[Gaunt's Ghosts 10] - The Armour of Contempt

by Dan Abnett

  The rain provoked the first emotional reaction they’d seen from Dacre and his men. The resistance fighters gazed up into the pelt, or took off their hats to bask in the streaming water.

  “First rain this area’s seen in two years,” Dacre said, brushing the running droplets off his face with a calloused hand.

  Gaunt nodded. He knew it was the invasion that had triggered the storm. You didn’t dump such a catastrophic amount of mass and energy into an atmosphere without the weather patterns flying apart. He remembered Balhaut, Fortis Binary and, most recently, Ancreon Sextus. It wasn’t just the heat exchange of weapons use, it was ship drives in low orbit, gravity generators, overpressure and atmospheric insertions. This rainstorm in Lowensa Province was due, in part, to the null fields of capital ships squeezing the air over the ocean at Gereon’s tropics, to the global warming of orbital barrage, to the rapid air displacement of a hundred thousand drop ships.

  They squelched onwards, water pouring off their weatherproofs and capes. Dacre led them down the line of a valley, and then took them across a stream swollen by the sudden rain. They moved upland after that, to a crest, and then sharply down, into a wet hinterland of dead and partially fallen trees. The rain showed no sign of letting up. Cascades of flash-flood water boiled down the slopes around them.

  They arrived at a platform made of dressed stone. It extended out into the bend of a suddenly fast-flowing river. There was no explanation for the platform except that it might have once been the foundation of a building no longer in existence.

  Dacre bade them all sit down.

  “What now?” Gaunt asked.

  “We wait,” said Dacre.

  Gaunt moved through the settling figures of his section and found Beltayn.

  “Can you raise Cantible?” he asked.

  Beltayn shook his head.

  “Keep trying. Try and get a signal to Rawne that we’re all right.”

  “I will, sir.”

  Gaunt sat down and drew his cloak around his throat against the fierce rain. It was cold and clammy.

  He looked out across the platform, and the surging, dark river, at the trees. Rain seasons usually brought life back to woodland and forest, but here it was too late. This forest had perished and dried, and the rain was simply washing the corpse.

  * * * * *

  II

  Time began to lose its meaning. Every wrist chron in the section started to misbehave during the night, all except, as Gaunt believed, his own: the battered, junk timepiece he’d brought through Gereon once already. It continued to tick steadily when everyone else’s was stopping, or spinning their hands like the vanes of an air-mill in a gale.

  The storm subsided in the slow hours before dawn. For a long time, in the enclosing dark, the only sounds were the gurgle of the swollen river and the plick-plack of water dripping from the dead trees. The sky became pale before sunrise, and the light turned grey and turgid. When true daylight came, it suddenly became darker. The sky was a lowering roof of gunmetal clouds, knotted like brain tissue.

  A hand touched Gaunt’s arm and he started, realising he had fallen asleep. He’d been dreaming. He’d been in a house at the lonely edge of some world. Tanith pipes had been playing. Tona Criid had come up to him from some dim hallway and punched his chest. Her face had been stained with tears. “You’re dead! You’re dead! You’re dead!” she wailed, beating at him. He’d tried to embrace her and calm her, but she’d pulled away.

  There had been a repetitive clicking. Gaunt had looked around and seen Viktor Hark sitting by a window, racking the slide of a bolt pistol.

  “Look, I’m sorry,” Hark had said, rising to his feet. “I really am, but you’re dead and I can’t let this go on. You’re killing my men with your ghosts.” Hark had raised the bolt pistol towards Gaunt’s face and—

  The hand touched his arm. He woke with a snap.

  It was Eszrah.

  The Nihtgane was standing over him, his reynbow tucked under his arm. Gaunt noticed immediately that the weapon was loaded.

  “Hwat seyathee?” he whispered.

  “Gonn thesshaff,” Eszrah whispered.

  Gaunt looked around and rose to his feet from his cross-legged stance. He reached for his weapon. Dacre and the resistance fighters had vanished. The Ghosts of his section sat hunched and slumbering on the platform around them.

  “Feth!” Gaunt hissed.

  “Seyathee feth?” Eszrah whispered back, sweeping the woods on the far side of the river with his reynbow.

  “Yes I fething well do seyathee feth!” Gaunt spat. “Oan?”

  “Already awake,” Mkoll replied, materialising suddenly at Gaunt’s elbow. “Dacre’s gone.”

  “No, really?”

  Mkoll gazed at Gaunt steadily to diffuse the colonel-commissar’s anger and sarcasm.

  “I was awake,” he said, “although they didn’t realise it. They were talking. I listened. They were worried about us. They don’t trust us, and the storm overnight spooked them.”

  “Why?”

  “Oh, come on. You remember what it was like here. We mistrusted everything. They haven’t seen rain in two years, so that freaked them out. The whole idea of liberation—”

  “What about it?”

  “Well, I don’t think they believe in it. It’s what they’ve been praying for. Now it’s here.

  “Now it’s here what?”

  “It’s too good to be true.” Mkoll looked up at Gaunt. That’s what they were saying. Anyway, they left, about an hour ago.”

  “Why didn’t you wake me?”

  “Because we’ve been under observation ever since.”

  “We have?”

  Mkoll nodded. “Besides, you could use the sleep.”

  “Who’s watching us?” Gaunt asked.

  “Dunno,” said Mkoll, “but they’re out there.” He nodded in the direction of the trees on the far bank of the swirling, peaty river. “They’re safe enough.”

  “How can you tell?”

  Mkoll shrugged. “We’re not dead yet.”

  “Get everybody up,” Gaunt said.

  Mkoll and Eszrah roused the section. They woke and stood up, groaning and bemused. Larkin roused so suddenly, his long-las fell on the ground with a clatter that echoed through the dripping glade.

  “Sorry, sir,” he said. “Bad dream.”

  Gaunt smiled. He knew about such things. His own recent dream still hadn’t left his memory. He was especially locked on the image of Tona Criid, thumping at him. She’d had a dream too, he remembered, on the transport just before they’d come in. She’d dreamed that he had died. Gaunt believed in the power of dreams. They’d spoken the truth to him more than once. He’d fobbed Tona off, but now it troubled him. On Gereon, last time out, she’d dreamed so accurately of Lucien Wilder, Throne bless his memory. She’d dreamed of Lucien Wilder long before she’d known any man of that name actually existed.

  “What was your dream, Larks?” Gaunt asked.

  “Cuu,” Larkin said. They both laughed, for although Cuu was a true nightmare, he was a nightmare long gone.

  “Sir,” Mkoll whispered, touching Gaunt’s arm.

  Gaunt turned to look.

  A skinny figure had emerged from the treeline on the far bank of the river, stumping forwards through the silt and mire. He was tall and scruffy, rake thin from malnourishment.

  Gaunt knew him at once.

  Gaunt hurried to the end of the platform and leapt down into the gurgling river with a splash. He waded across to the far side and came up the muddy shore to greet the man standing there.

  “Gereon resists,” he said.

  The skeletal man nodded. “So it does, Ibram. Shit, it’s good to see you.”

  They embraced. Although drawn and haggard, there was no mistaking the man.

  His name was Gerome Landerson.

  III

  “You came back,” said Landerson.

  “I swore I would.”

  “And you brought…” Landers
on didn’t finish the sentence. He made a nod with his head. He didn’t mean the combat section on the platform behind Gaunt. He meant the invasion forces rolling into Gereon half the world away.

  “I swore that too. As well as I could.”

  Landerson smiled. His skin was like old leather, and a poor diet had lost him several teeth. “When I first met you, Ibram, you broke my heart. I thought I was going to meet salvation itself, and you told me you had just come to silence some rogue high brass.”

  “I remember.”

  “But you were salvation. Eventually. You’ve got them on the back foot.”

  “It’s only been a couple of days.”

  “We have lines of information,” Landerson said. Two, maybe three main strongholds have fallen. The south is yours. Unholy fights are going on at Brovisia, Phatima, Zarcus, K’ethdrac, a dozen other zones. We know the Plenipotentiary fled the planet two hours before the first drop, presumably forewarned by pre-translation patterning. And the power’s gone.”

  “What?”

  “In all the outlying regions. No wolves, no glyfs, no sorcelment barriers. It’s like they’ve sucked every shred of power they have back into the main fights.”

  Gaunt nodded. “It’s a start. But this isn’t settled by a long way. Even given the military strength Crusade Command has unloaded on Gereon, we could be weeks, months from liberation. Maybe even longer. We don’t know what the enemy has up its sleeve.”

  “I understand.”

  “I need you to know that. Even if the end is coming, there may be a lot more days of pain to come.”

  “I understand, Ibram.”

  “That’s why we needed to broker proper contact with the resistance as quickly as possible, to speed the process.”

  Landerson spread his hands. “Well, here we are. I guess we should group up and start sharing data.”

  “That’d be good.”

  “Look,” Landerson said, “I want you to know… I stand here in simple gratitude. What you’ve done for me. What you’ve done for my world. I—”

  Gaunt held up a hand. “Don’t, Landerson. I know what you want to say, and I don’t deserve it. I fought for Gereon while I was here, and I fought for it when I got back. I don’t know what it was I said that made High Command decide to resource this liberation and commit to it. Maybe it had nothing to do with me at all. Maybe they just decided it was time.”

  “I don’t—”

  “Whatever the reason, I’m glad it’s happening and I believe it’s a crime that it has taken so long to begin this effort. If anybody should be thanked for ensuring Gereon’s survival, it’s men like you.”

  Gaunt’s section crossed the river, and Landerson brought his own team of cell fighters out of the trees to meet them. They were all in as poor a state as Landerson himself. Gaunt actually knew three of the men from his time with the resistance, but he had difficulty recognising them.

  Landerson and his men greeted Cirk, and Larkin, Brostin, Beltayn, Criid and Mkoll, who had all been members of that original mission team. Landerson had been resistance even back then, and had guided them loyally through the entire hunt for Sturm. Effectively stranded on Gereon after the mission’s completion, Gaunt and his team had put all their efforts into building the resistance to wage an underground war against the forces of the Occupation. Together, they had taken risks and faced horrors that were difficult to frame into words. Gaunt was a career soldier, and had served on some of the bloodiest battlefields of the Crusade. In terms of personal danger, privation and extremity, none of them compared to his time in the resistance war for Gereon.

  But they had made their mark. Under the leadership of Landerson and the Ghosts, the resistance had become a strong, supple thing that defied the occupying forces. They had built a pact with the partisans of the Untill, Eszrah’s people, and learned to use both the Nihtganes’ stealth talents and their impenetrable territories. Mkoll, Bonin and Mkvenner had schooled them in covert actions. Varl, Rawne and Criid had taught the resistance fighters, many of them civilians, how to live and operate as soldiers. Beltayn had engineered their communication network. Feygor had taught them the tricks of explosives, Brostin had taught them how to use fire, and Larkin had taught them how to shoot. Gaunt had instructed them in fluid principles of leadership. They had personally destroyed eighteen garrisons, seven power stations, thirty-six communication hubs, seven airfields and a large number of daemonic machineries, including several of the abominable jehgenesh. And the Plenipotentiary that Landerson had reported fleeing Gereon just prior to the invasion was not the same being who had held that office when Gaunt’s mission team had first arrived. Assassination was not beyond them.

  As they travelled together into the deep woodlands, under the grey sky, the Ghosts and the resistance fighters said little to one another. Both, for different reasons, were used to being silent.

  Landerson walked with Gaunt.

  “I’m sorry about all the precautions,” he said.

  “You don’t have to be sorry. I understand.”

  “We have to be wary, even now. These last few months, the Archenemy’s become more skilful at infiltration. Face changers. Mind swaps. Remote psychic control. We’ve had losses. Just last week they cremated an entire cell in Edrian, deep in the Untill. Eighty dead, most of them Nihtgane families.”

  Gaunt shook his head.

  “It happens that way,” said Landerson. “But you remember Carook?”

  “Carook the Butcher?”

  “The very same.”

  “Feth, the time we spent trying to sanction him. The ambush outside Phatima. The bombs in his palace.”

  Landerson nodded. “We got him. Last month. Finally. We got word he was going to observe worship at the ahenum in Fruslind, but an insider source, a palace servant, leaked he was going to stop en route and oversee some Son training at the Peshpal Garrison. Diggerson took a four-man team in three days before. Hid themselves behind the rostrum, and laid low for sixty hours. When Carook sat down to observe the display, they sprung him.”

  “Clean kill?” Gaunt asked.

  “We were low on firearms anyway, but Peshpal was warded, so nothing metal could be slipped in. Diggerson and his men tunnelled under the wire, naked. They were armed with slivers of glass. I don’t believe it was a clean kill, Ibram. But it was a definite kill.”

  “And a long time coming. I’d like to shake Digger-son by the hand.”

  “So would I. None of them came back. Carook’s life-ward slaughtered them.”

  Gaunt didn’t reply. Such was the desperate nature of resistance war. Missions, especially those aimed to assassinate high-ranking monsters, were regularly suicide.

  “Diggerson was a good man,” Landerson said. “He would have liked today. Anyway, I’m sorry we strung you along.”

  “I understand.”

  “We were observing you.”

  “I know. Since Cayfer.”

  “Since before that, my friend. The coded exchanges with Navy Intelligence seemed solid enough, but we had to be certain. The code said it was you that was coming, to establish contact, but it would say that, wouldn’t it?”

  “So you sent Dacre?”

  “I sent Dacre, so I could look at you, and make sure you were on the level, and make sure you weren’t being followed. You’ll forgive me for being over careful.”

  “Rawne will be sad to hear Diggerson’s dead,” Gaunt said. “They worked well together.”

  “Rawne’s here, is he?”

  “Back at Cantible.”

  Landerson nodded, as if this small fact made his world a better place. He asked after the others, Bonin and Varl and Feygor.

  “Murt Feygor’s the only one who hasn’t come back with me. We lost him, on Ancreon Sextus.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” said Landerson. “He was a good man.”

  “You know,” said Gaunt, “he really wasn’t. He and Rawne were black-hearted devils when I first met them. Gereon changed them both. I still take a
pause to think that Rawne’s a friend of mine now. My best friend, to be honest. Time was, we’d have happily killed one another. I still hate him and he still hates me, but the necessity of Gereon bound us tight. Feygor too. Not a model soldier, but after Gereon, I’d have sold my soul for him and vice versa. He died well, Landerson. He died in combat, at the front. He died like Diggerson did, selfless, heroic.”

  “Murt Feygor?” Landerson laughed.

  “I will count him amongst the heroes I’ve known,” said Gaunt. “Thank the God-Emperor, I now don’t have fingers enough. Now, you tell me about Ven.”

  “Ven?”

  “You had Dacre show me his tomb.”

  Landerson nodded. They were slipping their way down a deep slope, surrounded by tall, dark trees and thickets of lichen brush. Gaunt didn’t have to be told that they were entering the edges of the Untill.

  “Ven was a giant,” Landerson said, reaching out to steady Gaunt as they slithered down the rain-mushed earth. “I mean, peerless. We owe him as much as we owe the Nihtgane. Shit, it always seemed like he was a Nihtgane. I’ve never known a man move so quiet and kill so hard. Before you’d even left us, he was making a reputation for himself, you remember. The Archenemy wanted him. After you went, he came into his own. He wasn’t shy. He knew that word-of-mouth was as important a weapon as blowing shit up. He started to—”

  “To what?”

  “Take credit. Spread the myth. Scare the enemy. He was supernatural, unkillable. A ghost in the woods. An avenging phantom. He became a figurehead for the resistance. Just like you told him to.”

  “I did,” said Gaunt, remembering his final conversation with Mkvenner.

  “Ven did you proud, Ibram. He did what you told him to do. He became a legend. Everything the resistance did was attributed to Ven. Sabotage, assassinations, bombings. He became their bogeyman. When they got him, it was our blackest day.”

  “How did they get him?”

  Landerson shook his head. “It was one of those things. He was operating out of the deep Untill with a hand-picked team of Nihtgane. They called themselves the Nalsheen. That mean anything to you?”