by Dan Abnett
The blast was dull and flat and rough, and filled the air with spinning tatters of debris and clouds of dust.
Coughing hard, Criid rose and looked around. Merrt’s attacker was half-visible through the smoke gusting out of the room. He’d taken the force of the mangling blast. The room’s door was stoved in. Merrt himself had been thrown back as far as the stairhead.
“Are you all right?” Criid called out, still coughing. Merrt nodded and began to pull himself up.
Voices were calling out from below. “Clear?” a voice was calling. “Clear?”
“Clear!” Merrt yelled back.
“Make way! Who’s up there?” the voice asked. Merrt and Criid realised it was Sobile. Sobile was on the stairs. He was coming up. His boots were thumping on the steps.
Merrt had no rifle.
Criid looked at Merrt, and then put his foot on his own lasrifle, which was lying on the ground, and slid it as fiercely as he could across the landing to the Tanith.
Merrt grabbed it.
“Report? Who’s taken this building?” Sobile demanded as he came up the final flight to join them with his pistol drawn. Criid looked from side to side and snatched up the nearest fallen lasrifle.
“Report!” said Sobile. He looked at Criid. “You clear this?”
“Yes, commissar.”
“What’s above?”
Criid shook his head. Sobile shouted to the gaggle of troopers coming after him to sweep the upper floors. He looked at Criid again. “Don’t just stand there!” he snapped.
The unit was moving again in less than half an hour, back into the blackness of the night-afflicted city. A Krassian division was pushing in left of their position. Their gunfire and flamers lit them up like a river of lava in the darkness. Aircraft swooped in overhead to support them. Criid heard the distant voice of a titan.
They appeared to be fast approaching some kind of inner city wall or second line of defences. Criid glimpsed huge bulwarks dotted with gunports, and flamer towers that periodically dressed the face of the cliff-like wall with curtains of sheet flame. High towers and hab blocks loomed massively behind the inner wall.
“Halt!” Kexie ordered, and made them crouch down along a bombsite street while the area ahead was scoped. From where they were crouched, Criid could see parts of the defence wall above the nearby ruins. The scene was lit up by intense firelight, the ruins in the way just fragile silhouettes.
They waited. Criid dabbed at his bruised face. His whole head, face and collar bones ached and throbbed from the frenzied beating he’d taken. His jaw, mouth and one eye were swollen, and his lips were split and sore. Blood from grazes and abrasions had dried on his skin. It felt as if he’d torn a muscle in his neck in his efforts to twist his face away from the fists.
He replayed the fight in his head several times. Each time he ran through it, he hoped that the faces of the enemy soldiers would diminish in their horror, fading through repetition and familiarity. They refused to. He’d met the enemy at last, and it had scarred his mind.
The squealing pig-thing with the heavy gun was worst of all. If he hadn’t dropped to the ground when Caffran gave the warning, he—
Criid thought about that. Caffran wasn’t with them. He was hundreds, maybe thousands of kilometres away. Yet it had been his voice, clear and distinct.
Hadn’t it?
Perhaps it was the blessing of the God-Emperor that allowed Caffran to watch over Criid. Criid didn’t object, but he wondered why Caffran? Why not his ma, or his real father?
“Rise up!” Sobile ordered, and the unit got up with a clatter of kit. “Ready to advance!”
They began moving forwards again. The fight ahead sounded loud, like the loudest fight they’d been drawn into yet. Criid ran his tongue around his teeth. Several felt loose.
“Hey,” said Merrt, falling in step beside him. He held out his lasrifle.
“You gave me yours,” he said.
“Oh,” said Criid. They quickly exchanged weapons. Merrt looked his up and down.
“That is yours?” he asked Criid.
“Yeah. What’s the matter?”
“Nothing.”
Kexie was shouting. The unit was starting to run forward, clearing the jagged ruins and coming out onto the approaches of the huge defensive bulwark.
It was immense, bigger than Criid had even imagined. The flame light was so bright, it was like a grounded sun. Furious blizzards of gunfire billowed in the air under the great wall. The streets and transit ways of the outer districts met the wall, both at ground level, and by way of giant road bridges that crossed the trench in front of the wall, and entered the wall through huge, defended gates. Hundreds of thousands of Imperial Guardsmen were sweeping forwards in fast flowing rivers of bodies along the roads and out across the bridges to assault the wall. AT 137 went with them.
HUNTERS
I
“What’s this one called?” Zweil asked.
“Syerte,” Eszrah replied. The old ayatani sniffed, nodded and wrote the word down on his flap of parchment.
“And this one? This one here?”
Eszrah cocked his head and stared. Then he frowned and shrugged.
“Is that a ‘no’ or a ‘not sure’?” Zweil asked.
Eszrah shrugged again.
“Well, far be it for me to condemn an entire genus of plant to eternal damnation,” said Zweil, “so I’ll play safe for now and describe it under ‘others’.”
Eszrah didn’t seem particularly bothered either way. Zweil scratched down a brief description of the dull, unimpressive plant in question, and then moved further along the overgrown ditch.
Tona Criid jogged up the curve of the parched field to join them. Cantible, still exhaling smoke into the glassy sky, lurked on the neighbouring hill. There was a general bustle of activity coming from the town: a distant clatter of armour, the hum of Valkyrie engines, a very occasional gunshot.
Noa Vadim, the Ghost assigned to watch the ayatani out in the open, saluted as she approached. She looked down at the priest in the tangled field trench, the Nihtgane standing over him at the edge of the field, watching him diligently.
“What’s he doing?” she asked.
“Don’t ask,” replied Vadim. He yawned expansively.
“Tired?” she asked. He shrugged. “You should have taken the rest while you could,” she said. Some of the regiment had been given a few hours’ sleep overnight.
“I slept all right,” Vadim replied. Thought I wouldn’t, bedding down in a place like that…” Vadim shot a sour look in the direction of Cantible. “But, no. I slept all right. It was just the dreams.”
Criid nodded. “The dreams’ll get you here, every time. Keep saying your prayers. So… what is he doing?”
“I’m not entirely sure. When I asked, he said something about a ‘systematic benediction’, and left it at that.”
“I’ve come to get Eszrah.”
Vadim shrugged again. “You’ll have to take it up with him,” he said.
Criid slid down the dusty bank into the weed-choked ditch. It was part of the old field system, an agricultural divider, but the neglect and abuse Gereon’s most recent masters had imposed upon the land had allowed it to run wild, and then wither. She picked her way over to where the priest was bending.
“This one?” Zweil called.
“Syerte,” replied Eszrah from the bank.
“Ah, yes. That’s come up before, hasn’t it. And here, this one, this one down here, this ugly fellow?”
“Unkynde,” the nightwalker said.
“You sure now?” Zweil asked.
“Unkynde.”
“Unkynde… khhaous?”
Eszrah nodded. Zweil scratched down a few words on his long flap of parchment, and then stopped to pull up the offending plant vigorously and toss the scraps up onto the edge of the dead field. The recently pulled remains of other plants already littered the field rim.
“Father,” said Criid. “Your errand here
seems rather botanical.”
“This world’s been a long time without the ministry of the Throne,” Zweil said. “It needs a damn good blessing, every last soul and beetle and pebble and wildflower. The tall fellow is acquainting me with the local flora, so that I can be quite specific in my prayers.”
“You’re cataloguing the flowers you have to bless?”
“Flowers, plants… we’ll get to trees this afternoon, I hope.”
“This afternoon?”
Zweil looked at her. “You think it might take longer?”
“I think it’s possible you haven’t undertaken a comprehensive bio-survey of a planet’s indigenous plant life before,” she said.
He held up his flap of parchment. “So, what you’re saying is, I’ll need a bigger piece of paper?”
“That is what I’m saying,” she replied.
He turned back to the weeds around his legs. “You see, Tona, what I don’t want to do is bless something unworthy of the Emperor’s grace. I’ve only got a limited amount of spirituality inside me, you see, so I don’t want to waste any. The Archenemy, damn his hide, the Archenemy brought plants with him, you see. Crops and spores and other alien things.”
“Yes, I know,” said Criid.
“They’ve infested the whole place. Parched the soil. Choked off the local crops. Filthy things. The tall fellow’s helping me to identify those and root them out so I don’t go blessing them by mistake.”
“Are you going to weed the entire planet?” she asked.
“Don’t be stupid, woman, I’m not an idiot. It’s just if I see them, they offend me and I pluck them out. The tall fellow, he calls them… what is it you call them?”
“Unkynde,” said Eszrah.
“Unkynde. That’s it. Means sort of alien. Not of this place. Not from round here. An outsider. A—”
“I understand,” said Criid. “Father, I came here because the colonel-commissar needs Eszrah for a while.”
“But I’m still working here.”
“I know, but it’s important.”
“Well, I’m not going to get to trees this afternoon at all now, am I?”
“It’s a shame, certainly,” she agreed. She looked up at the Nihtgane. “Gaunt,” she said. Without a word or another sign of notice, Eszrah turned and headed down the field towards the town.
Zweil puffed out a tired, disappointed breath and sat down on the bank of the ditch. He pulled up his skirts and fiddled with his large army-issue boots.
“My boots are too big,” he said. Then he complained, What am I going to do until the tall fellow gets back?”
Criid hesitated. “Father, there was something.”
Zweil looked her in the eye sharply. “Dalin,” he said. “I hadn’t forgotten. You know, I mention his name at all the sacred hours.”
“I think it’s me,” she said. “I need more than this morning’s regimental prayers.”
He took her by the hand and knelt her down amongst the weeds. “Here?” she asked.
“As good a place as any,” he replied. “He’s somewhere on this dirt, and so this dirt connects us. Mr Vadim?” Zweil held up his bony hand and gestured to Vadim to fetch the stole and rood and antiphonal that he had left on the edge of the ditch to go rooting in the weeds.
“Now then,” Zweil said, turning the pages of the old book. “The prayer of a mother, for her offspring, under the eyes of the God-Emperor…”
* * * * *
II
“Ears on,” Gaunt said as he strode into the middle of the group assembled in the town square. The senior officers came to attention.
“I’ll make this brief, because we’ve all got work waiting,” Gaunt said. “Item one, remind the men in your commands that daily shots are essential. Dorden tells me there were quite a few who forgot to report to him this morning for anti-ague. No excuses. Let’s get into a habit. Item two, Cantible’s going to be our operational base for the next few days at least. For our own security we need to move ahead with the search patterns. Street by street, hab by hab, thorough flush searches. I don’t want to find enemy scum holed up amongst us, and I certainly don’t want reprisal cells managing to stay hidden. Basements, cellars, attics. Got it?”
There was an affirmative chorus.
“Any sign of glyfs or wirewolves yet?” Gaunt asked.
“No, sir,” replied Mkoll.
“Well, that’s a part I don’t understand,” Gaunt said. “Anyway, remain vigilant. Anything strange, anything, vox it in. Make sure your men understand. Those are things they simply will not be ready for, or be able to deal with. That’s why we brought tanks.” He glanced politely at the Dev Hetra officer present, who made a respectful nod.
“Indigenous survivors?” Gaunt asked.
“We’ve found about two hundred and seventy humans who appear to have been enslaved townsfolk,” said Hark. All of them are seriously sick, malnourished, and implanted with a thing in their arms. What did you say that was called? Consented? Some refuse to talk, or are unable to talk. Those that can, affirm their allegiance to the Emperor and bless us for rescuing them.”
“Which could just be them saying what they think we want to hear,” said Faragut. “We will, of course, have to keep them interned. Envoys of the Inquisition will be arriving in the next few days.”
Gaunt frowned. He didn’t like it, but he understood that there was no other way.
“After examination by the Inquisition, and the appropriate medical treatments, they have every reason to expect to be freed,” Faragut said. “They may be exactly what they seem to be. Slaves. There is, after all, a precedent,” he added pointedly, “for Imperial subjects surviving on this world for some time without becoming tainted.”
“But we’ve only located two hundred odd?” asked Cirk.
“Two-seventy,” said Hark.
“Out of a population of what? Thirty thousand?”
“About that.”
“What in the name of the Throne happened to the rest of them?” Cirk asked.
“I doubt we will ever know,” replied Faragut. “Or want to know.”
“Item three,” Gaunt said, before the meeting lost its way, “we seem to have made initial contact, which was our primary objective, so I’ll be leaving this site shortly to pursue that. Mkoll will lead my escort detail. Is that drawn up?”
“Ready to go, sir,” Mkoll said.
“Good. In my absence, Major Rawne has the baton. Any questions?”
They set out on foot about an hour later, a section of thirty men along with Gaunt, Cirk, Faragut and Eszrah, and moved north. Their route followed a farm road up through the devastated agricultural zones of Lowensa Province in the direction of a smaller town called Vanvier.
The day was warm and still, the sun climbing slowly behind a blanket of hazy white. Deep, scraping, doom-laden sounds reached their ears as if from vast distances, suggesting they could hear echoes of the main conflicts across the continents, although Faragut dismissed this as wishful thinking and blamed a trick of the wind.
“There is no wind,” Larkin said to Brostin.
Another trick of the wind, perhaps, was the sizzling static crackles that blistered the air from time to time, and appeared to be associated with the glare of the sun.
The rolling landscape was shrivelled and dead. It had once been a lush arable region, similar to the part of the country around Ineuron Town where Cirk had grown up and where her family had owned agricultural land. Her own lands, already plundered and razed before she left them, probably resembled this now: a dust bowl, where only the roughest, coarsest grasses and vile, imported fungi still grew, where homesteads and lonely farms stood empty and dead, and the dry bones of livestock littered the cracked earth.
It was a distressing sight. Cirk said little as she walked along, but Gaunt could empathise with the grief she was hiding. It hadn’t been that long since he’d lived on this world, and it had been suffering then. The land, the climate, the plant and animal life had all begun
to suffer, as if diseased, and natural cycles had begun to fall apart. It was nothing compared to this. Gereon was no longer a place afflicted with the brutal early onset of a disease or an infection. This was the terminal phase of waste and corruption.
As they marched, Gaunt checked with Beltayn. The vox officer, using the new codes that Bonin had found, had finally managed to raise Daystar early that morning. Daystar was code for one of the few underground contacts the Navy had managed to establish prior to the liberation. Gaunt’s force had been meant to join up with them at the temple at Cantible. Plans had evidently changed.
“The resistance only survived by being as secretive as it could,” Cirk said. “Unlocking it may be slow going. Even though we’re not the enemy, getting them to let go of their secretive habits might be tough.”
“We’ll manage. It’s the task High Command has set for us, after all. It doesn’t matter how much hot metal we throw at the main theatres, we can’t properly take Gereon back until we open it up from the inside. For that to happen, the underground is vital.”
Cirk nodded, but it was a strange expression, as if she was trying to convince herself. Faragut, by her side, smiled. He looked as if he was about to say something.
“What is it?” Gaunt asked.
“Nothing, sir,” said Faragut.
Up ahead, Criid suddenly shouted, “Down! Off the road!”
The section dropped off the roadway immediately and took cover in the low roadside ditch. The land around was rolling flat, and covered with a thick expanse of pinkish grass that grew to the height of cereal crops.
Gaunt crawled along to Criid and Mkoll.
“What did you see?”
“Something out there in the grass, about half a kilometre off. Something big, prowling low.”
“What sort of something?” Gaunt asked.
“A big animal. A predator. Just a shape, really, too low in the vegetation for me to make it out. It was like it was stalking us. As if we were a herd of game.”
Mkoll and the other scouts in the section crept out to sweep. When they came back reporting no traces, Gaunt moved the section on again.
