Blood Pact

TWENTY-ONE Bleed

Mkoll paused. He turned in a slow circle, reading the snow-covered ground.

He shook his head.

On the empty, winter street behind him, Preed and Jajjo were checking side turnings for traces. The chief scout was pretty sure they wouldn’t find anything either.

The signs had been there. From the gatehouse at Section, out into the streets, they’d been easy to track, as clear as day. It was snowing, for Throne’s sake! An absolute gift to any tracker. Gaunt might as well have left a trail of taper flares, or blood.

Something had begun to outfox the acute senses of the Tanith scouts. Something was deceiving Mkoll’s eyes and wits, and it was deceiving his best men too.

This snow was different. It wasn’t like any snow he’d ever read. It teased and it flirted, and promised to reveal all manner of secrets, but it was uncooperative. It blurred and it blended. It covered and it erased. It forgot more than it remembered.

It didn’t behave like snow.

Mkoll was certain, stone-cold certain, that there was something in the storm, some ugly influence in the bad weather that was deliberately blinding them and confounding them.

Silent as any ghost, Eszrah came up beside him.

Mkoll looked at the Nihtgane and shrugged.

Eszrah narrowed his eyes.

‘Close, he ys,’ he said.

Mkoll nodded. ‘Except it’s just so… you must have noticed it too, Ez. The trail’s wrong. The snow’s lying to me.’

Mkoll looked up. The distant, thudding shapes of the Valkyries were swinging around for another pass.

‘Jago,’ Eszrah replied.

Mkoll shrugged. ‘You’re right. You and me, we followed him across the dust of Jago and found him. We can find him again.’

Commissar Edur watched the progress of the search teams.

‘I hate to sound remotely impatient,’ he said to the Tanith officers, Kolea and Baskevyl, ‘but I expected a little more from the vaunted Ghost scouts.’

‘You’re not the only one,’ replied Kolea bluntly. ‘It’s not like Mkoll to be this much off his game.’

‘Explanation?’

Baskevyl shrugged. ‘Colonel-Commissar Gaunt has gone to ground. He’s an intelligent man, and he may have covered his tracks well. He knows how Mkoll and the scouts operate. He knows how to hide the signs they would look for.’

Edur pursed his lips. ‘Which begs the question: is he hiding to stay alive, or hiding because he’s guilty of something?’

He noted the expressions on the faces of Kolea and Baskevyl.

‘Just thinking aloud,’ he assured them. ‘The problem being that the inquisitor’s capacity for patience is going to be far less than mine.’

The three of them turned to look together. Further down the street, Rime and his circle of henchmen were grouped in quiet discussion. The displeasure on Rime’s face was readable even at a distance.

‘If he orders us out,’ said Edur, ‘we lose all control. Then, I’m afraid, Gaunt’s going to wind up dead, whether he’s guilty or not.’

Maggs fired. He fired and fired again. Nothing was coming out of the albino’s old gun. He’d used up everything in the gun’s clip shooting at the old dam.

Maggs tossed the empty pistol aside and bent down. He clamped his hands around the etogaur’s throat and twisted.

Gaunt slammed into him from the side, and tore him off the etogaur. Locked together in a tangle of limbs, Gaunt and Maggs rolled heavily across the partly boarded floor of the refurb, and collided painfully with a stack of fibreboard.

‘What are you trying to do?’ Gaunt yelled at the Belladon as he attempted to pin him and subdue him. The gunshots had brought Gaunt running.

Maggs didn’t reply in any properly articulate way. He shrugged his shoulders backwards violently, breaking Gaunt’s grip. The back of his skull butted into Gaunt’s cheek.

‘Maggs! Stop it,’ Gaunt warned, rolling clear.

Maggs made a gurgling, inhuman noise. He was back on his feet, hunched low, like an ape or an ursid. He drove at Gaunt. His teeth were bared in a snarling grimace: an animal’s threat display.

Gaunt couldn’t do much other than try to absorb the feral charge. Maggs ran into him, bear-hugging him, and they struck the pile of fibreboard together, again, this time on their feet. Gaunt had seen Maggs’s eyes. He knew the man had lost his mind. He could feel the grease of sweat on Maggs’s skin, the fever-heat throbbing out of him.

Maggs wrestled Gaunt into the fibreboards a third time, and tried to crush him into them. Gaunt jabbed his elbow down onto the back of Maggs’s neck. He had to repeat the ruthless blow several times before Maggs flinched away from the source of pain and released his grip.

As Maggs sprang away, Gaunt threw a punch that caught the Belladon’s jaw, and lurched him sideways into a pile of paint pails, buckets and loose timbers. Metal containers clattered as they fell. Trying to keep his feet, Maggs ploughed through the wood and the buckets with his arms milling and clawing, scattering the obstacles out of his way.

Gaunt moved forward to restrain him. He called out the Belladon’s name again, in the hope that it might snap some sense or recognition into the man.

Maggs came up, out of his stumbling collision with the paint pails, clutching a fat plank of timber. He hefted it like a bat or a club, and swung it. Gaunt had to jerk back to avoid being hit.

‘For Throne’s sake, Maggs.’

Maggs advanced on him, swinging the timber hard. Maggs was making a whining, sobbing noise.

‘Maggs!’

Gaunt tried to dodge around Maggs, but Maggs caught him across the shoulder with the makeshift club, and Gaunt fell sideways into one of the work curtains. He clutched at it for support, and the top edge tore away from its iron fixings with a sharp, rending sound. Maggs came at him again, the plank raised over his head in both hands, ready to slam across Gaunt’s skull.

Gaunt tried to shield himself. He twisted hard, wrapping the heavy curtain tarp around him and over his head. He felt the blow, but the lethal force of it was soaked up by the taut curtaining.

Gaunt scrambled free of the curtain, and stumbled into the adjoining chamber of the refurb. The curtain’s thick, waxy seams caught on the buttons of his uniform, tangling him, and he was forced to pull free of his coat to get clear. The contents of his pockets, upended, scattered onto the floor.

Maggs wrenched his way through the work curtain after Gaunt. He was still clutching the plank, and he was still whining and sobbing, the thick, wet sounds mixing with rapid panting noises. His eyes were pink and bloodshot. He blinked, trying to focus, trying to see where Gaunt had gone.

Gaunt had ducked to the right, just inside the doorway. Maggs only saw him at the very last moment. Gaunt had found a workman’s mop, and swung it like a bat of his own. It caught Maggs across the shoulder blades, and the old handle snapped in half, but the force of the blow was sufficient to knock Maggs sprawling onto his hands and knees. The fat plank of wood clattered out of his grip. Maggs tried to grab for it, but Gaunt struck it out of reach with the splintered end of his mop handle. Gaunt brought the mop handle around as a baton, aiming it at Maggs’s head, but Maggs, still on his knees, intercepted it with his right hand, and stopped it dead.

The fever had bred an astonishing power inside Wes Maggs. He only had one hand on the broken handle compared to Gaunt’s two, and he was kneeling where Gaunt was better braced on both feet. With a grunt of exertion, he tore the handle out of Gaunt’s hands.

He rose. Gaunt backed away.

Gaunt expected Maggs to attack him with the mop handle, but Maggs threw the broken shaft aside.

Gaunt saw why. On his hands and knees, Maggs had found a better weapon. He had found the damogaur’s soot-caked rite knife. It had fallen out of Gaunt’s coat pocket.

Maggs took a step forwards, holding the jagged knife low and ready. His breathing had become really laboured. He lunged, and Gaunt jumped back. Maggs lunged again, sweeping the knife around. Gaunt barely avoided the second blow.

The third blow – a vicious, front-on stab – came closest of all. Gaunt had almost run out of space to back up. There was a wall close behind him. Maggs was boxing him in. The ground was uneven. There was no space in which to turn. Gaunt wondered if he could feint left or right. He was fairly certain that the panting, sweating, blood-shot Belladon would be too quick.

He had run out of choices. The only option remaining was the one he wanted to avoid most of all.

He drew his bolt pistol and aimed it at Maggs.

‘Stop it,’ he warned. ‘Stop it, Maggs. Drop the blade and stop this.’

Maggs growled.

‘Don’t make me finish it this way, Wes,’ Gaunt whispered. His finger tensed on the hard curve of the trigger. He wasn’t getting through. He could feel another lunge about to come his way.

There was a loud and dull metallic impact. Maggs swayed, and then collapsed sideways. He hit the ground bonelessly and lay still.

There was an ugly bruise on Doctor Kolding’s temple. He lowered the dented metal bucket he’d swung into the back of Maggs’s head.

‘Are you all right?’ Gaunt asked him.

Kolding didn’t answer.

Gaunt ducked forward and plucked the rite knife out of Maggs’s limp fingers. Maggs was deeply unconscious.

‘We need to tie him up,’ said Gaunt. ‘Throw me that bolt of twine. Over there, doctor.’

As if slightly dazed, Kolding put the dented bucket down, and fetched the twine. Gaunt quickly began to bind Maggs’s wrists together.

‘I thought he’d killed you,’ Gaunt said.

‘He hit me,’ said Kolding. ‘He hit me hard. I’m not a soldier. I don’t know how to fight. Once I went down I decided to stay down for my own good.’

‘That was probably very wise,’ said Gaunt.

‘It doesn’t feel very courageous,’ said Kolding. ‘Not now, and not when I was sixteen.’

‘You saved my life,’ said Gaunt, ‘and for that, and more besides, you have my thanks.’

Kolding pointed at Maggs. ‘He is running an awful fever. I think that may have driven him to this. He was seeing things. They were things that he was evidently scared of.’

‘It’s more than that,’ said Mabbon Etogaur.

The prisoner looked like an upright corpse. The fever was still upon him, and his breathing was as laboured as Maggs’s. He was leaning in the doorway behind them, holding onto both the torn work curtain and the doorpost for support.

‘You should not be on your feet,’ said Kolding, striding towards him. ‘Help me get him settled again,’ he added, over his shoulder, to Gaunt.

They supported the prisoner and walked him back to the bed that Kolding had set up for him in the adjoining room. The prisoner was leaden and unsteady. There was a sort of diseased smell coming off him that Gaunt did not like at all.

‘He woke me,’ said Mabbon. ‘He woke me from my fever dream, tearing at my throat. He was trying to break my neck.’

‘Don’t waste your strength,’ said Gaunt.

They settled him back. ‘I tried to move. To call out.’

He looked at Kolding, who was preparing another shot from his case.

‘Are you a doctor?’ he asked.

‘You were wounded. We found a doctor to help us,’ said Gaunt.

‘I would have died,’ Mabbon said to Kolding.

‘You may still die,’ Kolding replied tersely. ‘I’ve treated your wound, but you have developed a secondary infection, probably due to the less than ideal circumstances of your post-operative recovery. The fever–’

‘My wound isn’t causing the fever,’ said Mabbon quietly. ‘It’s them.’

Gaunt looked at him.

‘It’s the work of the ones who have been sent to silence me,’ said Mabbon. The spaces between his words were getting longer. ‘They’ve got warpcraft into my blood. Into your man’s blood too, I think.’

‘How?’ Gaunt asked.

‘They have a witch with them,’ Mabbon wheezed, ‘a strong one. She is upon my soul, and she’s calling out to me in my dreams, commanding me to die. I can hear her. She’ll have been in your friend’s dreams too, urging him to kill.’

‘How do we fight this witch?’ Gaunt asked. ‘Do you know?’

‘You must let him rest,’ Kolding insisted.

‘Do you know how to fight the witch?’ Gaunt demanded.

Mabbon Etogaur’s eyes closed, and then flicked back open.

‘She’s wickedly strong,’ he breathed, ‘but I know a trick or two. I was an etogaur in the Pact. Give me that rite knife.’

‘Now wait a minute!’ Kolding exclaimed.

‘Listen to me,’ Mabbon hissed. ‘She’s in my blood. She’s upon my soul. That means this game is close to being over. They know where we are. All the while she’s in my blood, they’ll be able to find us. I need to break that tie, and then we must move to another place.’

‘How do we break the tie?’ Gaunt asked.

‘I cannot believe you’re even listening to this,’ Kolding exclaimed. ‘The man’s feverish. He’s delusional. What’s more, he–’

‘How do we break the tie?’ Gaunt snapped.

Mabbon held out his hand. ‘I have to bleed her out of me, and then I have to bleed her out of your friend.’

‘I’m not going to be part of any barbaric ritual,’ Kolding said, but he handed Gaunt a small medicine basin.

Gaunt took the stainless steel bowl from the doctor and walked back to the prisoner. He’d carried Maggs’s bound body through from the other side of the curtain and laid him down beside the etogaur. Maggs was still unconscious, and twitching deliriously in the embrace of a dream that Gaunt had no desire to share.

Gaunt put the basin down and, after a final, thoughtful pause, handed Mabbon the rite knife, handle first.

‘Keep the basin ready,’ said Mabbon, his breath rasping in and out. ‘We mustn’t spill a drop, or leave any they can use.’

Gaunt nodded.

‘Hurry up,’ he said. ‘I don’t like this at all.’

Gaunt held the basin close. Mabbon opened one of Maggs’s bound hands, held it firmly, and sliced the rite knife’s blade across the palm. Maggs shook.

‘It won’t take much,’ said Mabbon. ‘The witch, she’s monstrously powerful, but to bind into our blood, she has to make a link, you see? For us to be tied to her, she has to be tied to us.’

He squeezed Maggs’s hand, and the blood welled and ran.

A fit came upon her. It came without warning. Eyl was so shocked by it that he recoiled.

His sister screamed. She had her hands in the sterilising baths, elbow-deep in red liquid, and as she screamed, the right-hand jar shattered. Over six litres of blood product vomited out of the exploded cylinder and gushed across the theatre bench.

Ulrike staggered backwards, pulling her hand out of the intact bath. Blood splashed out across the tiled floor in long, drizzled sprays from her hands. She cried out again, a squeal of rage and pain.

She turned to Eyl.

‘Sister? What is it, sister?’

She was breathing so hard that the front of her veil was sucking in and out. Droplets of blood had caught in the lace net and glittered like cabochon rubies. She raised her right hand and opened the palm towards him. The whole hand and arm was dripping with blood, but he could see the wound across her palm. He supposed she had been cut by broken glass from the exploding bath.

‘Your knife!’ she wailed.

‘What?’

‘He’s got your knife, and he’s bleeding me out of them!’

‘The pheguth? You mean the pheguth?’ Eyl demanded.

She screamed at him again, but this time it was a petulant scream of frustration and anger. She sank to the floor.

‘It hurts!’ she complained. ‘He’s hurt me. He’s cutting the tie!’

Eyl knelt down beside her, and held her tight, rocking her. She sobbed. Her clutching hands made bloody imprints on the tan leather of his coat sleeves.

He heard his men at the theatre door. Her screams had drawn them downstairs in concern.

‘Magir?’ Karhunan called out, unwilling to cross the threshold.

‘It’s all right!’ Eyl shouted back. ‘It’s all right. Leave us. Go back upstairs, and get the men ready to move.’

Eyl felt her wince again in his arms. She opened her left palm and held it out for him to see.

He watched as an invisible edge sliced the palm open.

Mabbon grunted out a breath and clenched his left hand over the basin. His blood spattered out of his fist and collected with the measure they’d already taken from Maggs.

‘Are we done?’ Gaunt asked.

Mabbon nodded.

‘Doctor?’ Gaunt called.

Kolding was just finishing the compression dressing on Maggs’s palm. He got up and came over.

Gaunt handed him the basin. ‘Get a lid sealed on that, then bind the prisoner’s hand.’

Kolding took the basin. He looked scornful and disapproving.

‘Quickly, please,’ Gaunt said. He wasn’t in the mood for the man’s disdain. Gaunt had crossed a few lines in his life, always out of necessity. Some heathen blood-magic ritual felt like one of the worst.

It had better damn-well work.

There was a noise from the refurb’s outer entrance.

Gaunt signalled to Kolding to keep quiet, drew his pistol and hurried towards the entrance.

It was Criid, squeezing back in through the boarded window from the street. Her hair was wet with snow, and she’d obviously been running hard.

‘You’re back sooner than I expected,’ said Gaunt, holstering his pistol.

She shook her head.

‘They’re close,’ she said. ‘We have to move.’

‘No argument,’ Gaunt replied. He bent to pick up his cap. It had been on his lap when he’d been sitting watch, and heard the gunshots.

‘Get any food?’ he asked.

‘There wasn’t time.’

She followed him into the chamber where Kolding was tending Maggs and the prisoner.

‘What the feth happened here?’ she asked.

‘They got to Maggs somehow,’ Gaunt said.

‘What?’

Gaunt stepped through the work curtain he’d half-torn down, and began to retrieve his coat and the items that had scattered from his pocket. Criid followed him.

‘It doesn’t really matter,’ said Gaunt. ‘The simple truth is, they know exactly where we are, so we need to switch locations. Gather your things and help the doctor.’

‘We need to run,’ said Criid.

‘Maggs is sick, and the prisoner is sick and wounded,’ said Gaunt. ‘The purpose of this entire exercise is keeping him alive, and moving him any distance is going to be contrary to that aim. We’ve moved him too much already. I have to trust the doctor on this.’

‘So where do we go?’ she asked.

Gaunt stopped to pick up his pen and his copybook.

‘I have an idea,’ he replied.