[Gaunt's Ghosts 04] - Honour Guard

by Dan Abnett

  “Volunteers! Come on!” Kolea snapped. Hands went up all around. Kolea selected eight men and turned.

  “Wait!” said Dorden. He moved forward and checked the minor wounds on Kolea’s face and chest. “You’ll live. Let’s go—”

  “You’re coming?”

  Corbec was pretty much beloved by all, but he and the old doctor had a special bond. Dorden nodded. He turned to Trooper Rafflan, the vox-operator. “Signal the commissar. Tell him what we’re doing and where we’re going. Tell him to get a medic down here to man the aid-post and an officer to supervise.”

  Dorden gathered up a makeshift kit and hurried after the troopers moving out of the square.

  “You’re behind schedule, Gaunt,” said the clipped voice from the vox speaker. The lips of Lord General Lugo’s three-dimensional holographic image moved out of sync with his utterance. Lugo was speaking via vox-pictor from Imperial Base Command at Ansipar City, six hundred and forty kilometres south-west of the Doctrinopolis, and atmospherics were causing a communications lag.

  “Noted, sir. But with respect, we’re inside the Holy City four days ahead of your pre-assault strategy prediction.”

  Gaunt and the other officers present in the gloomy command tractor waited while the lag coped with the reply. Seated in harness restraints to the rear, astropaths mumbled and muttered. The hologram flickered and jumped, and then Lugo spoke again.

  “Quite so. I have already applauded the work done by Colonel Furst’s Pardus units in breaking you in.”

  “The Pardus have done excellent work,” Gaunt agreed smoothly. “But the colonel himself will tell you the Infardi put up little outer resistance. They didn’t want to meet our armour head on. They fell back into the Doctrinopolis where the density of the buildings would work to their advantage. It’s going street by street with the infantry now, and by necessity, it’s slow.”

  “Two days!” the vox crackled. “That was the estimate. Once you’d entered the walls of the Holy City, you said you’d need two days to retake and consolidate. Yet you’re not even near the Citadel!”

  Gaunt sighed. He glanced around at his fellow officers: Major Kleopas, the squat, plump, ageing second-in-command of the Pardus armour; Captain Herodas, the Pardus’ infantry liaison officer; Major Szabo of the Brevian Centennials. None of them looked comfortable.

  “We’re shelling the Citadel with mortars,” Szabo began, his hands in the patch-pockets of his mustard drab jacket.

  Herodas cut in. “That’s true. We’re getting medium firepower close to the Citadel. The heavies will pull in once the infantry have cleared the streets. Commissar Gaunt’s representation of the theatre is accurate. Getting into the city proved to be four days easier than you estimated. Getting through it is proving harder.”

  Gaunt shot the young Pardus captain an appreciative nod. A calm, united front was the only way to deal with tactically obsessed top brass-hole like Lugo.

  The holographic figure jerked and fizzled again. A phantom of green light and mist, Lord General Lugo stared out at them. “Let me tell you now that we are all but done here at Ansipar. The city is burning and the shrines are ours. My troops are rounding up the enemy stragglers for execution as we speak. Furthermore, Colonel Cerno reports his forces are within a day of taking Hylophan. Colonel Paquin raised the aquila above the royal palace at Hetshapsulis yesterday. Only the Doctrinopolis remains in enemy hands. I gave you the job of taking it because of your reputation, Gaunt. Was I wrong?”

  “It will be taken, lord general. Your faith was not misplaced.” A lag-pause. “When?”

  “I hope to begin full assault on the Capital by sundown. I will advise you of our progress.”

  “I see. Very well. The Emperor protects.” The four officers repeated the abjuration in a mumbled chorus as the hologram fizzled out. “Damn him,” Gaunt murmured.

  “He’s there to be damned,” Major Kleopas agreed. He pulled down one of the metal frame slouch-seats from the wall of the tractor hull, sat his rotund bulk down and scratched at the scar tissue around the augmetic implant that served as his left eye. Herodas went to fetch them all caffeine from the stove rack by the rear hatch.

  Gaunt took off his peaked and braided cap, set it on the edge of the chart display and tossed his leather gloves into it. He knew well what Kleopas meant. Lugo was new blood, one of the “New Minted” generals Warmaster Macaroth had brought with him when he superseded Slaydo and took command of the Sabbat Worlds Crusade almost six sidereal years before. Some, like the great Urienz, had proved themselves just as able as the Slaydo favourites they replaced. Others had proved only that they were book-learned tacticians with years of campaign in the war-libraries of Terra and none at the front line. Lord General Lugo was desperate to prove himself, Gaunt knew. He’d botched command of his first theatre, Oscillia IX, turning a sure-thing into a twenty-month debacle, and there were rumours that an enquiry was pending following his lightning raids on the hives of Karkariad. He needed a win, and a victor’s medal on his chest, and he needed them quickly before Macaroth decided he was dead weight.

  The liberation of Hagia was to have been given to Lord Militant General Bulledin, which was why Gaunt had gladly approved his Ghosts for the action. But at the last minute, presumably after much petitioning behind the scenes by Lugo’s faithful, Macaroth had replaced Bulledin and put Lugo in charge. Hagia was meant to be an easy win and Lugo wanted it.

  “What do we do?” asked Szabo as he took a cup from Herodas.

  “We do as we’re told,” Gaunt replied. “We take the Citadel. I’ll pull my men back out of Old Town and the Pardus can shell it to pieces. Clear us a path. Then we’ll storm the Citadel.”

  “That’s not how you want it to go, is it?” asked Kleopas. “There are still civilians in that district.”

  “There may be,” Gaunt conceded, “but you heard the lord general. He wants the Doctrinopolis taken in the next few days and he’ll make us scapegoats for any delay. War is war, gentlemen.”

  “I’ll make arrangements,” said Kleopas grimly. “Pardus armour will be rolling through Old Town before the afternoon is old.”

  There was a metallic rap at the outer hatch. A Tanith trooper on duty opened it and spoke to the figure outside as cool daylight streamed into the dim tactical chamber.

  “Sir?” the trooper called to Gaunt.

  Gaunt walked to the hatch and climbed down out of the massive armoured mobile command centre. The tractor, a barn-sized hull of armoured metal on four massive track sections, had been parked in a narrow street beside the basilica where the city’s refugees were now being housed. Gaunt could see rivers of them still issuing from the Old Town district, pouring into the massive building under the supervision of Ghost troopers.

  Milo was waiting for him, accompanied by a local girl in cream robes and a quartet of old, distinguished men in long gowns of austere blue silk.

  “You asked for me?” Gaunt said to Milo.

  The young Tanith nodded. “This is ayatani Kilosh, ayatani Gugai, ayatani Hilias and ayatani Winid,” he said, indicating the men.

  “Ayatani?” Gaunt asked.

  “Local priests, sir. Devotees of the saint. You asked me to find out about—”

  “I remember now. Thank you, Milo. Gentlemen. My trooper here has undoubtedly explained the sad news I bear. For the loss of Infareem Infardus, you have my commiserations.”

  “They are accepted with thanks, warrior,” ayatani Kilosh replied. He was a tall man, bald save for a silver goatee. His eyes were immeasurably weary.

  “I am Colonel-Commissar Ibram Gaunt, commander of the Tanith First and over-all commander of the action here at the Doctrinopolis. It is my wish that your high king, so miserably murdered by the arch-enemy, should receive every honour that is due to him.”

  “The boy has explained as much,” said Kilosh. Gaunt saw how Milo winced at the word “boy”. “We appreciate your efforts and your respect for our customs.”

  “Hagia is a holy world, father. Th
e honour of Saint Sabbat is one of the primary reasons for our crusade To retake her home-world is my chief concern. By honouring your customs, I do no more than honour the God-Emperor of Mankind himself.”

  “The Emperor protects,” the four priests echoed in concert.

  “So what must be done?”

  “Our king must be laid to rest in sanctified soil,” said Gugai. “And what counts as sanctified?”

  “There are a number of places. The Shrinehold of the Saint is the most holy, but here in the Doctrinopolis, the Citadel is the high hallowed ground.”

  Gaunt listened to Kilosh’s words and turned to look out past the jagged roofs of the Old Town towards the towering plateau of the inner Citadel. It was swathed in smoke, the white after-fog of heavy mortar shelling wisping away into the windy blue air.

  “We have just drawn plans to retake the Citadel, fathers. It is our imperative As soon as the way is clear, I will allow you through to perform your rites and lay your gracious ruler to rest.”

  The ayatani nodded as one.

  There, thought Gaunt. It’s decided for me. Hell take Lugo’s wishes, we have a need to recapture the Citadel now. Kloepas, Herodas and Szabo had emerged from the command tractor now and Gaunt waved them over. He signalled to his waiting vox-officer too.

  “We’re go for the Citadel,” Gaunt told the officers. “Get the armour ready. I want shelling to begin in an hour from now. Beltayn?”

  The Tanith vox-officer stepped up. “Signal the Tanith units in the Old Town area to withdraw. The word is given. Armour assault begins in an hour.”

  Trooper Beltayn nodded and hitched his vox-set around to his hip, coding in the orders for transmission.

  “That one’s your leader?” Sanian asked Milo as they waited in the shadow of the command tractor. “That’s him.”

  She studied Gaunt thoughtfully. “It is his way,” she said.

  “What?”

  “His way. It is his way and it suits him. Do you not have a way, Trooper Milo?”

  “I… I don’t know what you mean…”

  “By ‘Way’, the esholi means destined path, boy,” said ayatani Gugai, looming at Milo’s left side. Sanian bowed her head in respect. Milo turned to the old priest.

  Gugai was by far the most ancient of the four priests Sanian had found for him. His skin was wizened and deeply scored with innumerable lines. His eyes were clouding and dim, and his body, beneath the blue silk robes, was twisted and hunched from a lifetime that had been both long and hard.

  “I’m sorry, father… with respect, I still don’t understand.”

  Gugai looked cross at Milo’s reply. He glanced at the bowed Sanian. “Explain it to the off-worlder, esholi.”

  Sanian looked up at Milo and the old priest. Milo was struck by the peerless clarity of her eyes.

  “We of Hagia believe that every man and woman born in the influence of the Emperor—” she began.

  “Fate preserve him, may the nine wounds mark his fortune,” intoned Gugai.

  Sanian bowed again. “We believe that everyone has a way. A destiny preordained for them. A path to follow. Some are born to be leaders, some to be kings, some to be cattlemen, some to be paupers.”

  “I… see…” Milo said.

  “You don’t at all!” Gugai said with contempt. “It is our belief, given to us by the saint herself, that everyone has a destiny. Sooner or later, God-Emperor willing, that destiny will realise itself and our way become set. My way was to become a member of the ayatani. Commander Gaunt’s way, and it is clear, is to be a warrior and a leader of warriors.”

  “That is why we esholi study all disciplines and schools of learning,” Sanian said. “So that when our way becomes apparent to us, we are ready, no matter what it brings.”

  Milo began to understand. “So you have yet to find your… way?” he asked Sanian. “Yes. I am esholi yet.”

  Gugai sat his old bones down on an empty ammo box and sighed. “Saint Sabbat was a low-born, daughter of a chelon herdsman in the high pastures of what we now call the Sacred Hills. But she rose, you see, she rose despite her background, and led the citizens of the Imperium to conquest and redemption.”

  The best part of six years in the Sabbat Worlds Crusade had told Milo that much. Saint Sabbat had, six thousand years before, come from poverty on this colony world to command Imperial forces and achieve victory throughout the cluster, driving the forces of evil out.

  He had seen images of her, bare-headed and tonsured, dressed in Imperator armour, decapitating the daemons of filth with her luminous sword.

  Milo realised the girl and the old priest were staring at him.

  “I have no idea of my way,” he said quickly. “I’m a survivor, a musician… and a warrior, or that’s what I hope to be.”

  Gugai stared some more and then shook his head. It was the strangest thing. “No, not a warrior. Not simply a warrior. Something else.”

  “What do you mean?” asked Milo, disarmed.

  “Your way is many years hence…” Gugai began, then stopped abruptly.

  “You’ll find it. When the time comes.” The old priest rose stiffly and wandered away to rejoin his three brethren, talking together quietly in the stepped portico of the basilica.

  “What the feth was that about?” Milo barked, turning to the girl.

  “Ayatani Gugai is one of the Doctrinopolis elders, a holy man!” she exclaimed defensively.

  “He’s an old madman! What did he mean I wasn’t a warrior? Was that some kind of prophecy?”

  Sanian looked at Milo as if he’d just asked the dumbest question in the entire Imperium.

  “Of course it was,” she said.

  Milo was about to reply when his earpiece squawked and combat traffic crackled into his link. He listened for a moment and then his face went dark.

  “Stay here,” he told the girl student. He hurried towards Gaunt who stood with the other Imperial officers at the rear steps of the command tractor. Sunlight barred down between the high roofs of the temple district and made pools on the otherwise dark street. Rat-birds, their plumage grey and dirty, fluttered between the eaves or roosted and gurgled in the gutters.

  As Milo strode towards Gaunt he could see that the Tanith commander was listening to his own headset. “You heard that, sir?” Gaunt nodded.

  “They’ve got Colonel Corbec. Kolea’s leading a rescue party.”

  “I heard.”

  “So call off the withdrawal. Call off the armour.”

  “As you were, trooper.”

  “What?”

  “I said — As you were!”

  “But—” Milo began and then shut up. He could see the dark, terrible look in Gaunt’s face.

  “Milo… if there was a chance of saving Corbec, I’d hold up the entire fething crusade. But if he’s been taken by the Infardi, he’s already dead. The lord general wants this place taken quickly. I can’t suspend an attack in the slim hope of seeing Colm again. Kolea and his team must pull out with the others. We’ll take the Citadel by nightfall.”

  There were many things Brin Milo wanted to say. Most of them were about Colm Corbec. But the look of Colonel-Commissar Gaunt’s face denied them all.

  “Corbec’s dead. That’s the way of war. Let’s win this in his name.”

  “Signal him ‘no’,” Kolea drawled.

  “Sir?” vox-officer Rafflan queried.

  “Signal him a ‘no’, gak take you! We’re not withdrawing!” Rafflan sat down in a corner of the ruined Old Town dwelling they had secured. Trooper Domor and four others moved past to the cracked and bare windows and aimed their lasguns. The old doctor, Dorden, weighed down with his medicae kit and loose-fitting black smock, was last into the building.

  “I can’t, sir, with respect,” said Rafflan. “The colonel’s signalled a priority order, code Falchion, verified. We are to withdraw from the Old Town now. Shelling is to commence in forty-six minutes.”

  “No!” Kolea snapped. The men looked round from thei
r positions.

  Dorden settled in beside Kolea on the slope of plaster and rubble under the window.

  “Gol… I don’t like this any more than you, but Gaunt’s made an order.”

  “You never break one?”

  “An order from Gaunt? You’re kidding!”

  “Not even on Nacedon, when he ordered you to abandon that field hospital?”

  “Feth! Who’s been talking?”

  Kolea paused for a moment. “Corbec told me,” he said.

  Dorden looked down and ran a hand through his thinning grey hair. “Corbec, huh? Damn it…”

  “If they start shelling, we’ll be hit by our own guns,” Trooper Wheln said.

  “It’s Corbec,” Dorden said simply.

  “Don’t signal,” said Kolea, reaching forward and unplugging Rafflan’s headset. “Just don’t signal, if it makes you feel better. We’ve got to do this. You just never got the order.”

  Mkvenner and Sergeant Haller called back that the street was clean. They were on the edge of the Stonecutters’ district.

  “Well?” Dorden looked at Kolea.

  “Come on!” he replied.

  Two hours after the midday chimes had peeled from the dozen or more clock towers in the Universitariat district, to be echoed by the clocks of the Old Town and beyond, the Pardus armour was unleashed.

  Led by Colonel Furst aboard the legendary Shadow Sword super-heavy tank Castigatus, a storm-shoal of fifty Leman Russ Conquerors, thirty-eight Thunderer siege tanks and ten Stygies-pattern Vanquishers slammed into the southern lip of the Old Town.

  Long-range bombardment from Basilisk units and Earth-shaker platforms out in the marshes south of the city perimeter fell for twenty minutes until the tank squadrons were poised at the limits of the Old Town district. By then, firestorms were boiling through the street blocks from the livestock market north to Haemod Palisade and all the way across to Infardi Mile.

  The tank groups plunged forward, their main weapons blasting as they went. Vanquishers and Conquerors followed the street routes, churning up the Mile like determined beetles under a rising pall of smoke and firedust that quickly shrouded the entire city. The hefty siege tanks ploughed straight through terraced habitation blocks and ancient dwelling towers with their dozer blades, bricks and building stone and tiles cascading off them. The thump and roar of the tank guns quickly became a dram beat heard by all of the citizens and soldiery in the Doctrinopolis. The Ghosts had fallen back into the suburbs south of the Old Town, and the Brevians had withdrawn clear of the firefield to the Northern Quarter above the Universitariat. Vox-officers reported to the tactical teams that Sergeant Kolea’s team had not been recorded.