[Gaunt's Ghosts 12] - Blood Pact

by Dan Abnett

  When he pulled out the copybook, a folded sheet of paper fell out of its pages onto the ground between his legs. It was a letter, with a finely printed letterhead at the top of the sheet. It was a polite introduction from a Mr. Jaume, a photographic portraitist.

  Gaunt realised that he’d pulled out his own copybook. Eszrah’s, virtually identical, was in the opposite side of his jacket. The letter, the one poor Beltayn had insisted Gaunt had seen and which he’d denied all knowledge of, had been tucked into the cover of his book, probably since the morning it had arrived at Aarlem.

  He folded it up to put it away, and noticed the letterhead. The address of Jaume’s studio was listed as “137 Carnation Street, off Moat Street”. Moat Street. That’s where he’d seen it. It wasn’t a memory of the Balhaut War at all, just a little speck of driftwood that had got jumbled up in his head.

  Eyl stood quietly in the kitchen of Doctor Kolding’s house on Kepeler Place. Though the middle of the night was not long past, a blue twilight was beginning to seep in through the windows. First light, and though the snowstorm had not eased off, the first hint of daylight was being magnified and reflected by the enfolding whiteness.

  Apart from Kreeg, who was standing watch inside the front door, and Gnesh, who was minding the lower street access from the ambulance garage, the men of the philia were resting in the upper rooms of the house. Twenty-nine men; his force had been reduced to twenty-nine men. Kaylb Sirdar was gone, the first to die. Eyl had not witnessed the death to place it into any kind of definitive chronology, but he knew his sister couldn’t lie.

  Eyl had taken off his grotesk. He relished the pain in his hands, chest and face where the carbine had been exploded in his grasp and left him gashed and burned. The injuries reminded him he was alive, just as they reminded him who had to die.

  Time was slipping away. With every passing minute, their mission became harder, the odds greater, the opposition more resolved. The philia had spent its weapon of surprise, and Eyl estimated they had only a few more hours left in which to exploit the enemy’s shock. By morning, he thought, the Imperials will have gathered their wits and rallied. They will have closed the city down and begun the hunt for us.

  Until then, Eyl meant to make the best use of his time. The city environs were still caught in an un-state, the sick half-light of the warpcraft that his sister had cast over the metropolis to numb, baffle and confuse. The storm continued unabated, and lent to them its gifts of concealment and mystery. The philia still had enough time to do its work. Once again, his sister was the key.

  Eyl picked up one of the half-empty enamel mugs that was standing on the worn kitchen table. Out of curiosity, he sipped the cold, black liquid inside.

  It tasted of blood. Everything tasted of blood.

  He went downstairs to find his sister.

  She was in the small surgical theatre that lay behind the swing doors at the bottom of the stone steps. Eyl pushed the doors open gently. He had no wish to make her jump or disturb her work.

  And she was most certainly at work.

  Eyl knew that the men of the philia had withdrawn into the house’s upper rooms so that they did not have to linger too close to her witchery. Proximity to Ulrike’s craft caused the skin to prickle and the heart to go frantic.

  Eyl swallowed back the bile that had rushed up his throat.

  “Sister?”

  She had taken winding sheets of white cloth from a storage cupboard, and pinned them to the theatre’s wood panelled walls using surgical blades, turning the sheets into stretched canvases. Then she’d made blood marks upon them.

  She’d located the theatre’s source of blood stock, a refrigerated unit beside the scrub sink, and raided its contents. Empty transfusion packets, torn open and discarded, were scattered across the tiled floor. She’d squirted, shaken and splashed the contents of the packets across the sheets.

  As Eyl approached, she was gazing at the marks, her wet, red hands by her sides, dripping on her mourning skirts.

  “What do you see?” he asked.

  “Nothing. It’s all broken. Disjointed. Incomplete.”

  “Why?”

  She shrugged. “The future doesn’t want me to see it.”

  Eyl bent down and picked up one of the emptied blood packets. He read the label.

  Synthetic blood supplement.

  “This isn’t real blood,” he said. “It’s artificial. Made in a vat.”

  She nodded.

  “I know,” she said. “I can read. I thought it would work.”

  She squinted again at the blood marks on the sheets, the blackberry darkness of the blood, the yellow-pink halo stains of the plasma.

  “I’ll have to use real blood. Bleed myself. Give me your rite knife, brother.”

  “I lost it,” he admitted.

  She turned to him. He could feel the heat of her gaze from behind the veil.

  “Upon my soul,” she said, “that is unfortunate.”

  “It is what it is,” he replied, though he knew she was right. “Tell me about the real blood.”

  Striding like a headstrong child, she went over to the counter immediately. She’d emptied and washed a couple of the glass sterilising baths, and filled them with blood product. Suspended in the red liquid, Eyl could see the strips of bloodstained leather that Malstrom and Bare had cut from the upholstery of the limousine.

  “Where did the blood come from?” he asked.

  “From the synthetic store,” she replied. “Don’t worry, it’s just a medium. It’s not as reactive as blood, but it’s better than water, and that’s what I thought I’d be forced to use.”

  “And?”

  “I can sense him already,” she said.

  Using a surgical tool, she’d scratched a grid and accompanying symbols into the worktop, and placed the glass baths at the centre. Arcane mechanisms were at work.

  “You can?”

  She nodded. “I’ll have his location soon. His heartbeat. There was a lot of blood on the leather. He bled all over the seats.”

  She looked up at him.

  “He might be dead already, Baltasar.”

  “I suppose so.”

  “The pheguth might be dead already,” she continued. She laced her arms around him, and rested the side of her veiled head against his chest. “Our work might be done. We could slip away and—”

  He pulled her arms off him.

  “I must have a confirmed kill,” he said. “Besides, you know we can’t. We can’t slip away from this. This world will end us. This mission will undo us. A day more, perhaps two, that’s the measure of our lifetimes. We knew this when we accepted the burden upon our souls.”

  “You did. Not me,” she replied.

  “We were made for this, sister, we—”

  “I was made. I was made for this. The gore mages wove me for this very purpose. You volunteered, Baltasar. Proud warrior, great damogaur, you volunteered for the glory of this mission. I was never offered a choice, and I wish I had been. That is one of my truths.”

  He nodded sadly.

  “If you’d had the choice, would you have chosen this?” he asked.

  “I cannot lie,” she replied. “Sometimes I wonder what life is like. I mean, what it is like to lead a life: to be born and grow up, and make choices and follow paths. I wish I could have done that. I wonder what choices I’d have made. But I know what I am, brother. A witched instrument. No childhood, no life, no choices. Bred for just one purpose. Even so—”

  “Even so?”

  “I would have chosen this. The pheguth must die.”

  “And the Anarch?” Eyl asked. “Will the Anarch die?”

  “Brother, you know that’s the one thing I can’t see,” she said.

  “What’s the matter?” Maggs asked.

  He’d woken up suddenly, cold and stiff on the hard bed of the tarpaulin, with no idea of time or location. It had taken a panicky moment or two for him to remember.

  His clipped ear hurt like a fet
her. The wound had begun to ache and throb, like any flesh wound after the initial sting and shock has worn off. Worse, the fear and stress that he’d accumulated the previous day was still flooding his system, the last thing he needed.

  Gaunt was asleep. The bastard could sleep anywhere. Criid was undoubtedly prowling the perimeter. Doctor Death was kneeling beside the patient. Maggs could tell that something was up.

  “What’s the matter?” he repeated. It was bone cold in the blue darkness of the refurb, and Maggs saw his breath smoking out in front of his face. The patient, under the blankets on the stretcher, was trembling and murmuring.

  “He’s taken a fever,” Kolding replied.

  “A fever?” asked Maggs.

  “That’s what I said.”

  “What kind of fever?” Maggs asked.

  Kolding looked up at him in the gloom.

  “There is only one kind,” he replied.

  “The bad kind?”

  “Yes.”

  “Uh huh. What do we do?”

  Kolding laughed a little, odd laugh, and said, “Why, sir, we take him at once to the Oligarchy Municipal Medicae Hospice on the Avenue Regnum Khulan, so they can begin intensive isolyte therapy… Except, oh, we can’t do that, can we?”

  Maggs shook his head.

  “The fever came on suddenly,” said Kolding. “I found rainwater caught in that sheeting over there. I’m trying to keep his face cool.”

  “Is he going to die?” asked Maggs.

  “We’re all going to die, sir,” Kolding replied.

  “I meant now,” Maggs snapped.

  “Possibly. I think his wound has become infected. Hardly surprising, given the circumstances.”

  “Look, Doc, I don’t like this any more than you do,” Maggs said. He paused and then started suddenly.

  Kolding stared at him.

  “Are you all right, soldier?” he asked.

  “Yes,” Maggs replied, shaking his head. “Why?”

  “You look pale, sweaty,” said Kolding.

  Maggs didn’t feel good at all, but he knew there wasn’t time for any self-indulgence. Feeling like crap was his problem.

  “I’m fine,” he said.

  “I think you might be running a temperature too.”

  “Just look after freak-face, all right, Doc?” Maggs said.

  He realised that his hands were shaking. His knees felt soft. He watched the doctor in the half-light as Kolding mopped the prisoner’s brow.

  “Where’s Criid?” Maggs asked.

  “Who?”

  “The girl, the woman,” Maggs said, frustrated.

  “I think she went out to check the street,” Kolding replied.

  Maggs reached for his weapon. Criid had his las. Doctor Death’s automatic pistol was wedged in his pocket. He drew it.

  “What’s the matter?” Kolding asked, suddenly apprehensive as he saw the weapon come out.

  “Nothing,” Maggs replied, but that wasn’t the truth. The truth was he’d just remembered the dream that had woken him in the first place.

  The siege of Hinzerhaus, on the fortress world of Jago, had been an awful ordeal. It had also been the Ghosts’ last major action before their retirement. Good men had died at Hinzerhaus, and one way or another Wes Maggs hadn’t been one of them.

  The place had haunted them during the siege. Ghosts had walked amongst the Ghosts. Everyone had fireside stories, stories about returning old friends or lost comrades, or pieces of childhood, or driftwood memories made flesh. According to the old Tanith, men like Mad Larkin and Shoggy Domor, the ghosts that had come to them on Jago had taken the form of actual lost souls like Bragg and Corbec, men who’d been dead and dust long before Maggs and the Belladon had joined the First. Maggs had little idea who Bragg and Corbec were, but the reappearance of their shades seemed to matter a feth of a lot to the Tanith-born troopers.

  Maggs’ personal ghost had been called the old dam. That was the name he’d given her. Some ancient, forgotten matron from Hinzerhaus’ dust-erased past, she’d stepped down out of one of the old, time-ravaged oil paintings and followed Maggs around the gloomy, satin-brown halls. She had worn a long, black lace gown, which rustled as she moved. Her face… Feth, her face had been a meat wound, the kind of thing that even a professional soldier didn’t care to look at for long.

  When Hinzerhaus’ spell had finally broken (and the rumour was, it had been psyker magic all along), the old dam had left Maggs alone, once and for all. A last hiss of her black dress against the satin brown floor, and she’d gone.

  For the two years since then, every morning, Maggs had given quiet thanks that she wasn’t stalking him anymore.

  Two years. Two years. For the first time since Hinzerhaus, Maggs realised he’d dreamed about the old dam. He’d dreamed about her long, black rustling dress and the face he did not want to behold.

  Why had she come back? It wasn’t fair! Why now?

  Why had she come back?

  Maggs’ hands shook. The old gun felt slick in his grip. If the old dam had come back, he wasn’t going to let her get him. He’d kill her. Ghost or no ghost, he’d fething kill her.

  Droplets of sweat were beading his forehead. Maggs didn’t feel good at all.

  But he had a gun, and he wasn’t afraid to use it.

  EIGHTEEN

  Zolunder’s

  Someone was knocking on the street door. The knocking was disturbing the cantor-finches, and they were banging and twittering around their delicate cages in dismay. Midnight had long passed. Elodie wasn’t sure if that made it ridiculously late or ridiculously early.

  She checked the security monitor covering the red door, but whoever was knocking was standing just out of pict-view. And why were they knocking when there was a perfectly good bell?

  Elodie yawned. The night after the raid, Urbano had decided not to open. This had surprised Elodie, because Cyrus Urbano was normally such a get back on the frigging steed kind of man. There had been something funny in the air that day, though, and it wasn’t just the sting of being taken for such a huge score, or the miserable snowstorm that had come in, out of season and unwelcome.

  Urbano had told her to send everyone home for a day or two, and had then gone out to attend to some business.

  Now someone was knocking on the street door.

  Elodie had fallen asleep on the couch in her dress. Xomat, the member of parlour security who’d pulled premises watch that night, had long since drunk himself to sleep, and was snoring in the greeter lounge.

  Elodie got up. The knocking came again. Then whoever it was found the bell-push at last, and started pressing it hard.

  She took the las-snub out of the under-bar drawer, and tucked it into the back of her sash. She went to the street door and peered through the spyhole.

  Outside, dawn was fighting a losing battle with the snowstorm. The court was a dim, lightless void, especially as the garmentfab had shut and no light was coming down from its windows. There was somebody out there. Elodie just couldn’t see who.

  She opened the door. The new lock they’d been obliged to fit following the raid was stiff.

  “Oh, thank the Throne,” said the girl on the doorstep. “I was starting to think no one was here.”

  “Banda?”

  Banda looked pinched and tearful. She was still dressed in the red silk gown she’d been wearing when the Commissariat had carted her away, and not much else. She was shivering, and leaning on the gryphon’s beak of the black iron handrail for support.

  “What are you doing here?” Elodie asked.

  “They let me go,” Banda said. “Hey, can I come in?”

  “They let you go?”

  “Yeah, yeah. No charges. They questioned me. Fething Commissariat. Then they slammed me in a cell overnight. But they had nothing on me, so they let me go.”

  “What are you doing here?” Elodie repeated.

  Banda gazed at her, a hurt expression on her face.

  “Where else was I suppos
ed to go?”

  “Not here,” said Elodie. “Go away.”

  “What? Fething what? I took one for the team and you’re brushing me off?”

  “Not me,” said Elodie. “I’m sorry, Tanith. Urbano doesn’t want you around. He told me to let you go. He doesn’t like hostesses who—”

  “Who what?”

  “Who get picked up. I know it wasn’t you, although you should have known better. You should have pulled your head in. It doesn’t matter. Urbano wants you gone. He’s superstitious. He doesn’t like the connection. Come back in a week or two, and maybe I’ll be able to find you an opening at one of the other parlours.”

  “I don’t believe this,” Banda replied. Her voice sounded as if it had been crushed flat. She sat on the snow-crusted step and began to tear up.

  “Oh, come on. Go home,” said Elodie.

  “I’ve got no home,” Banda snivelled. “Tanith burned, remember?”

  “I didn’t mean. Oh, Throne, this really isn’t my problem. You must have friends in the city, family?”

  Banda shrugged, and said, “I don’t know anybody.” She looked at Elodie. “Maybe I can talk to Urbano? Make him see sense?” she asked.

  “He’s out,” Elodie replied. “I’m sorry, Tanith. I’ve got nothing for you. Go and find a hostel or something.”

  Banda sighed and shrugged. She breathed hard to control her sobs. She rose to her feet.

  “Right. Fine. Thanks for feth all. I’ll be seeing you.”

  She turned and started to walk up the steps to street level.

  “Tanith?”

  “Yeah?”

  Elodie held the door open.

  “Come in,” she said. “I can give you a drink and maybe some food, and some better clothes. But you’ve got to be gone before Urbano gets back. Understand?”

  “Throne, yes! You won’t regret this.”

  Xomat was still snoring. Elodie went around behind the bar and fixed two stiff sacras.

  “Were you expecting trouble?” Banda asked, gesturing at the las-snub tucked into Elodie’s sash. It was visible now that Elodie had turned and bent to fetch shot glasses.