by Dan Abnett
Adare and Meryn distribute ammo to Blane and the forward portion of the advance. Gaunt sees Caffran with Varl’s squad. He tosses his rifle and his musette bag back to him. Caffran catches them and nods.
Rawne’s still glancing at his timepiece.
“Let’s go! Let’s go!” he shouts. It’s really getting dark. The fluttering, stammering barrage of the gun battle is lighting up the whole city block.
“We’re going as fast as we can,” Gaunt says to Rawne.
Rawne looks at him, and sucks in a breath between clenched teeth that suggests that there’s no such thing as too fast.
Gaunt hears a noise, a swift, loud, rushing hiss, the sound of a descent, of a plunge, of an angelic fall from grace. It ends in a noise shock that quakes the ground and nearly knocks him down. It feels like the lightning has found its voice at last.
Then it happens again and again.
Light blinds them. Bright detonations rip through the eastern boroughs of Kosdorf, some as close as a block or two away from their position. Blast overlaps blast, detonation touches detonation. It’s precision wrath. It’s bespoke annihilation.
“The Ketzok,” yells Rawne to Gaunt. “A little early,” he admits.
Gaunt watches the heavy shelling for a moment, hand half-shielding his eyes from the flash. Then he turns the Tanith out of the zone with a simple hand signal.
It’s too loud for voices anymore.
Dorden cleans his head wound.
“It’s going to mend nicely,” he says, dropping the small forceps into an instrument bath. Threads of blood billow through the cleaning solution like ink in water.
Gaunt picks up a steel bowl and uses it as a mirror to examine the sutures.
“That’s neat work,” he says. Dorden shrugs.
Outside, in the morning light, the Ketzok artillery is still pounding relentlessly, like the slow, steady movement of a giant clock. Munitions resupply is an hour away, the bombardiers report. A huge pall of smoke is moving north across the sky over the hills.
“Rawne says you were instrumental in urging him to mount a reinforcement,” Gaunt says.
Dorden smiles.
“I’m sure Major Rawne was simply following standard operational practices,” he says.
Gaunt leaves the medicae tent. There’s still rain in the air, though now it’s spiced with the stink of fyceline from the sustained bombardment. The camp is active. They’ll be striking soon. Directives have come through, order bags from command. The Tanith are being routed to another front line.
He’s got things to think about. A week spent getting the regiment embarked and on the lift ships will give him time.
“Sir.”
He turns, and sees Corbec. “Caligula, I hear,” says Corbec.
“That’s the next stop,” Gaunt agrees. They fall into step.
“I don’t know much about Caligula,” says Corbec.
“Then request a briefing summary from the Munitorum, Corbec,” says Gaunt. “We have libraries of data about the Sabbat Worlds. It would pay the regiment dividends if the officers knew a little bit about the local conditions before they arrived in a fighting area.”
“I can do that, can I?” asks Corbec.
“You’re a regimental colonel,” says Gaunt. “Of course you can.”
Corbec nods.
“I’ll get on it,” he says.
He grins, flops back his camo-cape, and produces one of his cigars and a couple of lucifers from his breast pocket.
“Thought you might enjoy this now we’re outside field discipline conditions,” he says.
Gaunt takes the gift with a nod. Corbec knocks him a little salute and walks away.
Gaunt goes into his quarters tent to spend an hour packing his kit. The rain is tapping on the roof skin.
His spare field jacket is hanging on the back of the folding chair. Someone’s sponged it clean and brushed up the nap. They’ve taken off the Hyrkan badges and sewn Tanith ones on in their place.
There is no clue at all as to who has done this.
Gaunt takes off the muddy coat and jacket he’s been wearing all night and slips the spare on, not even sure it’s his. He strokes it down, adjusts the cuffs and puts his hands in the pockets.
The letter’s in the right-hand hip pocket.
He slides it out and unfolds it. He’d been so certain it was in his number one field jacket. So certain.
He reads it, and re-reads it, and smiles, hearing the words in Blenner’s voice.
Then he strikes one of the lucifers Corbec gave him, and holds the letter by the lower left-hand corner as he lights the lower right. It burns quickly, with a yellow flame. He holds on to it until the flames approach his fingertips, and then shakes it into the ash box beside his desk.
Then he goes out to find some breakfast.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Dan Abnett is a novelist and award-winning comic book writer. He has written over thirty-five novels, including the acclaimed Gaunt’s Ghosts series, the Eisenhorn and Ravenor trilogies and, with Mike Lee, the Darkblade cycle. His novels Horus Rising and Legion (both for the Black Library) and his Torchwood novel Border Princes (for the BBC) were all bestsellers. His novel Triumff, for Angry Robot, was published in 2009 and nominated for the British Fantasy Society Award for Best Novel. He lives and works in Maidstone, Kent. Dan’s blog and website can be found at www.danabnett.com
Follow him on Twitter @VincentAbnett
Hailing from Scotland, Graham McNeill worked for over six years as a Games Developer in Games Workshop’s Design Studio before taking the plunge to become a full-time writer. Graham’s written a host of SF and Fantasy novels and comics, as well as a number of side projects that keep him busy and (mostly) out of trouble. His Horus Heresy novel, A Thousand Sons, was a New York Times bestseller and Empire, book two in the Legend of Sigmar trilogy, won the 2010 David Gemmell Legend award. Graham lives and works in Nottingham and you can keep up to date with where he’ll be and what he’s working on by visiting his website.
Join the ranks of the 4th Company at www.graham-mcneill.com
Matthew Farrer lives in Australia, and is a member of the Canberra Speculative Fiction Guild. He has been writing since his teens, and has a number of novels and short stories to his name, including the popular Shira Calpurnia novels for the Black Library.
Aaron Dembski-Bowden is a British author with his beginnings in the videogame and RPG industries. He’s been a deeply entrenched fan of Warhammer 40,000 ever since he first ruined his copy of Space Crusade by painting the models with all the skill expected of an overexcited nine-year-old. He lives and works in Northern Ireland with his fiancée Katie, hiding from the world in the middle of nowhere. His hobbies generally revolve around reading anything within reach, and helping people spell his surname.
Nik Vincent has more than a dozen titles to her name, mostly children’s fiction, but also educational and reference books, and comics, and she co-wrote Gilead’s Blood and The Hammers of Ulric with her husband, Dan Abnett. She has finally succumbed to the lure of Warhammer 40,000, and hopes to have a long and rewarding career writing about the guys and girls, and villains and daemons that play games with her imagination. Total immersion will do that to you, so, thanks, Dan.
Nick Kyme is a writer and editor from the northern wastes of Grimsby. He now lives in Nottingham where he began a career at Games Workshop as a layout designer and journalist on White Dwarf magazine. Currently walking the halls of Black Library as Senior Range Editor, Nick’s writing credits include a host of short stories and novels. Principal amongst his works are the Warhammer 40,000 Tome of Fire trilogy featuring the Salamanders and his Warhammer fantasy-based dwarf novels. Read his rambling blog at www.nickkyme.com
Sandy Mitchell is a pseudonym of Alex Stewart, who has been writing successfully under both names since the mid 1980s. As Sandy, he’s best known for his work for the Black Library, particularly the Ciaphas Cain series. Currently, he’s in the final stages of a two year MA i
n Screenwriting at the London College of Communication, which has left far less time than usual for having fun in the 41st Millennium, but is continuing to chronicle Cain’s progress at every opportunity. His most recent project as Alex was the short film Ruffled Feathers, a comedy about a catastrophic hen night, which premiered in July 2010.
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