already dead. Thresher was trying to re-form her milling troops.
The ochre-clad warriors came on through the smoke like a storm, tearing into Noth’s still-forming line. Bayonets lashed and stabbed.
Noth had read the resistance reports on Furgesh and Nahren, bocage towns that had been mysteriously exterminated in the last two weeks. There had been unsubstantiated rumours that the killing had been done by soldiers dressed in ochre, warriors who had howled the words “Sons of Sek!” as they slaughtered.
Noth’s line buckled under the impact of the charge. The colonel saw men and women he’d known all his life cut down, murdered, dismembered as they tried to stave off the feral attack. Thresher’s cell was trying to engage, but now the bulwark emplacements were cutting them down in their dozens.
Noth saw Thresher fall.
So close, he thought. One of the ochre bastards came right up at him, and Noth shot him apart. Another smashed his bayonet right through the skull of the man at Noth’s side, and Noth put five rounds into the killer’s chest.
“Gereon resists!” he yelled. “Gereon resists!”
Another one was on him. Noth’s magazine was empty. He lunged with his bayonet, screaming. The ochre warrior smashed Noth’s weapon aside with a supremely practiced flick, as if he had been drilling for months on end.
The enemy bayonet impaled Noth through the sternum. He coughed up blood as it was wrenched out and staggered forward.
He knew he was dead. He tried to make the battle cry of the resistance one last time, but his lungs were full of blood.
The Sons of Sek didn’t even let him fall. Cackling like jackals, they hacked Noth limb from limb with their blades.
“Down! Go on!” Mkoll yelled, urging his squad down the next winding staircase. Up was not an option. What seemed like a division of Occupation troopers was hard on their heels, hammering fire down the stairwell after them. Every single member of Mkoll’s team, himself included, had picked up at least one flesh wound now, and Bonin had been hit badly above the right hip.
Besides, there was fire up above them. The charges Varl had managed to plant had set several floors in the midsection of the fortress alight. The air was filmed with drifting smoke, and there was an alarming scent of burning. Mkoll wondered if Gaunt had been successful. He prayed so.
Varl and Criid were leading the way down. Blood was running from a cut on Varl’s shoulder, and Criid was bleeding from a wound under her hairline.
Landerson was helping Bonin along.
Shots suddenly began to spray up at them. They ducked back. Varl peered down. Dozens of excubitors were lurching up the stairs below.
“We need another way out!” Varl yelled.
Mkoll ran back up the stairs a little way, firing shots up at the first Occupation troopers that poked their faces around the stair bend, and kicked open a door. It led into another hallway. They were crossing back into the side tower adjacent to the main keep.
“Get moving!” Mkoll shouted, blasting up at the troops trying to press down the stairs to get at them. Several fell, hitting the stone steps hard and slithering down, limp.
Varl and Brostin were the last two through the door. Brostin’s flamer had accounted for many of the enemy so far, and added to the conflagration in the bastion too. Now his prom tanks were wheezing and almost empty.
“You saving the rest of those charges?” he asked Varl.
“Not particularly,” said Varl. “But I don’t have time to set the det pins—”
“Just fething toss them!” Brostin yelled.
Varl turned and hurled the satchel down the stairwell.
“Now run, Varl. Run like a bastard and don’t look back.”
Varl did exactly what Brostin told him to do. Brostin shook the flamer’s tanks and drooled up the last of the accelerant. Then he aimed the weapon down the stairs.
“Say hello to Mister Yellow,” he murmured, and belched off his last spear of flame.
Brostin threw the heavy weapon aside and started to run. Most of Mkoll’s squad had already reached the end of the hallway. His long legs pumping, Brostin moved fast for a heavy man. He had almost caught up with Varl when the fire in the stairwell ignited the satchel.
There was a strange, drum-like thump. Then a fireball rushed up the stairs and boiled along the corridor, throwing Varl and Brostin right off their feet.
In the outer yards, the Sons of Sek were beginning to howl out their victory. Mabbon Etogaur moved forward, slapping men on the back, stepping over the butchered dead. Sporadic gunfire still rattled from either side.
He heard something and looked up. Dark against the night sky, the bastion was suddenly illuminated. Some kind of furnace light had split its midriff, spilling flame up into the air from dozens of windows. Mabbon looked at it in astonishment. The right-hand side of the bastion was on fire, and so were the upper storeys of the side tower.
Mabbon keyed his vox-bead. “This is the etogaur. Primary orders. All units evacuate the bastion. You are charged with the safe removal of the ordinals. Do it now and do it properly!”
He looked back at the vast fortress. Fire was belching from the entire right-hand side. What in the name of the Anarch had happened up there?
“Cirk! Cirk, stay down!” Rawne cried, trying to staunch the blood gushing from his leg wound. Something catastrophic had just shaken the entire donjon. He could smell burning.
He heard Cirk yelp. She’d been hit. The shot-rate coming from the bastion troopers down the hall was increasing, and some were moving forward.
“Stay down!” he shouted again.
Rawne looked around. The partisan had vanished, and Feygor, last seen maimed and bleeding from at least three hits, had finally succeeded in dragging Larkin into the cover of an adjacent room. The only person in sight was Curth, crouched down in a doorway. She was still firing at the enemy, yelling out her rage. She had ditched her pistol and had grabbed hold of Feygor’s fallen lasrifle.
“Ana!” Rawne yelled over the constant fusillade.
“What?”
“We have to get forward! We have to get forward now!”
“Why? What the feth for?”
Rawne staggered across the hall and fell down beside her. “Cirk’s pinned,” he said. “We have to move forward and drive them back, or she’s dead.”
“So fething what?” Curth snarled, firing again. “She deserves to die. That bitch. She’s a total bitch. You’ve seen the mark on her. She’s Chaos filth!”
“I’ve seen it,” Rawne murmured. “I see it everywhere.”
“What?”
He sat up and looked at her. She was still shooting.
“Ana. We can’t leave her to die.”
“Why the feth not?” Curth asked.
“Because… because otherwise, the archenemy has won.”
“What the feth are you on about, Rawne?”
Rawne coughed the smoke out of his gullet. “She’s helped us, Curth. Every step of the way, without question. She’s got us through, risked her life. Feth it, we wouldn’t have got in here without her. I don’t like her either. I don’t trust her. She’s got the mark. But then again, I don’t think I trust anyone any more.”
“I say we leave her!” Curth grunted and fired again.