by Dan Abnett
“Let’s go back and secure the new gate,” said Rawne. “We’ll keep it open and under watch so we can see what’s out here, and close it if we need to.”
“I’ll stay put,” said Bonin. “We could use a spotter. First sign of trouble, I can double time back to the gate and get it shut.”
“Just stay out of sight,” Rawne told him.
He headed back up the gulley with Livara and Jajjo. Behind him, he could distinctly hear the Clang! Clang! Clang! of the iron ram striking the main hatch.
II
“Where do you suppose you’re going?” Hark asked.
He was limping down the hallway towards the main gate on his crutch, moving through the tail end of Daur’s men. They were agitated, and some had risen to their feet instead of crouching by the walls as instructed.
“Get back down and get ready!” Hark ordered, thumping past. The repetitive slam of the ram up ahead was dismal and chilling, and he could appreciate why the men were close to snapping. Hark understood their fear, but lack of formation discipline simply couldn’t be permitted. He drew his pistol.
“Get ready! Ready now! Glory of Tanith! Spirit of Verghast! Fury of Belladon! They’re going to come at us and we’re going to give them death! What will we give them?”
“Death!” the chorus came back.
“That’s more like it!”
Some of the men cheered. Others shook themselves and tightened their grips on their weapons. Hark realised he was wishing, hoping, begging for the main gate to just get on with it and cave in. The waiting was the worst part. Give the Ghosts a fight and none of them would have time to think about running.
Brutal fighting was already underway. From above, through the thick rock of the roof, they heard the muffled noises of frantic las-fire and explosions reaching them from the scale assault. The floor shook occasionally, and dislodged dust seeped fitfully from the cracked ceiling.
Hark came up the tunnel to the gatehouse. The men were lined up against the wall. He saw Ban Daur, standing ready at the tunnel mouth. Daur had four flamers drawn up ready at his back, but there were over a dozen troopers positioned down in front of him around the tunnel steps and the inner hatch. Daur had cleared all his men out of the gatehouse chamber.
“Captain?” Hark said.
“Commissar.”
“Why the feth have you pulled out of the gatehouse, Daur?” Hark whispered in his ear. “Why aren’t your flamers front and centre?”
“Who’s commanding this position, commissar?” Daur asked.
“Well, you, of course.”
“Thank you. I know what I’m about. The men know what’s expected. Support me. Don’t question me.”
Hark had never seen Daur so firm, so bloody determined.
“Absolutely,” Hark said, with a courteous nod.
The outer hatch was badly deformed. With each successive blow of the ram outside, it buckled even further, tearing away from its frame. They could hear, quite clearly, the shouts and bellows of the enemy right outside, clamouring to get in.
Clang! The hatch bent. Clang! The lip of it twisted inwards. Clang! A hinge began to shear. Clang! The middle of the hatch distended like a fat man’s belly.
“We hold the outer hatch, we kill a few of them,” Daur whispered to Hark. “I want to kill a lot of them. The gate chamber is our killing ground. It bottles them up and leaves them ready for slaughter.”
Hark nodded. He understood.
“You may tell the company to fix, commissar,” said Daur.
“G Company!” Hark yelled, turning to aim his voice back down the tunnel. “Straight silver!”
A clatter of locking blades answered him.
“Fixed and ready!” Haller called back.
“Fixed and ready, captain,” Hark said.
“Any moment now!” Daur shouted. “Remember who you are! And remember Ibram Gaunt!”
The company, to a man, roared its approval. The sound drowned out the beat of the ram.
The sound drowned out the metal screech of the hatch finally sundering.
Screaming like feral shades loosed from the depths of the warp, the Blood Pact stormed the gatehouse. The hatch had only partially fallen in, and they came pouring in, over and around its bulk, streaming, as it seemed to Hark, like rats, like a swarm of rodent vermin spewing out of a duct across the belly hold of a mass conveyance, flowing like a tide over any and all obstructions. Grim figures in red, their filthy uniforms adorned with strings of finger bones and human teeth, came scrambling through the opening, howling out of the mouth slits of their black iron masks, their eyes bright with bestial lust. Some fired weapons, others brandished trench axes and mauls. The reek and noise of them was appalling.
The first of their wild shots hit the floor, the roof, and the frame of the inner hatchway. A Ghost in the front rank went over.
“Fire!” Daur yelled.
The dozen or so Ghosts crouching around the inner hatchway opened fire, cutting into the front of the swarming tide as it surged towards them. Enemy warriors buckled and fell, or stumbled, wounded, and were promptly smashed down by the brute men rushing in behind them. There was a sudden stink of blood and crisped flesh. The Ghosts kept firing. Daur was firing too. Hark raised his pistol and lanced energy beams into the oncoming mass, incinerating some, violently dismembering others. In seconds, the leading ranks of the storm force were dead, just corpses carried forward by the press behind.
The tide faltered slightly. The Blood Pact warriors began struggling to clamber over bodies to reach their foe. Some tripped and fell. Las-fire knocked others off their feet. The close confines of the gate chamber degenerated a bewildering blur of bodies and yelling, motion and shots, almost incomprehensible in its violent confusion.
In the first ten seconds after the fall of the hatch, the Blood Pact lost forty warriors in the gate chamber, for the cost of only two Ghosts. Daur’s killing ground had been expertly achieved.
But Ban Daur’s ambitions were greater. As the gate chamber filled to capacity with storming enemy troops, with more shoving in behind, and the front of their assault almost at the inner hatch, Daur turned.
“Switch! Now!” he yelled above the din.
The Ghosts at the hatch who had been holding the enemy at bay with rifle fire suddenly rose and fell back, firing as they went. Daur pulled Hark to one side.
The flame-troopers stepped up, line abreast, and took their places, facing the charge.
“Flames, flames!” Brostin yelled.
He triggered his burner. At his side, Lubba, Dremmond and Lyse did the same. The result was devastating. The heat wash shock-sucked back down the tunnel and made Daur, Hark and the Ghosts around them gasp and shield their faces. The four flamers stood side by side in the inner hatch and streamed liquid fire into the entry chamber of the gatehouse.
There was nowhere to run or hide. There was nowhere to escape from the conflagration. The seething inferno ripped back across the chamber all the way to the broken hatch, and then blasted outside into the open, into the iron-masked faces of enemy warriors packed tight and clawing to get in.
Inside the furnace of the gate chamber, the monstrous destruction was stoked by grenades and ammo packs touching off and exploding. Stumbling, burning figures, ablaze from head to foot, blew apart as grenades in their packs and musette bags caught and detonated.
The fire made a whining, keening sound as it swirled around the chamber, spinning up to scorch the roof. It was licking, leaping and surging as if it was alive. It was almost too bright to look at, and the writhing black shapes inside it almost too terrible to bear. The scream of the fire reminded Hark of the shriek of the wind that punished Jago, day and night, eternal, primordial and hungry.
The burns across his back ached in blistering sympathy. It felt good to pay back that pain with flames.
III
The Ghost manning the slot to Kolea’s left suddenly took three rapid steps backwards, swayed, and collapsed flat on his back.
> “Medic!” Kolea yelled, continuing to fire down out of the slot at the enemy figures on the walls below him. His overlook wasn’t the only one where someone was shouting for a doctor. Kolea had started the fight with five men in the box, and now only Derin and Obel’s adjutant, Dafelbe, remained upright.
“Medic!” Kolea yelled again. “Medic here!” He aimed out, saw a scrambling figure ascending through the smoke below, and squeezed off two shots. The enemy warrior crumbled and half fell, his arm snagging on the side of the storm ladder he’d been scaling. Hooked, the warrior struggled. Before Kolea could shoot again, the warrior’s own comrades had heaved him off the ladder out of their way. He fell into the smoke. Derin put a round right through the face of the first man up behind him.
“Need ammo,” Derin growled.
“I know,” said Kolea.
“Soon,” Derin added.
A whooping rocket hit the top lip of their slot and showered them with grit as it exploded.
“Too close,” coughed Dafelbe.
Kolea looked out again, shots whining up past him. He saw the Blood Pact on the nearest ladder passing up another coiled length of scaling rungs, man to man, making ready to cast it up the next stretch of wall. Kolea fired at them.
The warrior at the top of the ladder, anxious to protect the ladder-bearers below him, unpinned a stick grenade and swung back to pitch it up at the slot.
“I don’t think so,” said Kolea, taking a pot-shot.
The warrior toppled back off the ladder, and his grenade dropped in amongst the men immediately beneath him. The blast took the ladder away from the rock face in a thud of smoke and sparks.
Kolea had no time to feel satisfied. Heavy fire began to chop in from the right. The raiders had succeeded in getting another scaling ladder right up under the overlook next to them. The Blood Pact warriors at the top of it were fighting hand-to hand with the men in the slot, hacking to gain entry. Those lower down on the swaying ladder section were shooting sideways at Kolea’s position.
“Feth it!” Kolea said, trying to return fire. The angle was poor.
“Derin! Do what you can!” Kolea cried, backing away from the window.
“Where are you going?”
“Just do it!”
Kolea ran out of the overlook, along the connecting hallway and into the adjacent casemate box.
The gunslot there was full of hacking, flailing limbs and snarling grotesks. Pabst, Vadim and Zayber were fighting to keep them out, but Pabst was wounded in the arm and Vadim could barely see for the blood streaming down his face.
“Shoot them!” Kolea cried, coming in behind them.
“No ammo!” Vadim screamed. A trench axe crunched into Zayber’s neck and he staggered backwards, spewing blood.
Kolea snapped his carbine to full auto. “Ghosts drop!” he yelled. Vadim lurched aside, pulling Pabst with him.
Kolea raked the gunslot with rapid las, blowing chunks and lumps out of the rockcrete sills. The enemy warriors choking the slot screamed and jerked as rounds ripped into them. Some fell out and disappeared instantly, others yowled and held on, clawing at the edges of the firing position, weighed down by the dead and wounded.
“Run! Get some ammo!” Kolea shouted at Pabst. He kept firing, blowing off fingers and hands, dislodging grips. A Blood Pact warrior tried to lunge bodily in through the slit, and Kolea blew him open across the shoulder, dropping his corpse onto the firestep inside the slot.
Kolea ran to the step and pulled two stick bombs out of the corpse’s webbing panniers. He yanked the pins out and posted them out over the slit edge. There was a meaty double thud.
Pabst came running back in with a bag of clips. He was closely followed by Merrt, Vivvo and Tokar.
“What are you?” Kolea asked them.
“Gn…gn… gn… reinforcements,” said Merrt.
“Rawne sent a company down from topside to back you up,” said Vivvo.
“Get to the slot. Good to see you,” Kolea nodded. He went back into the corridor, moving through the fresh troops joining the overlook deck.
“Spread out! Fill the gaps!” he heard Corporal Chiria yelling down the smoke-washed run.
He went back to his original position, and found that Derin and Dafelbe had been joined by two Ghosts. One was Kaydey, a Belladon marksman firing a long-las. The other was Tona Criid.
The side of her head was bandaged. With grim concentration, she was firing snapshots from the corner of the slot.
“Welcome back to the Emperor’s war, sergeant,” Kolea said to her as he resumed his place.
“I can’t tell you how glad I am to be here,” she replied sardonically.
Kolea risked a look out as the others rattled away on either side of him. No fresh ladders had been attached, and the enemy forces were milling around at the foot of the casemate buttress in a disorganised rabble, swathed in smoke, contenting themselves with firing up at the boxes. A vast plume of dirty black smoke was fuming out of the gatehouse far below.
“I think Daur’s done a day’s work,” Dafelbe muttered.
“Looks that way,” Kolea agreed.
“Either that, or the fething fortress is alight,” Derin added, never one to trust a bright side.
“They’re falling back!” Criid called out.
It was hard to see clearly through the thick, accumulating smoke seething up the southern face of the house, but the enemy did appear to be in retreat. Gunfire and rockets continued to come up at the gunboxes, though the rate grew thinner. Kolea could see groups of distant figures fleeing back across the dust bowl into the throat of the pass.
The last few shots were exchanged.
“This is Kolea,” Kolea said into his microbead. “Report—did we hold the gate?”
Traffic snatched to and fro in brief clips.
“Say again?” Kolea said.
“Overlook, this is Daur. We have held the gate.”
Kolea looked at Derin and they both allowed weary grins to cross their dirty, unshaved faces.
“Sir!” Dafelbe called out.
Kolea turned.
Dafelbe was bending over Tona Criid. She had sagged down quietly in the corner where she had been standing. Kolea hurried over.
“Was she hit?” he asked.
“I don’t think so,” Dafelbe replied. “I think she just passed out.”
Tona stirred. “I’m all right.” she mumbled.
“On your feet too soon,” Kolea said. “Let’s get you up.”
She didn’t answer. She had blacked out again.
Day twelve. Sunrise at five plus eleven, clear. No contact overnight no sign of enemy at daylight.
We weathered the third assault yesterday with precious few casualties considering. I am certain that if they had hit us on two fronts, as per the previous assualt assault, we would not have survived.
As it is, I intend to recommend B.D. for decoration for his sterling command in defence of the main gate (see accompanying citation).
Ammo very low R. trying to arrange supply drop. He has a plan that he is not sharing with anyone at this stage. I have impressed upon him the vital nature of the documents discovered in the so-called library. We must preserve and secure them, or transport them clear, before this fortress finally succumbs.
One minor but troubling footnote. Master of Scouts Mkoll seems to have disappeared. I am trying to account for his whereabouts.
—field journal, V.H. fifth month, 778.
SEVENTEEN
The Ghosts
I
The ghosts closed in. They have been there all the time, luminal things chained to the ancient place, just out of sight. Now they step closer, silent as whispers, elusive as voice fragments on a skipping vox-channel, soft as the brush of black lace against stone. They draw near.
They are not invited. They are sent. They smell the mind-heat of the lost souls in the house at the end of the world and swoop down, like winged things returning to the windcote. They are the dust on the satin br
own walls, the glow and fade of the lights, the scratch and rattle of something buried under the earth. They have the voices of friends. They are the voices of the dead. They are the darkest corner of the night, the coldest atoms of the cosmos, the moan of the wind. They are music, half-heard. They are dry skulls in a dusty valley.
The ghosts close in. Only in death may they move so freely. Only in the presence and the hour of death may they come so close.
They feel it. The end is coming: the end of Hinzerhaus and all those within its walls.
They gather in the empty halls and cold galleries. Slowly, slowly, they reach—
II
—out.
The light died. Rawne cursed, and flicked at the lamp-pack on his desk. He was sure the cell had been a fresh one, but it was dead.
“Rerval!”
His adjutant appeared at the door. “Sir?”
“Get me a fething lamp-pack, would you?”
“Yes, sir.”
Rawne sat back. He was tired. He’d been studying some of the old books brought up from the library. Trying to work by the come and go radiance of the wall lights gave him a headache, so he’d trained a lamp-pack on the pages.
The books didn’t interest Rawne much. He’d never had much time for history. History was dead, and Rawne was much more interested in being alive. However, the likes of Hark and Baskevyl believed the books to be important, so he’d made the effort.
It had also given him some occupation. The day had passed slowly, perhaps the slowest so far. Expecting attack at any moment, they’d all stayed on knife-edge nerves. That wore a body out. As Hark had said so often, waiting was the real killer.
The books, with their crumbling, loose leaf pages, had been diverting enough. Most of the plates made no sense, and Rawne had no way of knowing how accurate any of the charts were.
But he could see enough to know that Hark was right. The books had to be shown to someone who could assess their real worth. If there was any chance—any chance—that they were what they seemed to be, then they could be the difference between triumph and defeat.
