The Warmaster

Twenty-Four: I Am Death

‘We can walk from here,’ said Baskevyl.

‘Oh, come on,’ said Domor. ‘It’s not far now.’

‘Let me rephrase,’ said Baskevyl. He tapped the transport’s fuel gauge. ‘We’re going to have to walk from here.’

He pulled the transport to a grumbling halt, and they got out. The street was deserted and lightless, but the night air was heavy with the smell of fyceline, and the sky above the rooftops was blooming with an amber glow. They could hear the distant sounds of warfare from several directions, rolling in across the city.

Fazekiel looked at the Munitorum transport ruefully. The bodywork was punctured in dozens of places, and the rear end was shot out.

‘Close call,’ she said. Bask nodded. If the engine hadn’t started, they’d have been sitting targets. The ride out had been fierce and blind. Baskevyl had driven like a maniac, his only direction ‘away from the gunfire’.

Domor glanced at the burning sky.

‘Close call’s not over yet,’ he remarked. ‘The whole city’s up against the wall.’

They started to walk. They crossed streets that were shuttered and dark, and passed buildings that had been abandoned. Shrapnel and air combat debris littered the roadway, smouldering and twisted, some scraps still twinkling with heat. The stuff had been raining down indiscriminately for hours, and though the main air raid seemed to have ended, soot and sparks continued to flutter down. Up on the Great Hill, the glow of the palace’s void shields was dying away. A calculated risk, Bask supposed, but the main fighting zones were clearly ground wars at the edges of the main city, and the void shields would urgently need time to recharge. Another aerial assault could come at any time.

Twenty minutes brought them through the derelict quarters of Low Keen to the head of the service road. They walked in silence, weary, out of words. The battle had escalated around them and left them out of the main action. It was time to catch up and hope there was still a chance to rejoin the regiment.

Whatever warning they thought they might bring was surely now too late.

From the service road, they could see the Tanith K700 billet in the gloom of the industrial scar-land. Lights moved around the buildings. They could see transports.

‘Someone’s still there, at least,’ said Bask.

Halfway down the service road, they were challenged by sentries. Erish, the big standard bearer from V Company, and Thyst, another trooper from his squad. They seemed punchy and ill at ease.

‘Major Baskevyl?’ Erish said in surprise as they drew close enough for him to recognise them.

‘What’s going on, trooper?’ Baskevyl asked.

‘Just prepping to move out, sir,’ said Erish. ‘Up to the palace.’

‘The whole regiment?’

‘No, sir, just V and E Companies, moving the regimental retinue to shelter.’

‘Where are the rest of the Ghosts?’ asked Domor.

‘Front line, sir,’ said Erish.

Baskevyl and Domor glanced at each other. Their companies had gone to secondary without them. Possibly primary. They might already be fighting and dying.

‘Who’s in charge here?’ asked Fazekiel.

‘Captain Meryn, ma’am,’ Erish replied. ‘With Commissar Blenner.’

Fazekiel looked at him closely. She was a good study of body language, and Erish seemed unusually tense. No, not tense. Unsettled.

‘Vox the gate, Erish,’ said Baskevyl. ‘Tell Meryn we’re on our way in.’

‘Yes, sir,’ said the trooper.

‘What’s going on, Trooper Erish?’ asked Fazekiel.

Erish looked nervously at his comrade.

‘What do you mean, ma’am?’ he asked.

‘What aren’t you telling us?’

‘There’s been an incident, ma’am,’ said Erish.

‘How the feth did this happen, captain?’ asked Baskevyl.

Meryn shrugged. Around them, in the K700 yard, men from his company were loading cargo onto the Munitorum trucks, and the huddled members of the retinue were lining up to clamber aboard. There was an uncomfortable quiet, more than just a wartime quiet. A sense of shock.

‘A shrug’s not going to cut it, Meryn,’ Baskevyl said.

‘I don’t know what the feth to tell you,’ Meryn replied. ‘It’s a feth awful mess. What do you want from me? You want me to say that an arsehole from my company went psycho? Is that it?’

‘You and Gendler were close.’

‘So?’ Meryn sneered. ‘He was still an arsehole. I just didn’t realise how big an arsehole. Attacking a girl like that.’

‘Gaunt’s… daughter?’

‘Seems so.’

‘Where is she?’ asked Domor.

‘In one of the trucks. She’s conscious now, but she’s woozy and in shock. Once we arrive at the palace, we’ll get her to a medicae.’

‘I want to talk to her,’ said Baskevyl.

‘I told you,’ said Meryn, ‘she’s not in a fit state. Leave it. Leave it for now. Give her some time.’

‘There’ll be an inquiry,’ said Bask.

‘Don’t doubt it,’ said Meryn. ‘There should be. Blenner and I are ready to provide full statements.’

‘I can’t believe Wilder would–’ Domor began.

‘Well, he did,’ said Meryn bluntly. ‘There was always some loose wiring there. You must have seen it. Too much booze, and a grudge the size of the Golden Throne. Didi must’ve… Gendler must have put him up to it. Fethwipes, the both of them.’

‘Wilder killed Ezra?’ asked Baskevyl.

Meryn nodded. ‘I can’t believe it,’ he said. ‘I mean, Ezra… fething Ezra.’

‘And Blenner sanctioned Wilder?’

‘What else could he do?’ asked Meryn.

Domor and Baskevyl looked at each other.

‘Look,’ said Meryn, ‘we don’t have time for this now. Priority is to get the retinue up and into the sanctuary of the palace, while the shields are down. That’s a direct order from Gaunt. We can’t hang about here, no matter what’s gone down. We have to get this lot moving in the next few minutes.’

‘All right,’ said Baskevyl reluctantly. ‘Double time, everyone. Let’s move them to safety.’

Meryn threw a quick salute, and turning, began shouting orders at the loading parties. Baskevyl saw Elodie Dutana-Daur approaching, with one of the women from the retinue in tow.

‘Major?’

‘Yes, Elodie?’

‘Juniper’s lost Yoncy,’ she said.

‘She was with me, sir,’ said the older woman. ‘We were getting all packed away, then the commotion started, and I turned around and she was gone. I think she got upset. People were talking, saying that there’d been shooting. That people were dead. She thought it was them snipers again and got upset. I think she went to hide.’

‘I can’t find her,’ said Elodie.

Bask swore under his breath.

‘We’ll hunt around,’ he said. ‘She can’t be far.’

‘Yeah, we’ll find her,’ Shoggy echoed. He knew that he and Baskevyl were thinking the same thing: there’d been enough bad turns for one day. They weren’t about to lose Criid’s little girl too. ­Criid’s little girl… Gol’s little girl. Meryn had told them that the Astra Militarum intelligence service had taken Gol away. Wherever he was now, Gol Kolea would need his friends to look after his family for him.

‘Where’s Dalin?’ asked Baskevyl.

‘On the truck, looking after Gaunt’s child,’ said Meryn.

‘I’ll go and ask him if he knows anywhere Yoncy might’ve hidden,’ said Baskevyl.

‘I’ll start looking,’ said Domor. He turned to Elodie and Juniper.

‘Where’d you last see her?’ he asked.

A voice spoke in the night. It spoke in the crump of the artillery bombardments, in the distant roar of firestorms, in the clunk of mortars.

It was the old voice, the shadow voice. It had no words; it just spoke of war in sounds made out of war.

But its meaning was clear. So clear, it seemed to drown out all the sounds and furies bearing down on Eltath.

In the blue darkness of the unlit waste-ground behind the billets, Yoncy cowered in the rubble heaps. It was time. Papa was telling her it was time. Time to come home. Time to be brave and grow up. Time to go to Papa.

‘I don’t want to!’ she whispered, rubbing tears from her eyes with her grubby wrists. Then she wished she hadn’t spoken. Someone would hear her.

Someone had heard her.

Someone was close. She could hear boots crunching over the rubble in the darkness around her. People moving.

People coming for her. Ready or not.

‘What are you doing, exactly, Luna?’

Fazekiel stopped taking images, and lowered her small hand-held picter. Blenner was standing in the wash house doorway.

‘Recording the scene,’ she said. ‘Or did you do that already?’

‘Me? No,’ said Blenner. ‘Why? Why would I?’

‘Three deaths in billet,’ she said. ‘We can’t preserve the scene here, so we’ll need as much evidence as we can get.’

‘Evidence?’ asked Blenner. ‘Evidence for what?’

‘Are you serious, Blenner?’

‘It’s cut and dried!’ Blenner snapped. ‘Feth’s sake, Luna… Gendler went crazy. Wilder was in on it. They attacked Gaunt’s girl, then Ezra–’

With each name, Blenner was pointing angrily at a different blood ­pattern on the walls and floor of the old wash house. Fazekiel started taking pictures of every dark stain.

‘Stop it!’ Blenner snapped.

‘This incident is bad enough,’ said Fazekiel. ‘It would warrant a full hearing anyway, but the fact that the child of a lord militant is involved? You think Gaunt will just let this go on a field report?’

Blenner shrugged helplessly.

‘He’ll want to know everything. Ezra was his friend, and…’ She trailed off and stopped. ‘You’re supposed to be his friend, Blenner. His oldest, dearest friend. Why the hell aren’t you doing this for him? Why aren’t you doing your duty as a friend and a commissar, and wrapping this up in a bow for him? I mean, impeccably? No stone unturned? Why aren’t you doing that for him?’

‘I executed the bastard who–’

‘Just get out of the way, Blenner. I’ll deal with this.’

‘It doesn’t need to be dealt with,’ said Blenner petulantly. ‘I have a full report. Meryn was a witness to it. There’s nothing to–’

‘I’ll deal with it, I said. My report, my case.’

‘Just a fething minute, lady!’ Blenner yelled. ‘You weren’t even here!’

‘Exactly. Officio Prefectus procedural provision four hundred and fifty-six slash eleven. Independent review of any serious or capital crime. Don’t you even know the fething rulebook? Why am I not surprised? This can’t be your case because you were an active in the incident. Summary powers only cover so far. Get out, Blenner. My case, as of right now.’

She stopped suddenly, and looked around.

‘What was that?’ she asked.

‘What was what?’

‘That noise? Outside? It sounded like a bone-saw.’

The people had found her. Yoncy looked up.

Eight figures stood around her in the gloomy rubble. Men. Soldiers. Masks hid their faces.

‘Go away!’ she said. ‘Go away!’

She hid her head in her hands so she couldn’t see them.

The Sons of Sek raised their weapons and stepped closer.

‘This way, maybe?’ said Elodie hopefully.

‘She did like to play out in the open ground,’ said Juniper, hurrying along behind them. ‘Out the back, in the waste-ground. She’d play hide and seek, sometimes.’

‘We’ll take a look,’ said Domor. He adjusted his augmetics to the lower light. Behind the billet, away from the lamps of the yard, it was pitch dark, and the ground was loose and uneven.

They stopped and peered around.

‘Check that way,’ Domor said. ‘Juniper, go along to the latrines. I’ll look over here.’

They separated and stumbled into the darkness. Elodie moved along the rear of the billet buildings, groping her way. She called Yoncy’s name a few times, but there was something about the darkness that made her reluctant to speak. It was cold, and thick like oil. A fathomless shadow.

A bad shadow.

Elodie heard something. Movement, or a faint voice, perhaps. She turned, and started to move in the direction it had come from.

‘Yoncy?’ There was someone up ahead.

‘Yoncy, are you there?’

Something ran out of the darkness and flung itself into her. The impact almost knocked Elodie down.

‘Yoncy?’

Yoncy was clinging to her legs, sobbing.

‘It’s all right,’ said Elodie, trying to prise her free and get her on her feet. ‘It’s all right, Yoncy. We’ve found you now.’

‘They’ve found me too,’ wailed Yoncy.

Elodie froze. She looked up and saw the big, black shapes stepping out of the night around them.

‘Oh, the Emperor protect me,’ she gasped. ‘By the g-grace of the Throne, and all l-light that shines from Terra…’

She could smell the dirt-stink of them, the unwashed filth, the dried blood. Their masks leered at her like remembered nightmares.

‘Ver voi mortoi,’ said the leader of the Sons. He had drawn a blade.

The darkness grew thicker. It swallowed Elodie up. She clung to the child, but the darkness ate her whole. A swooning red-rush, then blackout.

There was a shrill, screeching noise, like a power saw ripping through hard bone in a surgeon’s theatre.

Blood flew everywhere.

Domor heard the noise. He started to run.

‘Alarm! Alarm!’ he yelled. It was a weapon of some sort. He’d heard a weapon. Insurgents. The fething enemy was among them.

He ran towards the spot where he’d last seen Elodie. Ghosts were moving out from the yard in response to his yells. Lamps were bobbing and flashing.

‘Secure the perimeter!’ Domor shouted to them. Fazekiel and Blenner shoved their way through the men to join him.

‘Shoggy?’

‘There’s someone back here, Luna,’ Domor yelled, running forwards. ‘Get fire-teams to the rear fast! I think it’s a raid!’

Fazekiel grabbed him. ‘Wait! Wait, Shoggy! What’s that?’

The lamps and torch packs were illuminating something in the ­rubble dead ahead of them. Two bodies, twisted together.

Everyone came to a halt.

‘Holy Throne…’ whispered Domor.

Elodie lay on the ground, her body and arms curled protectively around Yoncy. The two of them were soaked in blood.

Around them, every scrap and stone and brick and rock was dripping with gore. Steam rose from it in the night chill. Domor had seen shells detonate among squads of men. It had looked like this.

As if half a dozen or more men had been torn to shreds by some immense and violent force.

Blenner gagged and turned aside to retch. Domor and Fazekiel ­stumbled to the bodies. The Ghosts looked on, bewildered.

There were body parts everywhere, scraps of flesh and bone, chunks of shredded uniform, pieces of weaponry. Fazekiel crouched beside Elodie and Yoncy. As she touched them, her hands grew slick with blood.

‘They’re alive,’ she called out, her voice hoarse with horror. ‘They’re unconscious but they’re alive.’

‘What the feth did this?’ asked Domor.

The western end of Turnabout Lane was carpeted with bodies. Many had been felled by the Tanith marksmen during the first advance, the rest had been mown down in the two desperate pushes that had followed. Sons of Sek lay twisted and sprawled on the open roadway and the narrow pavements, piled up in places, smoke rising from clothes punctured by las-shots. Enough blood was running in the downslope gutters to make a clear gurgling sound. Smoke draped the air like gauze.

‘Movement at the head of the road,’ Larkin voxed.

‘Copy, Larks,’ Criid acknowledged. Her company and Obel’s had the top end of Millgate covered. They were dug in, but that wasn’t saying much. Street fighting was luck as much as craft, and the old mill area was a warren.

She glanced at Varl.

‘You honestly think they’re stupid enough to try again?’ Varl asked. ‘We cut them to ribbons. Three times.’

‘I don’t think stupidity has anything to do with it,’ Criid replied. ‘They want to come through, so they’re going to keep trying.’

Obel ran across and slid into cover beside them.

‘We’ve got a six-street section covered, backyards and breezeways too,’ he said. ‘Any wider, and we’ll be spread too thin.’

Criid nodded.

‘Rawne’s pushing units up to the right of us. The Helixids are supposed to have the left.’

‘I haven’t seen any Helixids,’ said Varl dubiously. ‘We’re supposed to be the invisible ones.’

‘Check it out,’ Criid told him. ‘Get a vox-man on it. If the Helixids aren’t in position, I want to know fast.’

Varl nodded, and dodged back to the street corner, head down.

Criid heard a plunk. A second later, a section of pavement high up Turnabout Lane blew up in a ball of flames. More, rapid plunks. Explosions turned into the left side of the street, blowing out the facade of one of the mill houses. Masonry tumbled down.

‘Mortar fire,’ Criid cursed. The shells were dropping thick and fast, and creeping towards her line. Incendiary shells. Flames were already beginning to lick into the mill houses and habs of the street.

‘Larkin!’ she voxed. ‘Fall back to me. All marksmen fall back!’

She heard a brief yelp of acknowledgement over the link.

‘Feth this,’ Criid said to Obel. ‘Infantry didn’t work, so they’re trying to burn us out.’

‘We’ll have to fall back,’ said Obel. ‘I dunno, Vallet Yard, around there?’

That would mean giving up about seventy metres of territory. But the shells were falling fast. She could barely hear herself think.

‘Contact!’ a trooper yelled from nearby.

Criid poked her head up. Down the lane, through the billowing flames, she could see silhouettes scurrying forwards, low and quick.

‘Hold them off!’ she yelled.

The Ghosts around her, huddled into cover, began shooting down the lane into the fire. Almost at once, she heard sustained gunfire kicking off in the streets parallel to her.

‘A Company to command!’ she called into her microbead. ‘Rawne, receiving?’

‘Go, Criid.’

‘They’re coming again. Laying down fire-shells and advancing behind them. A whole lot of the bastards.’

‘Understood.’

‘I need that support. At least two companies, preferably four. I need holding strength to come in via Vallet Yard and secure Hockspur Lane and Darppan Street.’

‘Stand by.’

‘Do you copy, Rawne? I’m not fething around.’

‘Stand by.’

Rawne pulled his microbead off and looked at Zhukova. She was so out of breath she was bent double, her hands planted on her thighs.

‘Tell me again,’ he said.

‘They’re coming through the scrapped boats,’ she said. She straightened up. ‘Significant strength.’

‘You’re sure?’

‘Mkoll’s sure.’

‘Good enough,’ said Rawne.

‘Look,’ said Zhukova, ‘they’re not going to come through, they’re already in there.’

Rawne looked at Oysten.

‘Tell Pasha to hold the highway, but be ready to spare me as many bodies as she can. Half her strength, if possible.’

Oysten nodded.

‘What about Criid?’ asked Ludd. ‘What about here?’

‘Take C Company, Ludd – back her up.’

‘One company?’

‘If Zhukova’s right, one company is all I can spare.’

Ludd looked at him, pinched and fierce.

‘The Emperor protects, Nahum. Go put the fear of the Throne in them.’

‘Sir,’ Ludd nodded, and beckoned Caober to follow him.

‘The other companies with me,’ said Rawne. ‘We’re going to cross the highway behind Pasha’s position, and defend the east end of the scrap boats. Mkdask, get your men moving and lead the way.’

‘Sir?’

Oysten was pointing to the microbead in Rawne’s hand. It was emitting a piping squeak. He put it back in his ear.

‘Rawne, go.’

‘Eli, it’s Varl! The fething Helixid–’

‘Say again, Varl.’

‘They’re falling back! The mortar fire’s hit them hard, and they’re falling back fast. The left flank’s open all the way from Penthes Street north to Turnabout.’

Rawne grimaced. Everyone was looking at him.

‘Acknowledged, Varl. Stand by.’

He looked at the officers around him.

‘Change of plan,’ he said. ‘B Company with me. We’re going after Mkdask. Vivvo, lead the rest to the left and cover Criid’s arse at the Penthes Street junction. Don’t just stand there, move!’

Rawne strode into the narrow street, B Company assembling around him.

‘Double time, straight silver,’ he instructed. ‘If you thought street fighting in an old mill quarter was tight fun, get ready to have your minds blown.’

He looked at Zhukova.

‘Lead us back to Mkoll.’

She nodded.

‘How many men did he have with him when you left him?’ Rawne asked.

‘Men?’ she asked. ‘Major, he was on his own.’

Here’s where it starts to get interesting, Mkoll thought.

The first few to reach him were forward scouts. He picked them off with his knife, one by one, as they came through the dank guts of the rusted boats. But the main force was on their heels, and it had become necessary to ditch the subtle approach.

He crouched below a metal railing thick with lichen and wet weed, and used a row of heavy tool chests for cover. He started pushing shots at anything that stirred on the deck of the agriboat and its neighbours. He saw Sons of Sek attempting to haul themselves through rotted hatches, and blew them back inside. Head shots, throat shots. He heard shouting and cursing from the hulls below him. Las-fire started to kick back in his direction. It shattered the chipped windows of the drive house, dented the corroded metal of the engine house wall and spanked off the metal tool chests.

Mkoll crawled clear. He ran along a jingling companionway bridge, ducked into fresh cover, and leaned over to fire multiple shots down the throat of a through-deck hatch. He heard bodies fall as they were blown off rusty ladders.

He got up again, swung over the rail and jumped onto an inspection-­way that ran the length of the agriboat. A figure in yellow combat gear was clambering up through one of the ladder-ways ahead. He fired from the hip, knocking the man sideways. The Son of Sek fell six metres into the bottom of an empty catch hold.

Mkoll swerved, and cut laterally across the boat. A man rose through a deck hatch in front of him, and Mkoll landed a hard kick in his masked face as he jumped over man and hatch together. The Son jerked backwards, his head bouncing off the back of the hatch ring, and he fell, senseless, knocking men off the ladder beneath him.

Las-fire ripped across the boat, a few shots, then a flurry. Sons of Sek had climbed on top of the engine housing, and were firing at him from cover.

He ducked, and crawled into the shelter of a hoist mounting. He changed clips fast. From his position, he could see the road line and the barricade. Ghosts were moving up from Pasha’s position. He estimated they would be in the hulks in six or seven minutes. Were they just responding to the gunfire flashes or had Zhukova got through? Did the Ghosts even know what they were about to meet head on?

More shots poured at him. He got down, took aim, and dropped two Sons of Sek off the roof of the engine house. He checked his musette bag. Four grenades. He took them out and started to crawl.

He reached a hatch, listened and heard movement below. He tossed a grenade in, and then kicked the open hatch shut to maxi­mise concussion. The dull blast thumped through the deck under him. He crossed, head low, almost on his hands and knees, and reached a vent chute that aired the lower decks. He set a long fuse to the next grenade and rolled it down the chute. He was at the next hatch when he heard the deadened bang of the blast. Thin smoke was issuing from the vent grilles in the deck behind him.

He slung a grenade into the next hatch and kicked the cover down, repeating the drill. The hatch flapped like a chattering mouth with the force of the blast from beneath.

How long now? Five minutes? Could he keep them busy for five more minutes? He remembered being a dead man, waking up dead, a ghost, on the Armaduke after the accident, with no memory and no sense of self, just an urge to protect and defend. A one man war. Time for that again. Time for that same single-minded fury and drive. Whatever it took, the Emperor protects.

What had that thing said to him? The man-but-not-man, in the machine space of the ship? ‘Ver voi mortek!’ You are death.

Mkoll had picked up the language on Gereon. It had been essential to survival.

Gunfire chopped at him. He felt a las-bolt crease his leg, a searing pain. Sons of Sek were rushing him from a service hatch.

He shot the first two, point-blank, then swung the butt of his gun up to greet the face of the third, poleaxing him so hard the Arch­enemy soldier’s feet left the ground and he almost somersaulted. The fourth got a bayonet stab in the forehead. Mkoll hadn’t fixed his war blade, but he lunged the rifle with a perfect bayonet-stab thrust and the muzzle cracked the enemy’s skull.

More in the doorway. He leaned back and fired, full auto, sweeping. Las-rounds speckled the metalwork either side of the hatch, took the hatch off its hinges and ripped through the Sons of Sek in the doorway.

One man war. Last stand. Time was running out, running out too fast for him to stop it.

He saw more yellow-clad warriors coming at him, coming from all sides. They were pouring out of every hatch of the agriboat in their dozens, hundreds.

‘Ger tar Mortek!’ Mkoll yelled. ‘Ger tar Mortek!’

I am death. I am death.

Some of them faltered, stunned by his words, the unexpected threat of their own barbarian tongue.

He cut them down.

Time was running out. His ammo was running out.

He was almost done, but they were still coming, more and more of them rushing him from all sides.

‘I am death!’ Mkoll screamed, and proved it until his shots ran dry, and his hands and warknife ran wet with blood.