[Gaunt's Ghosts 02] - Ghostmaker

by Dan Abnett

  His mind blinked, two or three times, flashing images of the outside which roared and wailed. Then it coalesced and he saw.

  He saw the storm, the magnitude of the storm. He cursed himself. He should have realised that he had been too weak to control such a conjuration. He had intended a storm, of course, as a diversion to cover his more subtle, complex illusions. But the stress had robbed him of consciousness, and he had lost control.

  He had unleashed a warp-storm, a catastrophic force that now raged entirely beyond his ability to command, far from covering the humans and allow them in close enough for the illusions to work them to his cause, he had all but blasted them away.

  His head lolled back. His final deed had been a failure. He had exhausted his entire power, burned his runes, extinguished some of his guide spirits, and all for this. Kaela Mensha Khaine! An elemental force of destruction that fell, unselective, upon all. It roared about him, like a war-hound he had spent months training, only to see it go feral.

  There were a few faint spats of light, the traces of a handful of humans who had been close enough to become wrapped in his illusions. But far from enough.

  Lord Eon Kull, Old One, warlock, wept. He had tried. And he had failed.

  Mkoll had been stumbling through the torrential rain for fifteen or more minutes before he stopped dead in his tracks, shook himself in amazement, and then hurled himself into the cover of a dripping, exposed tree-root.

  It was not possible. It was… some kind of madness.

  He look up at the stormy sky, shuddered and hugged himself. All along, he had suspected the storm was not natural in origin. Now he knew it was playing with his mind.

  This was Monthax, Monthax, he told himself, over and over. Not Tanith.

  Then why had he spent the last twenty minutes making his way home to the farmstead he shared with his wife and sons in the nal-groves above Heban?

  Shock pounded in his veins. It was like losing Eiloni all over again, though he knew she was dead of canth-fever these last ten, fifteen years. It was like losing Tanith again, losing his sons.

  He had been so convinced he was hurrying back through a summer storm from the high-pasturing cuchlain herds, so convinced he had a wife and a farm and a family and a livelihood to return to. But in fact he had been scrambling his way back towards the ruin and the massed forces of the enemy.

  How had his mind been so robbed of truth? What witchcraft was at work?

  He pulled himself to his feet and made off again, now in the opposite direction, towards what he prayed were friendly lines.

  On Lilith’s orders, a sizable force of men began pushing back into the storm-choked jungles. Her bodyguard formed around her, following a roughly equal number of Tanith Ghosts under Gaunt, the regrouped remnants of the first, Second and Seventh platoons. The wounded had been sent on to the lines.

  Gilbear had protested, both at the advance and the co-operation of the Tanith, but Lilith had made no great efforts to disguise her contempt for him when she denied his objections. If her fears were realised, this was Gaunt’s business as much as hers. Besides, the Ghosts had already been in there, and had a taste of what to expect, for all the vaunted veteran skills of the Volpone’s elite Tenth Brigade, she wanted a serious fighting force, with enough numbers that losses wouldn’t dent. Sixty men, or thereabouts, half dedicated heavy infantry, ordered to guard her by the general, half the best stealth fighters in the Guard, led by their own charismatic commissar.

  A reasonable insurgency force, she reckoned. Still, she had had her astropath signal back for reinforcements. Thoth had been reluctant until she had pulled rank and suggested the magnitude of the threat. Now five hundred Bluebloods under Marshal Ruas and three hundred Roane Deepers under Major Alef and Commissar Jaharn were moving up in their wake, an hour or so behind them. The astropath was now dead from the effort of sending and receiving through the storm. They left his body where it lay.

  It seemed bloody-minded to push a unit back into the storm zone when all other Imperials had retreated out of it, and it seemed to compound that error by sending in fresh numbers after them. But Lilith knew that, storm or no storm, Chaos host or no Chaos host, the key to victory on Monthax lay in the heart of that zone. And the focus of her own, personal inquisition too, perhaps.

  Lerod led the spearhead, lie had volunteered, brimming with an enthusiasm that Gaunt found faintly alarming. Yael, one of Lerod’s men from the Seventh, had told of Lerod’s miraculous escape from the enemy gunners on the creek bank, and explained that Lerod now thought his life charmed.

  Gaunt wondered for a moment. He’d seen that sort of luck-flare before, where a man thought himself invulnerable. The consequences could be appalling. But he’d rather have Lerod laying his “luck” at the front than cursing them lower down the file.

  Besides, Lerod was a fine soldier. One of the best, the most level-headed.

  And more than that… All of the Ghosts, Corbec included, seemed somehow eager to get back into the deadly storm. It was as if something called to them. Gaunt had seldom seen them so highly motivated.

  And then, in a pause, he realised that he, too, was more than willing to turn back into the fatal onslaught besetting the dense jungle and creeks. He couldn’t account for it. It alarmed him.

  Lilith’s brigade slogged in through the creek-ways and water-runs, beaten by the rain and wind. The muddy ground became steep slopes, the low rises of upland rain forests above the flooded swamps.

  Lilith sent pairs of men forward to secure lines. Corbec and a couple of Ghosts and Bluebloods clambered forward with Lerod up the muddy escarpments, playing out cables that they secured to trees and stumps along the way. Lightning berated them, exploding the tallest trees round about.

  The brigade moved forward, following the twin lines of cable the advance had played out.

  High on a slope, Corbec nailed the end of his cable line to a stump, and then set watch with his party as the main force struggled up behind. One of the Bluebloods looked at him, smiling.

  “Culcis?”

  “Colonel Corbec!”

  Corbec slapped the younger man on the armoured shoulder, and the other Bluebloods eyed this camaraderie with suspicion.

  “Where was it — Nacedon?”

  “In the farm. I owe you my life, colonel.”

  Corbec guffawed. “I remember you fought as hard as the next that night, Culcis!”

  The young man grinned. Rainwater dripping down his face from his helmet lip.

  “So you made the Tenth, huh?” Corbec asked, settling in next to the Blueblood and taking aim into the blistering dark.

  “Your medic wrote well of me, and your leader, Gaunt, mentioned me in dispatches. Then I got a lucky break on Vandamaar and won a medal.”

  “So you’re veteran now? One of the Blueblood elite? Best of the best, and all that?”

  Culcis chuckled. “We’re all just soldiers, sir.”

  The twin lines of advance progressed slowly up the slopes along the cable lines, weaving between the heavy trees and saturated foliage. The ground was like watered honey, loose and fluid, coming up to their shins. At least there were no insects abroad in the onslaught.

  They moved on in fire-team formation, following a deep valley into the jungle uplands and the heart of the roiling storm. Lilith called a halt, to get a fix on their position. She was just raising her data-slate when a searing light flashed and they were deafened.

  Lightning had struck a tree twenty paces back, exploding it in a welter of wooden shrapnel. Two Bluebloods had been atomised by electrical arcs and another two, along with one of the Tanith, had been flayed alive by the wood chips.

  Major Gilbear slammed into Lilith as he stumbled up the slope. “We must retreat, inquisitor! This is madness!”

  “This is necessary, major,” she corrected, and returned her gaze to the slate. Gaunt was by her side. They compared data, pelting rain pattering off the screens of their respective devices.

  “There’s your Thi
rd platoon,” she said.

  “As you had it last fixed before the storm came down,” corrected Gaunt. “They were in the eye of the storm then, but can you get a true fix on their location now? Or on ours?”

  Lilith cursed silently. Gaunt was right. They were cut off from orbital locator signals, and the storm was playing merry hell with all their finders and codiciers. All they had to work on was a memory or location and terrain. And none of that seemed reliable.

  Gaunt drew her to one side, out of Gilbear’s earshot. “My men are the best scouts in the Guard, but they’re coming up blind. If this storm is psyker like you say, it’s foxing us. I’m not sure we can find our way to the last recorded position of the Third.”

  “And so you suggest?”

  “I don’t know,” Gaunt said, meeting her grim eyes. “But if we move much further in, I’m not sure we’ll be able to find our way back…”

  “Sir! Commissar!” It was Raglon, the vox-officer. He scrambled back down the muddy slope to Gaunt and held out his headset.

  “Third, sir! I’ve got them! Indistinct, broken, but it’s Major Rawne and the others all right. I copy micro-bead traffic, trooper to trooper. Sounds like they’re in a fight.”

  Gaunt took the headset and listened. “Can you get a fix?”

  Raglon shook his head. “The storm’s fething everything, sir. I can’t get the vox signals to jibe with anything. It’s like… like they’re nowhere and everywhere.”

  “Nonsense!” Gilbear barked, snatching the headset from Gaunt and adjusting the dials on Raglon’s caster set. After a moment, he gave up with a curse.

  “Try sending to them,” Gaunt told Raglon. “Repeat signal, wide-beam.”

  “Message?” Raglon asked.

  “Gaunt to Tanith Third platoon. Give status and position signal.”

  Raglon dialled it in. “Nothing sir, repeating… Wait! A response! Sir, it reads: ‘Position: Elector’s Palace, Tanith Magna. Rearguard’.”

  “What?” Gaunt grabbed the headset again. “Rawne! Rawne! Respond!”

  The third were holed up at a bend in the hallway, las-rounds blistering back and forth from a ferocious firefight. Over his micro-bead, Rawne could hear Gaunt’s signal.

  “Try them again,” he urged Wheln, who was fumbling with the dials on the vox-caster backpack.

  Rawne hated this Gaunt already, this new commander brought from oil-world to lead them. Where was he? What did he care for Tanith?

  Wheln interrupted Rawne’s thoughts. “Gaunt signals, sir! He says to withdraw and pull out. Instructs us to rally with him at the following co-ordinates.”

  Rawne eyed the print out and threw it aside. It made no sense.

  Gaunt was ordering them to abandon the palace and Tanith Magna itself.

  “Give me that!” he shouted to Wheln, taking the headset.

  “Sir?” Ragon held out his headset to Gaunt. “I don’t understand…” Gaunt took it and listened.

  “…won’t give up now… won’t let Tanith fall! Damn you, Gaunt, if you think we’ll give up on the planet now!” Gaunt lowered his hand, letting the headset droop. “Crazy,” Gaunt murmured. “He’s crazy…”

  Mkoll shouldered on through the rain. He focussed his mind on reality and shut up the yearnings in his head. Home, the lines… he would make it…

  Las-shots scorched at his heels, exploding trees. He glanced backwards and began to run.

  An enemy warrior loomed ahead of him and Mkoll blasted with one of his pistols, taking the head clean off.

  All around him, in the rain, Chaos warriors were closing.

  He ducked into cover as laser blasts puffed up leaf-mould and weed. Two shots to the left. Two to the right. A hit, and body falling and twisting in the grime. Then Mkoll was up and running again.

  A shot clipped his head and he went down, full length, into the mud. He tried to rise, but his body was slow and dazed. The mud sucked at him.

  A powerful hand took him by the shoulder and yanked him over, the mud sucking as it kissed him goodbye.

  Mkoll looked up into the face of Death, the raddled face of an enemy trooper. He shot him point blank and then rose, cutting the knees off the next foe who advanced with a double spit of las-fire from his guns.

  Mkoll started shooting wholesale, picking off shadows that loomed between the trees through the storm, and fired on him.

  Another shot kissed his flank and burned a scar that would never leave him. Mkoll dropped to one knee, firing with both pistols. He killed left and right. Maximum firepower. Then he realised his captured laspistol was coughing inert gas. He threw it aside.

  As he went to reload his issue pistol, a huge form barrelled into him and knocked him down. The Chaos trooper had his bayonet raised to rip Mkoll’s life out of his body.

  They wrestled in the mud for a few moments, until Mkoll was able to use his trained skill to roll the other off him.

  The sprawling warrior threw his bayonet and it impaled Mkoll’s left knee with a clack of metal on bone and a ripping of tendons. Mkoll faltered and fell.

  the enemy was back on him, hands outstretched and a murderous howl on his sutured lips.

  They fell back, thrashing, fighting. Mkoll couldn’t reach the Tanith blade in his waistband, but he found the enemy bayonet sticking out of his knee and wrenched it free.

  Cursing his life and mourning Eiloni, Mkoll plunged the dagger two, three, four times into the side of his aggressor’s neck, until the bestial warrior shuddered and died.

  Mkoll pulled himself free of the corpse, blood jetting from his knee with a force too great for the downpour to diminish.

  He stumbled on, armed only with the enemy knife now. He was getting weaker as he lost blood. The foot of his wounded leg was hot with blood, yet cool. His knee didn’t work properly. More fire came his way, cutting the limbs of trees and bursting ripe fruit-flowers.

  A deflecting laser round took him in the small of the back, and dropped him, face down, in the mire. Stunned, he writhed, no breath coming, mud sucking into his nose and mouth.

  Something made him pull himself up. Something, some urge.

  Eiloni. She stood over him, as pale and as beautiful as she had been at twenty.

  “What are you doing down there? What will the boys do for supper? Husband?”

  She was gone as quickly as she had appeared, but Mkoll was already on his feet when the first of the Chaos spawn closed in on him. On his feet and seared with passion.

  Despite the burn, agonising, on his back, Mkoll took the first down with his hands, breaking his neck and ribs and crushing his skull. Capturing the lasgun, he turned, setting it to full auto and cutting down a wave of Chaos infantry as they pressed in on his heels.

  He was still shooting, blindly into the night, his lasgun’s power cell almost exhausted and three dozen slain foe about him, when Corbec found him.

  Gaunt established a picket perimeter in the sloping forest to guard them as the field medics treated Mkoll. The storm continued to lacerate the sky above and sway the trees with the sheering force of wind and nearly horizontal rain.

  Lilith, Gilbear and Gaunt stood by as Trooper Lesp opened his field narthecium and dressed Mkoll’s many cuts and las-burns. The scout’s head was bandaged and his pierced knee had been strapped.

  “He’s a tough old dog,” Corbec murmured to Gaunt, sidling up to the commissar.

  “He never ceases to impress me,” Gaunt whispered back.

  Lilith looked over at them, a question in her face. Gaunt knew what it was: how had this man survived?

  “We’re wasting time,” Gilbear said abruptly. “What are we doing?”

  Gaunt turned on him, angry, but Lilith stepped between them.

  “Major Gilbear. Are you still my bodyguard commander?”

  “Yes, lady.”

  “No new duties have fallen to you since you were given that task?”

  “No, lady.”

  “Then shut up and leave this to the commissar and myself, if you don’t
mind.”

  Gilbear swung around and made off to check the pickets.

  Corbec poked his tongue out at the major’s back and made a vulgar noise. Gaunt was about to reprimand him when he saw Lilith was laughing.

  “He’s a pompous ass,” Lilith said.

  “Indeed,” the commissar nodded.

  “I meant no disrespect, inquisitor,” Corbec said hurriedly. “Yes, you did,” Lilith smiled.

  “Well, yes, but not really,” Corbec stammered.

  “Check the picket, colonel, if you please,” Gaunt said quietly.

  “But the major’s gone to—”

  “And you trust him to do a good job?” Gaunt asked.

  “Not on his current form, no,” Corbec grinned, saluting Gaunt and making an over-lavish bow to the inquisitor before hurrying off.

  “You’ll have to excuse my second-in-command. His style of leadership is casual and spirited.”

  “But it works?” asked Lilith.

  “Yes, but… yes. Corbec is the soundest officer I’ve ever worked with. The men love him.”

  “I can see why. He has charisma, courage. Just the right amount of healthy disrespect. Colm is a very attractive man.”

  Gaunt paused and looked off into the night where Corbec had vanished.

  “He is?”

  “Oh yes. Trust me on that.” Lilith turned her attention back to Mkoll. “So, we have your best scout, beaten and shot to hell, come to us out of the maelstrom?”

  “Yes.” Gaunt cleared his throat. “Mkoll’s the best I have, all in all. Looks like he’s been through fething hell and back.”

  “Feth… nice word. Good weight. I’ll be using that if you don’t mind.”

  Gaunt was puzzled. “Mind? I—”

  “What does it mean?”

  Gaunt suddenly got a very clear and vivid mental picture of what it literally meant. He and Lilith were acting it out. “I — I’m not sure…”