by Dan Abnett
Blood fountained from Juba Klaye’s chest as he was spun hard and wrenched off his feet by the impact of a high-calibre round. He fell heavily, half smothered by mud. With his concentration brutally severed, the psyker was powerless to prevent the storm from fading.
Almost lying on his back, eyes shielded against the dying lightning with one upraised hand, Culcis reached out for the vox with the other.
‘Major’ – he began, hoping desperately that Regara was listening.
XIII
Villiers lowered the rifle. His hands were shaking with a potent cocktail of fear and adrenaline. He had missed the kill-shot, so difficult in the scything crosswind and the rain, but at least the wyrd was down.
The emergence of the lightning storm had terrified him, his commanding officer enlightening him on the dangers psykers presented to good, honest soldiering men, and their propensity for summoning sorcery from beyond the veil.
Being here, on this battlefield; Villiers had no desire to worsen it.
Relief and exhaustion at a deed committed in fear and loathing made him sag. The rifle fell loose in his grasp. He felt small, weak, but at least he was alive. For now.
He desperately wanted to remain in the trench and not move, to bury his head until the storm had passed and the killing was done.
Stupidly, he wondered if Second Lieutenant Fenk would let him. Fenk seemed like a good man, someone who understood that in order to survive the horrors of war hunkering down was sometimes necessary. In those fleeting seconds between taking the shot and lowering his weapon, Villiers believed that, he believed Fenk might spare them both, until he felt the hands clamp around his neck.
He struggled, but by the time he realised what was happening and just how terribly wrong he had been, his already bleak world darkened further until only oblivion remained.
Fenk dropped the lifeless body of Private Villiers into the mud. As the ‘grey host’ faded, his appetites partially sated, he crouched to catch his breath.
The psyker lived, and while he did, Fenk knew he wasn’t safe. He had seen Lieutenant Culcis remove the wyrd’s shackles. Unfettered, the psyker’s mind would be free to wander. Perhaps Fenk was already too late and Culcis knew of Fenk’s deviancy. Perhaps he was, even now, voxing Major Regara to inform him of the killer cloistered within the Volpone ranks? Perhaps…
Fenk stopped himself, realising he had to master his paranoia. He had to assume that all was as it had been, that he remained undiscovered.
There was only one way to be certain of that fact, though.
Drawing his pistol, Fenk climbed from the trench and made for the lieutenant’s position. In the killing fields, his men were dying, gunned down by exultant Blood Pact. Fenk never even spared them a thought.
XIV
Juba Klaye was alive. Barely. Culcis and Drado supported the psyker under either arm and dragged him bodily from the east wall. The rest of the platoon, what was left of it at least, followed alongside in a ragged order.
It was over. Without the psyker there was nothing the Volpone could do against the bludvayne. A few had tried shooting the witch, but their ammunition was absorbed into the black cloud and reduced to ash or ions before it could do any harm. Everything that touched it or passed through it broke down, even missiles and shells. She was apparently impervious to every weapon in the Volpone arsenal.
Knowing if they tried to fight on there would be nothing left of his men but their charred skeletons, Lieutenant Culcis ordered the retreat.
Two sharp clarion blasts echoed mournfully across the field, and platoon banners were dipped. Too many Volpone had died needlessly already.
They weren’t the only ones.
Exposed, the scions were dying too. Caught by the bludvayne cloud, they had lost a lot of men in a matter of seconds without reply. Realising, like Culcis, that the situation was no longer tenable, several had already turned and were falling back. Some had reached as far as the Volpone vanguard and were exchanging fire with the Blood Pact alongside Lieutenant Culcis’s men. Despite their mauling and the proximity of death, they battled like lions.
Culcis caught the eye of one, a thickset trooper with hard eyes and the blood of his comrades splashed across his armour. He nodded to the lieutenant, and a fleeting moment of fatalistic camaraderie passed between them.
Taking advantage of the Imperial army’s sudden weakness, the Blood Pact advanced in force. The Death Brigade barked harsh orders to the lesser troops, taking command of blocks of men. The Jaegan grenadiers returned, roaming at the fringes of the killing fields, sowing confusion and mass death with their incendiaries before getting in close with their knives. Culcis briefly saw one grappling with one of the scions, before their struggle took them over the edge of a firing pit and both men disappeared from view.
Before the Blood Pact orders had been to engage, trammel and ultimately defend the wall; now, they were bent on annihilation.
Caught in the midst of extracting what was left of his strike squads, Ardal attempted to balance the scales with suppressing fire from the Valkyrie. Las bursts and the roaring muzzle flare of heavy bolters lit up the night, ploughing a bloody furrow through the swiftly massing Archenemy ranks.
Half running, half turning and loosing snapshots into the darkness, hoping the flesh-eating fog that was spreading across the field wouldn’t reach them, Culcis saw the gunship come in low. Screaming turbines kicked out a dense engine wash with a crushing downforce that warred against the tempest. Culcis could smell blood on it and felt katabatic winds buffet his body like fists, but saw no discernible effect on the dark cloud.
It was as if the essence of the bludvayne’s conjuration existed outside of natural laws. Even a psychically manifested flame would bend to the will of the elements, but the cloud simply reached. Tendrils of vapour snaked loose from the mass, uncoiling like the tentacles of some undersea leviathan, and began to wrap themselves around the Valkyrie.
Seeing the danger, Ardal wrenched a last man aboard and issued the signal for his pilot to climb. Quickly. Engines burning, the gunship achieved vertical loft, rising into natural darkness. The rain, wisps of smoke unfurling from where the acid-touch of the cloud had grazed it, hammered its burning fuselage.
Not only the Valkyrie bore the indelible scars of its brush with primordial evil, but so did Ardal. His agonised scream at the cloud’s barest caress was the last human sound Culcis heard from the gunship as it disappeared into the night and the storm.
‘We have to move, sir,’ said Drado.
Culcis, who had been almost transfixed by the sight of the escaping Valkyrie, was slowing. The corporal’s urging brought the lieutenant’s mind back to the present task. Survival.
Every Volpone and Scion on the field still alive was falling back. No-man’s-land was a wretched mess of wire, pits and uneven ground. Footing was treacherous. An ankle sprain, a ligament tear or a bone fracture – all now meant death. Hauling a dead weight, even between two, carried a similar sentence.
‘Do you think you can carry him alone, sir?’ asked Drado.
Culcis nodded, realising what his aide was suggesting. He noticed some of the First Sons led by the hard-faced scion he had seen earlier had also fallen in with the corporal.
‘Throne preserve you, corporal,’ said Culcis, and nodded to the thickset scion, before taking the psyker’s full weight. Juba Klaye could barely stagger, and he was mumbling incoherently. His robes were stained with arterial blood, and there was no medic in sight. Order was on the verge of collapsing. If refuge could be found and the psyker stabilised then maybe… If Klaye was the only weapon they had against the bludvayne then Culcis had to try to save the man.
Field surgery was beyond him, but Culcis thought he might at least be able to staunch the bleeding and bring Klaye around.
‘And you, sir,’ Drado replied. ‘It has been my honour.’
‘And mine
, corporal.’
Drado nodded curtly, then hollered to a clutch of Volpone, who stopped running to attend to his orders. Together with the few scions, they formed a ragged battle line, turned and ran straight for the Blood Pact.
Culcis headed for the nearest trench line where he knew the snaking network would bring him back into friendly territory. Regara had been warned of the danger, but would be marching to link up with the remnants of Culcis’s group.
Barely breathing, Klaye was a leaden weight when Culcis dumped him into the trench. He risked further injury to the psyker, but the fire exchange above would probably kill them both where they stood if he delayed. Culcis leapt down after him. Pausing only to check the man’s vitals, which were weak, he heaved Klaye back onto his shoulder, got his bearings and began to trudge through the mud. It was thick and sucked at his boots, but at least it was an obstacle he could face and overcome.
Reaching an intersection that had partly collapsed from a mortar burst, Culcis pulled up sharply. Blood Pact had overrun their position. He could hear them somewhere above, distant but still close enough for him to be able to discern their debased language. He knew a few words and phrases, but was far from fluent. Words, someone had told him once, were dangerous. Even those that seem innocuous bring damnation upon the ignorant or the reckless.
The Blood Pact was hunting.
Drado and the others could be dead, captured or worse. Klaye was flitting in and out of consciousness. Culcis was on his own.
Setting the psyker down, Culcis went ahead to check the junction.
The grunting cadence of Sanguinary tribesmen grew louder.
Culcis drew his pistol.
XV
Something moved through the fog, silhouetted against the fiery radiance of a distant explosion. A veil of heat lay upon the battlefield that turned the incessant rain into mist and transformed the earth underfoot into a mire.
Silently, a shadow slid in through the vapour and the blood-drenched mud.
At first it had the aspect of a wraith, an incorporeal revenant possessed of vague anthropomorphism. It drifted against the hot breeze.
As it drew closer, its maw widened and opened, revealing alabaster white teeth that curved into a grin. Its projected malice was as palpable as a gunshot, the many lives it had ended resonating in a stir of psychic echoes from the chasmal black pits of its eyes.
Unable to satiate its hunger, it would kill again.
Its latest victim cowered before it, and as the shadow of its stultifying presence exerted itself, every last light faded and Juba Klaye knew his own light was about to be snuffed out.
At the faintest disturbance, Culcis turned, expecting to be faced with the grim aspect of an iron grotesque. Instead, he saw a Volpone officer crouching beside Klaye’s body. A second lieutenant. His hand was over the psyker’s face, gently closing his staring eyes.
Bertram Fenk. Culcis recalled the man he had dragged from the trench earlier, and lowered his pistol.
Fenk slowly shook his head, but Culcis had already guessed the psyker was dead. He tried to shake off another impression, something just beyond his reach. It was the reason he had turned around, a sense of something, a threat.
Above the two Volpone, the Blood Pact roaming near the trench line grew louder still, and Culcis threw his body against the inner wall as he realised what he must have reacted to.
Fenk followed his example, though neither spoke.
Their uniforms begrimed with filth, the two Volpone tried to blend into their surroundings.
Rain beat down.
Guttural laughter cut the breeze with dagger sharpness as the Blood Pact caught sight of Klaye’s dead form slumped in the ditch. Neither cultist knew Klaye’s true nature; all they saw was a slain enemy soldier, slowly sinking into the earth.
Culcis remained still, his eyes on Fenk. His fingers tightened around the grip of his pistol.
Three distinct voices, three men. Higher ground gave them a second advantage. Culcis willed Fenk to be still, but he need not have concerned himself. The second lieutenant was like a statue, a bayonet clenched in his right hand.
If the Blood Pact chose to enter the trench, they would have to kill them and risk others hearing.
Culcis caught Fenk’s gaze and tapped the sheath of his own knife with his left index finger.
Make it quick, he mouthed.
Fenk gave a near imperceptible nod, and looked to follow the Blood Pact.
More guttural exchanges filtered down to them through the storm. There was a moment of silence, charged by the tension in the air.
Culcis dared not move further. He could smell the stink of wet copper, hot and heady on the breeze. It would take two seconds to draw his knife, another two to throw it. He had to trust Fenk to kill the second man, which left the third between them. If they could bear him down into the trench, drown him in the mud before he could shout a warning…
After a few more seconds, the Blood Pact moved on, drawn by distant gunfire.
Culcis remained rigid for a minute afterwards before finally letting himself breathe again. His heart was hammering. He approached Fenk, who had also begun to move, the bayonet held low and easy in his grasp.
As they closed, Culcis looked into the other man’s eyes, and for a fleeting moment he saw a cold and pitiless void, a serpent, not a man, staring back at him.
The errant flash of light against Fenk’s blade brought an image Culcis had dismissed as mild, psychological trauma back to the forefront of his mind. He was still trudging towards Fenk. They were no more than a few metres apart.
‘Second lieutenant,’ Culcis began, proffering his open hand.
For a second, it looked like Fenk still had his knife.
A heavy burst of las-fire interrupted the reunion, as Culcis arched his neck at the sudden actinic flash above them.
Voices, Imperial voices speaking Gothic, resolved on the air.
Harsh, magnesium stab-lights penetrated the gloom.
Regara’s bellowed orders rose above the storm. Volpone war cries rang out as the Imperium reclaimed the line. Something dark and formidable sped across the clouds, lighting up the edge of the battlefield Culcis could see with thunderous lascannon bursts.
‘Seems we live to fight another day, Second Lieutenant Fenk.’
Culcis and Fenk were scarcely a stride apart.
He noticed the knife was sheathed again, and Fenk had lost his viper’s gaze and smiled warmly instead.
‘To serve Emperor and Throne,’ he replied, ‘for Volpone glory.’
‘For Volpone glory,’ uttered Culcis, his thoughts suddenly pellucid.
The image in his mind, the one that had made him turn with its sudden potency and insistence, was an indigo aquila, spattered with blood. A common enough sight, he supposed, except it perfectly matched the clasp around Fenk’s neck. Culcis saw something else, too: first a wooden box, its contents a closely guarded secret, and second the look in Fenk’s eyes as if he had just shared the same revelation.
In the darkness and the driving rain before the trench was filled with light and the sound of allied voices, Culcis could not be certain that Fenk’s eyes did not narrow.
In the end, the Volpone 50th did not contest the ruins of Titus beyond the night when Tempestor Prime Ardal and the First Sons arrived through the storm.
We were to leave Lotun and its bitter memories behind. Although Titus will live on in Volpone history as an infamous defeat, the intelligence gathered during the conflict concerning the so-called ‘bludvayne’, and the potential threat this cabal presented to the Crusade, garnered the attention of Warmaster Macaroth.
Records describe how a contingent of Throne-sworn Angels, the vaunted Silver Guard, made landfall and razed Titus to ash.
The part Tempestor Prime Ardal played in the needless and profligate death of three hundred
and sixteen Volpone soldiers, as well as the clandestine deployment of an alpha-class psyker, remains a matter of quiet conjecture.
Needless to say, I personally, as well as the Volpone officers who survived the conflict, have a different view and know too well what is owed to us by the First Sons. It is an account we intend to collect in full.
– Personal journal, Major Vasquez Regara,
‘Royal’ Volpone 50th
Over the course of the Gaunt’s Ghosts series, I have enjoyed examining life behind the scenes of the regiment: what downtime is like, what day-to-day feels like in the various camps and accommodations, what it’s like to be a child, or a wife, or any other part of the non-com entourage. Gaunt is in charge of a large travelling ‘family’, a large proportion of which is civilian and supporting, rather than military assets. They’re his responsibility, too, but sometimes the structures of Imperial and military law do not comfortably apply to the close, intimate society of the entourage, and do not adequately protect it.
My interest in this ‘domestic’ side of Guard life probably began back in The Guns of Tanith, with the notorious Lijah Cuu storyline, and has been revisited through Dalin and Yoncy, and most recently, Captain Daur’s bride, Elodie. The ‘back-room life’ is now a major theme, and will become, in several different ways, a crucial part of the next two novels, The Warmaster and Anarch.
This powerful and quietly shocking story by Nik Vincent delves into that part of regimental existence. It is firmly set in current Ghosts continuity (beginning six days after the end of Salvation’s Reach and, literally, on the final page of the first story in this volume, ‘Family’). It is one of the other stories in this volume that presents vital and important connective tissue between the last novel and the storylines of the next. It’s a hard story because the subject matter is so gruelling, but I think Nik’s written it superbly.
Once again, pay attention and take notes. This story will have significant repercussions in The Warmaster…
