by Dan Abnett
The two words were an absolute imperative. Saultern could no more disobey them than arrest Mistral’s rotation. When his full consciousness caught up to his actions, he was marching up the slope of the first hill, his company behind him, Chimeras on either side, the tanks of Colonel Benneger’s 110th Armoured Regiment chewing up the terrain ahead. The wind battered him from the left, while a stronger wind, given a shape in cap and coat, stalked at his shoulder and held him to his course.
3. Yarrick
It was easy to despise Captain Saultern. It would have been too easy to dismiss him. I hadn’t expected the strength of my office to be needed so soon. Shoring up a quailing officer before the first shot had been fired was a bit much. The first shot could easily have been my own, putting down a coward. I’m not sure what made me pause long enough to think and look clearly. It might have been Saultern’s absurdity. I do know that what saved him in the end was his honesty. Whether he intended to speak as he did or not, he did not dissemble, and to speak that one word, no, to a commissar, took courage, even if it was of an unconscious kind.
Rasp wanted me to keep my eyes open at all times. To be a good political officer meant having a deep understanding of actions and consequences. So he taught, and so I believed. His views were not shared by all the members of our order. There were plenty whose approach began and ended with merciless disciplinarianism. Rasp, however, was a lord commissar. Achieving that exalted rank meant being more than a blunt instrument. Seroff and I were privileged to receive his wisdom. We were learning that being a commissar meant reading currents.
It meant seeing what was really before me, not what I expected to see.
So Saultern was still drawing breath, and, for the moment, behaving like a captain of the Imperial Guard. Was sparing him wise? I still had my doubts. He was convinced that he was unfit to lead. If he was correct, was I condemning troopers to a needless death by leaving them in the command of an incompetent? I was trusting my instinct, which was telling me that a man with so few illusions about himself was less likely to act stupidly than an officer with delusions of superiority or, Emperor save us, a belief in his own immortality.
I had made the decision. I would accept the responsibility for it and for its consequences. I would learn from what followed. That was the only way, Rasp said, to fulfil one’s duty, to become a commissar in the truest sense possible. Observe and learn. Observe and learn. The mantra spun through my head, a resolution and a comfort.
Observe and learn.
We crested the hill. Beyond it, the land dropped sharply until it was well below the level of the plain. We descended into a valley only a few kilometres wide. The two linked Vales of Lom were an oasis in Mistral’s desert of wind. Here, in these deep, sheltered declivities, the topsoil was not blown high into the atmosphere at the first hint of cultivation. Better still, rich nutrients carried on the winds for thousands of kilometres ran into the wall of the Carconne Mountains, and accumulated on the valley slopes. The vineyards had first been planted there twenty centuries ago, and the amasec they produced was the finest in the subsector. It was at least as big a factor in the Lom fortune as the family’s industrial holdings.
The wind diminished as we moved lower down, but suddenly became shrill. It keened. Then I realized I wasn’t hearing wind. Two of the tanks exploded ahead of me. The grey air was stained with the black teardrops of incoming heavy mortar shells.
My mantra changed.
Fight or die.
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The Fissure and A Ghost Return first published in the Black Library Live! 2013 Chapbook © 2013, Games Workshop Ltd. All rights reserved.
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