“I’m sorry, sir.” He rose to his feet. “Get your men away. I’ll draw them off.”
“No,” said Gaunt.
“It’s me they’ve scented. I—”
“No,” Gaunt repeated. “If they’ve got us, they’ll be on us all night, no matter how heroic and stupid you decide to be. We’ll end this quickly here and get clear before anyone comes looking for a missing patrol.”
“You’re mad,” said Landerson simply.
“Yes, but I’m also in charge.” He looked round at the mission team. “Straight silver. Let the dogs come and do them first. Then switch live and take out the rest. Understood?”
A whispered chorus of affirmatives answered him.
“For Tanith. For the Emperor.”
The sound of the dogs grew louder. Down by the agri-complex, an engine revved and a section of the outer fence stoved out and collapsed, driven down by the front fender of a large half-track. Its spotlights blazed out across the waste ground. Around it, through the gap, the unleashed hounds dashed out.
They were big. Some kind of semi-feral mastiff breed sired in the holds of the archenemy fleet. A dozen of them, each one so thickly muscled it weighed more than an adult human male. They could hear their paws thumping on the rough ground, hear their slavering growls.
Gaunt slid out a long silver dagger dulled with soot.
“Let them in,” he whispered. “Let them come right in…”
The first bounding animal crashed through the tree-line, heavy and stinking with spittle. Landerson heard it barking, heard it—
Whine. A meaty thump. An interrupted whimper.
The next came, and then the next. Two more frenzied dog-voices suddenly stilled away in pathetic squeals.
Then the rest. The other eight. One came in through the tree trunks right for Landerson. He saw its dull eyes, its gaping, wretched maw, the fleshy, drooling lips bouncing with the impact of its stride. He gasped out and raised his weapon.
Two metres from Landerson, as it began the pouncing leap that would bring him down, it jerked sideways in the air. Using his lasrifle like a spear, Mkoll wrestled the hound to the ground on his bayonet. It howled and writhed. He put a foot on its distended belly to free the blade, and lanced it twice more.
Around him, Landerson heard a quick series of dull, wet impacts, like ripe fruit being hacked by a machete. One human cry of pain.
A moment’s pause.
“All done?” Gaunt asked, wiping dog-blood off his warknife.
“Clear. They’re done,” Mkvenner replied from nearby.
“Everyone all right?”
“Fething dog bit me!” complained Varl in a whisper.
“Must’ve liked the idea of pig for dinner,” replied the female trooper who had dragged Landerson up.
“Imagine my surprise that he didn’t go for you then, Criid,” Varl said.
“That’s great. Talk some more so the enemy knows where the feth we are,” said the man Gaunt had called Rawne.
“Here they come,” said Mkoll, his voice just loud enough to be heard.
“Safeties off,” said Gaunt. “Mkoll. Circle the scouts round to the right and pincer. Brostin, Larkin? The transports. Ana? Keep your head down please.”
“But—”
“Keep it the feth down! Everyone else. On my word. Not a moment sooner. That goes for you too, major. You and your men.”
“Yes, sir. Lefivre? Purchason? Don’t shame me, you understand?”
Landerson looked back across at the fence. Both halftracks had moved out through the collapsed section and were advancing across the rough ground at a slow lick, searchlights sweeping. He saw a dozen excubitors dismounted alongside them, walking forward, las-locks raised.
“Looking for their fething pooches,” muttered Varl.
“Noise discipline!” Rawne snapped.
The patrol came closer.
“Not yet….” Gaunt whispered. “Not yet… let the foot troops get into the trees.”
So close now. Searchlight beams washed in through the trees, dappling off the shrubs and low boughs. Landerson could smell the spice and sweet unguents of the excubitors. There was no way they could take them all. Two to one, not counting the vehicles.
He raised his autorifle to his shoulder.
He saw the first excubitor enter the hem of the trees, a lanky black shape, las-lock right up to aim. He could hear the knock and thump of the bastard’s respirator box.
The excubitor disappeared. It had bent down. It had found one of the gutted fetch-hounds.
“Voi shet tgharr!” the excubitor yelled, rising.
“Now,” said Gaunt. His bolt pistol banged and the excubitor flopped backwards violently.
The edge of the woods went wild. Lasfire streamed out between the trees, shredding the low foliage. It was suddenly so bright it was as if the sun had come up.
The noise was extraordinary. Landerson saw at least four of the excubitors cut down in the opening salvo. He started to fire, but the air was suddenly thick with smoke wash and water vapour from the burst foliage.
The patrol began to answer, charging and firing weapons into the hail of fire from the woods. The halftracks gunned forward. A heavy bolter on the top of the closest vehicle began to flash and chatter. Small trees in the woodline were decapitated and deep wounds tore the trunks of the more mature trees.
“Larks! The lights!” Gaunt yelled.
The sniper close to Landerson sat up and fired his long-las, reloading and refiring with amazing precision. The searchlights on the vehicle rigs exploded one after another like cans on a shooting gallery wall, spraying out glass chips and stark thorns of shorting electricals. Another sniper round took the head off one of the excubitors manning the lamps.
Landerson saw Gaunt striding forward, shouting to his men though the roar of the intense combat drowned him out. He had a compact bolt pistol in each hand and was firing both of them. What Landerson had taken to be a single chest holster had evidently been a doubled pair.
Shots screamed through the trees. Branches exploded. Landerson could smell wood pulp and sap, fyceline and blood. He crawled to the nearest trunk and tried to get a better angle.
“Brostin!” Gaunt yelled. “Nail that first track!”
The big, rough-looking man calmly advanced with his massive autocannon cradled like a baby in his arms. He dropped the long telescope monopod to brace and then let rip, feeding ammo on a belt from one of two heavy hoppers strung to his hips.
The half-track plating buckled and twisted. This Brostin seemed to be aiming for the main chassis of the vehicle rather than the upper crew compartment. Why the hell would he be aiming for the most heavily armoured section, the engine bearing, the—
The half-track ignited like a fuel-soaked rag. Flames gushed out from underneath it and wrapped it in a cocoon of fire. The steady flow of armour-piercing rounds had ruptured the deep-set fuel tank. Landerson saw two excubitors, swathed in flame, tumble screaming out of the crew well.
“Holy Throne of Earth…” Landerson mumbled.
“He’s got a thing about fire, our Brostin,” said the man next to him. It was the sniper. Larks. Larkin. Something like that. He had a face as lined and creased as old saddle leather. “Plus, he’s ticked off he wasn’t allowed to bring his precious fething flamer. Whoop, “scuse me.”
Larkin raised his long-las, panned the barrel round and snapped off a shot that destroyed the head of another excubitor.
Pincer fire suddenly ripped in out of the right-hand quarter. Lasrifles on rapid, but devastatingly precise. Some of the excubitors tried to turn and were smacked off their feet. Landerson saw a chest explode, scale-mail pieces flung out. A las-lock was hit as it fired and blew up in a crescent of torched energy. Another excubitor was hit in the head and stumbled blindly across the wasteland like a jerking puppet until another shot put him down. Mkoll, Mkvenner and Bonin appeared out of the dark, coming in from the side, firing from the chest.
The last of the
excubitors went down. The second halftrack tried to turn and reverse. A tube-charge spun in from Rawne—a long, precise throw—and blew it apart.
Landerson lowered his weapon. He was breathing hard and his mind was reeling. How long? Thirty, forty seconds? Less than a minute. A whole patrol slaughtered in less than a minute. How… how was that even possible?
“Cease fire!” Gaunt yelled.
The area was bright with the burning wrecks of the vehicles.
“Douse them?” Varl asked Gaunt.
“No, we’re out of here. Now.”
“Into the woods!” Rawne shouted. “File of two, double time! That means you too, Varl, feth take your dog bite! Come on! Keep our new friends with us!”
“Stick with me,” the sniper said to Landerson. He smiled reassuringly. “Stick tight. The archenemy’s not found a thing yet that can kill Hlaine Larkin.”
“Right,” said Landerson, hurrying after him. For an older man, the sniper could move.
“What’s your name?” Larkin called back over his shoulder.
“L-Landerson.”
“Stick tight, Landerson. The woods await.”
“The woods?”
He heard Larkin laughing. “We’re Tanith, Landerson. We like woods.”
THREE
They had refused, from the very start, to refer to him by his name or rank. He was pheguth, which his life-ward told him meant something like “one that commits base treachery” or “one for whom betrayal has become a way of life”, only less flattering. It was a slur-word, a taboo. They were letting him know what they thought of him—vermin, filth, the lowest of the low—which was rich coming from them.
And it was fine by him. He knew what he was worth to them. Calling him a pariah was the worst they could do.
“Awake, pheguth,” commanded his life-ward.
“I’m already awake,” he replied.
“And how is your health this morning?”
“I’m still pheguth if that’s what you mean.”
The life-ward began to open the chamber shutters and let in the daylight. It made him wince.
“Could you leave that for now?” he asked. “I have a headache, and the light hurts my eyes.”
The life-ward closed the shutters again, and instead lit the glass-hooded lamps.
“This is because of the transcoding?” the life-ward asked.
“I would imagine so, wouldn’t you?”
His life-ward was called Desolane. It (for he had not yet been able to determine its gender with any conviction) was two metres tall, lean and long-limbed. Its slender, sexless body was sheathed in a form-fitting suit of blue-black metal-weave that had an iridescent lustre, like the filament scales of a bird’s wing. Around its shoulders, a gauzy black cloak drifted rather than hung. It was light and semi-transparent, like gossamer or smoke, and moved with Desolane’s movements even though it did not seem quite attached to the life-ward. The smoke-cloak almost but not quite concealed the pair of curved fighting knives sheathed across the ward’s thin back.
Desolane had been the pheguth’s constant companion now for six months, ever since his transfer to the custodianship of the Anarch and his removal to Gereon. The pheguth had begun to think of the life-ward as human, as far as that term would stretch, but this morning it was especially hard to ignore the xeno-traits, particularly the way Desolane’s long legs were jointed the wrong way below the knees and ended in cloven hooves.
And Desolane’s face. He’d never actually seen Desolane’s face, of course. The polished bronze head-mask had never come off. Indeed, it looked like it was welded on. It fitted around the ward’s skull tightly, smooth and featureless except for four holes: two for the eye slits and two on the brow through which small white horns extended.
The eyes themselves, always visible through the slits, were very human, watery blue and bright, like a young Guard staffer the pheguth had once had in his command. So very human, but set far too low down in Desolane’s face.
“Do you wish to eat?” it asked.
“I have little stomach for food,” he answered. He wondered how Desolane ate. The bronze mask had no mouth slit.
“The transcoding?”
He shrugged.
“We were warned that the transcoding process would unsettle your constitution,” said Desolane. Its voice was soft and pitched on a feminine register, which the pheguth decided was the reason he couldn’t determine the life-ward’s precise gender. “We were warned it might make you… sick. Should I fetch a master of fisyk to attend you? Perhaps a palliative remedy could be manufactured.”
He shook his head. “We were also warned that I should imbibe nothing that might interfere with the transcoding process. I imagine that if a safe palliative existed, I would have been offered it already.”
Desolane nodded. “A drink at least.”
“Yes. A cup of—”
“Weak black tea, with cinnamon.”
He smiled. “You know me very well.”
“It is my job to know you, pheguth.”
“You tend to my every need with perfect decorum. I’ve had personal adjutants who’ve taken less care of me. It occurs to me to wonder why.”
“Why?” asked Desolane.
“I am a senior branch officer of your sworn enemy’s armies and you are—forgive me, I’m not entirely sure what you are, Desolane.”
“You are pheguth. You are atturaghan—”
“That’s something else I don’t want to know the meaning of, right?”
“You are enemy blood, you are flesh-spoil, you are of the Eternal Foe and you are the most shunned of those that must be shunned. I am a sept-warrior of the Anarch, trophied and acclaimed, consented and beloved of the High Powers, and the winds of Chaos have breathed into me splendid magiks by which I have achieved the rank of life-ward, so as to stand amongst the Anarch’s own huscarls. Under almost every circumstance, my duty and choice would be to draw my ketra blades and eviscerate you.”
“Almost every circumstance?”
“Except this one. This strange one we are in.”
“And in this circumstance?”
“I must attend your every need with perfect decorum.”
The pheguth smiled. “That still doesn’t tell me why.”
“Because it is what I have been ordered to do. Because if one harm comes to you, or you suffer for one moment, the Anarch himself will scourge me, bleed me ceremonially, and eat my liver.”
The pheguth cleared his throat. “A fine answer.”
“You do so love to taunt me, don’t you, pheguth?” said Desolane.
“It’s the only pleasure I get these days.”
“Then I’ll allow it. Once again.” The life-ward walked towards the door. “I’ll bring your tea.”
“Could you release me first?”
Desolane stopped by the chamber door and turned back.
“Of course,” it said, producing the keys from under the smoke-cloak and unshackling the naked man from the steel frame.
An hour later, Desolane escorted him out of the chamber and down the long, drafty steps of the tower. The pheguth was dressed in the simple beige tunic, pants and slippers that his captors issued him with every morning.
In the long basement hall at the foot of the steps, where Chaos trophies hung limp in the cloying air, the pheguth turned automatically towards the chamber set aside for the transcoding sessions.
“Not that way,” said Desolane. “Not today.”
“No transcoding today?”
“No, pheguth.”
“Because it makes me sick?”
“No, pheguth. There’s something else to do today. By the order of the Plenipotentiary.”
“What’s going on?” he asked.
Two antlered footman came up, las-locks slung over their stooping shoulders. One carried a dagged foul-weather cloak of selpic blue rain cloth.
“This may be added to your garments,” said Desolane, taking the cloak and handing it to the pheguth.
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He put it on. He could feel his pulse racing now.
Desolane led him out into the daylight of the inner courtyard. The bulk of Lectica Bastion rose like a cliff behind them. At a barked command, a waiting squadron of excubitors shouldered arms and announced their loyalty to the Anarch. One of the footmen scurried forward and opened the side hatch of the transport.
“Where are we going?” asked the pheguth.
“Just get in,” said Desolane.
They drove for an hour, down through the steep cliff passes away from the bastion, onto a highway that had been repaired after shelling. The squadron of excubitors escorted them in their growling half-tracks. Deathships, fat-winged and freckled with gunpods, tracked them overhead.
“There is a function,” said Desolane, sitting back in one of the transport’s ornate seats.
“A function?”
“For which your presence is required.”
“Am I going to like it?” he asked.
“That hardly matters,” the life-ward replied.
They passed through some burned-out towns, through tenement rows of worker hab-stacks that the enemies of the Imperium had turned their meltas on. Finally, the cavalcade drew to a halt on the head road of a massive dam that curved between the shoulders of a craggy mountain range. The daylight was cold and clear, and water vapour hung like mist.
About three hundred battle troops stood in files along the dam top, weapons shouldered. Several pennants fluttered in the wind. As he dismounted from the transport, pulling the cloak around him for warmth, the pheguth saw the waiting group of dignitaries. Ambassadors, stewards, division commanders, warrior-officers, chroniclers, all attended by their own life-wards.
And the Plenipotentiary Isidor Sek Incarnate himself.
“By the Throne!” the pheguth gasped as he saw him.
The troops and excubitors in earshot cursed and ruffled, some spitting against ill-omen.
“Try not to say that,” said Desolane.
“My apologies. Old habits.”