[Gaunt's Ghosts 11] - Only in Death

by Dan Abnett

  “Wait…” whispered Mkoll, the pulse in his temple still going tap, tap, tap. He could feel his own nerves drawing tight. Why? Why the feth was he feeling so edgy? Nothing got to him, usually. Why did he have real misgivings about this place? Why had he suddenly got the strongest impression that—

  this is going to be trouble

  —he was being watched?

  To his left, an alcove. A shadow. Nothing. To his right, a doorway. Another shadow. Wait, not a shadow, a fething—

  No. Scratch that. Nothing. Just his imagination, reading shapes and forms in the gloom that weren’t actually there.

  “Feth,” Mkoll breathed, amazed at his own foolishness.

  “Say again?” crackled the link.

  “Nothing,” replied Mkoll into his microbead.

  In that doorway, he could have sworn… he could have sworn… someone had been standing there. Right there. But there was no one. Just a trick of the shadows. Just his racing imagination.

  This wasn’t like him. Jumping at shadows? Calm down. Calm all the way down. You’ve done this a thousand times.

  “Clear,” he voxed.

  Maggs squeezed his way in around the hatch behind Mkoll and began to shine his muzzle-fixed lamp around. Mkoll secretly liked Wes Maggs: he liked the Belladon’s spark and his wit, and admired his skill. Mkoll put up with a lot of mouth from Maggs, because of what he got back in soldiering.

  But Maggs’ famous mouth was unusually silent suddenly. Maggs was spooked, Mkoll could feel that. That compounded Mkoll’s own edginess, because he knew Maggs wasn’t like that either, ordinarily.

  It took a lot to spook Wes Maggs. Six days marching through the shrieking dust, plus the-Dry skulls in a dusty valley.

  —rumour would have helped. This chamber, this dry gatehouse, did all the rest.

  “Who—” Maggs began. “Who puts a rug in a gatehouse?”

  Mkoll shook his head.

  “And a picture?” Maggs added, creeping over to the frame on the wall. The cone of his lamp beam bobbed and swung. Then he snapped around suddenly, his weapon up hard against his collarbone, aimed.

  “Point that thing somewhere else,” suggested Bonin as he wriggled in through the hatch behind them. “What are you, twelve? Simple?”

  “Sorry,” said Maggs, dipping his gun.

  “You knew I was behind you.”

  “Sorry.”

  “You knew I was coming in after you.”

  “Sorry, all right?”

  “Shut up, both of you,” said Mkoll. This isn’t like us. We’re all over the place, scrappy and wound too tight. We’re Ghost scouts, for feth’s sake. We’re the best there is.

  Bonin glanced around, and allowed his lamp beam to trickle over the walls and ceiling. “This is charming,” he murmured.

  He looked over at Mkoll. “Shall I get the rest of the advance in?”

  Mkoll shook his head. “No.”

  “Uh, why not?”

  “I have a… never mind. Let’s just poke about for a bit.”

  Bonin nodded. “You all right, chief?”

  “Of course.”

  “Look at this picture,” called Maggs. He had gone right up to the wall where the old frame was hanging, and reached out with his left hand to touch its surface. His glove was caked with dust as white as ash.

  “What’s it supposed to be a picture of?” Maggs asked. “A woman, no… a man… no, a woman… a portrait…”

  “Just leave it alone, Maggs,” Mkoll said.

  “I’m only asking,” said Maggs, as he began to rub at the surface of the canvas with his gloved hand. The canvas shuddered in the frame. “That’s a woman, right? Am I right? A woman in a black dress?”

  Mkoll and Bonin weren’t looking. They were staring up at the sagging light fitments, the softly glowing, lidded reptile-eyes strung along the parched walls.

  “There’s still power here,” said Bonin, uneasily.

  Mkoll nodded.

  “How is that possible? After all this time?”

  Mkoll shrugged. “I think they’re chemical lights. Chemical fed on a slow burn, not an actual generator or power cell. Anyway, they’re almost dead.”

  Bonin breathed out. “Is it just me, or do they keep getting brighter, now and then?”

  Mkoll shrugged again. “Just you,” he lied.

  “Hey, it is a woman,” announced Maggs behind them. “It’s some old dam in a black lace dress.” He’d rubbed a patch of filth off the painting with his glove. Mkoll and Bonin trudged over to his side. The pale, expressionless face of a woman gazed back at them from the blackened canvas.

  “Fantastic,” said Mkoll. “Can we get on now?”

  “Oh!” exclaimed Maggs. He was rubbing at the portrait again, and the ancient canvas of the painting had suddenly perished beneath his persistent fingertips. It disintegrated like powder, and left a hole where the woman’s gazing face had been. Through it, Maggs could see the stone wall the painting was hanging on.

  “Happy now?” asked Mkoll, turning away.

  Maggs pulled up his weapon abruptly, and aimed it at the painting.

  “What the feth are you doing?” asked Bonin.

  Maggs took a step backwards, and lowered his rifle. He shook his head, dismayed. “Nothing,” he said, “nothing, sorry. Being silly.”

  “Start moving with a purpose, Maggs,” Mkoll instructed.

  Maggs nodded. “Of course. Absolutely, chief.”

  For a moment, for a fleeting moment, the disintegrating portrait had appeared to bleed. Dark, clotted fluid had oozed out of the collapsed hole like black blood from a meat-wound. But it had just been trickling dust, and Maggs’ imagination. He felt stupid.

  Not blood. Not blood at all. Just dust. Dust and shadows and—

  dry skulls in a dusty valley, with all the tops sawn off

  —his own stupid imagination.

  Mkoll and Bonin had crossed to the inner hatch. They began to haul on the elaborate brass levers.

  “Let’s get this open,” Mkoll grunted.

  “Uh huh. Let’s,” said Wes Maggs, as he hurried to join them.

  III

  “They’re taking too long,” said Tona Criid. The thin song of the dust was all around them, and visibility was down to less than four metres. The forward companies had drawn up half a kilometre from Hinzerhaus, waiting for the scout advance to report back. Half a kilometre, but none of them could actually see the house. “Just wait,” said Gaunt.

  “Should I send up a support detail, just in case?” asked Gol Kolea. Like all of them, he wore his camo-cloak pulled up to protect his mouth and nose.

  “Wait,” Gaunt repeated. He touched his ear-piece, took it out and checked it, and then glanced at his vox-officer.

  “Anything, or am I dead?” he asked.

  “You’re showing live, sir,” Beltayn replied, adjusting the brass dials of his heavy voxcaster. “Still nothing from advance.”

  Gaunt frowned. “Give them a vox-check, please.”

  “Yes, sir,” said Beltayn. Pulling the phones around his ears, he unhooked the brass mic and held it close to his mouth, shielding it from the swirling grit with his cupped left hand. “Ghost-ghost One, Ghost-ghost One, this is Nalwood, this is Nalwood. Ghost-ghost One, vox-check, please, come back.”

  Beltayn looked up at Gaunt. “Just static.”

  “Keep trying, Bel,” said Gaunt.

  “Ghost-ghost One, Ghost-ghost One, this is Nalwood, this is Nalwood…”

  Gaunt looked over at Kolea. “Gol, assemble a back-up anyway. Get them ready, but keep them in formation until I give the word.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Mkoll knows what he’s about. This is just a vox glitch, nothing more.”

  Kolea nodded, and shouldered his way back into the driving wind that was coming up the ravine. They could hear him shouting orders, and hear the clatter of men moving into position.

  “This is going to be trouble,” Major Rawne growled.

  “Eli, give
it a rest,” said Gaunt.

  Rawne shrugged a what-the-hell, but obliged.

  Gaunt waited. It was slow, like waiting for his own inevitable death. He paced, head down, looking at the way his boots scooped out depressions in the dust, marvelling as they in-filled again instantly. The singing wind curated Jago. It had no desire to let anything change.

  “There are certain—”

  Gaunt turned around. Ludd had begun to speak and then, for some reason, had thought better of it.

  “What were you going to say, Nahum?” Gaunt asked.

  Ludd coughed, his voice muffled behind his cloak hem. “Nothing, sir. Nothing.”

  Gaunt smiled. “Oh, I want to know, now. There are certain—what?”

  Ludd looked sideways at the bulky figure of Viktor Hark beside him. Hark nodded. “Just spit it out, Ludd,” Hark said.

  Ludd swallowed hard. It wasn’t just the dust in his throat. “A-at times of stress, sir, I was going to remark, there are certain methods that may be employed to dampen a nervous disposition.”

  “You think I am exhibiting signs of a nervous disposition then, Ludd?” Gaunt asked.

  “Actually, sir, that was why I stopped talking. I realised, rather abruptly, that I had no business suggesting such a thing, openly.”

  “Oh feth me backwards, Ludd,” Hark muttered.

  “Well,” said Gaunt, “in terms of morale and respect, you were probably correct to edit yourself. It doesn’t look good when a junior ranker suggests to his senior officer that he might like to calm down.”

  “Exactly my point,” said Ludd. “I just arrived at it too late.”

  “Let’s hear the methods anyway,” said Gaunt, clearly in a playful mood. “It might do some of us some good. Isn’t that right, Eli?”

  Nearby, Rawne inclined his head towards Gaunt, slowly. His eyes, behind his brass goggles, were hooded in the most sarcastic way.

  “Y-you really want me to—?” Ludd stammered.

  “Oh, Throne,” Hark breathed to no one in particular.

  “I really do, Nahum. I think you should tell us all about these methods.” Gaunt looked around at the rest of them. “Who knows? They might prove useful.”

  “Could I not, you know, just shoot myself now?” Ludd asked.

  “Surviving embarrassment is character-building, Nahum,” Gaunt said. “Get on with it. Start by telling us where these methods originated.”

  Ludd looked at the ground. He mumbled something.

  “Louder, please.”

  “My mother taught them to me.”

  Tona Criid started to cackle. Varl, Beltayn and even Rawne, despite himself, began to laugh too, but it was Tona’s brittle cackle that really cut the air. It made Hark wince. He knew that sound: the false laughter of bitten-down pain.

  Gaunt raised his hand to quiet the chorus. “No, really” he said. “Let Nahum continue. Nahum?”

  “I’d rather not, if you don’t mind, sir. I spoke out of turn.”

  “Consider it an order.”

  “Ah. All right. Yes sir. Well, there was this counting game she used to play to keep worry in check. You count one-two-three and so on, and take a deep breath between each beat.”

  “In this dust?” snorted Criid. She pulled the ridge of her cape down, hawked, and spat out a gob of grey phlegm.

  Ludd looked at Gaunt and lifted his shoulders. “She used to say the words ‘Throne of Terra’ between each count. One, Throne of Terra… two, Throne of Terra… three—”

  “Can I ask you a question, Nahum?” Gaunt said.

  “Of course, sir.”

  “Was your mother an especially worried woman?”

  Ludd shrugged. Gritty particles flecked off his leather coat. “I suppose. She was always nervous, as I remember. Her nerves troubled her. She was frail. Actually, I don’t know. I was eight the last time I saw her. I was being shipped out to the scholam. I believe she’s dead now.”

  Criid stopped chuckling abruptly.

  “I was also young when I lost my mother,” said Gaunt. He may have been lying, but no one was in a position to refute him. “Nahum, do I look to you like an especially worried woman?”

  “Of course not, sir.”

  “Of course not. But I am an especially worried commander. Do you mind at all if I use your mother’s counting game?”

  “No, I don’t, sir.”

  Gaunt turned and started back along the pass towards the invisible house.

  “One, Throne of Terra… Two, Throne of Terra…” he began. At the tenth Throne of Terra, he turned and counted his way back to them.

  The wind dropped, to a light breath. The dust sank. The sun came out.

  Eszrah ap Niht, who had been silent all the while, placed his lean hand on Gaunt’s arm, and nodded up the pass.

  “Histye, soule.”

  Ibram Gaunt turned.

  They saw the house for the first time.

  Elikon M.P., Elikon M.P., this is Nalwood,

  this is Nalwood. Objective achieved.

  Securing site as of sunset. No hostile

  contact to report at this time.

  Nalwood out. (transmission ends)

  —Transcript of vox message, fifth month, 778.

  THREE

  Ghosts in the House

  I

  In the ten minutes of dust-less, song-less silence that followed, the Ghosts were afforded their first proper look at the place that would later ring with the sounds of their deaths.

  Hinzerhaus.

  There wasn’t much to see: a fortified gatehouse, built into the foundations of the soaring cliffs and, above that, several tiers of armoured casemates and blockhouses extruding from the chin of the rock-face like theatre balconies. High up, along the cliff crest, there were signs of tiled roofs; of long, linked halls and blocky towers. To either side of the house proper, the ridge line was punctuated by cloche towers and budding fortifications, like warts and blisters erupting from wizened skin.

  A fortress-house. A house-fortress. A bastion tunnelled and drilled out of the impassive mountain rock.

  “Feth,” said Dalin Criid.

  “Quiet in the line there!” his company officer called out.

  Dalin bit his lip. Every man around him was thinking the same simple thought, but Dalin was the youngest and newest Ghost, and he was still mastering the stoicism and the field drill. For a flushed moment, he felt like a complete fool.

  The worst of it was, he knew they were all looking at him. Dalin had acquired a special place in the regiment, one that he was not entirely comfortable with. Touchstone, lucky charm, new blood. He was the boy who’d made good, the first son of the Ghosts.

  And bad rock Jago was his first combat posting as part of the Tanith First-and-Only, which made this more like a rite of passage, an initiation. Dalin Criid had a big legacy to uphold.

  Two big legacies, in fact: the regiment’s and his father’s.

  The vox-link clicked as signals came back from the command group. Senior officers were jogging back down the ravine, relaying the orders verbally to the waiting companies.

  Dalin was part of E Company, which made him one of Captain Meryn’s mob. Flyn Meryn was a handsome, hard-edged man, one of the youngest captains in the regiment, Tanith-born. Word was, Meryn was a Rawne in waiting, and styled himself on the number two officer’s vicious manner. Time, Dalin had been reliably informed, had mellowed Rawne’s notoriously sharp edges a little… well, if not mellowed then weathered. All the while, Meryn had been getting sharper, as if he was gunning for the top bastard prize. Dalin would have rather been assigned to any other company than Meryn’s, even Rawne’s, but there was a matter of duty involved. E Company had a vacancy and, in the opinion of everyone except Dalin Criid himself, only Dalin could fill it.

  Meryn came back down the line.

  “Advancing by companies!” he shouted, echoing the sing-song of the order as it had come to him. “E Company, rise and address!”

  The company rose, in a line. Behind them
, G and L companies got up off their backsides and shook the dust out of their camo-cloaks as their officers called them forwards.

  “Company uncase!” Meryn ordered.

  Dalin stripped the field casing off his lasrifle. He’d done it a thousand times, drill after drill, and he was no slower than the men either side of him. The case, wound up like a stocking, slipped away in his webbing.

  There was noise all around him: officers shouting instructions, and the chinking rattle of troopers rising to advance. Two and a half thousand Imperial Guardsmen made a considerable row just walking.

  “Keep it low!” Meryn yelled.

  More noise rolled back down the ravine. The command section, supported by A, B and D companies, was already beginning its advance up the gorge towards the gatehouse.

  “Stand ready to move, company!” Meryn shouted.

  “Are we expecting that much trouble?” Cullwoe whispered. He was next in line, on Dalin’s right.

  Dalin looked in the direction Cullwoe was nodding. The heavy and support weapon crews of the regiment had begun to set up along the sides of the ravine, covering the gatehouse. Locking brackets clinked and breeches clattered as team-served weapons were bedded and assembled in smart order.

  “I guess so,” Dalin replied.

  “I’m still hearing yap,” Meryn bellowed, moving back down the line. He approached.

  “Was that you, Criid?”

  Dalin saw no point in lying. “Yes, sir. Sorry, sir.”

  Meryn glared at him for a moment and then—

  oh please, no, don’t

  —nodded. Dalin hated that. He hated the fact that Meryn cut him slack because of who and what he was.

  “Just keep it low, Dalin, all right?” Meryn said, in a painfully avuncular tone.

  “Yes, sir.”

  Bastard, bastard, bastard, treat me like the rest, treat me like the others, not like some… not like I’m Caffran’s fething ghost…

  “That’s got to be a royal pain in the butt, mister,” whispered Cullwoe sidelong. “Him doing that, I mean.”

  Dalin grinned. It was a standing gag between the two of them. Khet Cullwoe was his buddy. They’d bonded early on, from the moment Dalin got himself plonked into E. Cullwoe was a Belladon, a bony, freckled, red-headed kid only four years older than Dalin. He had a grin you couldn’t help but laugh with. Cullwoe was Dalin’s sanity. Khet Cullwoe was the only one who seemed to get it, to get the very shitty place Dalin found himself in. “Royal pain’, in all its infinite variation, was their private, standing joke. The key was to make sure your sentence included the words “royal”, “pain” and “mister”.