More tales from the Sabbat Worlds

URDESH: THE SERPENT AND THE SAINT
A novel by Matthew Farrer

BROTHERS OF THE SNAKE
A novel by Dan Abnett

TITANICUS
A novel by Dan Abnett

DOUBLE EAGLE
A novel by Dan Abnett

SABBAT WAR
An anthology by various authors

SABBAT WORLDS
An anthology by various authors

SABBAT CRUSADE
An anthology by various authors

• GAUNT’S GHOSTS •
Dan Abnett

THE FOUNDING

Book 1: FIRST AND ONLY

Book 2: GHOSTMAKER

Book 3: NECROPOLIS

Also available as an omnibus

THE FOUNDING

THE SAINT

Book 4: HONOUR GUARD

Book 5: THE GUNS OF TANITH

Book 6: STRAIGHT SILVER

Book 7: SABBAT MARTYR

Also available as an omnibus

THE SAINT

THE LOST

Book 8: TRAITOR GENERAL

Book 9: HIS LAST COMMAND

Book 10: THE ARMOUR OF CONTEMPT

Book 11: ONLY IN DEATH

Also available as an omnibus

THE LOST

THE VICTORY

Book 12: BLOOD PACT

Book 13: SALVATION’S REACH

Book 14: THE WARMASTER

Book 15: ANARCH

Also available as an omnibus

THE VICTORY – (Part One)

Contents

Cover

Backlist

Title Page

Warhammer 40,000

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Eleven

Twelve

Thirteen

Fourteen

Fifteen

Sixteen

Seventeen

Eighteen

Nineteen

Twenty

Twenty-one

Twenty-two

Twenty-three

Twenty-four

Twenty-five

Twenty-six

Twenty-seven

Twenty-eight

Twenty-nine

Thirty

Thirty-one

Thirty-two

Thirty-three

Thirty-four

Thirty-five

Thirty-six

Thirty-seven

Thirty-eight

Thirty-nine

Forty

Forty-one

Forty-two

Forty-three

Forty-four

Forty-five

Forty-six

Forty-seven

Forty-eight

Forty-nine

Fifty

Fifty-one

Fifty-two

About the Author

An Extract from ‘Sabbat War’

A Black Library Publication

eBook license

For more than a hundred centuries the Emperor has sat immobile on the Golden Throne of Earth. He is the Master of Mankind. By the might of His inexhaustible armies a million worlds stand against the dark.

Yet, He is a rotting carcass, the Carrion Lord of the Imperium held in life by marvels from the Dark Age of Technology and the thousand souls sacrificed each day so that His may continue to burn.

To be a man in such times is to be one amongst untold billions. It is to live in the cruellest and most bloody regime imaginable. It is to suffer an eternity of carnage and slaughter. It is to have cries of anguish and sorrow drowned by the thirsting laughter of dark gods.

This is a dark and terrible era where you will find little comfort or hope. Forget the power of technology and science. Forget the promise of progress and advancement. Forget any notion of common humanity or compassion.

There is no peace amongst the stars, for in the grim darkness of the far future, there is only war.

In the year 791, the Sabbat Crusade had reached a crucial juncture. In an effort to hasten the end of the war, Warmaster Macaroth had withdrawn from the primary coreward assault against the Archon Urlock Gaur to focus his attentions and those of his battlegroups to nothing less than the destruction of Anarch Sek and the securing of the vital forge world Urdesh.

Under the proven and capable leadership of Lord Militant Eirik, the coreward assault against Gaur continued unabated in the Erinyes Group of worlds, but it was a bitter and frustrating campaign against an entrenched and well-disciplined enemy.

Several key theatres were believed crucial as to whether the Imperium’s gains in this region became a foothold or a footnote. Pivotal amongst these ground war campaigns was the liberation of Gnostes, a major world that had long been under Archonate occupation. Of the many conflicts that raged across the planet, one of the most curious was that of the reconquest of Agria, a modest island chain inhabited by a rugged and dour people. Several Militarum regiments were charged with this task, most notable of which were the Royal Volpone, an esteemed breed of soldier well known for their discipline and professionalism but also their arrogance. What exactly transpired during the Agria campaign has become a matter of conjecture but what is clear is that the war for the island chain took a bitter toll and left many unanswered questions in its wake.

– From A History of the Later Imperial Crusades

ONE

If he wanted to live, Darian knew he should take the pistol. The dead man had no use for it, but the lowborn were not permitted to bear arms. They would likely hang him for taking it. Or whip him to death. He’d seen a man take five hundred lashes before finally expiring. Darian didn’t want to die like that. He didn’t want to die at all.

But death was coming all the same. And it wore a devil’s face.

Maybe he could hide it, wedge it beneath the belt. He might need it. In a last-ditch moment of desperation, a pistol would be useful. The east flank had collapsed. That was the word rushing down the line like a sea of hellfire. Panic rode its waves.

The earth shook again, spilling clods of dirt into the trench as the barrage pounded the Ankish line and the air grew thicker with aerosolised blood and soil. It was like pitching through fog, only adhesive, and it caked the body like a second skin. A heavy cannonade answered the barrage, drumming in staccato. Our guns, their bombers. An impasse about to be overcome. Our forces would prevail, they had said, those men in the finely tailored uniforms with metal clinging to their chests like it was any sort of guarantee.

The blood cults were coming, this much Darian knew. Just like he knew he should take that Throne-damned pistol and put it to use. The enemy had broken the flank and soon the line would be overrun. He might be very glad of a lasgun then.

Darian regarded the weapon clutched in a dead hand and the blank-eyed officer with half his face missing. The gun remained, but he could not. He hefted the belt of canteens across his shoulder and trudged on.

It had been a decent trek back to town and from there a return to the trench, its long and winding course like an arterial vein poised to be severed. Darian passed the burnt-out shells of tanks in the mustard camo of the Pardus Armoured, slumped like lonely metal bunkers, distant islands in the fog, eerily still and inert. A Ministorum priest murmured solemn words over a row of quiet men lying on their backs, seemingly unconcerned with what was coming. A band of Tunnel-Rats in dirty ochre fatigues and bucket-shaped helmets ran the other way. They were grinning. Darian looked back despairingly as he watched them disappear into the fog. He hastily made the sign of the aquila to the priest to show that he was pious and hurried on.

As he worked his way deeper into the trench network he passed other men: some in the rugged drab of the Diggers, others in plainer uniforms wearing the caducei of medics. A second platoon in ragged forest green came his way, stern-faced and swarthy. Darian didn’t recognise the regiment as they trailed past, headed towards the sounds of a distant skirmish. There were so many auxiliaries, reduced to bits and pieces in an ill-fitting puzzle. He saw spotters and riflemen, a few crew-served heavy stubbers and missile tubes, a voxman tinkering with a boxy comms unit but eliciting only static. As the bombardment persisted and the guns answered, most of the troopers with more mediocre weapons hunkered down. And waited.

Few paid Darian any heed. As a mil-serve, he was largely beneath their notice, a servant and a non-combatant. Most didn’t understand his purpose but no one reached for his canteens, they all knew not to do that. His cargo wasn’t for them; even the burly Diggers, fearsome and headstrong as they were, knew the pecking order. And the Bluebloods sat at the top. The ‘bastard’ Royal Volpone.

They didn’t stir as Darian entered the Volpone part of the trench, not the sentries who had been posted there should the enemy get this far into the trench, nor the ranks who kept their hooded eyes forwards, waiting for something to materialise out of the fog. Standing in line, their finely made laslocks gleaming, their grey uniforms pressed and nigh-pristine, their fine armour and iconography shining – what proud popinjays they were. But rigidly focused. No casual chatter here, or fatalistic camaraderie.

Darian kept his eyes down nonetheless.

The trench opened out, chambers breaking up the labyrinthine monotony, the edges reinforced with additional steel revetments and flakboard. It delineated the entire southern edge of Lodden, the fortified town they had occupied for the last six months. Several firing holes had been cored out, tripod-mounted heavy bolters sitting snugly within. All Praxis-pattern, well made. Three more gunnery nests were in process. Diggers hacked at them with shovels and picks, dark sweat patches under their armpits like old bloodstains. The Volpone watched but did not participate. Menial work was not for the Bluebloods, though a few of the sergeants congratulated the Diggers on the quality of their labour and had stronger drink brought down the line to them.

A phonograph was playing, the sound tinny and the needle scratching. The rousing strains of ‘Volpone, On To Glory’ led Darian to the officers’ bunker where some of his lords had amassed.

An ornate electro-sconce hung over the room, swaying as motes of dirt spiralled from the ceiling like dying moths. The light flickered, illuminating a map table, three chairs and several charts affixed to the wall. A sweaty-faced adjutant was pulling files from a cabinet and stuffing them hastily into a large pack. Another mil-serve stood nearby, ready to receive it. Lenna. She gave Darian a quick smile and he felt warmer despite the chill air, returning the smile when he thought the officers weren’t looking.

The officers stood together. There were three of them surrounding a vox, listening intently to a scratchy broadcast. A cadre of silent adjutants attended them. All had grim faces.

‘It’s done then,’ uttered one as the broadcast concluded, leaning across the map table to switch off the vox. ‘We’re giving up the town. We’ve lost the guns.’

Fair-haired like many amongst the Volpone, with a sharp nose and clear grey eyes, he was the youngest of the three and the least scarred. A lieutenant called Armand Culcis. He had a strong bloodline, and a good family history. Fourth generation Blueblood. His family were amongst the middling nobles of the Volpone aristocracy, hence his officer’s rank.

Darian knew the history of all of the officers in the 50th. Not an insignificant number, but it was wise for a vassal to know his kings and which of them he should be wary of.

‘Shitting hells,’ Shiller growled, and started pacing. ‘I need a damn drink…’

A slab of a man, Isaac Shiller had the hooded eyes common to the Volpone aristocracy, with shoulders like the bulwarks of a fortress and a red beard that framed a portcullis of a mouth. Shiller was sixth generation, a captain, and from a long line of high-ranking military men. He had lofty aspirations, but bad habits.

As he paced, Shiller looked up and caught sight of Darian. His expression changed from disconsolation to annoyance.

‘Ah, you’re here at last. Just in time for our disgrace.’ Shiller glared, taking in Darian’s dishevelled appearance. ‘And look at the state of you. A bloody shambles. I should have you reprimanded.’

Darian murmured apologies into his dirt-caked boots as he gave a canteen to the red-haired officer. Shiller took a swig, swallowed and then scowled.

‘What’s this piss?’ he snapped, and tossed the canteen back at Darian, who caught it. This only irritated Shiller all the more. ‘Give me spice wine, you useless deg.’

In the background, Lenna looked afraid. She had been on the receiving end of Shiller’s temper before. Darian raised his hand surreptitiously to signal it was all right.

A bomb hit close, shivering the walls, and sent a decanter crashing. Glass shattered. Shiller swore. He was still righting himself when Darian offered the wine.

‘Fegging deg…’ Shiller spat, his gaze like a lance thrust.

Culcis interjected. ‘Is that strictly necessary, captain?’

Turning his ire on the lieutenant, Shiller looked about ready to unleash another barrage when the third officer, Major Regara, took an interest. He had been reviewing the map table intently, lost in thought, stoically bracing himself against its sides when the room shook.

‘Decorum, Captain Shiller,’ he warned, and glanced at the canteen. ‘And also a modicum of restraint. If that explosion and the snap-fire I can hear not so far away is any indication, our withdrawal is imminent. I need you sober. I’ll have good order when we leave.’

Shiller cooled immediately, his respect for the major ingrained. Some of the colour returned to Lenna’s cheeks.

‘Of course, sir.’

Where Shiller was thick, Regara was trim and sharp as a knife-edge, with greying hair that made him look distinguished rather than old. He also wore fine armour and carried an artisan sabre. His left leg was a chrome-plated bionic. Darian didn’t know how Regara had lost it, possibly the same war that gave him the scar across his face. Vasquez Regara was thirteenth generation and could trace his lineage back to the Macharian Crusade. Upper-tier nobility.

‘And give that man a drink, will you,’ he snapped, turning his attention back to the map table. ‘He looks like he’s run ten miles.’

Darian blinked.

‘Well, go on then,’ urged Shiller when Darian didn’t immediately partake. ‘Take a pull. Of the water, mind you. Can’t have the degs rolling around drunk now, can we.’

The word ‘deg’ meant ‘degraded’ and was a slur some of the officer class used to describe the mil-serves. It was frowned upon, but had yet to be stamped out. Darian declined with good grace, though he was parched as a dry desert wadi.

‘Suit yourself,’ said Shiller with an irked glare and drained the wine, supping it like milk from his mother’s teat.

Culcis stepped into Regara’s eyeline. ‘Sir… what is our course of action here?’

Regara took a calming breath. A vein pulsed in his neck. ‘We have no choice. This position has become untenable.’

‘We’ll reoccupy the town,’ said Shiller, the Blueblood in him reluctant to accept defeat.

‘They’re in the bloody town, captain. All over it. We have to withdraw from Lodden entirely and retreat, as per Voke’s order, to marker nine.’

‘That’s Ankishburg, sir,’ Culcis interjected.

‘I know where it bloody well is, lieutenant. Marker nine,’ he repeated. ‘Platoons to fall back along the town outskirts. Keep them in staggered formation and do it by degrees.’ He muttered an expletive. ‘Stretched across the length of the damn map… And have the Agrians mine the trenches. I want the damned Archonate writhing in blood and earth when they retake it.’

‘And the guns, sir?’

‘Can they be spiked? Do we have time for that?’

‘The magos reports that we can wreck the turning mechanism and limit their function, but that’s all.’

Regara swore under his breath again, then said, ‘Have the Martian do it. We don’t really have authority to destroy them anyway, or the time to seek approval. I want us long gone before the Pact get them facing in our direction. Shiller, you’ve got Lance and Shield Company, the second and third auxiliaries and the Pavis. Have the tanks maintain a barrage for the rank and file to retreat under. Put some heavy metal on the east flank. It might slow the collapse and give us more time. And get the bloody platoons back together, for Throne’s sake.’

Shiller gave an ugly smile. ‘I’ll have them pounded to the hells and back.’

‘See that you do, captain.’

Regara stood up straight from the map table. They were spread out, too far. Voke had tried to match the Archonate line, to engage on every front. It had left them vulnerable and the town at risk.

‘The entire Ankish line.’ Regara shook his head. ‘It won’t stand,’ he said bitterly. ‘It won’t bloody stand.’

Then he walked over to Darian, took a canteen of spice wine and drained it.

The leg ached. Despite the fact it hadn’t been there for years, it ached. Old memories returned, of Nacedon and everything Regara had lost there. Some pains didn’t go away. Not really.

‘Are you all right, sir?’ asked Culcis.

The major waved off his lieutenant’s concern, though he knew he must look grim. His eyes drifted to the sky and the silhouette of the Arvus lighter slowly disappearing as it spirited away General Voke and his command staff. Regara had declined a seat, preferring to see out the retreat on foot with his regiment. Besides, Major Pallard was dead, and an officer of rank was needed to coordinate the withdrawal of the other Volpone companies and the auxiliaries. It had seemed a noble gesture at the time. Now, with his leg hurting like a bastard, he couldn’t see past the folly of it.

They were half a mile from the extraction zone, Lodden well behind them, and trudging through sodden earth and persistent rain. It was sparse terrain, a few farms and outhouses the only structures. Chimera transports trundled past, fighting through the mud and flanked by teams of Agrian 22nd sappers, in case they needed rescuing. Regara watched the armoured carriers with undisguised longing. He had also refused the offer of a ground transport when Culcis had managed to scrounge it up, leaving it solely for the ferrying of the dead and injured. Even then, the armoured carriers weren’t enough and trains of stretcher-bearers trailed through the ever-worsening conditions.

The entire regiment was strung out, weary and defeated. They kept good order, even the auxiliaries, though most had been reduced to scraps.

‘Damned leg,’ he admitted, scowling at the state of his boots as he lumped through the mire. ‘Martian forged, chrome plated, but doesn’t like the damp. Or maybe I don’t.’

Regara cast a glance to the eastern flank. Now they were out of the trench and well on their way, he could fully appreciate the guns. The weapon they had been forced to abandon.

‘Throne above, Culcis,’ he rasped, ‘what have we allowed to happen?’

Godsword, the men called it, because it was said that the effect where its power fell was like the sword of the Emperor Himself. It was well named. Its four long macrocannon barrels stabbed into the sky like huge funnels tilted on their axis, their ends blackened by explosive expulsion. Lesser but still-devastating weapon batteries surrounded it, a defensive measure, but Regara couldn’t see these.

It had anchored the line, conjoined with the fortified town, a marvel of Martian engineering that was supposed to have been the key to unlocking the way south into Archenemy territory. The Pact had let them raise it, even fire it, and then they had taken it. Six months and Godsword was theirs.

‘Reinforcements are incoming, sir. The guns will be retaken.’

Regara didn’t comment. Through a magnocular, he watched as red-plated ants scurried across the macrocannon battery, the Pact feasting over their hard-won prize. He didn’t know how long it would take their engineers to fix the rotatory mechanism that enabled the immense machine to turn; he only hoped it would be long enough for the Volpone and their auxiliaries to get out of range.

He lowered the magnocular and the weapon grew far away again, a towering spear thrust into the smoke-choked air above Lodden.

Distant booms revealed that the main enemy forces had met the trench line and the mines left by the Diggers. A score of lesser detonations undercut it as the Pardus kept up their barrage but the tanks were pulling out now to join the rest of the retreat, wary of the massed infantry headed their way.

Setting off again, Regara noticed the mil-serve from earlier floundering with his heavy belt of canteens.

‘Culcis,’ he said to his lieutenant, indicating the other man. The mil-serve was young, maybe twenty-five Terran standard, though war made men look older than they really were. Dark stubble covered his head like a skullcap from where his hair had been shaved. Despite his lowborn provenance, he had a strong profile and fierce blue eyes.

‘Sir?’

‘Tell him to leave it. No one falls behind, not even the servants. I’ll have every man and woman accounted for, by Throne.’

Culcis nodded, then turned and raised his voice. ‘Cut the strap, deg,’ he yelled. ‘And move your arse. Quickly now!’

The mil-serve nodded, unbuckling the canteen belt and letting it fall. At once, his pace increased.

‘And, lieutenant…’ Regara added, a hard glance at the mil-serve slogging across the earth.

‘Sir?’

‘Don’t call them that. He is either mil-serve or you learn his name. Bad enough that Shiller is an ignorant swine with no breeding without having to put up with it from you too, lieutenant.’

‘Sir,’ answered Culcis, suitably contrite.

The mil-serve suddenly stopped and turned. Something had made him look up, and then he started waving frantically at Regara, shouting, ‘My lord, my lord!’

The major followed his gaze to a growing speck on the horizon. A low buzzing materialised on the breeze, audible above the general retreat with the conclusion of the tank barrage. Several of those tanks, those with enough elevation on their primary armaments, angled their long cannons skywards.

The speck became several, and then the forbidding shape of a fuselage and wings, pregnant with a bulky payload underneath. The Pact had few bombers, and hoarded them jealously, but without Godsword to worry about the Archenemy could afford to be bolder.

Over five hundred men tramped this stretch of earth alone, with hundreds more strung out along the line. A few had stopped to prime rocket tubes and launchers, hastily effecting firing positions.

‘Get those men down!’ Regara roared as the buzzing grew into a nerve-shredding whine.

He threw himself to the ground as the first of the bombs hit, mud and bodies thrown upwards in a spray. A spatter against his cheek felt too hot to be rain. A stone struck his helmet, the metal ringing in his ears. Something warm and syrupy oozed from his ear as vertigo overwhelmed him, and Regara lost all sense of direction.

The bombs kept coming, and he found himself crawling, bellowing for his men to follow but he didn’t know which way he was headed. Pushing with his elbows, half sinking in the mud, Regara knew with cold finality that he was lost. He needed to stop and get his bearings but the barrage shook the earth, rattling his senses.

Then a strong hand wrapped around Regara’s wrist and at first he thought it was Culcis, but then the face of the mil-serve appeared.

He shouted, ‘This way, my lord…’ And then he pulled.

Regara let him, a blind man led away from peril, churned earth raining down. The mil-serve had found an old foxhole and they scrambled inside. A half wall surrounded it, the foxhole a basement room of a ruined outhouse partially filled with rubble. The frantic grip on Regara’s jacket was Culcis, the lieutenant hauling Regara to him.

Gratitude would need to wait. Teeth gritted, they hunkered down as fury reigned above and the world turned white with fire and thunder.

TWO

The wounded stretched deep into the camp, a shanty town of rain-soaked tents and grey stone buildings. It had a rustic air, but its character was slowly being eroded by the demands of the war. Exhausted medics worked in the light of the crackling sodium lamps, hurrying between makeshift beds to treat burns and cauterise amputations. A shrine-house served as an infirmary for the worst cases, and pyres of the dead would burn long into the night. The bombers had taken a heavy toll upon an already decimated army, a slaughter Culcis could scarcely believe he had survived.

Three days ago they had reached the extraction zone outside of Lodden, owing to the bravura of the 81st Merlin and six squadrons of Vulture gunships. Culcis hadn’t witnessed the engagement, he only knew the bombardment had paused long enough for them to get out of that basement of some half-destroyed outhouse and herd what was left of the infantry to the waiting transports. A posthumous medal of valour had been awarded to the wing commander who had led the daring aerial intercession but with no uniform to pin it to, it would sit in some lord marshal’s drawer like all the rest.

The flyers ferrying the infantry had arrived early in the evening of that first night, several hundred soldiers descending on the town piecemeal. Many dispersed, heading off to find decent lodgings or distraction, in the absence of orders to do otherwise. Even days later, cohesion was still being asserted with many men still at large.

Most of the town was still intact; it had suffered lightly during the war. As the men had returned or were corralled by their officers, the communal structures slowly filled, some as billets, others for the high-ranking officers and their staff. Little had changed since then. Several of the men had taken to sitting around fires, their electro-burners flaring blue in the late evening shadow and providing a little warmth against the cold. The rain had continued for three days straight, though eventually reduced to a miserable drizzle that saw makeshift awnings unfold like sails at the fronts of abandoned commercia and alehouses. An old bell tower stood in the heart of the town, fortified and currently occupied by sentries with magnoculars and a sensor array. The lookouts called out stragglers, who stumbled in here and there.

Far fewer than Culcis had hoped.

Despondency had set in, and laxity. That had to change, hence the lieutenant’s mission to the Quarter. A secondary camp had sprung up to supplement the first, dubbed ‘the Quarter’, a place of vendors and hawkers scratching for coin as they sold their wares, seeking to turn war into an opportunity, or perhaps just to blunt the hopelessness of it all. Men survived however they could, Culcis supposed, as he moved amongst the traders and merchants. Most of the auxiliaries could be found here but some Volpone, too, their ingrained elitism softening in the face of necessity.

The Agrians, or ‘Diggers’ to give them their colloquial cognomen, engaged in barter and trade. Ankishburg was their town, after all, though Culcis doubted many of the indentured men actually came from here. The conscripts had joined the Royal Volpone at Vardish, a major port that lay far to the north. Fifty thousand Diggers had signed up, dispersed amongst three different warfronts. Men and women, though Culcis found it difficult to tell them apart, clad as they were in furs and skins. He had heard even the women had the beards for which the Agrians were so famed. Bound with ingots and leather, the Agrians placed great stock in their facial hair. It was seen as a mark of station amongst their kind, or so the Commissariat briefing had told the Volpone officer cadre prior to shipping out.

He watched them now, moving amongst the stalls and benches, picking at homespun cloaks and skinning knives. A few had coin and used it lavishly, like they weren’t planning on returning from the next sortie. Culcis thought that a shrewd judgement.

The 19th Talpa, or ‘Tunnel-Rats’, smoked kappa root in shadowy conclaves, their dirty faces lit by the flame of narcotics. They spoke in a chittering argot, and took to Low Gothic poorly, though their officers appeared to have a greater grasp of language and acted as translators where necessary. The Talpa had earned a reputation in the trenches, the knives and spiked mattocks they favoured put to good use there against the enemy. They were similar to the Roane Deepers, tunnellers whom the Bluebloods had fought alongside before, only less civilised and more savage. Even the Pact didn’t like fighting against the Talpa, but their numbers were few. Only a handful of companies had made it back from the battle.

The other regiments were also casualty-ridden: the Fourth Ohrek Rangers, 37th Royal Sloka, and the Tenth Pardus ‘Pavis’ Armoured, who had been reduced to a single division. He caught glimpses of every uniform, like staying with like, though some swapped trophies or shared smokes, the territorial nature of soldiers softening as the evening grew darker.

For the natives, it meant custom and trade. An old Agrian woman offering pungent-smelling broth pushed a bowl at Culcis as he walked by her ramshackle stall.

‘Gruppa, gruppa,’ she croaked, smiling through cracked teeth as she offered her wares.

Culcis took one look at the watery, leafy stew and turned away. One of his men lingered, tempted.

‘We’re not here to sample the local soup, Greiss,’ said Culcis without a backward glance as he pushed through the crowd.

Greiss did as he was told, and caught up to the other three men Culcis had brought with him.

‘And calm yourselves around the natives, for Throne’s sake,’ said Culcis, having caught the nervous glances of his men. ‘The Agrians are simple folk who’ll take to anger poorly. Remember your station.’

He was eager to be gone from this place and its rustic ‘charms’. Mud clinging to his boots, uniform stained from collar to cuff and reeking of days-old sweat – a bath, not broth, was what he craved. A few of the steam-houses remained intact, though getting into one took an officer’s rank above lieutenant. Perhaps the major would accommodate him.

The smell of obscura was heady on the night breeze, wafting from Talpa tents, and the sweat-stink of the brothels grew thicker the further he went.

‘It’s rather rough,’ muttered Hanmar, grimacing. His olive-skinned and aquiline face wore the expression well, his white hair like a dusting of snow. An able corpsman, Hanmar had a deft hand for digging out bullets and shrapnel. He wore a rapier on his hip, a family heirloom he had brought to war. The scabbard was well worn but Hanmar bore no scars on his face or body.

The raven-haired Greiss nodded, the strap of his helmet flapping under his chin. Culcis couldn’t remember ever having seen the sergeant not wearing it. He had a neck like a bullgrox, with shoulders and a demeanour to match. He had won the regimental weightlifting medal five years in a row.

‘And the smell of it,’ declared Rake, scowling.

‘It’s richer than your boots after a forced march,’ Dresk replied, winking at the other trooper’s mouthed invective.

Rake and Dresk were cousins, both blond-haired and grey-eyed, and joint heirs to a large dynastic estate they would probably never inherit. In the ranks, they were gunners and manned a crew-served heavy stubber with ruthless efficiency. Rake had quick hands and Dresk a steady nerve. Neither looked comfortable.

‘Settle down, all of you,’ said Culcis. Allied encampment or not, they needed their wits about them. ‘Eyes sharp,’ he added, bulling ahead.

A little further on the hawker’s market opened out into a broad square. An old, dry fountain stood in the middle. Raised voices caught his attention, notable because he recognised the accent. Even wayward men seeking distraction couldn’t entirely hide their ingrained refinement.

They had found them.

Four soldiers in unkempt uniforms faced off against three burly Agrians. Volpone soldiers. A table and several chairs had been upturned, a deck of cards lay scattered beneath. Scattered coins, too. The Diggers looked angry, speaking in their native tongue and gesturing furiously to one of their number who was pulling at his beard like it had been insulted. Culcis saw the silver ingot in the hand of one of the Volpone, a trooper he didn’t immediately recognise, and quickly discerned the narrative.

‘Bloody hells…’ he murmured, before striding into the middle of the fracas to demand, ‘What is the meaning of this?’

The Volpone stood to immediate attention, shocked to have the officer suddenly in their midst. Culcis didn’t give them any time to adjust.

‘Answer me, then!’

‘An innocent game of cards, sir,’ piped up one of the men at the back, eyes front. Culcis dismissed him with a glare.

‘I am not addressing you, trooper. You there,’ he said, chin jutting like a dagger at the man holding the ingot, ‘explain yourself immediately.’

He didn’t get the chance. The disgraced Agrian lunged for the ingot with one great, meaty hand. Culcis stopped him. Turning on his heel, he caught the man’s wrist and twisted it. Howling, the Agrian plunged to one knee, seemingly paralysed.

The roar of retribution from his allies couldn’t drown out the lieutenant’s stern voice.

‘Stand down,’ he said, putting the incapacitated Agrian between him and his aggressors. They didn’t appear ready to be dissuaded.

Culcis turned the wrist a fraction, eliciting howls of pain.

‘If you wish for me to break it, I will,’ he warned the others, who backed down but glared furiously at the soldiers who had wronged them. A crowd had begun to gather, a few Talpa and the odd Ohrek come to see what the fuss was all about, but mainly sympathetic Agrians who only saw the persecution of their kin.

‘Sir…’ warned Greiss, balling his thick fists.

‘Now then, sergeant,’ uttered an icy voice from the periphery. A man stepped forwards, a lieutenant’s rank pins on his shoulders. ‘The battle ended hours ago, and as I recall these men were not our enemies.’

Bertram Fenk wore a cold smile. He had just been using a bayonet to pick dried blood from under his fingernails and, now he had finished, he slid the long sharp blade back into its sheath on his belt. Dark-haired, dark-eyed, Fenk ever had the look of a man who knew more than he was letting on. Unlike most Bluebloods, who were muscular and well nourished, Fenk had a whipcord physique, rangy but also taut and not an ounce of fat. He had longish fingers, like a pianist. He gently wagged one at Culcis.

‘I am surprised at you, lieutenant,’ he said, turning his eerily placid gaze onto his fellow officer. Culcis felt his jaw tense involuntarily. ‘To raise a hand to our allies. It makes for poor inter-regimental relations, wouldn’t you say?’

‘Fenk,’ came the tart reply. Culcis released the Agrian, who shrank back to his cohorts, rubbing at his sore wrist. ‘I acted as I saw fit.’

Lieutenant Bertram Fenk nodded, and as he stepped into the gap between the disputed parties, the Diggers edged back again.

‘All of this for a silly lump of metal… Return it,’ he said calmly, addressing the trooper holding the ingot but keeping his eyes on the Agrians.

‘Return it, Corporal Redfern,’ Fenk said again when it didn’t happen immediately. ‘I won’t repeat myself again.’

The trooper handed it over, and Fenk took it without looking and gave it back to the Agrian. The burly man looked pleased, but his smugness faded when Fenk swept in close, the bayonet drawn and beneath the Agrian’s chin, the point touching his flesh.

‘A piece of advice. Do not make a wager you aren’t prepared to lose. Do you understand?’

‘Yes,’ muttered the Agrian in an angry rasp.

‘Good,’ said Fenk, and let him go. The Agrian and his allies shuffled back into the crowd. The onlookers dispersed, as did the tension.

When Fenk turned to face his own troops, the blade was sheathed as if it had never been otherwise, but Culcis had seen it, just as he’d caught Fenk watching from the other side of the square as the violence unfolded.

‘I presume you’re here for me, lieutenant,’ said Fenk.

‘What the hells are you doing here, Fenk?’

‘Preventing a messy incident, I would say.’

‘I saw the bayonet.’

‘What did you see, lieutenant? You saw a fellow officer of the Royal Volpone diffuse a situation you had allowed to escalate.’

‘I see more than that.’

‘Oh?’

A moment of silence passed between them, Culcis reminded of a recent campaign, when they had faced each other in the ruins of a city called Titus. This was before Gnostes. Culcis had learned something of the other man that day, something of his nature. Or so he thought. Now, just as he had then, Fenk narrowed his eyes ever so slightly.

I know, and I don’t care, they said.

The moment passed. Culcis gestured to the dishevelled Volpone. ‘Yours, I presume.’

‘I’ll see them reprimanded,’ Fenk assured him.

‘Regara is pulling the officers together for a briefing.’

‘Makes sense. I’ll make my way there now.’ Fenk nodded and walked away.

Culcis called after him, ‘Lieutenant,’ and he stopped and turned back. ‘Captain Shiller, is he here too?’

Fenk smiled again, his expression ripe with barely disguised loathing. ‘Of course.’

‘Where, precisely?’ Culcis gestured to the expansive market.

‘Where else?’

The rundown alehouse was busy, mostly with soldiers, and a pall of tabac smoke hung in the air like a fog. As with the hawker’s market the auxiliaries were everywhere, sharing tankards of black ale over fizzing electro-braziers. The murmured conversation halted as Culcis entered, and a few dark glances came his way, but most of the patrons had their eyes down and thoughts elsewhere. The dour atmosphere quickly resumed.

Much of Ankishburg was now abandoned or occupied by Imperial soldiers, but a few of the businesses in the town still traded. Either the proprietors saw an unparalleled opportunity to turn a profit or they simply had no means of getting out. In the case of the Ursa, Culcis assumed the latter.

It was a small establishment and he didn’t want Shiller thinking he’d come mob-handed, so he’d sent Greiss and the others back to camp. Sweat and the reek of stale alcohol stuck to him as he moved through a throng of bodies, slowly edging towards the bar, where he planned on asking the tender if he’d seen a Volpone captain with red hair and a neck as thick as a mortar shell.

He need not have bothered.

‘Lieutenant…’

As he turned at the sound of the voice, Culcis found Shiller propped up in a corner booth with a mostly empty bottle.

‘Won’t you join me in a little drink?’ he said, cheeks flushed like distress flares. ‘I’ve decided to rough it with the natives.’

Culcis noticed Shiller’s jacket hung open and his shirt had several brass buttons undone. Despite the cold outside, the Ursa felt like a furnace. It didn’t excuse Shiller’s lack of decorum, ‘roughing it’ or not, but then the captain was not a man to be overly concerned by such things.

‘The major has sent me to collect you,’ Culcis uttered briskly as he stood outside the booth, raising his voice above the hubbub.

‘Has he now. Well, I shall be along promptly… but only after you’ve had a drink with me. Nothing sadder than a man drinking alone, lieutenant, don’t you think?’ Shiller pushed an empty glass across the table.

‘Really, captain, I should be–’

‘Drink…’

‘I should really be getting–’

‘Sit your arse down!’ Shiller’s flare of anger faded as quickly as it had appeared. ‘And take a drink with me, Armand.’

The man was fairly deep in his cups, but a feral awareness glinted in his hooded eyes as he beckoned Culcis to sit.

Culcis gave in with a conciliatory gesture and took a chair.

‘Still no word on when we can expect reinforcements,’ Culcis began. ‘Apparently, they are being pulled from the other fronts.’

‘Always straight to business,’ mocked Shiller. He poured Culcis a measure. ‘It’s only been three days.’ He nodded to the glass. ‘Strong stuff, this native swill. Be warned.’

Culcis had a sniff and decided it was indeed ‘strong stuff’. He put his glass down.

‘If it’s swill, why do you drink it?’

‘Because I like to drink and this place is selling.’

‘To forget?’ Culcis ventured, and Shiller gave him such a vehement look he thought he might lash out.

‘To remember.’

Culcis held his gaze until Shiller looked down at his empty glass as if an answer he was seeking could be found in its dregs.

‘How many dead?’

‘Still to be properly tallied, but early reckonings are around two thousand men. Across the entire Ankish line.’

‘We had them, Armand.’ Shiller shook his head, clinging to his empty glass. ‘We had them.’

‘It’s a heavy toll, sir.’

‘Isaac,’ he said. ‘We’re in a damn tavern, Armand. No need for formality here.’

‘I disagree, sir.’

Shiller swore under his breath. ‘Suit yourself.’ He took another drink. ‘Regara said we were stretched too thinly, that the flanks were weak to counter, but that bastard Voke…’ Shiller raised his eyes. ‘He’ll hang for this.’

Culcis said nothing.

Voke had reprimanded Regara for his ‘insolence’, for daring to suggest he had seen something the colonel had not. The truth of it was, Voke had lost his edge and had mistaken arrogance for acumen. Nine months in this grind and the colonel’s obsession had been within apparent reach – a fortress, Rakespur, that the Archonates had been using as a base of operations. Imperial spies had learned that the Sanguinary tribes had something within their ranks that could put the entire Gnostes campaign at risk. The precise nature of it remained unknown, the final vox of the infiltrators a frantic half-heard testimony of tortured screaming. No further covert operatives were risked after that, but Rakespur became a major objective, and one Voke meant to take.

Lodden was supposed to have been the staging ground. Break the line from Lodden and momentum would carry the Imperial army the rest of the way. A few weeks, maybe a month, two at most, and the war on Agria would be over. Voke believed Lodden was the lynchpin, for why else would the enemy have fought so tenaciously and fiercely? Win here, win everything.

Voke was wrong.

He had overreached, and two thousand men had lost their lives. Regara had voiced his doubts about Voke’s plan, but in the end had been overruled.

‘I heard a deg saved the major’s life,’ said Shiller, apropos of nothing. ‘That true? I heard it from a sergeant who got it from a voxman who said he saw Regara crawling on his belly like a worm until that deg pulled his arse out of the fire.’

Culcis nodded, but did so reluctantly. They had lost sight of the mil-serve shortly after they’d reached the transports. Culcis wondered where the lad was now, and if he even realised the import of his actions.

Shiller chuckled at the thought. He had always disliked Regara for his rank, his record and his rapport with the men, yet he did respect him as a commander.

‘Bloody shameful,’ he said, rising to his feet and tidying himself up. ‘A man of rank in debt to one of none. I expect Regara is seething.’

‘I expect he is also glad to be alive.’

Shiller shrugged like he doubted it.

‘Are you leaving, sir?’ Culcis asked.

‘You should too,’ Shiller replied, ‘this is an insalubrious establishment to be found in for men of good breeding.’ He winked, shouldered his way out of the booth and left, muttering, ‘Shameful, bloody shameful.’

Culcis stood up just in time for the bartender to come for the coin that Shiller owed but evidently hadn’t paid. Muttering in irritation, Culcis settled the captain’s bill for him and made his way back to camp.

Regara had brushed his uniform, or rather his manservant, Balis, had done it for him. A shave had dealt with the worst of his unkempt facial hair. He had washed, the dirt of the camp seemingly ever-present. His polished armour shone with reflected firelight. A scabbarded sabre hung from his belt on its gilded chain and an ornate pistol sat in its holster on his left hip. Standing before the colonel’s billet, Regara wondered if he would have to use it.

He checked his pocket chrono, waited three more seconds and then entered the billet. It had been a clerk’s office prior to the war, and as such carried all of the austerity of the Imperium instead of the rural trappings of Agria. Voke had made the place his own. Fine rugs hid the floor. He had hung a portrait of himself in military uniform, a window onto better days. A painted winter landscape depicted Konisburg, the Volpone planetary capital, its teutonic spires draped in snow. A rich oak desk sat in one corner, parchments and vellum stacked in neat piles. An ink pot to one side, an auto-quill with its servo-armature at rest nearby. A high-backed chair tucked under the desk, upholstered in tanned leather. A chandelier held a brace of electro-flambeaux, their light drawing a long shadow from the severe-looking figure standing on the right-hand side of the main room.

Voke wore his finest parade regalia, every inch of his magnificent attire gleaming as he admired himself in the full-length mirror hung upon the facing wall. Armed too, Regara noticed. Pistol and sabre, polished to a glittering sheen, their inset gemstones flawless.

A fire crackled in the hearth at the back of the room and Regara let it fill the silence.

Voke didn’t speak straight away. He was a proud man, broad shoulders held back, silver-grey hair immaculately combed. Only his eyes had lost something of the emerald fire they once possessed. Upon arriving at Ankishburg, he had gone into seclusion. Three days in his quarters, and now a summons. He gently adjusted the brocade of his uniform jacket. His plumed helmet sat on a stool nearby, gold and red and glorious.

‘It is a sight to behold, wouldn’t you say, major? The resplendent panoply of the Volpone.’

‘There is none finer in all of the regiments of the Astra Militarum, sir.’

Voke smiled and brushed a hand across his coat. ‘Well spoken, major. Well spoken.’

Regara wanted to remonstrate with the man, to rail at the decision he had made that had left two thousand dead and Godsword with the enemy. He wanted to shout and tear at the medals on his chest, to throw the colonel’s vainglorious art upon the fire and watch it burn like he had watched their men burn as Voke had fled aboard a gunship. He wanted to do a great many things, but in the end he did nothing. His silence would provide the rope.

‘I am being replaced, major,’ Voke said. He had yet to make eye contact.

‘I see, sir.’

‘They want me off the line, back-end position. Something logistical, I expect.’

‘I understand, sir.’

‘Say I’m unfit for the front.’

Voke’s gaze wandered to some midpoint. Perhaps he was back amongst those wintry spires. He looked lost all of a sudden, all his pomp and starch bleeding away until only a man remained, defeated, ashamed. Regara almost felt sorry for him.

‘You shall assume temporary command,’ said Voke, recovering. He glanced over. ‘I know you’ll do a fine job of it.’

‘It is my duty and my honour, sir.’

‘Indeed, indeed…’

‘Is that all, sir?’

‘I believe it is, major,’ said Voke. ‘Though, if you wouldn’t mind…’ He gestured to his belt and cinched scabbard. ‘Can’t get the devil to sit quite right.’

‘Of course, sir.’ Regara stepped forwards, taking a knee as he untangled the scabbard’s chain. As the major was carefully arranging the links, Voke laid a hand upon his arm.

‘I should have listened to you, Regara. I thought I had glory within my grasp… I believe I may have erred. Fourteen generations of Voke, a lineage that reaches back beyond Macharius. Never tarnished. Not until…’ The weight of Voke’s shame made his hand tremble and he let go of Regara’s arm. ‘You have old blood, don’t you, major? Macharian heritage?’

‘Yes, sir.’ Regara stood. ‘You are ready, sir.’

‘Am I?’

Voke glanced down at the chain now hanging in perfect order from his scabbard.

‘It would appear I am.’

Regara saluted. ‘The Emperor protects, sir.’

Voke nodded, a tacit gesture that Regara could take his leave.

He had walked no more than ten feet from the billet and only paused momentarily when he heard the shot ring out. Regara carried on. There was much to be done.

THREE

Hauptmann checked the fuel gauge for the third time, tapping it with a gloved finger and hoping the dial was stuck. He was getting low, and the Vulpa’s engine let him know it. Rattling close to empty, the laboured clunking as he shifted gears, the coughing protests of the exhaust stack. They’d need to find them soon. But Agria had a lot of territory and the wilds of Kraggehil were as rugged as it came. Hills and depressions rumpled the land like waves, sharp ridges as their crests.

He fed three signal clicks into the vox, and slewed the bike to a halt.

‘All stop, all stop.’

A host of mimicked confirmations came back as Hauptmann pulled his canteen and took a sip. That was running low too, and the water was warm, but at least it was wet. He leaned down to retrieve his map and then unrolled it across the Vulpa’s handlebars, the waxy material well weathered but enduring.

Not unlike me…

He lifted his goggles and the caked film across his vision lifted too. South lay Ankishburg, Laagar and Vasha, then Lodden. Kobor to the east. He could see Ankishburg if he squinted hard enough, even with the dust in his eyes. North was Thrake and further on Lanchetek, which, according to the map, was more than a hundred miles away. Lanchetek had an intact airfield and a Munitorum field depot. That’s where they’d be coming in. Only one major road led south from the city.

‘Should be here by now…’ Hauptmann murmured and winced at the ache in his back. Six hours in the saddle already. The bike was heavy, the Vulpa’s dirty mustard chassis armoured, its mudguards like pauldrons over the thick tyres. He leaned it onto its hefty kickstand, grateful of the relief. The stamp on the metal chassis stated ‘Pavis’ in thick, stencilled writing, and the Vulpas were part of the light mechanised division of the Tenth: armoured carriers, walkers and bikes. The latter harked back, sentimentally some might say, to the Pardus’ origins as a cavalry regiment, one of several in fact. Hauptmann still considered himself and his fellow Rough Riders as cavalrymen, though he was a scout by trade and by training but also ran escort and rapid interdiction. Only at this moment, he was struggling to locate his quarry.

A pair of magnoculars sat in a dusty pouch on the opposite side of the seat. Pinning the map with one hand, Hauptmann took the scopes with the other and tried to see something, a marker, a smoke trail, anything.

He chewed his lip, missing his usual tabac, and muttered, ‘Something to the east…’ Hauptmann turned a dial on the side of the scopes to up the magnification. A dust plume, maybe half a mile out. A large one. Stowing his kit, he got on the vox.

‘Objective sighted, east.’ Map coordinates followed. ‘Riders, saddle up and move out.’

Before he moved off, Hauptmann took a worn piece of paper from his pocket. Unfolding it he revealed a pict of a pretty young frontierswoman, cradling a baby. He whispered, ‘Chari…’ and kissed it for luck.

Two; he’d seen two dust plumes. One to the east and then a second coming in from the west, closing rapidly on the first. Hauptmann checked his weapons, and gunned the engines.

The column hadn’t seen them. A long train of around thirty armoured Chimera troop carriers and lighter Tauros jeeps, headlamps blazing with the onset of night, were driving heedlessly into an ambush.

Hauptmann kept the Rough Riders dark and their vox silent. To reach out now, to make any overt sign, could tip off the flankers coming in from the west. He rode one-handed, scopes in the off hand. The bumpy terrain jerked the view but Hauptmann got a decent look via night vision.

Pacters, a light skirmish force. Maybe forty or fifty riders. Part mechanised, mostly bikers, and part animal. Equine, he thought, or maybe large canine. The darkness made it tough to tell. Bulked up, cybernetics. Trailing hooks in the dirt and hefting long pikes. Nail guns and spikers. Low armour. A few jeeps with heavier munitions. Marauders, little more than tribal bandits. As they closed they picked up speed and began to split into two groups, a serpent with two heads.

Standard raiding tactics. They would hit the column at the front, disable the first vehicle to create a roadblock and force the motorcade out of position. Then they’d hit the rear to prevent retreat. Like wolves harassing a herd. Confuse, keep them at distance as they panic and try to break out, and get tangled in their numbers. Then separate, pick off.

Little cuts, a slow bleed.

Hauptmann saw it all play out ahead of time. Some thought the blood cults barbarians, and they were, but to believe they were simple-minded savages too was to gravely underestimate them. He knew different, and had the losses to remind him.

Light flashes stabbed out from Chimera firing slits, sporadic las-bursts from part of the column as it finally apprehended the danger. Search lamps roved the darkness, seeking targets. One shattered, shot out by a nail gun. A marauder took a lucky hit, mount slipping under him as he lost control. The bike kicked as if flung by a spring then crashed down. Those who followed weaved around it, deftly avoiding the debris as return fire cracked all along the line. A big cannon chugged from one of the heavier rigs, its salvo ripping off a wheel and forcing a Chimera to skid, then stop.

The closest group of marauders attacked the head of the column, nail guns sparking and hurling tomahawks before peeling off in a snaking line. Hit and run. A few headlamps shattered, but a spiker thrown from the saddle embedded in the lead Chimera’s chassis, latching prongs biting into metal. An explosion tore out the side of the carrier a few seconds later, sheared metal flapping like parchment. It drove on, unable to slow its momentum, and soldiers spilled from the breach, bundling out of the hold to bounce off the ground and roll to a dead halt. Nail guns raked the bodies, making sure of the kills. Burning, venting smoke, the lead Chimera ground to a stop.

The marauders wheeled out and back, hooting and crowing as las-beams chased them ineffectively. Dust billowed in their wake, pumping into the air like a smokestack. They were coming back.

The move brought the bandits into Hauptmann’s sights, within striking distance. He went loud, ditching the noise baffle to let the engines roar.

‘Never the last ride!’ he bellowed. Headlamps turned up to full beam. Better than a flash grenade if the enemy doesn’t know it’s coming.

A few of the equines panicked at the sudden light and noise; one barrelled into a bike and both went down. Another ran into the path of a heavy rig, and the jeep bucked as it drove over the gene-bulked body, then flipped. More bikers pulled away from the crash, and the marauders’ formation started to fragment. Tribal headsmen shouted orders, tried to reposition, but by then the Rough Riders were on them.

Hauptmann unhooked his shock lance, easing it into his padded shoulder and lowering it into the cradle on the Vulpa’s forward glacis. In his peripheral vision, he saw the other cavaliers converge, sweeping in from the wide zones into a perfect spear-tip.

The Vulpa was built stocky, which made it good for terrain and capable of withstanding small-arms fire. It also meant it hit like a battering ram and excelled as shock cavalry.

Snap-fire pranged harmlessly off the Vulpa’s bulky armour. A nail embedded in the forward glacis but went no further. Hauptmann didn’t even blink. Head down, eyes up. Leaning over his lance, he found a target. Then he roared as the charge of twenty Rough Riders hit.

He tore his enemy from the saddle, the horrific momentum punching the marauder up and back. The smell of burnt flesh wafted on the air from the lance’s shock charge. He speared a second, impaling a jeep gunner, and nearly lost his weapon before the body shucked loose. Hauptmann hung on, rode harder. No pulling away, now they were committed. Another impact; he felt his shoulder jar but the padding took the worst of it. A flash of electrical discharge. A beast squealed, sounding porcine more than equine. Blood spattered noisily against the Vulpa’s chassis, like hot rain on metal. He kept going, ploughing through the bodies, motion blurring, alive to the thud of metal against flesh, against metal, and the shrieking of man and animal alike. Petrochem smell filled his nostrils and he breathed through his mouth so it wouldn’t overwhelm him. Something exploded, the heat of flames lapping at his skin and then gone in the same instant.

‘Mow through, mow through!’ he urged his cavaliers and heard the whip crack of laspistols as some of them switched to their sidearms. Hauptmann clung to the lance like it was part of him, the air crackling with corposant. The rush of noise, the blur of images, the desperate tension as it neared a tipping point…

And then he was out, and felt the blessed relief of clear air washing over him.

Hauptmann turned, making a quick headcount. Three cavaliers hadn’t made it, left behind with their mounts in the scrum. He’d mourn them later. A few had lost their lances too.

The marauders had it worse. He raised his fist, the signal to come about and close into formation. As he wheeled the Vulpa and led the others, Hauptmann saw the carnage they had left in their wake. A dozen maimed and dead, a collision of bodies, twisted up in their machines. The bleating of the beasts, limbs broken and ripped up like offal.

A few marauders staggered drunkenly out of this morass, half clinging to weapons, seeking safety. Hauptmann gave a sharp, chopping motion and the Rough Riders shot them down without mercy, las-beams snap-cracking on the air.

Fewer still had survived the charge intact, but they didn’t look in the mood for vengeance. Several of the Chimeras had zeroed in on the marauders now and harried any stragglers with bursts of heavy stubber fire. Muzzle flashes spoke loudly but were mostly ineffective. Another marauder went down, though, stitched by solid shot as he rode unwittingly into a crossfire. The others fled, hooting and shrieking, into the night.

Hauptmann led the squadron into a wide arc away from the column. The larger rear group of marauders had peeled off from its initial target and were coming to intercept.

A mistake on their part.

Prepared, and numerically superior, the enemy appeared to have the advantage as they bore down on the Rough Riders. Hauptmann knew better. His men turned sharply, a fan of dust arcing high behind them, and dragged the marauders after them like they had tow cables attached to their rigs. The rearmost cavalier took a hit, a lucky shot to the back of the neck that tore out his throat. He lurched then collapsed out of the saddle, bike slipping under him. Hauptmann lost sight of him when the bike struck a piece of debris and a spark exploded the ruptured fuel tank. A fireball bloomed then faded.

Hauptmann scowled. That made four.

‘On, on, on!’ he urged, the throaty putter of the Vulpa’s exhaust stack and the hollow echo in the fuel tank more or less a death knell. He only prayed he had given their allies enough time as he sighted a ridge line. Running on fumes, he burst up and over and sighted the column. The cavaliers followed him then split, sweeping through the gaps left in the Chimeras, who then opened up with turret weapons on the chasing pack.

The marauders realised too late they had been baited and rode right into the fusillade. Easy to lose sense of the battlefield in the dark when your blood is up and dust is everywhere. Heavy stubbers and heavy bolters sang out in staccato frenzy, accompanied by the shrill barks of multi-laser fire.

The troopers in the carriers had disembarked, ranking up in firing lines. Las and turret fire erased the marauders as they crested the ridge in a storm of ionised beams and solid shot. It ended quickly.

‘Nice and tidy, cavaliers. Very nice. One for the textbooks,’ said Hauptmann across the vox. He and the other Rough Riders had deliberately overshot the column by a few hundred yards and now turned to make their way back. His fuel had run out before he’d stopped, momentum taking him the additional twenty or so yards that he had to claw back under his own steam.

At the column, more troops had begun to disembark as well as a cadre of engineers, who were inspecting the damaged vehicles. The dead were already being recovered, dragged off and laid together, while a Ministorum priest murmured rites over the bodies. Scouts had been placed, two squads taking the high ground with scopes and sensor arrays.

Only one vehicle remained sealed and silent. Slate grey where the others were lighter, it didn’t carry iconography or any regimental designation. As Hauptmann pushed his heavy Vulpa towards his allies, he wondered idly who was inside.

Hauptmann gave a hand signal to a delegation emerging from the nearside of the column. They wore the grey and gold of the Volpone and held their finely made lasguns at ease across their chests. One wore an officer’s helm.

‘Apologies,’ the woman called out, her tone crisp and businesslike, ‘for our lateness.’

Hauptmann frowned but quickly shrugged off his surprise. He had thought all Volpone were male. She was attractive, not just on account of her looks but also her presence and confidence, though she couldn’t hold a candle to his beloved Chari. Broad-shouldered, tall too, and light on her feet. A short sword strapped to her leg looked more expensive than Hauptmann’s Vulpa, judging by the jewelled pommel and gilt chasing. She was hawkish, like most Volpone, clean-skinned and with eyes the colour of rich brown wood. And haughty, another trait shared by the Bluebloods. A small scar distorted the lower lip, but didn’t detract from her appearance. In fact, the small imperfection enhanced it.

Hauptmann was an old soldier with an old soldier’s values, and he felt the urge to tidy his appearance before coming into contact with the female officer. In the end, all he managed was a dirt redistribution. He even tried to remove a glove so she wouldn’t have to shake the grimy garment but ended up making a hash of it.

‘No need on my account, sergeant,’ she added, observing Hauptmann’s rank pins. Her basso voice quietened to a conversational level as they stopped in front of each other and she shook his gloved hand. The grip was firm. ‘Eight hours in orbital transit, another three in a damn Chimera, I have smelled and felt better.’ She smiled that cold appraising smile common to the aristocracy and released his hand. ‘Captain Aramis, Volpone Eighty-Sixth. You must be the escort.’

Hauptmann nodded, surreptitiously flexing his fingers. Her grip was very firm.

‘What gave us away?’ he said, adding, ‘Hauptmann,’ when the joke failed to land. ‘Tenth Pardus, Rough Rider Corps.’

‘Don’t see many motorised units these days of the war,’ she said, by way of what Hauptmann assumed was small talk. She had a certain poise about her, a readiness that put him in mind of a coiled spring. ‘Vulpa class?’

The sergeant brightened a little, impressed at Aramis’ knowledge. ‘Jovian pattern, yes. I don’t think they make them any more.’

‘That’s a shame. It looks a fine vehicle.’

‘It is. A rare breed.’ Hauptmann found that candle he held flickering a little. ‘You know your engines, captain.’

‘I know a thoroughbred when I see it.’

Hauptmann raised a querying brow.

‘I raised horses, back on Volpone,’ she said. ‘At Pascolon, on the southern continent. My family is part of the landed gentry. There’s a lot of prairie in the south. Good grazing pastures, not like this wasteland, though I suspect the war has had something to say about that.’

She turned her eyes from the wilds of the Kraggehil and back to him.

‘Your bravery saved the column, sergeant. Every man and woman here is in your debt.’

‘I did begin to wonder if you weren’t coming, captain.’

‘An unavoidable delay, unfortunately.’

They walked back to the column together. She noted Hauptmann pushing his bike.

‘You hung on to the last dregs though.’

Hauptmann nodded, then asked, ‘How many are you in your party?’

‘Just over three hundred souls, but we’re only the advance guard. Further reinforcements are on the way. Not easy pulling troops from the other fronts, mind you. There’s more than just Agria at stake here on Gnostes.’

‘I wouldn’t know much about that, ma’am.’

Aramis laughed, and there was a little steel in it. ‘Ma’am is what I call my mother, Sergeant Hauptmann. Captain is perfectly fine, or sir if you feel the need to be particularly obsequious.’

‘Noted, captain.’

Aramis gave him an approving look.

‘I’ve never seen a female Volpone officer before,’ Hauptmann remarked, as they neared the column. ‘If you don’t mind me saying. I mean no offence.’

‘None taken,’ Aramis replied airily. ‘We are a rare breed.’

Hauptmann laughed, despite himself. ‘Very good, captain.’

‘I thought so.’ She sniffed, raised her chin imperiously. It looked as natural as breathing to her, probably bred in all Bluebloods. ‘Most of the Volpone female population are embedded in state matters – all royal households have their queens and duchesses after all.’ She side glanced at Hauptmann, a wry look in her eyes. ‘And someone has to run things whilst the men are at war. Tithes won’t pay themselves. Only, we’re running out of men…’

Aramis’ command squad had filed in around them, acting as escort for the Rough Riders. One trooper offered Hauptmann a canteen. He took it gratefully, and had one long pull to quench his thirst. He noticed they were headed for the grey, unmarked Chimera.

‘He has asked for an introduction,’ said Aramis, eyes front, demeanour hardening. Her camaraderie ebbed and flowed like a tap.

‘Who?’

The door in the side of the slate-grey Chimera opened and a soldier in bulky carapace stepped out. The man was built like a barricade, his stimm-bulked physique intimidating. The hellgun across his chest looked custom-made: targeter, auto-loader, oversized power pack. The black-on-black stock matched the soldier’s armour. Also black was the badge in the middle, a clenched fist surrounded by barbed wire. He couldn’t see the man’s face; it was concealed behind dark green eye-lenses and the black rebreather mask attached to his helmet. A head taller and considerably wider than the sergeant, he practically radiated aggression.

Hauptmann recognised a Tempestus Scion when he saw one. No one had told him in the briefing that the column was travelling with storm troopers. A second Scion joined the first, the two like carbon copies straight off the factorum conveyer belt, brimming with testosterone.

‘Why, the general, of course,’ answered Aramis. She stopped, snapped her heels together and held a salute.

Hauptmann felt lost, but flicked out the kickstand so at least he didn’t have to hold up the weighty Vulpa for whatever came next.

‘I’m not sure I’m dressed appropriately for meeting–’ he began to say.

‘Nonsense, Sergeant Hauptmann,’ said a man emerging from the shadows of the Chimera’s hold. ‘You are perfectly attired.’

He wore a finely pressed Volpone uniform, his epaulettes strung with gold chain, a line of medals pinned to his breast. Lean of frame, he filled his tailored jacket and trousers well. Orange piping ran up the legs, discreet, tasteful. High boots reached almost to his knees and they were polished to a mirror sheen. A veteran officer; his gilt-threaded cap proclaimed as much. A silver Volpone badge was pinned to the middle, a golden gryfon rampant. His weapons were ornate, doubtless artisanal and vanishingly rare. A dark red cloak hung nonchalantly across one shoulder. It was cinched to a silver guard fashioned into the face of a snarling lion.

His cheekbones were finely cut, and there was evidence of rejuvenat in the false tightening of his skin. He had a rich pallor, his short hair turning to charcoal from lustrous black. His moustache was trimmed and oiled. But it was the eyes that told his story, the wisdom and experience, the vibrancy of a younger man still in his prime despite the older body he found himself in.

‘Brigadier Deviers,’ said the man, as if he could be anyone other. ‘I understand we owe you a debt.’

He didn’t offer his hand to shake, which Hauptmann was profoundly grateful of as he crafted a hasty salute.

‘Forgive my dishevelled appearance, sir,’ he blathered, ‘I did not expect… I thought that–’

Deviers tapped his nose, an amused glint in his eye as if he and Hauptmann were sharing a private joke. ‘Kept it all rather close to the chest, sergeant. If the enemy knew I was in transit, well, they might have really had a go at us. I warrant even your men, as capable as they obviously are, would have struggled to fend off that attack.’

‘Indeed, sir.’ Hauptmann tried to recover but found himself a little star-struck.

Horator De Nesk Deviers, of the Renhalt Deviers, sixteenth generation, of the royal house of Byzamund. Volpone aristocracy did not get much higher.

Hauptmann knew Deviers only by reputation. All the men fighting on Gnostes had heard of the brigadier general, and seen his grand orations on the propaganda reels issued by the Commissariat Prefectus. He had led the reconquest of the northern isles, a daring amphibian assault on Arka Beach, and had pushed back the Archonate occupation of Serdburg during the Vaskian Peninsula conflict. Victories that had led to a significant Imperial foothold on Gnostes.

To have brought in Deviers from the western front suggested Agria was more important than Hauptmann had realised. But as he had said to Captain Aramis, he didn’t know much about that.

The general’s reputation as a philanderer was also well known, but much less publicised. The bastards he had sired could make up a platoon, or so the joke went. Regarding the easy manner, the vim and vigour in the general’s eyes, Hauptmann could believe it. It was in sharp contrast to the cold aggression radiating off the pair of Scions who stood two steps behind him.

‘The crusade needs men like you, Hauptmann,’ said Deviers, with genuine bonhomie. ‘You are a credit to your regiment. Who is your commanding officer?’

‘Colonel Ganza, sir.’

‘Ah, yes,’ Deviers replied, as if mentally grasping the image of the man from some compartment of his mind. ‘Tank commander. A fine officer. The armoured push at Beltane.’

‘Yes, sir. That’s right, sir.’

‘Were you deployed during that conflict too, sergeant?’

‘I was, sir. We ran supplies for the medics.’

Deviers was nodding but his mind was shifting to other matters, and Hauptmann could tell their conversation was drawing to a close.

‘I shall recommend you be decorated, Hauptmann. In recognition of your valour.’

Hauptmann was slightly agog. The Volpone gave out medals like they were ration tins.

‘I was merely doing my duty, sir.’

‘Nonsense, sergeant,’ Deviers cut in briskly. ‘A medal will look fetching on your uniform at the next officers’ dinner.’

Hauptmann didn’t have the heart or the gall to tell the general that sergeants didn’t attend the officers’ dinner and that he kept his battle honours in a box at the bottom of his kitbag. Instead, he gave a shallow bow.

‘I am honoured, sir.’

He was about to step forwards to shake the general’s hand out of appreciation when Hauptmann felt a hand like a hunk of iron against his chest and the barricade of a Scion was suddenly in front of him. He had to suppress the instinct to reach for his sidearm, such was the level of aggression on display.

Deviers didn’t see any of it. He had already turned and was heading back to the Chimera.

‘A credit to your regiment, sergeant,’ he said. ‘See that Hauptmann gets whatever he needs, Captain Aramis,’ he added before disappearing into the shadows. It was the first and only time he had acknowledged her during the entire exchange.

The tension lingered in the air for a short while as the Scions re-embarked, and Aramis steered Hauptmann away to another part of the column.

‘I think he likes you,’ said Aramis, once they were well out of earshot. Her face creased a little with a wry smile.

Hauptmann barely took it in. He was still reeling. ‘I wouldn’t know.’ He glanced back at the grey Chimera. ‘And the bodyguards… who are they? Looked like Scions.’

Aramis stared ahead, a tiny vein standing out on her left temple. ‘They’re called the First Sons. And, yes, they’re Militarum Tempestus.’

‘Not Volpone then?’

Aramis gave a loud, mirthless laugh. ‘Throne, no.’

‘You don’t approve, captain?’

‘Let us say that there is rivalry of a sort, and leave it at that.’

‘Of course. Not exactly friendly, are they.’

‘You mean they are pugnacious bastards.’ Another smile, like sun glimpsed through parting cloud.

‘I wouldn’t have phrased it as eloquently as that, captain, but yes, I agree that they seemed like arseholes.’

Aramis laughed loudly. It was a good, rich laugh.

They were headed to where the rest of the Rough Riders had gathered, the cavaliers checking and securing kit. Hauptmann noticed four of the bikes now carried an additional burden on the back, bound up in a corpse shroud. He’d need to write four letters later.

‘Deviers will honour his promise,’ said Aramis, without prompt.

‘I’d never met him before,’ Hauptmann admitted. ‘He has a certain presence.’

‘He is a remarkable man,’ Aramis replied, though it felt slightly forced, almost by rote. ‘So then, sergeant,’ she said, smartly changing subject as they reached the laager of bikes, ‘what is it I can do for you?’ She faced him, and Hauptmann was struck again by her unshrinking confidence.

‘You would be in my utmost debt, captain,’ said Hauptmann, ‘if we could borrow a little fuel.’

Aramis’ smile turned as pleasant as a summer sunrise.

‘It would be my genuine pleasure, sergeant.’

Hauptmann watched her leave to fulfil his request, and decided he’d need to visit a confessor as soon as he returned to camp.

FOUR

Regara watched the officers slowly filing into the command room to take their seats.

The building had once been a printing press, its original function usurped for military use. Most of the machinery it had once contained had been broken up and stripped for parts years ago when the war on Gnostes had first started. A few pieces remained: an old frame serving as a map table, the cylinders and wheels stacked out of the way until needed for some as yet unknown purpose.

Vintage propaganda leaflets from earlier in the war littered the corners, covered in dust. They proclaimed swift victory for the Imperium and issued a call to every able-bodied man and woman of Gnostes to take up arms in the name of Macaroth and his Sabbat Crusade. The ink had run in places; it was a hurried and defective batch that had been left unused. These days, the faulty leaflets were deployed as latrine paper when the Departmento stocks ran out. No one commented on this mildly blasphemous pragmatism.

As well as the map on the table depicting the current conflict, a larger continental map summarising the relative battalion positions across the southern, eastern and western fronts had been pinned to the wall behind Regara. He kept the light low apart from the sharper sodium lamp overhead to focus attention. A servitor-stenographer sat nearby, its cybernetic body hardwired into its pulpit. It had quills for fingers, and when it wrote it looked like it was performing a piano concerto, not taking the minutes from a war briefing.

As the last of the officers took their seats, Regara reviewed his notes via data-slate. It was like experiencing a detailed memory shunt.

Upon making planetfall on Gnostes, the initial six weeks of the renewed campaign to take the largest of the southern isles, Agria, had gone well. Towns occupied by the Blood Pact had capitulated against Imperial military might and the Volpone began to believe they would conquer the island and cleanse it of the Archenemy in a matter of months, even under a year, but then came the collapse of the eastern flank and the Siege of Beltane. Those two conflicts alone had accounted for two years of brutal fighting. Earlier victories were chalked up to a misapprehension of Archonate military strength. The Volpone thought that by sacking Thrake and retaking the airfields at Lanchetek they had delivered a telling blow, when in fact they had been routing bands of skirmishers and petty tribal warlords.

The further south the Imperium pressed, the more entrenched the enemy had become, and the greater his numbers and martial fortitude. It had caught the Volpone unprepared. It took months to make even small gains, with Ankishburg and its surrounding satellite towns the only foothold that had any permanence. Lodden had come next, and the construction of Godsword. It was conceived of as an advanced outpost, but enemy shelling had taken a toll upon it. Still, it was fortified and made reliable as a forward base. Two miles south of Lodden and you met the Mireland, an unimaginatively named tract of dirt. It was a twenty-mile expanse, a hard slog through mud and slurry. The wastes were littered with Pact outposts – some abandoned, others in a state of serious disrepair judging by limited aerial reconnaissance – but petered out at Vegath’s Maw, a chasm a mile and a half wide at its narrowest point. Several bridges spanned this gulf, a jagged strip that ran four hundred miles from nose to tail, the largest of which was Gannad.

Beyond that lay the province of Karcas and the old fortress of Rakespur, where a major Archonate army was believed to be encamped. It was one of several abandoned sea forts that ran along Agria’s western coast, Rakespur being the largest. This had been and still remained the Imperial objective – to breach the nigh-on impenetrable Karcas border wall and then oust the Archenemy from Rakespur. Regara had attended briefings concerned with ‘experiments’ the Imperial intelligence directive believed were being perpetrated in the old fortress, but they were little more than rumours at this point.

With the attendees now present, Regara roused himself from his review and stepped up to the lectern. The hubbub in the room ebbed to silence. A Volpone majority made up the officer cadre, but there were other regiments represented: Pardus Armoured wearing tan fatigues; Ohrek Rangers garbed in rural camo; Royal Sloka in their fine armour of enamelled silver and scarlet uniforms, ever the second-rate peacocks; scruffy Talpa in whatever scraps and oddments they had scavenged or appropriated; and Agrians, of course, the conscripts in a mixture of flak armour, furs and tribal gewgaws. Even after all this time, the natives looked ill at ease in the presence of bonafide Imperial soldiers, but Regara couldn’t do much about that so he didn’t try.

Instead, he tapped the rune-key on the vox-amp in the lectern and addressed the men.

‘General Voke has been relieved of duty.’

A furore rose amongst the gathered officers like a storm wind. Despite his recent errors in judgement, Voke still had admirers. And allies. Several of them chafed at the decision, and made their displeasure known. The Slokans were particularly vociferous. Others, Captain Shiller amongst them, knew better. That Amadeus Voke had died by his own hand, rather than suffer the shame of demotion and court martial.

The regimental commissar, Eythor, was absent. He would be dealing with the body, ensuring its removal and passage back to Volpone. For now, Regara was on his own.

The major brooked no dissent. His strident voice would have carried even without vox-amplification.

‘And in his stead, command is mine until his replacement is with us.’

The unhappy officers simmered a little, their discontent fading to a dull murmur that Regara quashed as he went on.

‘We have suffered,’ he said, regarding the proud but war-weary soldiers. Several carried injuries, one lieutenant had walked in on crutches. A few had bandages peeking out from under their uniforms. ‘The defeat at Lodden and the double loss of Godsword are difficult to take.’

He paused, his words carrying to every ear. Stern, impassive faces met his own. Regara was merely stating facts to establish continuity.

‘But take it we must. This is war. Our duty demands it of us. And so it shall be.’

He let silence fill the room, took it as an opportunity to meet eyes with every man and woman present. When he was satisfied, Regara commenced the briefing proper.

‘Reinforcements are inbound from the western front, and we are grateful to have them. The majority of these recruits will be with us within days, so billets will get cramped and we’ll need more temporary shelters setting up for the new intake.’ A few displeased mutterings greeted this announcement but Regara stamped them out swiftly. ‘Endure it. We won’t be here for much longer. Now, for strategic disposition…’

The major tapped another rune-key on the lectern, prompting the map on the table to activate and deform into a contoured, tri-D image.

‘Our forces are split across three settlements, Laagar and Vasha to the west and south, respectively, and the majority here in Ankishburg.’

He tapped a third key and part of the map illuminated, depicting the position of Godsword. A red field radiated from it, denoting range. It came within a few miles of the three settlements.

‘Based on the loss of the guns and their effective range, a second push towards Lodden is untenable.’

The announcement was met with disapproval, as soldiers worn down by defeat and fatigue felt their chance to exact vengeance stripped away from them. A few raised their voices. Regara noticed Captain Shiller in the throng, rabble-rousing. Loud from the drink again.

I should have you on charges, you loutish bastard.

‘And in the meantime?’ asked Hercule Ganza. The dark-skinned Pardus colonel removed his cap when speaking, tucking it behind his back as he stood proudly. His barrel chest stuck out, sturdy and round as a tyre from a cargo-tracktor. ‘Are we expected to lick our wounds and wait? I have four brigades dawdling in the mud, major. Slowly going to rust. Should I just let them?’

‘How many engines did you lose during the retreat, colonel?’ Regara quickly held up a hand to ward off a disgruntled protest. ‘I ask sincerely, without offence intended.’

Ganza smoothed his thick mousy moustache as he reached for the answer. It was high. Not four brigades, but still high.

‘And that was just from their bombers, without Godsword to ward them. We may have successfully cancelled out the former, but what of the latter?’ He turned his attention to a robed figure, a red wraith at the edge of the gathering loitering like an uninvited guest at a feast. ‘Magos,’ Regara intoned, ‘please calculate for us how many more engines we would lose against our own macrocannon battery.’

The wraith shifted in its red robes, rivulets of bloody silk rolling to the hem as it moved. Limbs writhed beneath, metallic and whirring. Its hunched back suggested further appendages concealed beneath oil-stained material. A lens flare of deepest green illuminated the inner darkness of the hood. Pale, corpse-like flesh was revealed, puckered with steel and iron. The voice that came from within sounded inhuman, a mechanised death rasp.

‘Tenfold,’ it uttered coldly, and ice cooled the temper of every man and woman who heard it.

‘Tenfold,’ Regara repeated. ‘Have them dawdle in the mud, colonel, rusting or no.’

Ganza retook his seat.

‘We cannot make a direct assault. Not while the enemy hold our keenest weapon and turn it to their own ends. It’s a simple and brutal calculus for which any act of bravura cannot compensate.’

‘We could send a small force to the Lodden outskirts,’ suggested Captain Brandreth, a milk-skinned Volpone officer who had more piss than vinegar in his blood. He had fair, thinning hair combed over his balding pate out of vanity and an ugly scar up the left side of his face from early on in the war. ‘Infiltrate with scouts, set up a watch post in one of the old farms. Observe and measure.’

Observe and measure. That was Archivald Brandreth’s mantra. All he ever wanted to do was wait and watch. He carried an antique chrono on a gold chain and was ever consulting it in lieu of actually doing something. Several amongst the officer cadre thought he had lost his courage. Regara agreed with them.

‘The enemy will have set up their own forward scouts by now,’ said Regara. ‘I won’t risk an advance force only to have it captured or killed. And we’ve seen what happens to soldiers the Blood Pact take alive.’

They had, and the memories weren’t pleasant ones.

‘How many men come from Lanchetek?’ asked one of the Agrians. He pronounced the word ‘Lan’k’tk’ and had a thick accent, but his Low Gothic was good. A hetman-officer, judging by the torcs on his dusky arms and the silver ingots in his long beard. It looked like one was missing. He had a group of Agrian cossacks around him, sub-officers.

‘We have been promised significant numbers from the western front,’ said Regara. ‘This is how seriously the lord militant ranks the Agria conflict. Karcas must be breached and Rakespur taken. And from there the rest of the southern isles will fall. Macaroth demands it.’

These last words rang hollow, even to Regara. They hadn’t heard from the Warmaster in years, and Lord Militant Eirik, who was in overall operational command of the second crusade front, had sent barely two missives during the last half decade of the war. The Sabbat Worlds were burning and even the officer class had its hands full trying to douse the flames.

‘Have we received any word from Lord Militant Eirik or his staff?’ asked a captain in the hunting garb of the Ohrek Rangers. He was oak-skinned and athletic, with a bald head like a polished knob of wood. Regara recognised him as Cobel Ombi, a fine soldier, if a little idealised. He liked the man but groaned inwardly at the question, as if his own misgivings had summoned it from the other officer’s mouth.

‘None recently, but the lord militant has capable generals in the field and Gnostes represents an important objective to the campaign, as does our part in achieving that objective.’

‘But how many exactly?’ the Agrian interjected. Captain Ombi scowled at the interruption but the native had an insouciant air about him, almost lounging in his seat, and carried on regardless. ‘Do we know numbers, disposition? Anything?’

‘We know they are coming,’ Regara answered honestly, ‘and we must be ready as soon as they arrive. Now, I believe this is the best and most viable approach.’ He lit another part of the map, a town several miles south-east of the current warzone. ‘Kobor is currently under Pact occupation. Deemed of secondary tactical importance, it is ruled over by a petty tribal warlord. No Death Brigades. It also lies outside the range of Godsword and this mountain chain here leading out of the town’ – he identified it with a las-stylus – ‘will offer cover for a flanking manoeuvre that will circumvent Mireland and hit east of Karcas. Now, strategic analysis… Have at it.’

‘That’s a three-day march through a rad-zone, major,’ said Lieutenant Culcis, his grey eyes narrowing as they took in the map. ‘Are we sufficiently equipped?’

‘Munitorum stores are low but we can manage,’ Regara replied. ‘We can skirt the rad-zone and stay clear of Godsword through a narrow cordon.’ Again, he deployed the las-stylus to illustrate.

‘That would string us out, major,’ said Shiller. ‘A column that long will be vulnerable to attack. Security will be a challenge.’

‘One we shall rise to, captain. The cavaliers are able outriders, and more than qualified for the task.’ He inclined his head to Ganza, who replied with an appreciatory nod. ‘And it poses significantly less risk than marching on Lodden.’

Regara let the officers have their head. It kept their minds on the task and away from the recent defeat. He invited challenge and wanted agreement, not blind obedience, from his officers. Better to be shrewdly politic than ruthlessly authoritarian. He needed them to see the validity of the plan.

‘An easterly approach on Karcas,’ offered Lieutenant Fenk, ‘assuming we bridge Vegath successfully, means we’ll have to push through most of the adjacent region before we hit the border wall. That’s a lot of ground to take, sir. Bloody work.’ He said it without emotion, his dark eyes cold, as if he were discussing stacking munitions rather than killing men. It wasn’t a concern for Fenk, just a fact. He excelled at ‘bloody work’. It’s what made him such a valuable officer in the field.

‘By then we’ll be adequately reinforced,’ Regara countered. ‘It’s a hard route, but a necessary one. A direct push south is beyond dangerous with the guns in enemy hands, it’s that simple.’

‘Yes,’ uttered the Agrian officer again, still not placated. Regara wished he could remember his name, but the natives were hard to distinguish. ‘This word “simple”, I have heard it used several times during this campaign.’

‘War is never simple,’ Regara replied.

‘No, not for us, major. Agria is our home. You come, you fight, and when you leave we will remain.’

‘Most of the officers here haven’t seen their homes in over five years, hetman. Many of them a lot longer than that.’

‘Ah, but you have homes to return to. What will we have but the ruins of our towns and cities, the graves of our dead in their thousands?’ The hetman sat up in his chair, leaning forward. ‘We were promised swift liberation, but instead you have delivered death and disrespect.’ He sneered, scars creasing his face like cracked leather. ‘You Royals seek glory. You worship flags of triumph, trumpets and parades. I have only this.’ He held a fistful of soil that he slowly let drain, like sand through an hourglass, to the floor. ‘The earth of my land, and it cries out in pain and anger, as do my people.’

They had planned this, Regara realised. It was a statement of discontent. Things were worse with the Agrians than he had thought.

‘I ask for patience and forbearance,’ he said. ‘Our ways are not so dissimilar. If we remain committed, we can–’

‘I see the way you regard us, as lesser men, and some see us not as men at all. You believe because we dig the dirt that we are dirt? No, major,’ said the hetman, shaking his head, ‘we are not similar, not at all.’ He threw down the rest of the soil and it hissed as it struck the ground. He and his men got to their feet, chairs scraping loudly.

A few of the Volpone and Slokan officers began to object, also rising. Regara sat them back down with a gesture.

‘Patience is like grain, major,’ declared the hetman. ‘If you waste it, you will have no more crops and your tribe will die.’

He turned and the Agrian delegation made to leave. Culcis had taken a seat at the edge of the room, and got up to stand in the hetman’s way. He looked calm, but Regara saw the coiled aggression in his posture.

‘You’ll leave when dismissed.’

The Agrian leaned into the lieutenant, his voice low and threatening. ‘If you wish for me to break you, I will.’

Culcis ignored him, and looked to Regara, who gave a furtive shake of the head. The lieutenant stepped aside, but didn’t climb down from a state of readiness until the Agrians were gone.

‘I think that’s enough excitement for one briefing,’ Regara declared. He smiled at the gentle laughter, but saw no amusement in this. ‘Three platoons from Shield Company will remain on guard duty in the town. Captain Shiller, see to it.’

Shiller gave a curt salute.

‘As for the rest of you, patch up whatever platoons you can and have them mustered and prepped. It’s been a long three days and an even longer night, so let’s use what remains of it to get some rest. Longer days yet await us.’

Regara let his gaze roam around the room, studying the reaction of the other officers. It wasn’t the news they wanted, but at least it represented forward momentum.

‘We are not out of this fight. Not nearly out of it.’ He made the sign of the aquila, said, ‘The Emperor protects,’ and heard it echoed back to him. ‘That is all, officers, thank you. That is all.’

As the gathering broke and the officers departed to their billets, Regara descended from the lectern. Catching Culcis’ attention, he took the lieutenant to one side.

‘I need you to do something for me, lieutenant.’

‘Of course, sir.’

‘Find the mil-serve who saved my life. I would like to meet him.’

‘A reward, sir?’

‘Perhaps, or a position. I saw no household allegiance on his attire.’

‘Nor I, sir. I’ll scour the camp. He can’t have gone far.’

‘Very good,’ Regara replied. ‘And one other thing…’

‘Name it, sir.’

‘Have you upset the natives, Lieutenant Culcis? The way that hetman looked at you. That depth of enmity doesn’t just happen, it’s earned.’

‘A minor altercation, sir. Nothing serious.’

‘We need the Agrians on side, Culcis. For the sheer numbers, if nothing else. And find out that hetman’s name. If we’re to achieve any kind of unity after this then we’ll need to start with him.’

FIVE

Fenk left the gathering with the others. They departed into the camp in dribs and drabs, the officers who had become friends over the years of the war sharing a joke or remark until they reached the billets of their own companies and platoons. Fenk took part, as convention dictated, smiling when he was required to smile, laughing at all the right moments.

The Volpone mainly kept to their own, but a few had made bonds with officers from other regiments. Ever since the retreat, the Bluebloods had been forced into cohabitation with the auxiliaries, into close proximity with regiments they believed less professional, less effective than their own. Most were disdainful of anyone who wasn’t Blueblood.

Such arrogance. Fenk played his role. It suited him. In truth, he didn’t care about status, about legacy and lineage. These trappings were falsehoods that hid a man’s true instincts. But these instincts drove Fenk. They had once appalled him, but he had come to live with them for he could no more cast them off than he could willingly shear off his own arm. They were part of him. But he had mastered them. In a way.

As Fenk peeled away from the slowly dispersing throng of officers, he found himself drawn back to the Quarter and the hawker’s market. He had been there for a while when Culcis had shown up earlier that evening, even preceding his men and their ill-fated card game. Fenk had no time for gambling. It didn’t interest him. He had spent most of his adult life limiting risk. It wasn’t overstating it to say his life depended on it.

Night had come to the Quarter, and though fires blazed and sodium lamps flickered, the shadows pooled like inkwells and brought a certain anonymity. Fenk had a knack. He tended not to be noticed unless he wanted to be. Another mask. He wore several, depending on what was called for. He had cultivated a ruthless reputation on the battlefield. A useful half-truth. A killer lurked inside him, another self that, like a sleeper, sometimes awoke and fought for expression. Fenk gave it to him. He thought of this ‘other Fenk’ as the grey host, a sort of faded version of himself to which he ceded temporary control. He could be sated, sent back to slumber, but only after he had gorged.

The grey host stirred now, Fenk felt him in the itching of his fingers, the hypersensitivity of his skin. He bled through the crowds, the mood turning from commerce to revelry as the night wore on and the libations flowed. A shadow, Fenk drew no attention or regard. He had donned a storm cloak to ward off the chill air; he seldom felt much of anything, cold or warm, but it served as a useful disguise. On he went, into the bustling stalls, past the rowdy sing-song hubbub emanating from the Ursa. The tavern turned from melancholy to bawdy fatalism at night, when the natives filled it with the tinny strains of pipe-organs and their brazen ditties about voluptuous women and honest labour.

The crowds thinned, reduced to passing drunks and melancholic soldiers weeping in the shadows where they thought no one would see them. Fenk passed them too, until he reached the end of the Quarter entire, a ribbon of land separating one part of the encampment from the other, an unofficial turnpike that led to where the Agrians made their billets and pitched their tents.

And Fenk sighed, the loudest sound he had made since being on his own, and felt the anticipation of the grey host steal upon him.

SIX

The shrine-house teemed with the wounded, a flurry of grey-smocked medics moving amongst them. Despite its status as a hospital, it could not entirely shake off its previous incarnation. The statues of saints looked on with stony disregard from their alcoves, priests murmured benedictions or last rites to dying men. The heady aroma of sweat and copper warred with the tallow from prayer candles and hung heavy like a shroud. Low light cast the dusty chamber in sickly yellow, its ornate arches a sharp contrast to the more functional surgical benches, rows of closely compacted bunks and bags of counterseptic hooked to intravenous poles. Trolleys that had once been used to ferry books and scrolls from the library were now heaped with bloodstained rags and clumps of sticky gauze. Spent transfusion bags gathered underfoot like deflated balloons.

Med-grade servitors lumbered through the dingy passageways between bunks like tired undertakers, dispensing aerosolised sedative to keep the injured quiescent. Skull-faced cyber-cherubim laced the air with holy water from aspergillums. It worked in a fashion, though those in the grip of fever would claw at the grey-fleshed servitors as they passed, desperate for relief but receiving only the dead gaze of a lobotomised cyborganic.

After the first day, Darian had become inured to the screaming. Such an inhuman sound, when they screamed like that. It laid a man open, revealed his fears, his true mettle. The anticipation of pain to come, or the reality of actual nerve-shredding agony as the scalpel cut or the soldering iron cauterised. Amputations were worst. The wet tear of flesh, the dry-shriek of bone as it parted, the grunting of the corpsman as he did his best to make the cut quick and neat with a ruddy saw. It was not like sawing timber for the trench spikes or revetments. Timber didn’t spasm when it was cut. It didn’t scream. Then there was the hiss as the stump was sealed, the stench of iron-rich blood like hot metal in the nose. A cook preparing a steak, fat sizzling in the pan.

Darian held the trooper down, pushing hard on the man’s chest, and tried not to picture that steak as he closed his eyes. He couldn’t stop from salivating and almost threw up. The lie dissipated the moment he opened his eyes to the sight of the wide-eyed man thrashing against the bench. The skin was charred where the stump of the trooper’s arm ended. A Volpone private torn up by shrapnel and only half alive. Gangrene had set in, leaving the medic no choice.

Lenna held his hand, the one he still possessed, whispering soothing words in an effort to alleviate his pain. She appeared thin in the yellow light and Darian wondered if she was getting enough food.

And then the trooper grew still as the hypodermic punctured his arm, pumping him with morphia. Lenna released her hand a moment later. Darian saw it was blanched from the injured trooper’s grip. She looked pained but hid it behind a weary smile.

‘That’s it,’ said the medic, wiping his brow with his wrist, his hand still swaddled in blood-smeared synth-rubber. ‘That’s it,’ he repeated, standing back and releasing a sigh of relief. ‘He’s under.’

‘Will he live?’ asked Darian. A shade lay on the bench in place of the man it had been, bleached of colour, its breathing shallow.

The medic had begun removing his gloves, the thin material snapping loudly as he pulled it off his skin. ‘He has a better chance now than he did an hour ago.’ He regarded the mil-serves kindly. ‘You did well here. A man still lives because of you.’

‘I only held him, that’s all,’ Darian replied.

‘And what a fierce mess it would have been had you not.’ The medic, Morgan, washed his hands in a basin. The water foamed with counterseptic scrub. ‘But there’s more to be done,’ he said, shaking his hands of any excess and donning a fresh pair of gloves. ‘Come on.’

He led them off down one of the passageways between bunks, towards the sound of screaming.

Rhodri Morgan was of the Slokan contingent. Stockily built with a strong jaw and short dark hair, he wore a red uniform under his smock with a stylised caduceus on the left arm. A belt around his waist contained pouches for morphia phials and other pharma. He wore a sergeant’s rank, but had been a civilian medic who had signed on as a conscript and now found himself in the field patching up broken bodies.

‘Here, this one,’ he said, the mil-serves hurrying to keep up. Every decision in the shrine-house was an act of ruthless triage, the medics exhausted but bravely pushing through.

The next injured soldier was a Talpa, a scrawny wretch of a man with more dirt than skin, it seemed. A piece of shrapnel jutted from his leg and he was keening like a madman.

‘Tie off that bleed,’ Morgan instructed with calm assertion. ‘Make sure it’s above the wound. Tight as you can.’

Lenna found a strip of rubber hose, passing it to Darian so he could make the tourniquet.

‘Good, good. Now…’ Morgan gripped one edge of the piece of shrapnel and glanced at Lenna. ‘A piece of cloth, a stick… We don’t want him biting off his own tongue.’

Lenna looked around, before the Talpa, in a rare moment of cogency, tapped his belt.

‘That’ll work,’ said Morgan.

Lenna nodded, unhooking the belt, before folding it onto itself. She mimed for the Talpa to open his mouth wide, which he did. Then he bit down on the dusty leather as Lenna fed it to him.

Morgan gently patted the man’s shoulder. ‘Look at me.’

The Talpa’s eyes were roaming again, rolling back and forth in agony.

‘Here, soldier.’ More firmly from the medic this time. He tapped the side of his head when he got the Talpa’s attention. ‘My eyes. Right here.’

The Talpa nodded weakly, tears streaming down his face.

Morgan reasserted his grip on the piece of shrapnel. ‘Darian…’ he said.

Understanding what was needed of him, Darian gripped the other edge of the piece of shrapnel. The Talpa let out a muffled squeal through the belt clenched between his teeth.

‘Keep it steady,’ Morgan warned, ‘don’t jerk it. Now, on my count, you and I will pull. One hard pull, up and out. All right?’

Darian nodded, his eyes intent on the Talpa, who looked like the Nine Devils were at his heels. Lenna was on standby with medical wadding for the blood.

‘Ready, Darian?’ Morgan asked.

‘Ready.’

Morgan gave the count and they pulled as one. The shrapnel came out smooth, leaving a gash like a red smile in the Talpa’s leg. The man screamed, spitting out the belt and lashing out in agony. His flailing arm struck Lenna across the face, knocking her back and into the path of a Volpone officer.

She squeaked as Captain Shiller seized her wrist, his grip like a mantrap.

Darian was preoccupied with holding on to the injured trooper as Morgan hurriedly stuffed the wound with wadding and then gave the man a morphia shot. It left Lenna on her own.

‘Deg…’ snarled Shiller, his icy gaze on the mil-serve squirming in his grasp. ‘How dare you accost an officer in such a manner.’ He yanked her around so she faced him, a scolded child hung up for punishment. ‘Look at my boots…’ Ruddy cheeked and red-haired, his head was like a flame, burning on alcohol and anger.

Lenna turned her eyes down to Shiller’s blood-flecked boots. Her eye was already bruising from where the trooper had struck her.

‘Please, sir, I meant–’

‘Be quiet!’ snapped Shiller, forcing her attention back on him. ‘You’ll speak when I give you permission.’

‘Let her go…’ murmured Darian.

Shiller took in the scene before him. ‘What’s that?’

Morgan stepped forwards. Darian felt his face burn and his fists clench behind the medic. He wanted to hurt Shiller, hurt him like he was hurting Lenna. It didn’t matter that it would mean his death. In that moment, all that mattered was the anger threatening to boil over.

‘They’re assisting me, captain,’ said Morgan.

Shiller held the medic’s gaze for a few seconds, weighing up what to do next. He released Lenna, who fell into a heap and immediately clutched at her red wrist. Shiller was a large man, stoutly built and easily three times her size. A bully.

‘I have three men in Shield Company who need patching up for duty. It’s a matter of priority.’

‘Of course, captain. I will just finish up and then–’

‘Immediately,’ Shiller interrupted.

Morgan’s expression was implacable. ‘I will finish up here and then attend to your men.’

Shiller cocked his head, a bemused look on his face as if he couldn’t believe what he was hearing and therefore must not be hearing it at all. ‘I am giving you an order, sergeant.’

‘In this place, Captain Shiller, I have complete authority. According to the charter given to me by Major Regara, I make the final determination as to whom I attend to and when.’ He pointed at the Talpa lying insensate on the bench. ‘This man has had a piece of shrapnel jutting from his body for three days and will almost certainly die if I do not clean and stitch his wound promptly. You are at liberty to stay and watch. Now, if you don’t mind…’

Morgan went back to his patient.

Shiller was stock-still, his flaring nostrils the only indication that he had not in fact somehow died standing up. A vein corded his neck and eventually he growled, ‘See it done quickly.’ Then he made a sharp about-face and stalked away.

Darian watched him depart, watched every step. His jaw cracked. He felt a cool touch on his arm, looked down and saw Lenna.

‘It’s all right,’ she said.

‘I have balm in my medi-kit for that eye,’ said Morgan and started rooting around in a satchel on the floor.

‘I want to kill him,’ Darian hissed between his teeth, still glaring at the captain’s wake. ‘Bloody Shiller, that bastard…’

Lenna gently touched his cheek, brought his face around to hers.

‘Don’t say that out loud again,’ she told him, deadly serious. ‘Never. Promise me now that you won’t.’

Darian hesitated, then reluctantly he nodded.

SEVEN

Culcis had been heading away from the shrine-house when he heard the shot. A single, solitary report, as loud as a siren in the late hour of the night. Large-calibre, explosive. He knew of only one round that made a racket like that. Bolt-shell.

‘Come with me,’ he ordered the mil-serve, who nodded, eyes a little wider, a little more alert. ‘I want to keep an eye on you. The major will have to wait a little longer for this audience.’

Culcis broke into a run. Not too fast, as he had no desire to cause an unnecessary commotion, but he wanted to reach the source of that shot sooner rather than later. Other soldiers had heard it too, emerging from tents and billets. A few had armed themselves and made for the gunshot. At least the bell tower wasn’t ringing, none of the sentries had triggered any sort of alarm. That was something.

He caught sight of Greiss and Hanmar outside their billet having a smoke and gestured them over. ‘You two… follow.’

‘What is it, sir?’ asked Greiss, rushing to stub out his tabac as he adjusted his lopsided helmet and cracked his trunk of a neck. Hanmar was busily doing up the buttons on his uniform jacket as he ran to catch up. ‘An attack?’ Greiss fired a glance back at the billet, where he had presumably left his lasgun in the platoon armoury.

‘Should we go back for our rifles, lieutenant?’ asked Hanmar, following Greiss’ gaze and the meaning in it. Culcis noted he still had his sword.

‘It’s not an attack,’ snapped Culcis, and added more quietly, ‘at least I don’t think it is.’ He jerked a thumb at the mil-serve. Taking Regara’s advice, he’d learned the lad’s name was Darian. ‘Keep an eye on him.’

He should have told him to get gone, but it had taken Culcis most of the evening to find him; he didn’t want to have to do that all over again. Blind luck that he’d found the lad coming out of the shrine-house with a pile of bandages for cleansing. Regara wanted an audience. The sooner that happened, the sooner Culcis could get to his bunk and maybe catch a few hours’ sleep. Perhaps he could parlay this favour into an hour in the steam-house.

Then he reached the cause of the commotion and all his thoughts of rest and steam-houses vanished.

They had stopped just outside the hawker’s market, right on the threshold of the Ursa. A few of the tavern patrons had drunkenly wandered outside to look at the throng of furious Agrians who had gathered out front. Drum fires and hefted braziers lit shadowed, angry faces. Several carried weapons but no one had drawn. Not yet. Another throng of soldiers opposed them, some in the garb of the Slokans and the Ohrek, nervously fingering their sidearms, but most wearing Volpone grey, a look of stoic aggression in their eyes. A few had sodium-lanterns and stablights. Culcis counted around thirty or so on each side, with more gathering by the moment, himself and his men included.

A narrow strip of empty campground stood between them, about twenty feet, and the dam holding back this burgeoning flood of violence was a woman in a black leather coat. She held a silver-chased bolt pistol above her head, smoke still escaping in a lazy plume from its barrel. The skull on her black cap marked her out as Prefectus, a commissar.

Not one that Culcis knew. He had met Eythor on several occasions, a lithe, attenuated man who smoked profusely and had the emaciated features to show for it. Grey and ancient was Commissar Eythor, like a corpse exhumed from a grave. This one was much younger, stronger, and female, of course; a storm trooper in the form of a Prefectus officer, barely keeping her righteous anger in check. Her coat flared, the inner lining red as the dawn, revealing the hilt of a finely crafted sword. Culcis assumed it was a chainblade, judging by the telltale machinery in the handle.

An angry shout came from a long-bearded Agrian at the heart of the mob, thickly built and hirsute like most of his kind. He wore a hardy-looking officer’s coat, tan to match his brethren, and his scalp was shaved, the veins standing out like tributaries that wound through the old dark ink of tattoos.

‘There is perfidy here!’

They liked old words, did the Agrians, it spoke to their rustic roots and traditions. So did lynching.

The commissar’s retort was firm. ‘You shall disperse, and a trial shall be convened if deemed necessary.’ Culcis noted she didn’t lower her bolt pistol. He reached the edge of the crowd and started to work his way inwards.

‘A man lies dead,’ replied the Agrian, ‘murdered while he took rest.’

Slowly, the camp was awaking to this furore, soldiers drawn to it like metal filings to a magnet. It served only to inflame, as the Agrians saw their mob grow too. Something or someone was shuffling to the front, but through the increasing press of bodies, Culcis couldn’t see exactly what or who.

Not liking where this was headed, he looked over his shoulder at Greiss. ‘Get him out of here.’ He referred to Darian, who was trying to get a better look at what was going on. Then they breached the front rank of the Agrian contingent and Culcis knew this was bad.

The hetman, the one Regara had asked him to find out the name of, the same hetman whom he had been forced to restrain a few hours earlier, was dead. A band of Agrian soldiers, the four cossacks from the briefing in furred astrakhans, gently laid him down on the ground like a sacred offering. His dead eyes looked like pale moons, the wound around his neck an angry red cord.

Ligature marks. It wasn’t the first time Culcis had seen the effects of strangulation. He also noticed that another one of the ingots was missing.

‘We demand recompense for Uzra,’ said the long-bearded Agrian. Several of his cohorts chimed in with their agreement. Only the cossacks remained still and silent, which was more disconcerting than the more obvious displays of aggression.

‘Desist,’ repeated the now somewhat beleaguered commissar, very literally sticking to her guns as her eyes darted from one native to the next. For emphasis, she lowered the bolt pistol.

Even with a full clip, she only had nine rounds left. Nine rounds would make a mess, but it wouldn’t stop a mob. Not this mob, not in such ferment. Culcis thought of dogs barely at the leash, barking and snapping, but he quickly realised it wasn’t as wild as that. As primal. It spoke of rage, of a deep and inconsolable hurt only salved by the proverbial eye for an eye, but also measure and the need for restitution. That meant it could be salvaged, but only if that damn commissar put down her gun.

‘An attack against the Prefectus is an attack against the Emperor Himself!’ she warned, eyes wide. Now, here was an attack dog, jackbooted and clad in raven-black leather, the urge to exercise authority like a drug, and her the addict.

Not thinking about the identity of the dead man for a moment, Culcis pushed his way to the front of the throng, quietly berating the Volpone he passed and telling them in no uncertain terms to return to their billets. A few complied; many others didn’t. He saw no help in the masses, no sign of Shiller or Fenk, that bastard. He thought he caught a glimpse of Brandreth pocketing his antique chrono, but the captain quickly melted away in the crowd, no doubt content to observe and measure, the damned coward.

Culcis hadn’t considered what he’d say – he’d never had to talk down a commissar before, and hoped the experience wouldn’t end in his summary execution, but the need to act and prevent something worse impressed itself upon him. One of the cossacks had turned his way and he saw something sharpen in the man’s eye. Culcis was just about to open his mouth to interject between hurled threats and invective, when the words stopped in his mouth and he breathed a sigh of relief.

‘Enough!’ Regara’s voice rang like a clarion, clear as ice-glass, the natural orator in him coming to the fore. The crowd of Volpone and assorted auxilia parted to admit the major, his cybernetic tread whirring and grinding as if in empathetic annoyance.

He slowed as he emerged from the masses, a second man accompanying him but content to remain in his wake. Also Officio Prefectus, also not Eythor. This one was slight of frame, a long dark shadow in his storm coat, his features angular and sharp. Culcis was put in mind of a bird of prey in human form. Green eyes glittered from beneath the shadow of his cap. The gold piping suggested a high rank. Yet he gave the major the floor.

‘I say enough.’ Regara approached the young, belligerent commissar, who now had to split her focus between the aggressors to the front and her superior officers behind.

‘I have this under control, major,’ she said, looking askance at Regara.

‘Lower your weapon, commissar.’

‘The Commissariat does not observe the Militarum chain of command, it is its own separate entity and has specific charter–’

‘Gannika…’ The other commissar’s voice held a warning, like a master chiding an errant servant. It had a slightly lilting quality, smooth and urbane. ‘Stop quoting the charter and holster your weapon.’ The order was calm, composed, as if the one issuing it was possessed of the confident predetermination that events would transpire as he willed them.

The young commissar did as she was told, and straightened her coat afterwards in an effort to save some face. ‘Lord Rensaint,’ she said, and went to stand by her lord.

‘Better,’ said Regara, and turned his gaze to the corpse lying on the ground. ‘This is a matter of utmost severity. And I assure you,’ he added, looking the long-bearded Agrian in the eye, ‘it shall be treated thusly. But not here, not like this. There are procedures–’

‘We have no interest in your “procedures”, we demand–’

Regara cut the native off before he could go further.

‘And these procedures shall be observed. When you joined the Imperial Army as conscripts, you swore an oath to abide by the Lex Militarum. Your governance as Imperial citizens also binds you to the Emperor’s law.’ Regara raised his chin a little, imperious as any Volpone Blueblood when he wanted to be. He stated simply: ‘Do you renege on these oaths?’

Another voice from the throng answered, lighter, wise, and female.

‘We shall abide, major,’ she said, pushing past her kin.

She was an older woman, in her middle years, but handsome with a proud bearing. Her long hair was honey brown, her temples shaved, the remainder a tufty crest. She did not, Culcis noted, have a beard. She did wear Agrian torcs on her arms and the ingots, tied to a single dangling braid, clinked together as she tilted her head.

‘Though do not mistake our patience for placation.’

Shorter than most of the other Agrians, she had a dancer’s poise and physique. She accented her rural garb with Munitorum fatigues and flak body armour as several of the other natives had. Her thick boots were loosely laced, the leather tongues peeled over the vamp. Her rank pin made her a golova, the equivalent of an Imperial colonel. It had no bearing on her position in the greater Imperial war host, however.

A massive Agrian warrior, a protective detail perhaps, stood in her wake, massive arms folded. ‘Uzra was hetman for his clan,’ she went on, ‘and also the United Agrian Fellowship’s liaison for military matters. His position is esteemed amongst our people and so his unlawful death requires recompense. These are the words of Makali and so they are spoken, they are written.’

Regara bristled at that, and the woman’s superior tone.

‘You threaten?’

‘I see no threat here,’ the lord commissar, Rensaint, cut in smoothly. ‘Only a desire to balance the scales of order.’ He had advanced from his slightly refused position to stand more prominently. ‘Is that not accurate, Golova Makali?’

She nodded and raised her hands, the palms ingrained with the dirt of years of labour.

‘They are merely my words and what is written. I speak only of what is right and just.’

‘Well then…’ said Rensaint, his manner collegiate, and turned to the major.

Regara stood a moment in silence, studying this Makali and then the natives that obeyed her. Again, he was reminded of how little he knew of the Agrians, their ways and traditions. Even after all these years, he felt dumb and blind to their mores and motivations. He resolved to do better, though that might not matter now, what with Rensaint’s arrival and those whom he accompanied.

‘I have your agreement to a cessation?’ Regara asked.

She spat into her dirty palm and offered it to Regara, who raised an eyebrow.

‘That isn’t necessary.’

Makali shrugged, wiping her hand on her Munitorum-issue fatigues, and with a few shouted words disbanded the mob.

‘That went well,’ said Rensaint with a wry smile.

Regara watched the Agrians depart even as his officers chivvied his own troops and the auxilia back to barracks.

‘At least they didn’t kill anyone,’ the commissar continued.

Regara caught the look of the cossacks as they retreated with their hetman’s body, the coldness in their eyes like shard-ice as they glared at someone in the crowd. Regara couldn’t tell whom.

‘Don’t be so sure they won’t,’ he said.

EIGHT

Greiss kept his lasgun close, running the cloth over the barrel for the umpteenth time. He had his sleeves rolled up, his thickly muscled arms like Volpone red-oaks.

‘You can’t polish accuracy into that rifle, sergeant,’ said Hanmar, digging around in the supply room for a bedroll.

It was an old joke. Greiss was actually a perfectly competent marksman but he had once missed an enemy combatant at nearly point-blank, a misfire that skewed his shot, and he’d never managed to live it down. He took the gibe with typical good humour.

‘Bloody heathens…’ Greiss muttered, having shown no sign of hearing Hanmar, but growing more agitated with every pass of the cloth. ‘I don’t trust them.’

‘You don’t trust anyone.’ Hanmar found what he was looking for, and tucked the bedroll under his arm as he closed the door to the supply room.

‘It’s kept me alive and handsome so far, hasn’t it?’ Greiss said to the corpsman, with a little wink of the eye.

Hanmar frowned. ‘Second part’s debatable…’ He tossed the bedroll to the mil-serve loitering by the bunks.

Greiss was looking down his gun barrel. ‘Sight’s a little off…’

Hanmar raised a white eyebrow questioningly then turned his attention to Culcis. ‘You think they’ll abide by their word, lieutenant?’ he asked.

‘They have so far,’ Culcis replied. He was sitting down on a chair, taking in the view of the camp outside their billet window.

The makeshift barracks had been a wool yard before the war. It had a vaulted ceiling and precious few rooms. A small overseer’s office had been repurposed as a supply room and store for platoon kit. The old metal tool shed in one corner served as the armoury. Other than that, the building contained a host of bunks, and glassless windows let out most of the warmth from electro-stoves and heat-lamps.

The lieutenant’s gaze drifted to the mil-serve, Darian. After the major had left sharply with the two commissars, he’d had little choice but to bring him back to barracks until morning. He’d seen a convoy of Chimera armoured carriers arriving at the camp’s northern perimeter, right at the edge of town. Distant, but the plumes of blue petrochem were distinctive. Reinforcements. A sentry coming off watch duty by the name of Penraithe had told him a motorcade of some thirty or so vehicles had arrived less than an hour prior to the altercation outside the Ursa. He didn’t know who or what, but most of the livery was Volpone. Hauptmann had returned too, apparently, but Culcis hadn’t seen the Pardus sergeant-cavalier. He owed the man some money from their last game of covenants.

‘I’m sorry to have missed the altercation with the Diggers,’ said Rake, poking around amongst some bottles sitting on a table.

‘Wasn’t much to see, really,’ Greiss chimed in. Rake carried on delving.

‘What are you looking for, corporal?’ snapped Culcis, the incessant tinkling irritating.

Dresk answered. ‘The brandy, sir. Just a snifter to ward off the cold. What with us bunking in the ruddy goat pen.’ He gestured to the gaping windows. Sleeves rolled up, Dresk had dismantled and was in the process of cleaning and reassembling the belt-fed heavy stubber.

‘Hah!’ Rake declared triumphantly, bottle in hand. Culcis gave a small shake of the head.

The Volpone were born to plenty. Every soldier in their ranks, even down to the lowliest private, had an aristocratic heritage. These men served, and did so proudly, for their families, for their lineage. For the Emperor, of course. Three generations of Blueblood preceded Culcis. His was a modest line compared to some, but carried esteem. He had aspirations of command, greater than that of platoon. His father had been a major in the Volpone, a decorated soldier whom Culcis aspired to emulate and even overtake. Ambition, it was as natural to a Blueblood as breathing. Regara was his mentor in many respects, and the man he hoped he would, one day, replace.

Not all men of Volpone had such ambitions. Not all men of Volpone were of the aristocracy. It was a striated society, the landed gentry beneath the royals, and beneath them the vassals and then the peasants. Serfdom had its own hierarchy, but in war all the mil-serves wore the same stripe. Sons and daughters willingly indentured by their impoverished lowborn families for a Munitorum stipend. Others simply served the royal houses and accompanied its scions when they left for war. It was far from uncommon: batmen, valets, even tailors had left aboard tithe ships for the great void, for the Sabbat Crusade.

Culcis wondered at Darian’s provenance as he watched the lad find a place for his bedroll. He served no royal household as far as the lieutenant knew. Perhaps his master had died and left him bereft, a camp wanderer.

‘Darian,’ he said, trying to heed Regara’s lessons about using the mil-serve’s name.

The lad returned the lieutenant’s gaze. ‘Yes, my lord.’

‘Did you arrive here as part of the peasantry or did you serve a royal house?’

‘Neither, my lord. I am a camp orphan.’

‘I see.’ Culcis thought on that, at what it must have been like to have lived your life amongst an army, never knowing a home or where you came from. ‘So, you’re part of the retinue then?’

‘Have been for as long as I can remember, my lord.’

‘Learned a thing or two, have you?’

‘I tried, my lord, yes.’ Darian opened his mouth again as if to speak but then shut it.

Culcis noticed his hesitation. ‘Speak,’ he said. ‘You need not fear reprisal here.’

‘Unless you’re about to blaspheme against the Emperor,’ Rake cut in, ‘because then we’d have to…’ He drew a thumb across his throat in a slashing gesture.

Culcis scowled, and Rake held up his hands contritely.

‘I want to serve,’ said Darian, his eyes on the lieutenant as serious as a Prefectus firing squad. ‘As you do. It’s all I’ve ever wanted.’

‘I see. There are many ways to serve, Darian. The water carrier serves. The valet serves. All play their part, highborn and low.’

‘And yet I wish to fight. And die, if necessary.’

‘But you aren’t an aristocrat, so you’re not allowed?’

‘No, sir.’

It was the law of Volpone. To fight, to wield arms in the name of the Emperor, was a noble calling meant for noble blood. Most did it for glory, to further their standing and that of their royal house. Others for less salubrious reasons. It had always been thus and so Culcis had accepted it, but now that he was confronted with a man willing to fight and die not for glory, but for duty and that alone, well… A pity, but change was not an easy thing, he supposed.

Culcis suddenly had an idea and gestured to Greiss, who was still tinkering with his rifle.

‘You know weapons?’

‘I’ve seen a few, my lord.’

‘Can you field strip a lasgun?’

‘It’s a duty I’ve performed before. A part of my service.’

‘Sergeant…’ said Culcis.

Greiss looked up, realised what was expected and handed over the rifle. ‘Best take care of that,’ he warned.

Darian took it carefully, solemnly, Culcis watching and then the others watching him keenly too.

Rake cleared the bottles, making some room on the table. ‘Here,’ he said.

Darian obliged.

‘Well, then…?’ invited Culcis. The barracks had begun to fill up as troopers returned to their bunks. Lights began to be doused. ‘You’re on the clock now,’ added the lieutenant.

A murmured prayer to the weapon’s machine-spirit and then swift hands went to work, unscrewing the barrel from the body casing, removing the holding lug to disengage the short stock. It happened in seconds, like a conjurer at a carnivale. Darian sat back when he was finished, the pieces laid out precisely before him. Only the power pack was missing, because you didn’t polish a lasgun when it was loaded.

Rake gave a whistle. ‘Pretty fast.’

Culcis gave a facial shrug, but he was impressed. ‘And reassembly?’

Nimble fingers snapped the stock to the casing, a thumb pushing in the holding lug, then screwed in the barrel. It was even quicker than the stripping back.

‘Really bloody fast,’ said Dresk, who had stopped to observe the show.

‘Impressive…’ uttered Hanmar with a surprised but urbane smile.

Greiss took his rifle back as it was proffered to him. Then he peered down the barrel. ‘Sight’s perfect.’ He looked up, first at Darian then at his comrades. ‘Well bloody hells, chaps.’

And Culcis smiled. ‘Well done,’ he said, nodding. ‘Well done. You’d have made a damn fine soldier, I think.’

Pride burned in Darian’s eyes, and something else. Culcis couldn’t quite put his finger on exactly what it was.

Four men were waiting for him as Regara returned to his officer’s billet. One of them he knew very well, the others he had never formally met but knew by reputation.

Only one was seated, two others by his side and a third lurking at the penumbra of the crackling fire. The men wore Volpone grey and were of rank, all except for the fourth man, who wore black tactical apparel. He also held a visored helm under his arm, a breather mask hanging loosely by its strap. He looked mission ready. A Tempestus Scion.

It was warm, and the firelight cast the room in red and orange hues. It fell on books, several uniforms hanging on a wire frame, an antique desk with a map laid over it held in place by an empty mug, a recaff gurgitator, phonogram, a simple bunk, and a gadulka sitting in one corner, its polished strings shimmering.

‘I hope you don’t mind, major,’ said the man sitting – none other than General Deviers himself, Regara noted with a frisson of unease. ‘But I had your man stoke the fire.’

Regara could see no sign of Balis, and assumed he had already been dismissed. That, and the entourage, suggested this wasn’t a social call.

‘Welcome to Ankishburg, general,’ said Regara, and made a swift salute. ‘Officers,’ he added for the benefit of the other men in the room. His gaze lingered on the black-armoured Scion edged in shadow, the only one not to return a greeting. Even Deviers gave a nod of acknowledgement.

Commissar Rensaint slipped in behind Regara and the meeting commenced.

‘A pity about Voke,’ said the officer on Deviers’ left, a colonel by the name of Grussman. He started to poke around the major’s desk, prompting Regara to gesture to a bookcase.

‘Behind the copy of Lord Solar,’ he said.

Grussman, who was a solid sort of man with thinning blond hair and perfect white teeth, pulled out the volume, appreciating the subject matter as he reached for the bottle of vresk Regara kept for special occasions.

‘Macharian conflicts, eh?’ Grussman remarked, finding a glass and filling it. He wore eyeglasses and squinted at the label on the bottle. Deviers politely refused, as did Rensaint and the other officer. Regara had no idea if the Scions even drank, but wasn’t surprised when the storm trooper didn’t partake. ‘Such an inspiration.’

‘And a warning about the dangers of the cult of personality,’ Rensaint cut in. He struck up a thin-necked ivory pipe, the bowl embers glowing as he inhaled. His avian features sharpened.

Regara wondered if that was also a gibe at Voke. He chose not to engage, letting this part of the shadow theatre play out before Deviers decided to discuss what he had really come here for. Instead, he addressed the man on the general’s right – a man he knew very well.

‘Filip.’

The other man nodded. He had an athletic frame and carried a certain quiet air of refinement that suggested good breeding. His expression was warm and genuine. ‘It’s good to see you, Vasquez.’

‘Ah, of course,’ said Deviers, clapping his hands together as a thin smile played out over his lips, ‘you and Lieutenant Colonel Barbastian are old comrades, aren’t you, Regara?’

‘We fought together at Grimoyr,’ Barbastian replied, the shadow of a good memory briefly crossing his face. ‘Parted ways just before Titus.’

Regara smiled, his eyes meeting Barbastian’s and not disengaging.

‘On to greater glories, lieutenant colonel.’

‘Indeed, major… indeed.’

Deviers broke the spell. ‘Well isn’t this a fine thing, old friends reuniting, and new ones becoming properly acquainted?’

Grussman gave a tip of his glass. He was already sweating from the fire. Rensaint betrayed no discomfort, though his eyes narrowed. The Scion merely stood, still as rockcrete and just as personable.

‘I assume you wish for me to brief you on tactical operations, sir?’ said Regara, and was headed over to the map table when the general gestured for him to stand down.

‘Not necessary, major. I have been fully apprised, and am here to notify you of a change.’ He smiled again, that thin smile that could be charming when he wanted it to be, but Regara knew better. A change? Deviers had left the bonhomie behind and was all business.

‘I see, sir.’ Regara gave a furtive glance to Barbastian but received nothing in return.

‘You don’t, major,’ said Deviers, and then more cordially, ‘not yet.’

Grussman leaned on the antique desk, his weight causing the wood to creak. Regara bit back his annoyance but filed the insult away for later analysis. Rensaint watched like a bird on its perch, clouds of pale violet smoke gently whirling around him in a translucent cloak.

‘I concur with Colonel Grussman,’ said Deviers. ‘It is a great pity about Voke. An able officer, one would say, but prone to overreach.’ He turned his attention back to Regara. ‘You had reservations, did you not, major?’

‘They are a matter of record, sir.’

‘Indeed, indeed,’ said Deviers, but he had already moved on to his own thoughts. He stood, spry for an old man, and started to pace. ‘You were right to call out Voke. Had he listened to the counsel of his officers…’ He gave a facial shrug. ‘Well, I might not be standing before you. That the man felt it appropriate to take his own life speaks to the depth of his error.’

Regara tried to hide his surprise. For such a short amount of time in camp, Deviers was well informed. The general acted as if he had just commented on the weather as he went on.

‘Godsword in enemy hands and our allies, the Agrians, in uproar.’ He stopped and turned to look at Regara with just the hint of amusement in his eyes. ‘An eventful few days.’

Rensaint paused in the smoking of his pipe to offer, ‘The major has the latter well in hand, general. The natives are restless, but compliant.’

Regara gave a slight nod of appreciation, which the lord commissar reciprocated.

‘Good, good,’ Deviers replied, ‘we’ll need strong morale for what comes next.’

And here Regara sensed it, the change, the real reason they were all here. Deviers had reviewed Regara’s orders.

‘Next, sir?’

‘Yes,’ said Deviers, and he stopped and braced his hands against Regara’s desk. ‘The retaking of Lodden, of course.’

Regara paled. He almost laughed, until he saw the utter seriousness in the general’s face. He looked to Barbastian, but the man had averted his gaze. Grussman returned his glance, taking a sip of Regara’s vresk as he measured the major’s response to the news.

Amongst allies, Regara suddenly felt alone and vulnerable.

‘My plan was to press east to Kobor.’

‘Revisions, major,’ said Deviers, after leaving a long enough uncomfortable silence. ‘All plans must face revision.’

‘This isn’t revision, it’s suicide.’ The words came out unbidden, spilling away on torrents of emotion. Regara was happy to cede command, his charge had only ever been a temporary one, but to casually throw away the lives of the men he had fought to preserve…

‘Watch your bloody tone, major,’ rumbled Grussman from the back of the room. He stopped leaning and stood up straight.

Regara gave him a half-glance, unintimidated. He had duelled better men than Mattias Grussman. Those men were all dead, and he yet breathed.

Deviers wafted away the tension with a lazy gesture. Grussman returned to heel, leaning against the desk again. ‘It’s all right, it’s all right. Major Regara is merely adjusting to the shock. Not so many days ago he was facing certain defeat with death breathing down his neck. Isn’t that right, major?’

He knew about the mil-serve saving Regara’s life too. A camp had many spies, it seemed.

Regara gave a small inclination of the head, said, ‘I apologise, sir. A long few days, a difficult war.’

‘Isn’t it just, major. It is about to become easier.’ Deviers sat back down, his cue to the Scion in black to take the stage.

The shadows around him had deepened as the fire waned in its hearth. He didn’t move but to part his lips and speak. ‘A covert insertion force will enter Lodden, in advance of the main army group,’ he began, his voice a gravelly half-rasp. Regara had heard its like before. ‘Forty men with special equipment will infiltrate the enemy position, eliminate the guards and crew, and then neutralise the weapon with charges.’

‘You will accomplish what the magos could not? And with forty men? There must be a hundred Blood Pact surrounding that thing. A thousand in Lodden.’

‘One hundred and twelve,’ the Scion corrected. He didn’t comment on the Lodden numbers.

Regara scoffed. ‘Doesn’t exactly invalidate my point.’

‘The point is, major,’ Deviers cut in gently, ‘that we must have Godsword or the enemy must not have it. Those are the only two outcomes I can permit.’

‘Respectfully, sir, the Pacters will fire the weapon as soon as they see our forces advance on the town.’

‘My men won’t be seen,’ asserted the Scion.

‘And how many to take the town and hold it? At least six companies. Can you conceal that many men?’ Regara asked this of the Scion, who still hadn’t identified himself.

He didn’t answer.

‘You’re right, Vasquez,’ said Barbastian, and all of a sudden Regara resented his familiarity. ‘Which is why we’ll need to divert the Pact’s attention elsewhere so the main army group can get into position.’

Regara felt his blood rising. ‘You want to bait them.’

Barbastian nodded. ‘A sizeable flanking force will head east in the direction of Kobor as per your original strategy.’

‘I’m still waiting for the punchline.’

‘It’s not a joke, major,’ said Grussman, and Regara did not like the barely concealed relish in his tone one bit. ‘The flanking group will deliberately stray into the weapon’s range.’

Regara’s fists bunched at his sides. ‘War requires sacrifice,’ he said, voice barely louder than a whisper, ‘is that it?’

‘Don’t be so dramatic, major,’ said Deviers, betraying the slightest iota of annoyance.

‘We’ll use armoured carriers, crewed by servitors.’ Barbastian was doing his best to be placatory.

‘But not only servitors.’

‘Of course not.’

‘That weapon will devastate a mechanised group.’

‘Not if we silence it first.’

‘What’s the attrition rate?’ asked Regara. ‘I assume it’s been calculated.’

‘Far less than if we were to attack Lodden directly,’ said Grussman.

‘They will be threading the needle,’ said Regara, ignoring the colonel. ‘The rad-zone, the range of the guns. Even to skirt the edge… It’s a very narrow margin for error.’

‘It is worth the risk, major,’ added Rensaint, the lord commissar looming in Regara’s peripheral vision. As ever his tone was diplomatic. ‘Morale is delicately balanced, the men need a symbol. Godsword is that symbol. In our hands. Functional or not, but in our hands.’

Grussman snorted at the back, swilling down the last of his drink. ‘Told you he wouldn’t like it.’

‘I don’t believe we’ve ever formally been introduced, sir, for you to make such an assumption of my character,’ Regara stated levelly, using the kind of formal language that pre-empted a challenge. He took a step forwards, his hand resting on the pommel of his sheathed sword.

‘Now, now,’ said Deviers, ‘let’s not bicker, gentlemen. It’s unseemly.’

Regara glanced at Barbastian for support, but received only a gentle, near-imperceptible shake of the head. Let it go, it warned.

‘I leave a missive of your orders in full, major,’ added Deviers, brandishing a scroll that he tapped on the table edge and then left there for Regara to read.

He rose sharply, adjusting his uniform jacket, and waited for the major’s salute, which was duly given.

‘Revisions, Regara,’ he said again, ‘wheels within wheels. You just focus on your spoke, and let me worry about the others, eh?’ He clapped him on the shoulder, the blow firmer than Regara expected, and left.

Rensaint followed directly, as did Grussman, who had a thin smile for the major as they parted company. The Scion had already gone, slipped away into shadow without notice, which left only Filip.

Regara felt his jaw tighten. ‘Did you know?’ he asked stiffly.

‘Of course I bloody knew!’

The vehemence of the response took Regara aback, put his anger briefly in check.

‘It’s the glory,’ said Barbastian. ‘It’s always the damn glory.’

‘We are sending men to their deaths.’

‘Such is war. Other men will live because of it.’

‘They are unneeded deaths, Filip!’

Barbastian opened his mouth to rejoinder, but it quickly turned into a resigned shake of the head. ‘With Godsword against us, we can press no further on this front. It’s that simple, Vasquez.’

‘I hope you’re right,’ Regara replied, nodding ruefully, ‘I hope you’re all bloody right.’

‘We all have our part to play.’

‘Only some play it better than others, is that it? Never been one for games myself.’ He stormed off to drink what was left of the vresk.

Barbastian looked on with a hurt expression.

‘It is good to see you again, Vasquez,’ he said softly, taking his leave.

Regara watched him go, and drained what was left of the bottle.

NINE

The campground thronged with troops. Unkempt Talpa and stoic Ohrek rubbed shoulders with imperious Sloka trussed up in their best panoply, each in their modest contingents. Even the Pardus were represented by a small cadre of tankers accompanied by their commander, Colonel Ganza, their backs ramrod straight, chests out-thrust. Regimental and company banners fluttered gently on the breeze, stirring hearts as well as fabric.

The dawn spilled red, watery light over a jagged horizon and gave the Agrians a savage pallor. By far the most numerous amongst the auxiliaries, the Diggers had claimed a portion of the campground for their own, a colony both mentally and geographically. At least they had turned up for muster – the female golova, Makali, who had shown such uncharacteristic restraint outside the Ursa, leading the clans. She gave the slightest wink to Lieutenant Culcis, who maintained his composure despite the sense of disquiet the gesture provoked.

They had stuck to their word so far, and made no move towards retribution. Talk in the billets suggested the Agrian hetman had been killed by his own men. They were certainly belligerent enough, Culcis reflected as he watched the golova disappear from his sight. A squad of cossacks went with her, geared for war. Lasguns were slung over shoulders, together with picks and shovels. They had combat knives sheathed to their thighs, hardy flak armour the colour of tilled earth, blasting charges and grenades on bandoliers. One even carried an obsolete mark of flamer. Farmers become soldiers.

The bulk of the fighting men, though, were Volpone, soldiers of 50th and the newly arrived 86th and 101st, all in perfect rank and file, a sea of grey uniforms drowning out the colour and variety of the rest. Over the course of the previous evening and into the late hours of the night, more reinforcements had come into camp, fatigued from the long journey from Lanchetek but otherwise fresh off the landers and unblooded. Not that you could tell: every Volpone had the pressed and pristine appearance of the parade ground, their mien as refined as their uniforms. The sight fired Culcis’ prideful blood.

Over six thousand men mustered, together with supporting Departmento Munitorum logisticians in plain olive drab. Mechanised contingents of Chimera, Tauros and Sentinel and the brigades of heavy armour idled at the outskirts of Ankishburg, awaiting the order to advance. Ancillary non-Militarum personnel skirted the edge of the muster field, including an Ecclesiarchy confessor in purple vestments, a brutal-looking chainsword strapped to his back and a cadre of lesser priests in hessian smocks at his side. These men and women would come amongst the troops during battle, inciting religious fervour. Already they appeared restive, beating their chests with one hand, a murmur of prayer on their lips. By contrast, their counterparts in the Adeptus Mechanicus were much more sedate, the red-robed tech-adepts huddled in secretive conclave.

In Laagar and Vasha, similar musters were taking place. The entire Ankish line, readied for battle.

A large space had been cleared on the streets of Ankishburg in the early hours just before dawn and a stage erected, a short run of stairs leading up to it. Vox-amps stood either side of the stage. The laud hailers were fashioned into iron cherubim, thick cables snaking from the backs of their heads into a generatorium out of sight behind a raft of scaffolding upon which the stage had been raised. A holo-projector placed in front, its lens angled towards the would-be speaker, was receiving benediction by a cowled tech-priest.

A wooden effigy of the Emperor dominated the space. It stared down at the troops, instilling in them a hushed reverence that not even the Talpa would break. Culcis recognised the statue as the Emperor Triumphant, an eagle standard in His hand in place of His sword, a high crown replacing His iron halo. It had come from the Ankishburg library, brought here by servitors and hauled into place by labourmen with ropes. A piece of solid Ankish cedar, it shimmered, the dawn light tanning it the warm gold of reflected fire. It represented glory and victory. The general had chosen unsubtle symbolism for his formal speech to the troops.

Murmured prayer crossed the lieutenant’s lips as he met the stern regard of the effigy, entreaties to not be found wanting in His sight.

As Culcis opened his eyes, he saw Regara moving across the field. He had Shiller and Brandreth with him, though the two captains quickly peeled off to join their own companies. Culcis gave a crisp salute as the major fell in amongst the men. It was the first time he had seen him since the altercation outside the Ursa. He looked a little greyer than usual, a slight redness about the eyes, which were hooded and suggested the partaking of strong drink and a lack of sleep the night before. This too was unusual.

Woken in the early hours, just before dawn, Culcis could relate to the dearth of sleep. A pair of Valkyries had taken off from outside camp. It was a small strip, not suitable for bulk landers like the one at Lanchetek. Though the engine roar was quickly baffled, reduced to a soft thump of rapidly spinning turbines that soon faded, it had roused Culcis from an overly deep slumber that had left fatigue nipping at the edge of his awareness. At first, in those blurry, half-imagined moments, he had assumed it was the Merlins – but they had all but been crippled by their bravura extraction and were now reduced to supply drop and emergency operations.

Someone had taken flight prior to deployment, though. He hadn’t imagined it.

‘Good morning, lieutenant,’ said Regara, snapping Culcis back to the moment. The major made the sign of the aquila, thumbs interlocked, fingers spread in simulation of eagle wings, and bowed his head before the Emperor Triumphant.

Culcis waited for him to conclude his observance before answering, ‘Good morning, sir.’

‘A fine day for war.’

‘None finer, sir.’

‘None finer,’ Regara replied, and left a short pause before asking, ‘Did you find the mil-serve, lieutenant?’

Culcis sensed a coiled tension in the major, like an overwound clock straining at its gears. It manifested as uncharacteristic fidgeting, Regara’s gloves creaking noisily as he clenched and unclenched his fists.

‘I did, sir.’

‘And he is in your charge?’

‘Yes, sir. He is in the company billet and ordered to wait at camp.’

‘Good, then let us hope we survive the day and I am able to express my gratitude personally.’

‘Emperor willing, sir.’

‘May He be our shield, our sword… He protects,’ said Regara, with a shallow nod at the effigy.

‘Our shield, our sword. He protects.’

Vox-amps crackled, prompting a small cohort of uniformed men to troop out and gather at the side of the stage. Lord Commissar Rensaint and his second, Commissar Gannika; Commissar Eythor, who had been attached to the 50th since planetfall on Gnostes; two officers, Colonel Grussman and Lieutenant Colonel Barbastian – the latter Culcis had met before, the former was known to him only by reputation, but he had seen picts – and three aides of corporal rank.

This was merely the preamble. A beautiful aria spilled from the mouths of the cherubim, the vox-corded voice filling the air with its righteous hymn. It swelled, climbing to a soprano pitch, and as it neared its apex, deeper voices joined it in chorus.

Then came the general, striding to the front of the stage in full regalia like a politico at a rally.

He wore the Volpone grey, but was clad also in a golden cuirass. Greaves sheathed his boots and forearms, the gryfon rampant fashioned upon every piece in ornate filigree. The medals pinned to his breast shone like captured stars, the physical legacy of his service and accomplishments. A white horsehair plume sprang from a gold helm, the cheek-plates forged into wings. A silver shoulder guard accented the gold, a dark red cloak cinched to it and flowing like blood. Nobility bled from him like light from a sun.

Had the man upon the stage asked it, Culcis would have followed him into the very Eye of Terror itself. He knew him, of course, from the propaganda reels and the parchment renderings celebrating his victories. He was Horator De Nesk Deviers, the saviour of Gnostes, and a man who had made a career out of winning battles. Credited for marshalling the eastern and western fronts, responsible for the breaking of the siege at Beltane, his list of victories and personal accomplishments had its own wing in the Museum of Military History at Konisburg. Upon his death, it was speculated amongst high-ranking Volpone that he would earn a banner on the mile-long processional of the Eternity Gate. Sainthood beckoned for men such as he.

Then the general did something Culcis did not expect. He removed his helmet and let it clatter to the stage. Agog, the lieutenant watched it roll around, the plume like a bent rudder guiding it aimlessly across the stage floor until it came to a halt. Then Deviers unclasped his armour, the entire cuirass landing with a resounding metallic clang as he discarded it. The greaves followed until Deviers stood before them wearing only his uniform, a sword belted to his waist by its scabbard.

Unsure of the appropriate protocol, Culcis ventured a half-glance at Regara but the major looked unmoved, as if used to such histrionics. He was the only one, as the shock in the crowd was felt palpably around the campground. Even the auxiliaries exchanged unsure glances. The general had them enrapt.

With a gesture, Deviers silenced the vox-amps. The chorus abruptly cut off.

‘Here, now…’ he declaimed, voice carrying despite the lack of augmentation. Culcis reasoned he must have possessed some kind of vocal enhancement, but if so it was cunningly hidden. ‘We are not fighting for Gnostes alone. We do not shed our blood, our very lives even, for Agria. No. Our dream is nothing short of mankind’s pre-eminence, it is the dream of Imperium. And one we all share. So, as one people, as one tribe, we must meet this challenge before us.

‘There are those who would persuade us to lay down our arms, that our safety and sovereignty do not hinge on victory here. Let the Archenemy have Gnostes, they say. It is but one world.

‘These are the words of fearful men, and only tyrants fear. Let them. I put my faith in you, good men and women of the Imperium. To fight by your side, to live by your honour and trust. To lead you on to victory – on to glory and liberation. I pledge my allegiance to this, and I vouchsafe my unswerving conviction to lay down my life amongst yours, for my God-Emperor, may His glory reign on Terra eternal. He shall be my judge in this, as He will yours.

‘I am but a man, and what is a man in the fathomless multitudes of our galaxy? But I have the heart and spirit of a warrior, and when I think of the lesser men who ravage this world, who have taken up with craven gods, who have reneged on every oath of fealty ever sworn, an Archenemy we must defeat in absolute totality, then I am possessed of such wrath. That these wretches would see us put asunder? I defy it… I defy them.

‘You want to make reprisal. As do I. You want to honour the dead. As do I. You want the glory we were all promised and to liberate Agria from Archonate tyranny… As do I. War does not hinge on the outcome of a single battle. We are all warriors. And our will is the stronger. It is said they are cunning architects of malice, and have aligned themselves with all manner of dark artifice. I do not fear it.

‘They have erred, these occultists… these tyrants. They have roused our anger, stoked it until it is white-hot and burning. And with that holiest of fire we shall drive them out, we shall fight for every yard and inch, we will throw them back to hell itself – and I promise you we shall not rest until this world is free.’

He roared. ‘For God-Emperor, for mankind!’

And the crowd roared back.

TEN

The rad-counter clicked into amber again and Hauptmann found himself peering into the dust wastes. He couldn’t see much of anything but he felt it, the danger.

‘Too close…’ he muttered, tapping the needle of the rad-counter just to be sure, and saw it align as it had a few seconds ago. The chalky taste of anti-radiation pills dried his mouth.

A fierce wind had hit almost as soon as the column had left Ankishburg, raking the flanks of the armoured transports with grit and swirling across the Kraggehil wilds. Squalls of dust thickened the air, forcing Hauptmann to regularly clean his goggles.

‘Roper,’ he called out, and a man in full cavalier garb turned at the mention of his name, a magnocular in his gloved hands. ‘Anything?’

Roper shook his head, pulling down the scarfs wrapped around his mouth in order to speak. The dust had coated his thick moustache anyway, turning it from dark brown to sandy. Hauptmann could remember when the man had been clean-shaven, in his youth. War changed everything, though. Even grooming habits.

‘Thought I caught a whiff of movement…’ Roper grimaced. ‘All that bloody dust, though, sir. There could be a ruddy battalion out there and we wouldn’t see it until it was right up our noses.’

Hauptmann signalled that he understood. ‘Lennox…’

The other cavalier had brought his Vulpa to a complete stop, the kickstand in position as he balanced a long rifle on the handlebars. ‘Nothing through the scope, sir.’ Young, was Lennox. Had a wife, having made the mistake of getting married on Pardua before shipping out. A romantic. He was also a bloody excellent shot with a rifle. But what could survive in all this?

That’s what bothered Hauptmann the most. He gave the signal again. ‘Garrison, any change to those rads?’

The most advanced of the scouts answered over Hauptmann’s vox, voice muffled by the rebreather mask hooding his nose and mouth.

‘Ticking into red every few yards, sergeant.’ He paused, and Hauptmann heard a tongue lick dry lips. Garrison was a smoker, he missed the taste of tabac in his mouth. ‘Reckon we must be pushing the edge of it, sir.’

He was about three hundred yards out, slowly idling back and forth, partially obscured by the storm.

‘All right, corporal,’ said Hauptmann, marking Garrison’s position on the canvas map he had unrolled against the front of the bike, ‘come back in. Report to the medicae when you do.’ The anti-radiation pills were meant to be proof against the poisonous atmosphere in the rad-zone but Hauptmann didn’t trust them. Not really. He opened the vox to all the advanced scouts. ‘Re-form and regroup. I’ve seen enough.’

He packed away his kit and gunned the Vulpa’s engines, headed back towards the column. The others fell in behind in a dispersed formation with only Garrison lagging.

A long trail of tanks bled away into the distance, numerous Chimeras and Tauros, and three of the colonel’s four brigades, tracks churning up dust, a bloody great column of it spilling into the air and giving away their position. As intended. There were walkers too, loping in squadrons, and a baggage train of other transports boxed in by the rearguard. As he rode closer to the column, Hauptmann saluted the other outriders as he passed them, lances upright in their saddle-locks, heads down and hooded against the dust.

Two columns of distinct lines resolved, approximately a hundred yards apart. Those nearest Hauptmann had soldiers hanging off the guide rails or sat nonchalantly on the forward glacis, sharing room with roped-up supplies and other kit. Mainly Volpone from the 86th, though there were a few Diggers and Talpa too. The Ohrek had refused, demanding to be a part of the main push. And there weren’t enough Sloka left that anyone much cared where they threw in their lot, a cause of much consternation for the heavy infantry.

The farther column, the one to the south, had no soldiers hanging off Chimera chassis. Each vehicle had a driver only, and the formation mainly comprised the ramshackle and patched-up rigs that were barely fit for service. Several had broken down already since the excursion began and had to be fixed. Most hung together by haphazard welding and scraps of wire, as well as the prayers of the cadre of enginseers travelling with the column. How they had also repurposed the servitors to actually drive the rigs went beyond Hauptmann’s understanding. He knew engines, he knew how to fix a Vulpa or a vox-unit. Mystical mechanics were the Martians’ domain and he had no desire to surrender any part of his humanity to learn them.

His gaze drifted beyond, to the ruins of Lodden, its burnt-out shadow still visible on the horizon as the column’s route took it east. The town had suffered during the war and now they were going back to it. This diversion, he had been told, was a precautionary measure. The weapon would be neutralised by the Scions before it could be fired. Hauptmann had never met one of those glory boys he didn’t want to punch, and the First Sons were no exception to that. They were excellent soldiers, however.

The Godsword loomed, a reminder of its threat. A black silhouette, like a spear thrust into grey cloud, piercing heaven, promising judgement. He prayed then; he prayed the calculations of the Martians proved accurate, that the First Sons lived up to their reputation. It prompted an ill feeling, seeing that thing, a weapon upon which they had so relied now turned against them.

They had deployed macrocannons at Beltane, a desperate act not without some credence. It had been a bitter conflict – not only the siege, but what preceded it. Some of the stories he had heard, the tunnel fighting and what the embedded troops had been through. Horrors unending. The Pardus had arrived later, there to exploit the work of the heavy guns, those damn macrocannons. Stygis and Thunderstrike patterns. Weapons intended for use against god-machines, against Titans and starships. Not men. Bodies had atomised in the barrages. No bone or blood remained, just absence. The resulting craters had nearly sunk the city. The vaporised masses, they had been the fortunate ones. Those at the fringes of the blast zone, the limbless, the shattered half-men he had run medical supplies back and forth to preserve… Throne above, it was a grim undertaking.

Eyeing the head of the column at last, two Leman Russ tanks and a Chimera with a hefty comms array, Hauptmann engaged his vox.

‘Captain…’

‘Go ahead, sergeant.’ Aramis sounded distracted, her many sentries around the column doubtless feeding her regular reports.

‘We’re running about three hundred yards shy of the rad-zone but the storm’s messing with our parameters. It’s coming inwards, right at us.’

‘Your assessment?’

‘We’re skirting too close.’

‘Noted.’ There was a pause, a few clicks of vox-static. ‘Is there anything further?’

‘If we stray into that rad-zone or it strays into us, we’ll have a lot of sick men on our hands. Radiation pills or not.’

‘The risk is acceptable, sergeant. We have our orders.’

‘If we pushed another hundred yards or so south, we would mitigate any–’

‘And move both columns within range of Godsword. I’m sorry, Hauptmann. We’re between Horus and the Eye here. The radiation risk is acceptable.’

‘Aramis…’

‘I told you, sergeant. In the field, I am captain or sir. Now, is that all?’

Hauptmann turned his gaze to the dust storm and then back to the ominous silhouette of Godsword.

‘Yes, sir.’

That ill feeling he hadn’t quite been able to put his finger on, that elusive sense of disquiet; he now knew what it was. He knew what it made him feel like as they rode the invisible tightrope.

Bait.

Aramis scowled as she reviewed the report. Radar auspex had them riding close to the edge of Godsword’s range. And on the other side, a dust storm was widening the rad-zone and pushing it right at them. A narrow isthmus existed between these hazards, one Aramis was expected to chart. She shouldn’t have taken her frustration out on Hauptmann. If they survived this, she vowed to make it up to him. She had a decent bottle of vresk she thought the sergeant might enjoy.

‘Fifty yards south,’ she said, the navigator signalling her understanding as she relayed the message across the vox.

‘Did you piss him off?’ asked Henessey.

Yes, thought Aramis, but her aide wasn’t referring to the sergeant-cavalier.

The shadows in the armoured hold softened the usually hard edges of Henessey’s face but couldn’t hide the rueful humour in his eyes or the tilt of his thin lips. The left eye was a bionic, chromed bronze with a blue iris, but the right was human enough. He had a plate stapled to his head, a reminder of an old injury, and the rest of his scalp was shaved practically to the nub.

‘By existing, I piss him off. By being necessary, corporal.’

There was a pause, filled by the vox chatter coming through the master feed. A small cadre of Militarum comms operators manned stations, watched radar outputs on screens of green monochrome.

‘Permission to speak freely.’

‘Aren’t you already, corporal?’ Aramis looked up, which Henessey took as consent. She trusted everyone in this hold. They were hers, after all.

‘Grussman is a bootlicking, malicious cur.’

‘Noted,’ Aramis replied, utterly deadpan, and returned to the reports. ‘Though you forgot shit-eating,’ she added, with a wisp of a smile.

‘Indeed I did, captain. A shit-eating, bootlicking, malicious cur.’

‘And misogynist.’

‘I really am failing in my duties, captain.’

Aramis laughed, confident the conversation would go no further. The colonel was not universally liked amongst the 86th, except for those men he took into his inner circle. Too busy playing politics was Grussman, his nose entirely up Deviers’ shiny, golden arsehole. He must have been a fine officer once, Aramis supposed, but she had found men were often addicted to self-destruction when it came to the desire for advancement.

She turned from the report, sliding back a wall panel so she could look out of a view-slit. Squinting against the sudden rush of dust and air, Aramis peered past the flanking Chimera and its drone pilot. Aramis saw the weapon, stark and forbidding in the distance. She swore she saw it move.

ELEVEN

Soldiers advanced on Lodden. They did so quietly, in fear of the weapon that loomed above them in the distance, one part of the vanguard sent to reconnoitre the town.

Culcis led them and as he reached the northern outskirts, he crouched behind the ugly stump of a perimeter wall. Troopers followed him, most in the pristine uniforms of the Volpone, others in the forest green of the Ohrek or the grubby ochre of the Talpa. They took up positions either side of the road, or in a low ditch, or the lee of a collapsed watchtower. Anywhere cover could be found. Rubble and debris lay everywhere, and though the bloodstains were old, the memories they stirred were not. Men had died to take Lodden. More had fallen losing it.

And now they had returned to do it all over again.

‘Definition of madness, sergeant?’ he asked his command squad nearby.

‘Sir?’ Greiss was tucked behind an old barricade and frowned as he adjusted his helmet. Culcis wondered if perhaps the soldier had been born wearing it.

‘Doesn’t matter,’ the lieutenant replied.

The Ohrek force leader, a master sergeant called Ghanu, moved up stealthily with three of his riflemen. His dark eyes flashed as they caught the light.

‘Looks quiet, lieutenant.’ His voice was rich and deep, and he had a noble bearing like a lot of the Ohrek. A short-stocked las-repeater was slung over one shoulder, a thick combat knife sheathed on his thigh. ‘I don’t trust it. Where are the citizens? I see no sign, not even of the dead.’

When the Ankish line had collapsed, many of the citizens of Lodden had fled, but not all. Not all could, and many had been left behind. Now they were simply gone.

‘A good question, master sergeant,’ said Culcis, appraising the main gate into the town through a las-scope. He couldn’t see any movement, any sign of occupation.

In the time it took for him to look, the Talpa lieutenant, Pukk, had joined them. Unlike the Ohrek, he came alone. ‘Are we going in?’ he asked. His teeth were black from kappa root and he possessed a grubby, well-worn aroma.

The Talpa had wire for limbs, it seemed: his dishevelled uniform was almost hanging off his body and he had an unkempt scruff of grey hair that Culcis assumed must be lice-ridden judging by how many times he removed his coal-bucket helmet to scratch at it. Upon closer inspection, a patch of dirt on the Talpa’s right cheek actually turned out to be a tattoo of a coiled rat.

‘You have city-fighting experience?’ Culcis asked.

The Talpa nodded, a vicious look in his eye, and patted the spiked mattock he wore on his hip like a beloved pet.

Culcis had approximately sixty troopers in his charge, a full platoon of which were Volpone, including his own command squad. The rest were auxiliary. He looked to Ghanu.

‘I need eyes,’ he said.

Ghanu nodded, and at a gesture a band of Rangers swept up crisply and quietly. All carried las-repeaters and frag charges, and wore urban camo over the forest green. At the lieutenant’s signal a second squad, Volpone, joined them. One of ours, one of theirs. Even deployment had politics.

Culcis made a short downward chopping motion with his fingers and the two squads broke from position and advanced up the roadway that led to the town’s northward gates. Lasguns held close to their bodies, crouched low and sprinting, they reached the gatehouse without incident. A Volpone sergeant called Edrin held out his hand, palm flat to indicate stop.

Two troopers took the left side of the gate, one high, one low, lasguns trained on the town beyond; another two took the right side, same positions. The rest of the squad hunkered next to the outer wall, propping their rifles against cratered gaps where they could, holding them upright against their shoulders where they couldn’t. A crew-served weapon team lugged an ammo belt and a collapsed heavy stubber, still wrapped in canvas and tied off.

The Ohrek sergeant pulled a telescopic sight and swept it slowly back and forth. A flamer bearer held his weapon low, the igniter flickering lazily, a spotter with his hand on the trooper’s shoulder watching for enemy movement. A weak sun bled through the cloud, but a dust storm was in effect, turning the day a brownish overcast that filled corners and crannies with deep shadows. Buildings encroached, turning Lodden into a darkened warren.

A faint vox-crackle made Culcis swear aloud. He hadn’t realised how tense he was feeling. Shiller’s voice resolved at the other end of the feed.

‘Anything, lieutenant?’

Culcis passed his gaze across the severed razor wire, the collapsed bunkers and burnt-out pillboxes. The northern outskirts were quiet. No attempt had been made to rebuild its defences or repair anything, let alone occupy it.

‘Negative, captain. No sign.’

Shiller replied quickly, ‘Then what the bloody hell are you waiting for?’

A silent exchange passed between the two sergeants running point, then Edrin turned and rotated his hand in a clockwise fashion. Rally on the gatehouse.

Culcis patted Pukk on the shoulder, felt the sharp edges of the man’s frame through the fabric of his uniform.

‘Two fire-teams,’ he whispered. ‘Advanced positions.’

Two five-man squads of Talpa peeled off from the rest of the vanguard, reached the gatehouse and scurried inside. Fast, silent, they put Culcis in mind of vermin despite his best efforts to think otherwise.

As soon as the Talpa were in, he gave the order to move up, pumping his fist in the battle-sign for hurry. Thirty Volpone advanced on his signal, moving by squad, and the air filled with the soft clamour of jostling equipment.

Sergeant Edrin met them at the gatehouse. The main street was dark, most of the lamps shattered. The shells of old commercia buildings lay open on either side. A checkpoint sat about halfway down, but there were gaps torn into the barricade and the watch-house had been flattened. A munitions yard stood at the end of the street, roads projecting left and right, leading further into the town. Its roof had collapsed and scattered brick still lay where its east wall had been blown out. Craters pockmarked the roadway, some filled with off-spilled petrochem. Wet earth churned underfoot.

‘It’s like a blackout, sir,’ griped Edrin, referencing the near-dark conditions brought on by the storm and the cluttered layout of the town. ‘Could be anything out there. I’d suggest some stab-lamps.’

Culcis nodded to indicate he’d heard Edrin’s recommendation.

‘And what do your eyes tell you, master sergeant?’

Ghanu hadn’t stopped interrogating the shadows since he had reached the gatehouse. He did so a moment longer before answering, ‘There is nothing, lieutenant.’ He faced Culcis. ‘I see nothing here.’ He offered a slight smile. ‘Except for our malodorous comrades.’

He was referring to the Talpa, though Culcis could find no sign of the trench fighters.

‘I’d hardly say that constitutes certainty, lieutenant,’ Edrin cut in, bristling at being so casually brushed off.

Culcis silenced his protests with the raising of his hand. He believed the Bluebloods were the finest fighting men in the entirety of the Guard but he wasn’t so proud as to not recognise the keen instincts of the Ohrek, honed from years of dense, nocturnal forest warfare. The Volpone brought precision, discipline, strength. They were heavily armoured and well armed. However, though they had lighter troops, the Ohrek and even the Talpa made for better scouts. Even in urban terrain. But he wasn’t about to explain any of that to Edrin.

‘Map,’ he uttered instead and Edrin unfurled a sketched layout of the town, pleased to be of service again.

Greiss pulled out a stab-lamp and smothered it with a rag to dim the light. It was just bright enough for Culcis to mark two avenues of ingress and a second rally point at a communal square with a grease pencil. The rest of the battlegroup were somewhere behind him, likely nearing the gate as they advanced on the northern outskirts. Shiller was impatient and wanted this done. Three hundred men in the advance party on this part of town.

Culcis divided the platoons then gave a sharp signal with two fingers, waving them left to right. The group split into two columns and pushed down the street, eyes high and low. No stab-lamps. The shadows seemed to thicken the deeper they went. A smell of sour milk and spoiled meat threaded the air. No bodies though, alive or dead.

About halfway to the munitions yard, the formation still in column, Culcis raised a clenched fist and the squad sergeants cascaded his signal down the line. Every Volpone froze, hugging the buildings, spoiling vantage points. The lieutenant glanced at Hanmar, who was by his shoulder, but the olive-skinned corpsman shook his head after he had checked the bio-scanner.

‘Think we’re getting some interference, sir.’ The dull green glow of the screen fizzed and crackled. ‘Seen something, lieutenant?’ Hanmar asked.

‘A feeling,’ Culcis replied. ‘See if you can get it working.’

Hanmar nodded, adjusting dials on the scanner but yielding no results.

Culcis looked over his shoulder at the voxman, a trooper called Hauger. ‘Anything?’

A shake of the head from Hauger, who then said, ‘Not since we entered the town, sir.’

Culcis swore under his breath. There must be a vox-jammer in effect. Somewhere ahead of them, the Scions would be making their infiltration. Without the means to contact them, and having seen no sign of them or their passing, it was impossible to gauge the success of their mission. It was impossible to gauge much of anything. Lodden appeared deserted.

Fenk should have entered the town on its eastward facing by now, two platoons in his charge, another three hundred men following under Captain Brandreth. Their orders were simple: advance, clear and occupy. Take and hold the weapon until the larger battlegroup could move up and secure. So far, the first part of that had proven easy. Culcis thought too easy.

Where the hell is everyone?

He didn’t believe the Pact would just abandon Lodden, for it would mean abandoning Godsword too. Why fight so hard to obtain it just to surrender it?

Situated at the southern edge of the town, the weapon had been worked into the defensive wall, raised up on an artificial plinth of rockcrete and surrounded by a riveted metal shell. A compound of entrenchments, manned turrets and other minor defences encircled it like a keep. It was supposed to be impenetrable, an anchor on the east flank of the Ankish line, but the Pact had wrecked all that. Those boasts rang hollow now, made by men prone to hyperbole. Regardless, it still dominated the horizon. Even amongst the press of buildings, Culcis could see it through gaps in the ragged townscape. The dust clouds did their best to obscure it but the weapon was still there, a sleeping sentry. Or perhaps just waiting.

‘Are we moving, lieutenant, or waiting for reinforcements?’ whispered Greiss, his tone suggesting he was prepared to do either.

Culcis spared a glance at Godsword. ‘Why haven’t they fired it, Greiss?’

‘I don’t know, sir.’

‘And where are the enemy? The Pact should be crawling all over this place.’

‘We may find them yet, sir.’

‘No sentries, not even skirmishers.’

‘Perhaps they’ve withdrawn.’

‘Do you think that likely, sergeant?’

‘No, sir, I do not.’

‘That leaves only two outcomes,’ said Culcis. ‘Either they’ve pulled back for another reason, or…’

‘They’re still here and we haven’t found them.’

‘Precisely.’

‘Shall I try to vox Captain Shiller, stall the advance?’

Culcis shook his head. He doubted it would work, but that hardly mattered at this point. ‘We’re in its eye now, Greiss,’ he said, looking up at the distant barrel of Godsword. ‘There is no more stalling.’

He gave the signal, and they moved out.

TWELVE

Regara stood atop a ridge a quarter of a mile from Lodden and scoured the town through a pair of magnoculars. Shiller had commenced his advance, three hundred men descending with bayonets fixed and rifles charged. A pair of Hellhound flame tanks trundled beside them, the armoured rigs touting bulky fuel canisters – a terror weapon when deployed in close-quarter engagements. Pardus urban camo patterned their hulls, mustard yellow traded for grey and black, and a clutch of Talpa hung on to the cargo netting strewn across the forward glacis.

‘They’re moving in…’ Regara uttered.

Below and behind him, the rest of the army waited in disciplined ranks. He had three other officers on the ridge with him, Rensaint, Grussman and Barbastian.

‘Should have sent in the bloody Tunnel-Rats to smoke them out first,’ groused Grussman. ‘Scared up the quarry a notch or two.’

‘And announce to the Pact that we’re here?’ countered Barbastian, eyebrow raised. ‘Not exactly subtle.’

‘Nothing subtle about a flame tank either,’ Grussman countered, to which Regara found he had to concede. ‘If you want hornets, lieutenant colonel, then use a sharp stick. That’s all I’m saying.’

They had kept most of the auxiliaries back, including most of the Agrians, preferring discipline to expendability – though not even Eythor would admit that, and he was a callous bastard on his best day. Besides, city fighting played to the Volpone’s strengths. Their equipment, their superior armour, their tactics and training. The Slokans had little left in the way of military strength, despite their assertions to the contrary, and the Ohrek were better suited to rural terrain – though a few had been utilised in the advance party as scouts – whilst the Agrians were farmers and trench builders conscripted into military service. As for the Talpa… Regara had seen death row penal legions that were less savage. Still, they played their part. The truth of it, though, was far less finessed. Glory motivated everything the Volpone did. Another laurel for the banner, another gilded honour. A victory to erase the stain of defeat. Bluebloods knew only how to win; anything else was anathema.

The leather of Rensaint’s gloves creaked noisily as he gripped the hilt of his sword. ‘Why haven’t they fired the weapon?’ he asked.

A similar thought had occurred to Regara. According to the magos, they were well inside the range of Godsword. It either meant the First Sons had been successful, in which case why had there been no reaction from inside the town, or something else had happened. The not knowing bothered him the most.

He lowered the scopes and pointed them in the direction of Kobor.

‘Column’s moving,’ he said, tweaking the magnification, but it was a fair distance and all he really saw was a large dust plume. ‘Should be in range of the guns soon.’

‘Isn’t it obvious?’ said Deviers as he climbed up the ridge, a pair of Scions in tow. ‘The bastards want a fight.’

He had emerged from his command vehicle armoured and armed – not in his parade finest that he had so histrionically discarded to appeal to the common masses, but in his Volpone grey carapace, his helm and sabre, his snub-nosed laspistol. Even the crimson half-cloak was absent, though he still wore the silver lion-headed shoulder guard.

‘And we’re going to give it to them, by the Throne.’

Regara blinked back his surprise. ‘Sir?’

Deviers unsheathed and sheathed his blade, testing the smoothness of withdrawing it. ‘Did you think I came here just to make speeches, major?’ He smiled, that charming, savage smile. ‘I came here to win a war, to lead. The only way I know how to do that is from the front.’

Even Grussman, a long-time confidant of the general, balked. ‘Brigadier, I must protest. There is no need for this–’

‘There is every need, Colonel Grussman. I pledged to fight alongside these men. I won’t break an oath I only just swore.’

Grussman drew in close to the general, his voice low, his eyes flitting to the other officers, searching for supporters. By the way he was acting, Regara assumed Deviers had done this before. The man was known for his acts of bravura. It had won wars.

‘There are soldiers for this…’ Grussman began.

Deviers turned and held his gaze. There was steel in it. Unbendable steel.

‘This, colonel? Do you mean fighting? Dying? I am a soldier. We all are. Volpone glory to the end.’

Regara had heard of it before, vainglorious officers who sought out the worst of all warfronts, always craving the heart of the battle. Not for bloodlust. For the honour of it. Such men did not last long, but Deviers had some years on him. Throne, Regara knew he himself had more than a few, but the rejuvenat the general used was primus-grade and even it couldn’t hide every crack.

He trooped on, leaving a frustrated Grussman in his wake.

‘You’ll have strategic command from here, colonel,’ snipped Deviers, a parting shot for the colonel’s apparent insolence. ‘Major…’ he ordered.

Regara stepped to, handing off the magnoculars to Barbastian, who would remain to see to field command. Two squads fell in, all handpicked men, Blueblood veterans every one. Deviers had a small cohort of Scions, his two shadows and three others making up a fire-team. A Chimera stood nearby, engines already idling.

Deviers apparently meant to join the front with only a small retinue. His next words confirmed it.

‘We’ll join up with Shiller. Ensure he’s prepared for us.’

A voxman the general had turned his attention to saluted.

Rensaint had watched the entire theatre with apparent cool reserve but as the troopers filed out, he swept down off his perch to join them. Only the slightest pinch around his eyes suggested his annoyance. Although he had only spent a few hours with the commissar, Owyn Rensaint struck Regara as a man who planned methodically and in detail, considering every potential exchange and scenario. Almost a form of prescience. Evidently, he hadn’t foreseen this.

‘I think I’ll stretch my legs, general, if you’ll permit me to join you?’ he said cordially. ‘Commissar Eythor has matters in hand here. I see no need to remain.’

Eythor lurked below, amongst the masses. If he felt anything about being left behind, he didn’t show it. The man was as emotionless and inert as a corpse, a sharp contrast to the smoothly politic Rensaint.

Deviers paused as he was climbing into the back of the transport, favouring Rensaint with a curt, backwards glance. ‘As you wish, lord commissar. The Prefectus must go where it is needed, by the Emperor’s will.’

Rensaint gave a shallow nod. ‘His will,’ he murmured, and followed Deviers and the Scions aboard.

Regara went next. His leg was bothering him again. Phantom pain, he knew, but it often presaged trouble. The major wasn’t a particularly superstitious man and he didn’t consider himself credulous either, but he would have been a fool not to heed this sign.

He looked back as he mounted the ramp, and saw Barbastian watching him from the ridge. A sudden pang seized him, akin to a loss not yet experienced yet still felt. In that moment, he wondered if he would see Filip again, but by then it was too late and the press of bodies had shuffled him on into the interior and the red-lit dark of the transport’s hold.

Fenk was good at spotting when something was out of place. He had the knack. It was the very same knack that made him good at moving unseen, unnoticed.

He knew almost every soldier in Lance Company, and the only reason he had any gaps in his knowledge at all was on account of the casualties they had sustained during the retreat. Troopers from the 86th and 101st had filled in the ranks, made the company viable again. So, Fenk accepted there would be troopers he didn’t know, but fighting men stood out. They had a look: the eyes, the way they moved, a wariness, a readiness that spoke to a shared experience.

The commissar, Gannika, didn’t have it. She had something at once cold and fiery behind her eyes, a taut-string tension that made her stiff and jerking like an automaton. But it wasn’t her Fenk had noticed as they crept stealthily across the threshold into the eastward-facing gates of Lodden. It was a trooper he didn’t know. Young, but moving with practised skill. Like he had watched someone do it over and over again, and had managed to replicate the behaviour. An imitator.

Maybe 86th or 101st, maybe somewhere else. It didn’t matter. Wherever they had come from, the trooper didn’t belong.

‘Redfern,’ he said, summoning the corporal as they crossed an empty arcade, the columns and porticos riddled with bullet holes. ‘Do you know that trooper?’ Fenk tipped his knife in the direction of the trooper, who was running on ahead with his squad.

Redfern frowned, his face a patchwork of old scars and skin like leather. He was a bruiser was Redfern, a gutter noble who cared nothing for standing or prestige, only that he had and others had not, and that this gave him a measure of power over his lessers.

‘Never seen him before, sir,’ he said, his voice a raw-edged growl that rattled in his throat. ‘Probably Eighty-Sixth or Hundred-and-First.’

The advance squad were establishing sentry positions, watching rooftops and corners. Still no engagement, and the quiet was unsettling some.

‘Is he a problem, sir?’ Redfern had a glint in his eye, the one that usually preceded violence. He had killed before, and not just on the battlefield. A taste for the blood, some said. Fenk would agree. The grey host might have dealt with Redfern long ago, but Fenk liked having a mad dog that was his to unleash.

‘Not yet…’ Fenk answered truthfully, and gave the order to follow.

THIRTEEN

Culcis stopped at the edge of the square. He felt his breath catch in his throat and wondered why his heart had begun to beat so fast.

His troops were hunkered down, poised at the lip of a wide set of steps leading down to the square itself and spread out amongst the fronts of abandoned commercia buildings and behind half-collapsed columns. The hum of readied lasguns trembled the air. The last time Culcis had seen this place, there had been people. Citizens of Lodden, the ones who hadn’t been able to flee to the wilds, and Imperial soldiers patrolling or gathered in small groups, talking, eating, smoking. The square was empty now, and against the lieutenant’s will it filled with his fear, instead. Only he couldn’t understand why.

‘What is that?’ he hissed, and turned to see Ghanu’s eyes wide, like two silver coins glittering amongst his dark features. The master sergeant was within a few yards of the lieutenant, crouched down, weapon trained on the shadows. He murmured in native Ohkish but despite the language barrier, the meaning was clear. It was a warding prayer.

Culcis squinted against the dark, trying to see… anything. It occurred to him the square would be a good place for an ambush. A large expanse with little to no cover, higher ground on all sides and limited visibility. The Militarum had a term for it – kill-box.

‘Hanmar…’

The corporal shook his head, the bio-scanner still strangely silent. His attention never left the square, eyes roaming, searching.

No word from the Scions, no sign of the enemy. Shiller was coming. They needed to clear this zone. And yet…

It was darker here than the rest of the town, the square enclosed by tall buildings that stooped like decrepit men. Old scraps of fabric hung on vox-wires. Sheets of plastek, drawn over windows, creaked in the breeze. A large fountain stood proud in the middle of the square. It was made of iron, but the metal had succumbed to rust and a mire of stagnant, dirt-flecked water stood in its large basin. The beast it had been crafted to represent had three heads – bovine, ursine, equine – their mouths agape. A rope of stringy algae drooled from one, clinging to its iron fangs like spittle.

There was something standing in the stagnant fountain water, four towering scaffolds that reminded Culcis of gibbets – though he could see no noose, and during the Imperial occupation they had never used the square for executions. The scaffolds had been added recently. Something hung from each of them but it was hard to discern, like a smear on a picter lens that wouldn’t wipe off. A sigil – he couldn’t think of a better way to describe it – floated above the fountain, faintly luminous, as if a dagger had made a cut in the air and left a wound in its wake. Culcis blinked, once, then again, but he couldn’t focus on it so he turned his gaze on what lay ahead.

Sixty men awaited his command, even the Talpa having returned to the ranks and fallen conspicuously silent. Their lieutenant, Pukk, was looking at his boot. Something marred the toecap where he had inadvertently scuffed it against the ground. Sticky, like tar. He sniffed at it, scowled.

‘Tell me that degenerate has not stepped in shit,’ muttered Greiss but the thick-necked sergeant’s disgust couldn’t hide his trepidation. Hairs stood up along the bare skin of his arms and he swallowed.

The Talpa was mouthing something to his comrades, his chittering dialect difficult to parse.

Sange.

He was saying ‘sange’.

Ghanu was looking down, not at his feet but at the ragged line daubed against the pavers. Culcis followed it, followed the Ohrek’s gaze as it tracked the line. It ran the circumference of the square. As he completed the circuit with his eyes, Ghanu turned back to the lieutenant and gave a small, near-imperceptible shake of the head. A plea.

Culcis was drawn back to the fountain, to the basin. Fuller than he remembered, just a catch bin for the rain. At least it had been. The water level had since risen. Thickened. Darkened. A tiny movement caught his eye, the surface of the water disturbed by an escaping air pocket and something beneath. It bobbed gently, breaching the placid scum that had developed on top. It looked pale, organic. Not unlike bone.

To his dismay, his troops were already moving. Already down the steps. He couldn’t remember giving the order. And he was moving too, every man amongst them drifting like sleepwalkers across the square. They advanced left and right of the fountain, hugging the high sides of its ornate basin, casting wary glances at the rusted iron beasts.

And that’s when Culcis saw it. The orange-red patina that had built up over the ironworks shone. Rust was dull, flat. This was wet, and coagulated.

Sange.

Blood.

The order to withdraw on the bow of his lips, the lieutenant’s gaze led him up, back to the sigil and to one of the scaffolds. Details resolved, as if he was seeing it for the first time. As if it wanted to be seen. The thing hanging from it resembled an animal carcass made of scrap metal, intertwined with wire and stained almost black, with a long chain wrapped around, pulling all the spikes and edges together like a mismatched jigsaw. A hollow bovine skull stared back at Culcis and he felt its regard like a cold touch at the nape of his neck. Then an ember flared in one of its eye sockets, quickly burning into a crimson flame.

The bio-scanner bleeped abruptly, half a second of sound stretching on into forever before Culcis roared, ‘To arms! To arms!’

The hurried clatter of raised lasguns rippled across the square, men backing off in swathes, their fingers trembling against triggers, eyes pressed to iron sights trying to deny the evidence of their senses.

It unfurled, the bovine thing. Long, far longer than it had seemed all entwined like that. Claws and teeth, and anima. Hunched and long-limbed, furnace heat bleeding through the joints. Lowing like the flesh creature it scarcely resembled. Spoiled meat and sour milk ripened on the air.

Sergeant Edrin was weeping, a desperate prayer repeating over and over as he barrelled past Culcis to lift his shaking rifle. The charge block whined, high-pitched, tuned to full power.

Then he died.

A spear of metal pierced his chest, lifting him bodily, legs dangling. Helpless. Edrin was spitting blood all over his chest and face, his weapon hanging from a nerveless finger. Still in a state of shock, the seconds like stretched elastic in his mind, Culcis traced the spear back to the segmented tail that had impaled Edrin.

Not a tail, a limb. It hunched, the thing that had killed Edrin, a broken-backed monstrosity of gangling legs and arms. A second gibbet stood empty behind it. The same sentience blazed within it, like tangible malice. It took three unsteady steps, whatever infernal energies that drove it leaking out of joints in gouts of crackling fluid. It slumped and expired.

Confusion and relief warred within Culcis before a heavy thud made him turn as the first one, the bovine thing, landed on all fours. It was built like a tank. Culcis tried to give an order but the words scraped like sand in his mouth, his tongue a strip of cured leather. He almost screamed.

‘Fire… Fire at will!’

Staccato las-beams went off like firecrackers, fizzing and snapping. The bovine thing leapt, raking sparks as it pushed off the ground. Hauger split in half, the voxman slit from groin to crown by a trailing claw, the red pieces of him spilling out in a slurry of innards. It trundled on, the creature, goring Vesher, lifting up the Blueblood like a sack of meat and smashing the poor bastard against the side of the fountain, where he left a smear. Men scattered before it, as if reacting to tank shock. Others took aim. Las-beams stitched it, high and low, hitting limbs and torso. It bellowed, driven back for a few seconds before charging down two of Ghanu’s Rangers and shredding them. It sprang, propelled by its hindquarters, into a Talpa. The Tunnel-Rat barely had time to unhook his mattock before it tore into him.

A krak grenade thrown by Ghanu staggered it; blood, oil and something else spouted from the ruined joints. A flamer doused it and it screamed, the voice uncomfortably human. Still burning, it brought down two Bluebloods, Krelish and Blaik. A Talpa leapt at it, a war shout on her lips, mattock and axe raised. A swipe of the horns and she fell in two perfect halves, cut across the midriff.

Culcis was trying to get his scattered troops into formation. Greiss fired unerringly, hitting the bovine skull with five shots out of six, before thumbing the lever to rapid fire and hosing it. Ejecting the smoking power pack, he slammed in another and kept going. It wasn’t enough to stop it.

‘Rake!’ cried Culcis.

Rake flicked out the standing feet on the heavy stubber, Dresk feeding the ammo belt. Muzzle flare roared a moment later, solid shots punching the bovine’s flank as the rest of the squad fusilladed it with las-fire. At last it gave ground, hemmed in and hurting from concentrated fire. There was an infinitesimal moment of respite to think, to take stock.

Bodies lay everywhere. Speared and dismembered. Decapitated. Ghanu was getting the Rangers into order, carefully marshalled shots herding the bovine thing as the Talpa snapped at it like caged rats, hacking and bludgeoning. A squad of Volpone, Edrin’s former men, stood next to the Ohrek, firing in disciplined ranks. Then the flamer bearer took a hit and a stray spark cooked off the fuel in his tank. The explosion took out five men. Another four fell screaming as burning promethium drenched their backs and faces.

Culcis turned his cheek from the heat, shouting, ‘Rally! Rally!’ trying to reach Ghanu, trying to stay alive.

Six Rangers remained, two with knives after their las-repeaters had depleted. Only Pukk was left from the Talpa, his brethren cut up like offal. Ohrek las-repeaters chased the monster but it weathered the shots, seemingly impervious. Pukk flung his axe and it spun, end over end, to embed in the creature’s mass.

The bovine let out a rage-filled bleat, the flesh-leather of its torso still aflame. Culcis shot it in the eye, a marksman’s shot, and the embers there died. The explosion that followed took Naaver, Gonfried and Jethry, a sudden electrical detonation that left scorched black bones behind it. But at least the thing was dead, nothing left of it but scraps of twisted metal scattered across the square.

The lightning was still dying away when the third and fourth scaffolds began to rattle.

‘Back!’ Culcis shouted, blood in his eyes turning his view red. ‘Retreat to the stairs!’

They went up, backs to the steps, moving gingerly as two half-seen figures moved in the shadows towards them. It was even darker now, the sky cast in sackcloth black and all colour bled away to anaemic monochrome.

A las-beam cut the dark, blue and faltering. It lit a tall figure ambling on two legs, like a man but not a man. An ancient knight in cobalt iron. Too tall, too thin, too many edges. Fire glowed within it but gave off no light. Horns protruded from a distended, equine helm. It stooped as long forelimbs extended, unhinging like a flick knife, trailing and grating on the ground.

A second las-beam cracked off. Then another and another, as the men fired and climbed, fired and climbed.

A trooper fell and the knight lashed, its long fingers coiling around her ankle like a whip before pulling her away screaming. Her head hit the ground as she was dragged and the scream cut off, the skull cracking as loud as a grenade. Las-beams chased her into the shadows but she was gone.

Culcis reached the top of the steps, Greiss hauling him by his arm. They’d lost at least half the men. Ghanu and two other Rangers, Pukk, the last Talpa and the Volpone remained.

‘Holy Emperor, protect us from evil…’ Hanmar was murmuring, close to his lieutenant’s side. The useless bio-scanner was gone and he held his lascarbine to his shoulder as a fourth creature loped into sight. Hanmar’s shots struck metal, sparks flying off segmented wings held protectively in front of an avian body. Its beaked head turned as it issued a plaintive shriek. It jerked, awkward but mercurial, like it was moving out of phase, in one position one moment and then another the next without any visible transition between.

Culcis called for the heavy gun.

‘Strafe it!’

Rake had abandoned the stand. He braced the heavy stubber against the wall, Dresk lugging another belt into the hungry ammo feed. It chugged out rounds the size of canteens, rupturing pavers and sending the pieces into the air in rapid eruptions.

Unearthly fast, the avian creature darted from the worst of it and circled wide, forcing the fire to follow. Its murder-mate was less bold and flung out a limb, snagging Culcis by his boot and yanking him off his feet…

Culcis felt the earth slip violently beneath him, then pain as his back hit solid stone. He smelled burned leather and the world lurched again as he was pulled towards the steps.

A firm hand grabbed his arm. It was Greiss, teeth gritted, lasgun discarded so he could try to save his lieutenant. The muscles bunched in the sergeant’s arms, both hands now gripping as Culcis felt his leg pulled. He screamed in agony as the joint stretched, the bone resisting. In pain-flooded half-awareness, he imagined the limb shearing away, taking most of his pelvis with it. His boot was burning, fire lapping where long, blackened fingers touched it.

A flash of bright silver registered as Hanmar slashed with his rapier, trying to sever the arm that held Culcis, but his blade was meant for duelling and had little effect. Pukk stepped up, armed with an axe, and hacked down two-handed.

‘Take the limb!’ roared Culcis, half blind with pain. He meant his own.

Pukk hacked again, wires and sinew parting as his blade sheared black iron. Hanmar jammed his rapier in the wound, levered it wider with two hands as Greiss held on.

Culcis pleaded, ‘Cut it now…’ His hip cracked, muscle tearing, the flesh of his ankle burning as the leather of his boot turned to ash.

Pukk hacked a third time and the thing’s wrist parted, spewing blood and other fluids as the limb flailed away like a streamer. A plaintive howl confirmed they had hurt it, the knight retreating to lick its wounds. Culcis sagged like a taut rope abruptly released, the sudden absence of tension upending Greiss, who sprawled onto his back, gasping with relief.

A Volpone fire-team led by Pukk stepped up to shield the lieutenant as Hanmar administered a hurried shot of morphia. The pain ebbed, a dull wall of numbness between it and Culcis, before he almost blacked out.

He heard a voice in his ear, distant and soft like a bad vox return. ‘Need to move, lieutenant…’

Dresk.

‘Take his arm, cousin.’

That was Rake.

Culcis groaned, ‘Get back on that damn heavy…’

‘Stubber’s empty, sir.’

Dresk again.

‘Dry as a Tallarn’s arse crack, sir.’

Definitely Rake.

The fire-team began to shrink as the cousins dragged him. The pain felt distant, as if it belonged to someone else, and Culcis looked down to find his ankle burned but the fingers that had seized it gone.

They were all retreating, back into the column-lined avenue that led to the square, two shadows in pursuit, hungry and hurting. Driven by pain-fuelled instinct and caged sentience.

Less than twenty men from sixty.

A memory stirred, something from just before deployment. As Culcis brought it firmly to mind, a briefing on known enemy combatants, a name resonated. It evinced a sort of primal fear in him that he couldn’t explain.

Wirewolf.

And it was only then that he realised he and his men were dead.

FOURTEEN

Shadows moved in the storm. Hauptmann knew it as surely as he knew the fingers and calluses on his hands.

He signalled his squadron, and the Rough Riders fell in from positions along the edge of the column. Thirty men, all mounted, engines growling as the intakes coughed and spat.

‘I can take a look.’ Garrison had ridden up alongside, and pulled down his scarf to speak. His chin was shaped like an arrowhead, his thin lips always twitching except for when they had a tabac-stick between them.

Hauptmann shook his head. ‘Stay close,’ he said, and waved Roper up to the front of the squadron. ‘See if you can get a few of those Tauros to join us.’ He gestured to the armoured jeeps flanking the column as outriders. Roper nodded, took Mathiss and Vekker with him, and went to round up some heavier guns.

They rode steady, Vulpas bouncing lightly against the terrain. The dust was thick, thicker than it had been when they left camp. It had taken on the cast of a sand wall, tan brown and churning. Eddies whipped in the mass, as the air turned and twisted. And through these vortices of dirt… shadows. A darker brown against the storm, like muzzy silhouettes refusing to take form.

‘Could be nothing,’ remarked Garrison.

Hauptmann nodded. ‘That’s what I’m hoping.’

Lennox rode one-handed, also out front, a scope in the other hand. He adjusted the magnification, nimble fingers doing what was needed blindly, a deftness born of repetition and the cavalier’s natural talent. He was a pious lad with a strict upbringing, sober as an arbitrator until he smiled and mindful of his manners, so when he swore aloud Hauptmann knew they had a problem.

‘How many?’ Hauptmann asked. He would have reached for his own scope but frankly Lennox had younger, better eyes.

The lad had pulled his rifle, had it sat over his lap as he rode and attached the scope with one hand.

‘Many more than thirty, sir,’ he replied.

Garrison kissed the aquila necklace he wore. ‘Wish it had been nothing,’ he said, unsheathing a stub-nosed combat shotgun. ‘Should we engage?’

Hauptmann thought of Chari then, and the boy he hadn’t seen in twenty years who would by now be a man. In that second, he considered everything he had missed, all the days gone, and the grief of that wound up inside him like a tight ball before he swallowed it.

‘Hold for now,’ he said, betraying none of these feelings to his men. ‘Even masked up, we can’t ride in that.’

‘How can they, sir?’

Lennox asked a damn good question. The radiation would kill anything human, which didn’t leave many comforting possibilities. Hauptmann couldn’t answer, so he asked a question of his own instead.

‘You see how close they were?’

‘Scope gauged at five hundred yards, sir.’

Shit.

That was a little close. Roper and the others were headed back, three Tauros in tow. Six-wheelers, the heavier Venator class, their armoured frames and chassis painted mustard yellow and equipped with autocannons and missile tubes. The sight of them eased Hauptmann’s nerves a little.

Then he heard the howling, an inhuman, animalistic cry reverberating out of the storm.

From the briefings, Hauptmann recalled this of Kobor: It is a settlement of low importance, though fell early to the Archonate onslaught. Militarum intelligence is limited, but suggests one of the Sanguinary tribal warlords rules it like a fiefdom. They are of a particularly barbaric caste, this racial offshoot, allegedly active in several other warzones. More spurious reports claim the proliferation of abhumans amongst its ranks. Such notions come unsupported by evidence and therefore are given little to no credence.

The silhouettes solidified, and Hauptmann didn’t need Lennox’s young eyes to see what was coming for them. Or how many.

He raised Aramis on the vox, and she answered curtly.

‘Captain…’ he said, his eyes on the herd as it swept out of the radiation cloud like some unholy tide, ‘prepare for all-out attack.’

Fenk heard gunfire and urged his men towards it. He knew Militarum-issue gear, it had a certain cadence that every soldier with enough battlefield miles in his boots recognised. Praxis pattern: crisp report, perfect pitch. Mainly lasguns, but the rattle of solid shot from a heavy stubber too. The drumming staccato of the inferior repeaters favoured by the Ohrek. Noise makers, no precision. The louder bangs of explosives. A krak grenade meant they’d encountered something heavy.

He ran, careful but still quick, focusing on the echoes and the gradual decline in ferocity, the lengthier gaps between bouts of sustained fire.

They are falling back…

‘You, private,’ he snapped, and the lad he didn’t recognise turned at the lieutenant’s voice.

‘Sir!’

He knew the routine at least.

‘What’s your name?’

The slightest hesitation. ‘Unsworth, sir.’

They were running between rubble, the part of Lodden that had taken the worst the war had to throw at it and had never been rebuilt. Redfern scurried by the lieutenant’s side, face grim, eyes everywhere. A survivor, was Redfern.

‘Are you fast, Unsworth?’ Fenk asked.

‘Sir, yes sir.’

‘I want you as scout. Fifty yards ahead. See anything coming and you shout. Understand?’

The lad nodded, and was on the cusp of haring off when a stern voice cut in.

‘Lieutenant.’

It froze the lad still, a fear instinct cultured within him at the sight of an officer of the Prefectus entering the chain of command. Fenk brought the group to a halt and they took covering positions as Commissar Gannika came over.

‘Madam commissar?’

‘Where are you going?’ she asked, the words so starched they had edges.

‘To where our fellow Guardsmen are fighting and dying, commissar.’

‘Our orders are to reach Godsword…’

‘And we’ll get back to that after this.’

‘…to reach it with all haste, lieutenant.’ Her belt holster was already empty, a silver-chased bolt pistol in her hand. To her credit, she didn’t level it at him. Not yet. ‘Or shall I assume command?’

Fenk licked his lips, his eyes recording every aspect of Commissar Gannika’s face. The bright, fiery eyes and pale skin, the hard line of her lips and jaw. Any softness had been beaten out of her long ago, and sculpted marble remained. The Schola Progenium had turned this Imperial orphan into a machine that followed and gave orders. Fenk had met servitors with more warmth.

‘I take it compassion was not on the curriculum, commissar.’

‘Summary execution was.’

‘Noted,’ Fenk replied, not missing a beat. ‘And the men that are selling their lives?’

‘Do so with honour in service of the Throne. No more tarrying. Orders, lieutenant.’

Fenk smiled, but his eyes narrowed as he did so.

‘Orders, commissar,’ he replied, and they headed back in the direction of Godsword, leaving the dying sounds of battle and of soldiers behind them.

Regara and the others met up with Shiller in the main avenue, Lodden northwards. The troops made way for the Chimera and it had barely stopped when the ramp unfolded and Deviers strode out. The captain had nearly shat himself at the sight, managing little more than a bewildered, ‘Sir?’ before the general was taking charge.

‘What is he doing here, major?’ Shiller asked under his breath, as the rest of the party were disembarking from the hold.

‘Leading,’ Regara answered.

‘But he’s the–’

‘Yes, he is,’ Regara supplied, watching Deviers ahead, accompanied by Rensaint and the storm troopers as he disappeared into the crowd.

‘Saint’s piss…’ Shiller remarked beneath his breath.

‘Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that, shall we, captain.’

Regara took command of the rest of Shield Company, leaving Shiller with Lance. As they advanced down a wide street, the vox-static that had dogged them passing into the town persisted. It was quiet, but the black outline of Godsword loomed like a promise. Death or victory, the knife-edge was keenly balanced.

The lack of vox was a problem. It meant they were effectively cut off from the advance party led by Culcis, so Deviers had wisely sent out scouts ahead of the main force to forewarn of danger.

The Bluebloods dispersed by squads, spilling amongst the town as they broke into smaller groups better suited to close-quarter engagement. Regara kept his men close to Deviers. A contingent of Agrians accompanied Shiller’s force and a portion of those split off and joined the major. He saw the golova he had encountered in the Quarter, cradling a lascarbine to her chest, a belt of skinning knives circling her waist. She favoured him with a wink as she advanced alongside her troops. They looked eager, the Diggers. This reckoning was long coming for them, but the object of their vengeance had yet to appear.

As they penetrated deep into the town, the continual lack of opposition, the ghostlike avenues and buildings, made Regara uneasy. He exchanged a look with Rensaint, and could tell the commissar felt the same. They were here, though, he could feel them. The Pact. Though the side alleys were still and the window frames and doorways hollow and the shadows unmoving, they were here.

It wasn’t until a ragtag bunch of scouts came running into Regara’s sight, fear in their eyes, that the Blood Pact finally made themselves known. A missile struck a Hellhound in the flank and the tank went up like a tinderbox. Eight men died instantly, burned and shredded, before a chorus of Volpone vox-horns sounded the alarm.

Everything happened fast after that.

Regara saw the Agrian golova kill the Pacter holding the missile launcher, a pinpoint shot through the throat. Fire and blast wash from a secondary explosion lit her savagely, ruffling her hair. Makali punched the air, triumphant, bellowing something in her native tongue that Regara took to mean ‘first blood’ or ‘first kill’.

A Death Brigade emerged from the shadows and the ruins, lasguns and stubbers lighting up. They wore stained flak armour reinforced with an amalgam of barbed metal plates. Some carried ritual knives, pistols or grenades in the other hand. A sirdar, low officer class, wielded a long-bladed cleaver-sword. Not a man or woman amongst them revealed their face, hidden as they were behind their grotesks. A sea of smiling devils and monsters swept in to engage the Militarum.

Regara was shouting the order to return fire as the Bluebloods opened up with their lasguns. Stand-mounted heavies were hurried into position, gunners and loaders working in tandem. An intense short-ranged firefight ensued, a storm of overlapping las-beams searing the air from either side of a paved plaza. Bodies fell on both sides.

Taking a knee behind a flakboard barricade, Regara snatched off shots into the gloom. He had Rensaint beside him and two squads of Bluebloods along the stretch of improvised shielding. Deviers and his retinue were twenty feet away, hunkered behind a plate of tank armour shored up by sandbags and razor wire.

The Scions fired in perfect rhythm, every las-bolt a kill. They were conversing between shots, and though Regara couldn’t hear them above the roar of the battle, he knew they must be calculating how to extract Deviers.

The man’s bravura would get him killed, and so much for all his laurels and victories then.

An Archonate heavy gun was really starting to chew up the flakboard, a Volpone trooper losing an ear and crumpling to the ground screaming as a stray round clipped him.

Rensaint noticed too and took aim through an alarmingly widening gap in the barricade. A crackling beam speared from his sidearm, a volkite serpenta of exquisite manufacture. It turned the Pact gunner to ash and fire, the ammo hauler dying shortly after as the gunpowder cooked off and exploded.

‘We can’t stay here, major,’ he said, shouting to be heard as he snapped off another excellent shot. A rasp-whine discharge and a Pact sirdar fell, torso cored through and burning.

‘Remind me never to duel you with pistols, commissar,’ Regara replied, indicating a partially collapsed wall further up the street that would provide better cover.

‘I am also an excellent swordsman,’ Rensaint remarked with a wry smile, then nodded his approval at the major’s choice.

‘That might be a more even contest.’

They moved, fast and low, two officers and almost twenty men in train. They lost one, an unlucky ricochet hitting Ethorl in the neck. He bled out, choking on his own blood, and all Regara could do was watch. He cursed, firing back, shooting the crown of a Pacter’s head, the helm and skull exploding messily. Rensaint was no less effective, the commissar’s aim as measured as his wit.

The Death Brigade were the Blood Pact elite, most of them ex-Guard veterans broken by the war and turned to the worship of occult gods. Others were mercenaries, swapping coin for dark religion. They fought with discipline and precision.

Deviers showed little respect for any of that. He had pushed up with his troops, the Scions flanking him either side as he shouted orders to advance. Fingers of energy spidered across the blade of his sword and he held it up like a beacon, a challenge. He lost a Scion, the storm trooper taking a bullet meant for the general, but it bought a few more yards and the pressure on the dwindling Death Brigade increased. They retreated by degrees and in decent order, but Deviers had the scent of blood – a nobleman on the hunt – and the enemy casualties mounted. Shiller snapped at his heels, an eager hound, drunk on more than just the whiff of glory.

Regara gave the order to break cover as the fire coming in at his men lessened.

‘He’ll get himself killed…’ He meant Deviers, of course.

‘Or he’ll win the battle single-handed,’ Rensaint replied, but the rueful look in his eyes told the entire story.

They fell in on the flank, but Deviers was really pushing now, his grip barely on the leash of his rampant men who fired on the move, from the hip, sacrificing accuracy for saturation. Amidst the chaos, a runner approached the major, darting between cover. Without functional vox, the old methods held sway.

The pale-faced private looked out of breath as he delivered the general’s orders. Rally with Brandreth and join the assault on Godsword.

Rensaint’s expression suggested he didn’t like it but he was politic enough to keep that to himself.

‘You aren’t bound to my command, commissar,’ said Regara, pulling his troops together to carry on southwards into Lodden.

‘My responsibility is ensuring Godsword returns to Imperial hands. Lead on, major.’

The knife was low and his grip on the haft reversed as Fenk withdrew the blade from the sentry’s neck. The body crumpled quietly, Fenk taking the weight and gently lowering it to the ground. He signalled, a curt back-and-forward slash of the hand, and Redfern and Coppel moved up. They darted between scraps of cover, using the low light to their advantage. Lasguns slung over shoulders, each man also held a knife.

Fenk and his troops had reached the southern quarter of Lodden, the ruins of the town slowly giving way to fortifications. It was the fringe of Godsword’s domain where Mechanicus enginseers and Militarum sappers had swept away the old commercia and hab structures, replacing them with barricades and bunkers. The guards were surprisingly light.

Two more sentries in bloodstained flak armour and ragged ex-Militarum uniforms wandered into view. They wore masks, black iron grotesks that were the signature apparel for ‘Pacted’ troops. It had the air of the theatrical about it, the mask, possessing a long sloping nose, high cheekbones and brow, and a row of grinning teeth. Through the eye sockets, though, sadism burned brightly.

One sentry had an old stubber hooked over their shoulder, the strap and stock well worn, and clearly war spoils. A blade sat in their grip, thick, serrated, stained with sacrificial blood.

The grey host stirred, and Fenk felt the righteousness of the kill it demanded. He pushed it down, content to observe as Redfern slit the neck of the first, but Coppel snagged his own coat, his strapped lasgun smacking against a barricade, loud enough to alert his prey. The second sentry turned, a barked invective in Pact dialect signalling surprise and contempt. A lasgun with a razor bayonet rose up out of instinct and Coppel froze, flinching before the beam that would kill him.

The trigger was never pulled; a knife jutting from the second sentry’s throat left them choking on blood. Redfern swept upon them with feline grace, a hand across the mouth of the mask, the other pulling his expertly thrown knife and holding the sentry down until they stopped wriggling.

A scathing glance told Coppel he had erred. Recriminations would follow, but not now. Fenk urged them on.

Heads down, split into fire-teams, they moved through mostly abandoned defences before hitting a trench line that led right to the edge of the main bunker complex and Godsword. So close now, Fenk could smell the ion charge on the air produced by its capacitors. But still, they were a hundred yards or more away from the weapon itself.

They descended into the trench and Fenk dared a glance over the aegis wall where he and the others waited. The Pact had staved a row of spikes halfway between the defence line and the macrocannon’s walled bunker. The dingy light made it hard to see why, so he held out his hand for a scope and put the device to his eye a moment later.

Only then, his vision enhanced, did he understand.

‘Bloody Throne…’ he rasped.

Gannika’s firm grip on his shoulder was a silent plea for explanation.

It wasn’t the rows of Blood Pact troops standing behind the barricades that chilled his already cold heart. It wasn’t even the bodies of twenty Scions, their eyes cored out, left to rot, tied to those awful spikes. It was the warrior armoured in baroque, crimson warplate down on one knee in front of them.

And then Fenk felt the air change, grow heavier. The actinic scent of the capacitors ramped up and with mounting horror, he knew what was about to happen.

Hauptmann was on fire. A stray flamer burst from a four-wheeled Tauros had caught him, and he patted his arm furiously until the fire was out. The heat barely registered. They were moving, cavaliers left and right of him, snapping off shots like riders circling a laager of wagons. Tauros behind them, autocannons a perpetual heavy rattle in his ear.

Attempting to stymie the tide.

‘Never the last ride,’ he shouted across the vox.

A laspistol bucked in Hauptmann’s fist, a heavy-gauge ‘hotshot’. It actually kicked, the recoil like a punch. The beast fell, half its head burned down to scorched meat, smoke trailing from its eye socket as it hit the dirt and disappeared.

They might have been human once, the beasts. They cantered on two legs, reverse-jointed and hoofed. They were brawny, frothing at the mouth and draped in coarse, wiry hair. Hauptmann had heard rumours, they all had, of some Guard units using so-called ‘beastmen’ in their ranks. Usually penal legions or murder-squads with low life expectancy. He had chalked it up to tall tales from soldiers with too much grain-alcohol in their cups; stories about amalgams of man and beast. Ovine, caprine, bovine… variations on an abhuman theme.

He estimated hundreds, a great herd of rad-scarred creatures too tough or too stubborn to die. A few carried autoguns and other crude firearms, though they used them poorly. Others had swords or improvised clubs. Overseers in gas-hoods and riding cyber-equines drove the beasts with whips and electro-goads. They looked human enough, their cruelty as well as their appearance suggesting as much.

Hauptmann watched as a group of the beasts staggered through the promethium fire of a flamer, only to reach the Tauros that had burned them and fall amongst its crew, hacking and feasting. A grenade went off, rupturing the vehicle’s fuel tanks and Hauptmann turned his gaze from the sudden flare of light and noise.

More were coming, pressing at the edges of the column and pushing it further southwards. Lennox took sniper shots with his rifle, aiming for the overseers. A gas-hooded rider was struck and slipped off his mount. The herd barely paused to rend and devour them.

‘Fall back!’ Hauptmann was shouting. He rode up and down the line, fighting to get his cavaliers to coalesce. They were strung out, vulnerable. He’d lost sight of Vekker, and feared the worst.

Roper acknowledged the order with a curt wave of his hand, gathering up nearby riders. Garrison fell in beside his sergeant. Mathiss was on his wheel.

‘How many?’ asked Hauptmann, bouncing in his saddle even as he eased off the throttle. The stink of the beasts was heady now, their grunting and howling almost deafening.

‘I counted twelve amongst mine,’ Garrison replied.

‘Another ten with me,’ offered Roper, bringing in his Vulpa alongside.

With Lennox that made twenty-three.

Hauptmann swore, then glanced over his shoulder. The last of the Tauros were right behind them, a mass of beasts swarming several hundred yards in their wake. Ahead, the short distance to the vehicle column closed at an alarming rate. A few of the Guardsmen had started taking potshots from Chimera firing slits but it was as effective as shooting into a sea.

‘We can’t hold that, damn it. Not a tide like that.’ Hauptmann opened up his vox. ‘Captain…’ he began.

‘Tell me we’re winning, sergeant.’

‘Wish I could, captain. We have to retreat or they’ll hit the column.’

‘In your estimation, can we weather it?’

‘The herd is in the hundreds, captain, and moving damn fast.’

Aramis swore loudly over the vox. ‘Retreat takes us well within range of Godsword. We’re already on the cusp, sergeant. It’s too risky.’

‘Once that herd hits, it won’t matter either way.’

The crackle of vox-feed answered, a few moments of dead air filled with the urgent drone of Vulpa engines as they barrelled away from certain death.

‘Then we stand and fight. Prepare your troops.’

The vox-feed cut out abruptly.

Hauptmann gave a long exhale, then he raised his hand and turned it in a circle. Rally on me. Throttling the engines, he peeled off and the other cavaliers followed his lead.

They rode to the front of the column as the Chimeras began to slow and come to a halt. Hatches opened, soldiers clambered off chassis and filed out, ranking up in firing lines in front of their transports. One trooper stayed on the mounted guns, turrets turning to face the enemy. Only the secondary column ploughed on, the servitor-drivers following their protocols without an enginseer to countermand them. Hauptmann watched them go, and saw snatches of the herd follow, but it did little to thin their numbers.

They were meant to be a diversionary force and weren’t equipped for pitched battle, but that hardly mattered now. Aramis would have to do the best with what she had and pray to the Throne it was enough.

As he circled back along the south edge of the column, Hauptmann saw her alight from the command Chimera, the two battle tanks either side. She strode over to her men, helm and armour shining, a half cape flapping in the breeze at her shoulder. The Bluebloods waited in disciplined ranks, their lasguns held at the ready. She had drawn the short sword from the sheath on her leg and held it high above her head, poised. Her pistol rested at her side, held loosely.

Volpone interspersed with Talpa, though even the Tunnel-Rats had fallen silent. A few Slokan fire-teams lurked amongst the line too, desperate for some measure of glory to justify their highborn notions of war. Three hundred soldiers all told, several armoured carriers and a pair of Leman Russ battle tanks. Even with the addition of Hauptmann and his remaining outriders, it wasn’t much. Not nearly enough.

The herd grew louder, and the scent of them thickened. It drew a sneer from Henessey, who had donned his officer’s cap and had a lasgun slung over his shoulder.

‘Such debasement,’ he said. ‘Hard to believe they are part human.’

Aramis never took her eyes off the enemy. ‘Is it, corporal? I’m not so sure.’

Plosive detonations had started up as the Leman Russ tanks fired their battle cannons. Plumes of dirt and animal bodies were flung skywards as the ordnance found its mark, hammering the edges of the herd, corralling the beastmen so they didn’t spill too wide and encircle the Militarum forces. Hauptmann’s cavaliers would sweep up any stragglers or strays that broke the cordon.

The Emperor would need to see to the rest.

To have a chance, any chance, she had to keep the beasts in front.

Aramis estimated three hundred yards or so between them and the herd now. Soon the din would be difficult to compete against so she chose this moment to address her troops.

‘Soldiers of Volpone…’ she declared, not bothering to reference the others, who she deemed no better than militia. Rattle-cracks of fire snapped from a few places amongst the line where Talpa and Sloka had already begun to shoot. It was fear, she knew, but it was also ineffectual.

The Bluebloods held firm, their martial discipline etched into their bones.

‘At my signal you shall fire as one. Front and rear rank.’

Sergeants carried the order down the line, and her words echoed back to her several times.

The standard-pattern lasgun had an effective range of approximately three hundred and thirty yards. It was a fine, reliable weapon but only at short range could it be truly devastating. Confronted by a solid wall of baying, snorting beastmen, Aramis could conceive of only one path to victory. Let them get close and hit them hard, inflict as much damage as possible at once. Induce panic. She calculated the Volpone would have two rounds of fire, possibly three if fortune smiled, before the herd was amongst them.

At two hundred yards, she said to Henessey, ‘Volpone glory, corporal.’

‘Volpone glory, captain.’

At a hundred yards, she slashed down with her sword and the gloom turned to light and fire.

Dozens fell to the first volley, las-beams ruthlessly scything. The smell of burnt meat grew heady and nauseating. The herd trampled the dead and the dying, heedless of them, driven only by pain, by the need to vent that pain on others.

‘Second volley!’ roared Aramis, sword slashing as the Volpone fired again. The beasts faltered, their horde coherency starting to break down as parts of the herd attempted to slow and turn, to flee.

Precious seconds were gained. Aramis raised her sword again. It was about to descend when she felt the detonation rumble through the air. She half turned, sword wavering, and saw the spit of flame reaching from the lofty mouth of Godsword’s primary cannon.

A cold realisation hit. The Scions had failed.

They were too close. There was no time.

It roared like thunder, the vast artillery shell, as it bore down with the fury and purpose of a comet. She met Henessey’s gaze, saw fear, and knew her own eyes would convey only sadness and regret.

I’m sorry, Gavid… she mouthed before there wasn’t time enough to say anything else.

A tremor shook the walls of Lodden, the anger of a god-weapon given voice.

Culcis felt it through the pavers beneath his feet and saw it in the dust motes spilling from the wooden beams overhead as he stumbled from the threat in the shadows. His fear of the immediate was briefly eclipsed by the harrowing sense of failure and what followed it. The Blood Pact still held the weapon.

An alleyway encroached on either side, heavy stone walls braced with cedar wood and bolted firmly. Mugger’s Row, they called it. Little light penetrated this dingy hollow of Lodden, made darker by overcast skies. His leg was agony, the morphia already fading. He could scarcely stand. Morbid thoughts intruded as his death drew nearer. The others fought as Culcis staved off despair.

Ghanu was out front, depleting the last dregs of his las-repeater as he strafed the avenue beyond. He lost his footing as the ground trembled under him. His stagger took him forwards and a flash of metal tore his bicep. Ghanu cried out and clutched his arm, the repeater falling from his grasp and sagging on its shoulder strap. Another Ranger took his place, a half-born war shout on his lips before the snick of a blade removed his head, releasing a fount of arterial crimson.

Pukk shouted down his revulsion, blood bathing his upper body as he hooked Ghanu around the waist and pulled him back. The other troopers took the Talpa’s lead, recoiling in horror. Scarcely ten men remained, the stragglers lying dead in the avenue where the wirewolves had steadily picked them off.

‘Form ranks!’ snapped Culcis, finding some resolve.

Hold on another few seconds, and then another. If you know you’re going to die, make the enemy fight for it. The words of a drill-sergeant, long dead but not forgotten. A man didn’t survive because he was the best fighter or the finest tactician, he survived because he refused to give in.

Culcis would not give in. He heard Greiss shoulder the door again, using every inch of his bulk and strength. It was stuck, bent inwards by a grenade blast, and led to an old machine shed. If they could get inside, they might last a little longer.

Another few seconds.

The dead-end alley was precisely that after the blind scramble from the fountain in the square, running from the dread creations of the Archenemy. In his half-panicked state, Culcis recalled only fragments about the wirewolves. It was a local cognomen. The Militarum classified them ‘K-weapons’ or ‘kill-weapons’ – ‘murder-makers’ as some had dubbed them – a melange of metal and arcana. Ritual science, the incongruity of which had made Culcis scoff. He wasn’t scoffing now.

A solitary chink of light remained. The wirewolves had slowed. It was the only reason any of the Guardsmen yet lived. Though the creatures were still predatory, the early vigour that had seen to most of the lieutenant’s men had ebbed, a tide pulling away from the shore of their patchwork forms. Like their namesake, however, they had begun to circle their prey, that furnace gaze burning.

A clutch of Volpone lasmen led by Hanmar ranked up, one kneeling in front, another standing behind, five abreast. They fired at the lieutenant’s order, retreating a step after each volley, but it barely made a dent. The wirewolves took ponderous strides through the las-fire, hunched over as if their heads and forelimbs were too heavy for their frames to bear. The avian thing dragged its wings, a wretched, flightless horror.

‘Greiss…’ said Culcis, regretting the edge of panic in his voice.

Another grunt, a creak of protesting but unyielding metal. The lasmen fell back again and Culcis joined them, laspistol flaring with azure discharge.

‘Make the bastards bleed for it!’

Only a few feet stood between the Bluebloods and the machine shed now. No more backward steps. And still the wirewolves refused to fall.

A cross-street cut Mugger’s Row in half, a junction they could not reach, all other avenues of escape denied to them with the machine shed effectively sealed. As the wirewolves moved across the junction a shout echoed from nearby, just out of sight. The things half turned, as if some dim part of them recognised the imminence of their dissolution and wanted to look their slayers in the eye.

A storm engulfed the wirewolves, full-bore and ferocious. Black iron wilted against it like paper exposed to a flame. White light scorched his retinas before Culcis had to turn away, the high-pitched shriek of energy discharge ringing long after the fusillade had faded. Corposant played across shattered pavers, fingers of charred black stone grasping from the epicentre of a violent detonation.

A moment later, a band of Bluebloods hustled into view with Regara at their head. He took in the dead, the ragged state of Culcis and his men.

‘In the Guard,’ said Regara, ‘a soldier is not judged by the manner in which he lives…’

‘He is judged by how he meets his death,’ Culcis replied.

‘And we are not dead yet.’

Culcis straightened, defiant. His men did too. ‘No, we are not, sir.’

The pride in Regara’s eyes almost hid the grief. It swiftly turned to resolve.

‘Can you fight, lieutenant?’

‘We can, sir.’

‘Then fall in. And by Throne, let’s take back what’s ours.’

FIFTEEN

The warrior was praying.

Hiding behind the aegis wall with his men, Fenk found his attention pulled towards him like a black hole, unable to look away. Head bowed, scarred lips moving softly. Kohl-ringed eyes, shut to better see his gods. Tiny scripture riddled his scalp. Baroque armour of black and crimson clad a hulking body. A black iron gorget encircled a thick neck. Scraps of parchment, some dark with old blood, others burnt by ritual fire, fluttered from shoulder guards that curved up and over the arms. A horn arched from one, three small skulls rattling against it.

A large blade lay reverently across the warrior’s gauntleted palm and it was this to which he prayed – or rather to the act it had recently committed. Blood shone wetly in the light of yellow sodium lamps. The knife had been used to carve the sigils into the Scions. Symbols of hate and anarchy. A beseeching to old gods.

A feeling rose within Fenk, like heartburn or a bad piece of meat, twisting in his gut. With an odd sense of detachment, he realised it was fear. Primordial and instinctual. He didn’t know the warrior’s order; such knowledge was not for men like him. Nor did he care to know. Let the universe have its secrets. Fenk would keep his own.

Fenk knew what he was. He knew the pieces within him were misaligned. Aberrant. Empathy was an unfamiliar emotion to men like him. In spite of that, of what war or ill-breeding had made him into, Fenk could still recognise evil when he encountered it.

A Traitor Astartes.

This one was like a priest or warrior monk, a son of Ruin spat from hell to malign all of mankind. He stole a glance at Redfern, and found the corporal clenching his teeth, pupils like pinholes.

‘Are you with me, corporal?’ Fenk hissed. A hundred yards away, he didn’t know if the warrior could hear him, but he took no chances.

Redfern didn’t move. His knuckles whitened on his bayonet knife.

‘Corporal…’ Fenk tried again, and this time Redfern turned to nod. In the distance the warrior was rising, his devotions at an end.

‘What do we do?’ asked Redfern.

Fenk stole a glance at Kreedy. The man reminded the lieutenant of a scholam teacher, with a bookish face and a pair of wire-frame glasses hooked behind his ears. The voxman, who had the receiver cup pressed to his ear, shook his head. Fenk’s chrono ticked over, bound to his wrist by a strip of leather, the metal plates of the face folding over half by half and revealing that Brandreth was overdue. No Culcis or Shiller, either. Something must have waylaid them. Either that or they were already dead and Fenk and his platoons were the only Guardsmen left alive in Lodden.

Gannika appeared in his periphery, a tacit reminder of Fenk’s duty, having shuffled up through the ranks as she navigated along the aegis wall.

‘That is a Traitor Astartes before us, lieutenant,’ she said, keeping her voice and her head low. ‘There is no greater foe a true servant of the Throne will ever face.’

Fenk barely held back his scorn. ‘I know what it is, commissar. Are you telling me to engage it?’

‘No, lieutenant,’ Gannika replied crisply, ‘I am saying that if you choose to, I shall be at your side.’ Fenk saw the resolve in her eyes. It was bred in them, the Progenium cadets. A useful trait, for certain, but it couldn’t shield everything. She was afraid too.

Fenk had never considered himself heroic. He liked killing, he could acknowledge that about himself. But this was different.

A hundred yards between Fenk’s men and suicidal glory. He smiled ruefully.

‘We have to take the weapon ourselves.’

Redfern blinked, incredulous. ‘How, sir?’

‘By any means necessary.’

Fenk made a quick assessment of the terrain. A hundred or so Blood Pact defended the weapon and its immediate compound, several guarding the wall itself. Static defence guns ringed this perimeter, surrounding a metal dome that housed the capacitors for the macrocannon array, but these were lightly manned. Beyond that was a command bunker that he couldn’t see, but which he assumed must also be guarded. And then there was the Traitor Astartes. He had begun to make his way back to the main body of Pacted troops waiting behind improvised outworks in front of the weapon and soon disappeared amongst them. The capacitors had begun to cool and recharge after the first barrage. A second would follow.

‘This channel runs right up to the compound edge,’ said Fenk. ‘I’ll take two fire-teams along the aegis wall, infiltrate the inner perimeter and take the main nest, static guns and all. The rest will make a feint against their main forces, keep them occupied. Those static guns can be turned on the yard below the compound. We create a kill-box. Hold it for as long as we can and hope that help arrives before we’re all dead.’

‘You have a somewhat perfunctory leadership style, don’t you, lieutenant,’ Gannika observed.

‘I’m still alive, aren’t I?’ Fenk replied.

‘I’ll lead the feint,’ offered Redfern, his earlier fear tamped down by the focus on action.

‘No, I need you with the second fire-team, corporal,’ Fenk countered.

‘Leave that to me, lieutenant,’ said Gannika.

Fenk nodded, his opinion of the commissar ever-changing. He looked around at his men, the squad sergeants already daisy-chaining the plan as Redfern picked the fire-teams. They had clustered together as close as they were able, as if sensing the import of the moment. Every face was a hard, resolute mask. He was proud of them, these bastards.

‘I won’t say good luck,’ Fenk told them. ‘Only the credulous trust to luck. So I’ll say this instead – die well and die bloody.’

As speeches went, thought Fenk, it wasn’t bad. A savage grin spread across the faces of the men in his charge, each as eager and fatalistic as their commanding officer.

The two groups separated, Gannika’s feint bleeding back down the aegis line to a secondary position amongst the ruins, from where they would attack. Fenk and Redfern’s fire-teams remained, stripping out of their webbing, ditching any non-essential gear. They had to be light, and fast.

As he was shedding his rations and canteen, Fenk caught Unsworth’s eye. The lad looked transfixed, gazing up at the monument to death that was Godsword. Fenk clenched his shoulder, and brought him around.

‘Are you up for this, private?’

The lad nodded and what Fenk had at first taken to be fear he now realised was something else. It was zeal.

‘Die well, die bloody,’ he replied, to which Fenk gave a feral smile.

Hauptmann couldn’t move. Nor could he see. Smoke and dust had filled the air, his senses a cacophony of distant pain and disorientation. The air tasted of metal and rapid ionisation. He heard shouts. Cries. Bestial snuffling.

He remembered the light first of all, a searing, magnesium fury that eclipsed everything and turned it white. Then came the noise, a rising crescendo, a worlds-ending cataclysm that split earth and turned sand to glass. His ears still rang with it and vitrified fragments cracked beneath him as he tried to crawl. Belatedly Hauptmann realised his engine pinned him by the left ankle, a faithful servant now turned betrayer. His efforts only dug a shallow grave to lie in. About to shout for help, he saw shadows staggering through the murk, snorting and grunting. One paused, stabbing down with a crude blade, and a strangled gurgle followed.

Other shapes slowly resolved… the wrecked husks of armoured transports, bodies hanging across torn stanchions like limp garments left to dry in the sun, or else slumped on their backs from hatchways or draped on embarkation ramps like discarded mannequins. Several of the bodies had the bulky artificiality of servitors and the breeze stank with aerosolised oil-blood amalgam; others mewled with all too human frailty and pain, only for the beasts to snuff the sounds out. They roamed drunkenly through the carnage, reeking of ordure and hot animal sweat. A shining spar of Chimera chassis glinted in the clawed grip of one, employed as an improvised spear. It thrust, and a plaintive cry abruptly cut out.

They were heading his way.

Hauptmann reached for his sidearm but found the holster empty. He kept a knife on the kit-bag strapped to his Vulpa and searched for that too, but it was gone. He cast about in the dun-coloured haze, the murk slowly lifting as the dust and smoke began to dissipate, but there was nothing. No weapon, not even a piece of shrapnel he could use. Nearby, he heard the crackle of flames, suppressing a moment of panic as he considered the Vulpa’s fuel tank but the burning came from behind, from the vast crater torn into the earth from the macrocannon’s impact. He had been caught at the very edge of its destructive potential and, he assumed, thrown. Of the other cavaliers there was no sign, but he felt a coldness in his heart at the thought of them that could not have just been sentiment.

Arching his neck, stretching to its fullest extent, Hauptmann tried to gauge the magnitude of the devastation but just saw black, endless and engulfing black, shimmering and glassy like a dark obsidian sea.

A sharp bleat alerted him and Hauptmann looked ahead again. His desperate movements must have given him away, because the beasts were coming now. Bovine and caprine, they emerged through thinning dust, bloodied yet hungry. Madness burned in their dark eyes, devoid of humanity.

Panicking, Hauptmann’s breath stabbed out in short, sharp hikes as he looked around. Frantic, he raked through every pouch and stowage on his bike that he could reach, pulling out maps and compass, an empty canteen. Nothing of use. He pushed again, trying to lever himself from under the heavy engine, but his leg remained stuck.

The stench intensified, abattoir-ripe and noisome. He gagged, bile stinging his throat, and fought back the urge to vomit. An insect was buzzing in his ears; a cloud of flies followed the foul creatures and their passage through the banquet of the dead. Hauptmann saw them properly now, their gait cautious as they approached him, the caprine gnawing the last hanks of flesh from a bloodied human femur. Scraps of uniform clung to it like tendrils of hair and it devoured these too before casting aside its vile repast. Thin ropes of saliva drooled from the bovine’s upthrust jaw, its flat-headed teeth already grinding in anticipation.

As they closed, Hauptmann lost the creatures from sight for a moment, as the Vulpa came between them and him. He dared to believe they had lost interest and moved on as beasts are sometimes wont to do, but a few seconds later they crept around the front of his treacherous mount, brimming with savage intent. He wanted to roar, to cry defiance, knowing he could not overpower them in his current state and that cannibalisation by abhuman half-breeds was a poor way to die, but instead he stared, eyes wide, close to mania as the thought of his own dissolution almost overwhelmed him.

He thought of Chari, and of the son he would never meet – of the man he might have become – and hoped he would think of his father fondly and forgive him for leaving them. It was a pleasant fiction but not enough to shield him from the horror of that bestial maw sinking down to take its fill…

A las-beam flashed, close enough to burn Hauptmann’s cheek, and he hissed in unexpected pain. Warm, stinking blood splashed his face like a ritual anointing and the bovine fell back with the impact of the shot. The caprine squealed, spooked and suddenly afraid. Turning tail, it clopped a few feet before a second beam found its back and cored it like a rotten apple, the blast pitching it headlong into the dirt.

Hauptmann let out a breath he hadn’t realised he was holding and felt strong hands grasp his arms.

Aramis looked down at him, stern as she holstered her pistol, and then tried to free him.

‘Keep a watch,’ she said to someone off to the left where Hauptmann couldn’t see. ‘These bastards are everywhere.’ Her uniform looked a little dishevelled, the breastplate stained with spots of blood. The cape at her shoulder had a large tear in it and flapped like a pair of vibrant carnivale streamers.

‘Captain…’ said Hauptmann in a hoarse croak.

‘I thought you were dead, sergeant,’ she said, pulling.

‘I’m a hard man’ – Hauptmann winced, the captain’s touch was none too delicate – ‘to kill.’

‘Right enough you are,’ she said, and beckoned the person she had spoken to forwards. He wore a Volpone corporal’s uniform and had a bionic in place of his left eye. The entire left hemisphere of his skull was shaved, a plate over the parietal bone. As a trained cavalryman meant to operate as scout and wayfinder, Hauptmann had received some medical training. He hadn’t had much cause to use it; strange how the details returned sometimes.

It was a deflection technique, he knew, to stave off the agony of the Vulpa being lifted from his trapped ankle.

‘On my count, Henessey,’ Aramis said to the corporal, letting go of Hauptmann’s arms to snap off a quick shot into the shadows. A canine yelp confirmed the kill. She took up her previous position and counted down from three. On ‘one’, she cried, ‘Pull!’

Hauptmann screamed. He wasn’t proud. It hurt like all the Nine Devils of Horus had stabbed him in unison as Aramis dragged him free. She was strong, stronger than she looked, which was actually pretty considerable.

He felt a sting in his neck, and as the fiery agony deadened, realised he had been given a morphia shot. His head floated, senses blurring before they snapped back like a sudden focus adjustment on a picter. He was being dragged again, both Aramis and the corporal she had addressed as Henessey pulling him bodily through the desert wilds.

‘Where…?’ he slurred, the pain meds thickening his tongue.

‘There’s a redoubt,’ said Aramis, ‘not far. A few of the Chimeras, one of the tanks. Henessey and I went back in to search for survivors.’ The conversation was a juddering cascade of hurried words and half-snatched images. Henessey looking down, trying to appear calm and supportive; Aramis’ concerned glances behind them, where Hauptmann’s booted feet limply bundled along, giving him away.

‘Back in?’ asked Hauptmann, struggling for the words. He strained, pulling his chin to his chest to see the way they had come. Close up, it had felt intense, claustrophobic; at a distance, there was only horror.

A crater spread out across the Kraggehil wilds, a yawning black desolation ringed with the hollowed frames of Militarum vehicles, still burning, their hulls partially melted in the blast heat that had killed their crewmen. Ash and bone remained, candle flames guttering in eye sockets, metacarpals and phalanges as thin and brittle as fire-blackened twigs. A banner burned fifty feet away, its bright material steadily devoured.

Hauptmann wept as he beheld hell itself, a fiery pit in which nothing lived.

‘What survivors?’ he rasped, and let his head fall back.

SIXTEEN

Gannika had engaged, her exhortations to the Emperor loud and bullish. Whipping snap-fire cracked from behind the columns and fallen rubble where her troops took position. A heavier plasma beam droned alongside, a deeper beat against the pitchy crescendos of lascarbines. Then the thudding report of the commissar’s sidearm, bursting bodies with its mass-reactives.

It was a spirited attempt, thought Fenk, who caught snatches of the battle as he scurried along the aegis wall with two fire-teams in his wake. Heads down, nimble and unburdened but for what weapons they could carry and the bandoliers around their waists, the Bluebloods hit the edge of the compound wall as the firefight in the wide road below intensified. A wicked crossfire lashed over the scrap of open ground between the two forces, rockcrete chips and puffs of grit exploding across barriers of low cover. Here and there, a soldier would be hit, a lucky shot or a bad call as they scrambled for advantage.

The Pact fought hard, as they had been trained to do, the cracks of stubbers and purloined lasguns a violent rejoinder to Gannika’s opening salvos. At first they held back, caught between their barbaric urge to rush the enemy and the orders of their damogaur to man the defences. Then they bellowed, blades rattling against pieces of metal chestplate, the belligerence of their voices distorted through their grotesks.

Vah’nek!

Vah’nek!

Fenk knew enough of the enemy’s feral argot to recognise this for a name. A channel parted in the ranks, spiked helms shuffling as the Pacted admitted a huge, armoured figure. The warrior-priest. He who had slain the Scions.

Vah’nek.

Poised at the compound wall, Fenk watched Vah’nek move slowly, like a prize fighter about to take the ring. Closer now than he had been before, the sense of sheer inviolability the warrior-priest evinced made the breath catch in his throat. Fenk held out the flat of his palm behind him, signalling for his men to wait. Not yet, not yet…

Las-beams splashed against Vah’nek’s crimson and black as he climbed the outworks, a pattering of rain for all the trouble it caused him. A full helm hid the scriptured face, horns of ebony twisting from the brow, a cold iron mask like a portcullis gate. Unperturbed by the solid shot dashing his greaves and breastplate, the warrior-priest pulled a long, chain-toothed sword from his back. A throaty engine growl and the teeth began to churn.

A brave lasman stepped out from cover to hurl a grenade. The warrior-priest shot it partway through its arc, so quick Fenk hadn’t even seen the pistol being drawn. Fire and shrapnel spread across the air like a spill of ink. A second shot took the plucky lasman in the hip before he could step back, leg and pelvis separating violently, bloodily, as the brass round detonated as soon as it embedded. Flung by the blast, the bloodied corpse landed in the street.

The warrior-priest advanced purposefully but unhurried, the Pacted swilling in his wake as they left behind the barricade, eager to share in the slaughter. He uttered something, the words unknown to Fenk but ringing hot like bee stings in his ear. The Blood Pact on his heels replied with a rabid cheer, Vah’nek’s oratory whipping them into a frenzy.

Gannika gave her own impassioned shout, her words lost to the bitter firefight unfolding, but a flurry of las-fire followed. About eighty yards between both sides now. A plasma beam missed its intended target, the warrior-priest fleeter than he had any right to be in that armour, but cooked a Pacter down to the bone. The death scream barely made it past the scarred lips. The commissar fared better, striking Vah’nek’s bolt pistol with cold precision. After the explosion died off, he was left nursing three fingers in a ruined left hand. The right clenched the chainsword as he picked up the pace, the angry revs an expression of the warrior-priest’s wrath. He took most of the Pacters with him. Rifles and autoguns were discarded for ritual blades and sidearms.

Fenk had seen Blood Pact at close quarters. They were ferocious, more like animals than men. Only a handful surrounding the damogaur remained, all Death Brigade, as well as a few Pacters manning the wall guns, who had not even bothered to take aim. Against the Traitor Astartes, Fenk reckoned Gannika had minutes at most. Her troops were already falling back by degrees. He gave a succinct slash of the hand, back and forth, back and forth.

Move-move-move.

Redfern took point, boosted up the wall by a fellow Blueblood, and then he was clambering over the lip. A hand thrust down, and Unsworth took it, as eager and scared as any of them. Both fire-teams scaled the outer defences quickly and quietly, the attention of the Pact gunners on the unfolding carnage below.

Fenk caught a glimpse through the north-facing barricade, Gannika with chainblade aloft and bolt pistol blazing like a poster child for Imperial propaganda. Then the warrior-priest was amongst them, hewing and rending, and all of that jingoistic fervour faded. An illusion founded on sand. He revised minutes down to seconds.

The fire-teams split. The defensive guns that ringed the inner part of the compound ran on a rail bolted around its circumference. A bridge led from this ramped section to a large platform, and a hatchway to the bunker where Godsword had been amalgamated with Lodden’s outer defences. Within, the gun could be readied, primed and fired. A small cadre of operators would be inside, probably at least two guards.

Redfern’s men went left, headed for the defensive guns while Fenk’s went right, going for the bridge and the bunker. One of his team, Fife, carried a Praxis-pattern fusion gun not unlike the plasma weapon venting below. That and the brace of krak grenades Fenk carried should see them through the armoured hatchway. Already the air had started to vibrate, a background hum that made his teeth itch. Ion saturation. A second barrage from Godsword was imminent.

Fenk pushed up; a guard walked into his eyeline and paused, as if suddenly wrong-footed. Fenk dropped him, las-shot to the neck, and just like that the attack commenced.

He had to give the Blood Pact credit, they were tenacious bastards. They were also prepared. At a sirdar’s keyed command, a series of auto-ramparts sprang up from concealed recesses in the floor. It took Fenk by surprise and the Pacters made quick use of the impromptu cover.

Fenk rolled back around a corner chased by a salvo of retaliatory fire.

‘Shit! Down! Get down!’

Fife was dead, shot in the brief panic, his fusion gun intact but just beyond reach and trapped under the trooper’s body. Carborne had taken a hit; blood drenched his left shoulder. A big man was Carborne, heavyset like an auroch. The lad, Unsworth, looked unscathed but was hunkered down and unmoving like the rest. Fenk locked eyes with them both across the width of the ramp. They couldn’t stay here. Gannika needed those defensive guns in her corner. And the rest of the army needed the Throne-damned Godsword silenced.

Fenk whistled sharply, signalling Kreedy. The voxman looked pale and ducked back reflexively as a burst of solid shot chipped the edge of the wall where he was crouching. Of the fire-teams, only Kreedy had kept his most burdensome piece of kit. He raised Redfern on the vox, even though the corporal was but twenty or thirty yards away, albeit out of sight.

A loud detonation, presumably from a grenade, sounded before the snatched report confirmed Fenk’s fears: the other fire-team were pinned.

Matters worsened further a few moments later as Vah’nek landed on the ramp.

He must have leapt from the street, Fenk conceded, mind reeling at the implications of that. The lieutenant felt it through the floor, a violent jerk of distressed metal yielding to a heavy mass. It only briefly crossed his mind what that might mean for the commissar and those below before he heard the monstrous burring of an Astartes chainsword. He had either finished them or the weapon was a greater priority.

Redfern’s shout abruptly cut off. It was followed by the thud of a body hitting the inner compound wall. Heavy footfalls like jackhammers struck the ramp, a rapid acceleration of movement. Another scream, loud and then soft, as a man was bulled off the ramp by what felt like a battering ram. Fenk could only hear it, the carnage happening twenty yards away around the opposite side of the compound wall. It was part of the armour plating that encased the immense capacitors for the weapon. Power build-up trembled the metal, heated it.

‘Screw it…’

Fenk darted from cover, pistol lit in his hand, a flurry of bolts finding two Pacted who had made the mistake of relaxing their guard when the Traitor Astartes had entered the fray. He took one of them in the throat, the las-beam like a dart piercing through-and-through. The second was shot in the head, a neat cauterised hole through helm and skull. Both fell back. The rest surged, but Carborne and Kreedy had followed the lieutenant, blasting away with manic abandon, and the momentum of the skirmish tipped.

The return fire clipped Fenk’s shoulder – a graze, nothing more – as he vaulted the first auto-rampart. The sirdar was waiting for him on the other side. He had just enough time to get his bayonet knife up to parry as the sirdar swung her ritual blade. Sparks flew where metal connected, scraping apart before clashing again. Throne, she was strong.

Fenk half glimpsed Carborne, who spun in a tangled pirouette, struck in the chest. Kreedy hit a third Pacter but could only wound them. He shot again, up close, to finish the job. He looked whitewashed, out of breath from panic, but he was still fighting.

Two remained, the sirdar locked with Fenk and another running for the bridge and the bunker.

Heavy reinforcements within, Fenk guessed, forced to reassess his earlier estimations.

Unsworth shot the runner in the back, dropping him, and without a second’s hesitation put a second las-bolt in the sirdar. Searing heat rasped Fenk’s ear as the beam passed by and found the eyehole of a grotesk. The immediate pressure on Fenk eased as the sirdar fell away, ritual blade clattering on the ramp.

‘Shit and Throne, lad,’ Fenk gasped, rubbing at his scorched lobe.

Thunder rattled the ramp, relief turning to horror on Unsworth’s face.

Vah’nek had found them.

Kreedy managed to turn his head before the chainsword ripped through him from behind. A fizz of static cut out as the boxy vox-unit was shorn in two before a sheet of blood and matter swept the ramp. Fenk fell back in shock, the front of his body painted crimson. He scrambled, slipping on the gore still sluicing from Kreedy. The reek of hot metal and sulphur stuffed his nose and mouth like a gag, choking him. Spits of chewed meat were still flicking off the chain teeth of Vah’nek’s sword as the warrior-priest slowed the engine to clear it. A las-burst raked his flank and he swept out an arm, throwing Carborne, who had survived his chest wound, into the wall. The crunch of bone left the outcome of the trooper’s survival without question this time. The distraction was momentary, ineffectual scorch marks on Vah’nek’s armour the only sign of Carborne’s failed intervention.

Fenk palmed the krak grenade hooked to his bandolier.

Die well, die bloody.

The warrior-priest’s pitiless gaze fell on him through green retinal glass.

‘Come on then, you bastard!’ roared Fenk, in a rare fit of emotion.

Vah’nek uttered a reply in some dead language, the words guttural and arcane, his tone imperious.

Fenk understood his meaning well enough and thumbed the grenade’s detonator stud. About ten yards stood between him and his imminent death. Ten yards and less than two pounds of pressure.

Vah’nek crossed the distance in a blink, blurringly fast, a gauntleted hand around Fenk’s neck. Fenk’s vision crowded with blackness. He felt his grip loosen and then he was flying, the grenade too. He struck one of the auto-ramparts, felt his shoulder crack from the impact and bit his lip to divert the pain. A dull explosion, far off, signalled his plan’s failure, the krak grenade spent without meaningful effect.

Groggy, consciousness fleeting, he fumbled for another grenade but found he no longer wore the bandolier. It lay a few feet away, the straps and buckles ripped apart.

A deep, rasping noise emanated from the warrior-priest’s portcullis mouth-grille as Fenk realised what must have happened. Vah’nek was laughing.

Then came the flash-whine of an energy burst, and blood spatter from the hole cored in the warrior-priest’s chest splashed Fenk’s face.

Vah’nek staggered. Fenk blinked away tears of iron-rich blood, still trying to figure out what had happened as the Traitor Space Marine sank to his knees. Gauntleted fingers gently probed at the terrible wound that had vaporised heart, lungs and most of his internal organs. It was miraculous that he was still functioning at all. As he pitched face forward, a wild-looking Unsworth was revealed behind the dead Vah’nek, clutching Fife’s fusion gun.

For a moment, Fenk was speechless. He almost couldn’t believe it and brought red-stained fingers to his lips to confirm it. The effect was bracing, a concoction utterly unlike mortal blood, strong and acerbic. He tasted mild acid.

Not waiting for instruction, Unsworth was on his feet, fusion gun on a sling over his shoulder and sweeping up the fallen bandolier. Halfway down the ramp, he hurled the grenade belt at the hatchway as Fenk looked on, still dazed. It blew with grievous effect, the explosive Unsworth had primed cooking off the rest in a massive detonation that tore away the hatch and most of the side of the bunker. The blast rocked the private onto his heels, and he held up his arm to ward off the sudden heat and pressure. Seconds later several figures staggered from the smoking, fiery wreck. Las-beams shuddered forth, smears of light on air, ill-aimed and desperate.

Fenk had scrambled to his feet, a sorry bloodstained mess, but reached Unsworth as the lad began hosing the exposed bunker interior with the fusion gun. Pacters burned up like bonfires. It was over in seconds, just before the weapon overheated and Unsworth dropped it like a ticking det-charge.

‘Get on the guns, lad,’ snapped Fenk, still unsteady, head pounding, arm numb. His voice was a snarled rasp from where Vah’nek had tried to crush his throat. There was still fighting going on below. He heard the guttural noises of more Blood Pact.

Unsworth nodded, belting across the ramp to the other side of the compound. Still on the bridge, Fenk felt the de-escalation of power from the weapon, and sagged, before passing out.

The air changed as the explosion from the compound faded, and Culcis reasoned that Fenk must have succeeded. He prayed to the Emperor for that, a chink of light in abject darkness, as a second cohort of Pacted reinforced the first. The Archenemy had the numbers, having expertly pulled and picked apart the Imperial aggressors, displaced them across the ruined town.

Too late now. They had to fight, hold out until the two army groups could reach them.

Culcis had Gannika in his arms, as he and Greiss pulled her from harm’s way. Hanmar, Dresk and Rake guarded their retreat. She had been thrown, he assumed, or smashed aside. Her finely wrought chainblade lay in pieces, and far from her reach. Something had destroyed it. Her arm with it, the bones shattered.

He didn’t see what. They had arrived too late for that. They had arrived to find the remnants of two platoons doggedly clinging on against a host of Blood Pact, though most of the Guardsmen were dead and the rest falling back. Something had slaughtered them, torn limbs, pulped skulls. Spilled viscera lathered the street and made the other troopers gag. It put the reinforcements on the back foot as soon as they had made the bend into the open street.

Regara and Rensaint had pushed through it undaunted, the lord commissar sparing a glance for his cadet before engaging the enemy in full voice and fiery bombast. It galvanised to an extent, and gave the retreating troops a few precious seconds of breathing room.

The Pacters pressed hard, emboldened by the fact they had the Imperial fighters on the ropes. A wildness affected them, but not enough to spoil their discipline. A Pact officer, a damogaur judging by his trappings, bellowed orders and the men obeyed with well-drilled proficiency. A small cadre of Death Brigade accompanied him, the formidable elites armed with a purloined bolter and a heavy autogun. It took a toll, tore up scraps of cover and reduced them to kindling. Bluebloods piled up like sandbags and the Pacters began to press.

Regara took a hit, left shoulder, but his armour bore the brunt. His face was ashen when he dropped down behind the stone pillar, though. Rensaint had joined him, unable to hold his ground against such intensity of fire from the Pact. Firing blind with his exotic sidearm, he patted the major’s uninjured shoulder and received a nod and some muted words in reply.

Culcis watched all of this from a distance. The Imperial forces were strung out down the street and struggling to maintain coherency. Without a nearby vox, he had no idea where Shiller or Brandreth and the rest of the army group were. Judging by the major’s battered attire, he had come from a warzone, but beyond that Culcis had no gauge. There had been little time to debrief after the wirewolves. A medic had patched up Culcis and his men as best as he was able, and that was that.

A lonely banner fluttered. Shield Company. It had been driven into the earth. This and no further, it said. Burn holes admitted feathery shafts of light.

Gannika looked pale as milk.

‘Is she dead?’ asked Ghanu, his deep voice carrying despite the furious firefight. His las-repeater spent, a knife sheathed at his belt, there was little for the Ohrek to do but hold his ground and wait. Pukk lurked at his shoulder, an unlikely pairing. He and the Talpa had kept themselves busy, dragging injured troopers into cover, but the Guard were hunkered down now and another backward step would be their last, and the end of their ambitions to retake Lodden.

Leaving Rake and Dresk at the barricade where they were sheltering, Hanmar crouched down next to the commissar to check her vitals.

‘Still with us,’ he said.

‘But for how much longer?’ Greiss gestured with a burly arm to the defensive guns lined around the upper tier of the Godsword compound. Shadows were moving behind them, men about to take up position. Between the onset of the Pacters and the autocannons above…

The nose of one jerked up, suddenly activated. The others followed suit, a clever network array slaving one weapon to the rest so that a single gunner could engage the entire battery if needed. Less accurate, but singularly devastating.

‘God-Emperor preserve us,’ uttered Ghanu, as he made the sign of the aquila. Pukk was laughing, his imminent death a source of constant amusement.

Culcis watched as the muzzle flares lit one by one and gunfire swept the street like a scythe.

Blood Pact fell in droves. Torn apart, hewn down like scraps of bloody wheat. A chain reaction spread from man to man, a sea of jerking puppets, their bodies destroyed by high-velocity rounds. A few took cover. Others ran. They tried to return fire but the angle and the fortifications of the compound made it nigh impossible. A Guardsman manned the guns, a solitary private, spraying heavy rounds into the Pacters like a farmer hosing crops. He took a horrific toll.

Rensaint was first to react. Pulling the banner from the earth, he ran into the disorientated enemy, bellowing to Emperor and Throne, his pistol blazing like a holy flame. They followed him, of course, the men of Volpone, the rest of the Guard. Regara too, urging his troops forwards. Several fell, shot down by retreating Blood Pact, but the return fire was poor, hurried. The line broke, soldiers fled.

Only the damogaur stood his ground, and Regara dealt with him. He met the first blow on the flat of his sword, the sabre’s edge crackling with energy discharge. The major’s riposte was expert, his form immaculate. The damogaur’s serrated blade vanished, blasted down to the nub, a smoking hilt and ragged stub all that remained. A savage thrust and Regara impaled his opponent, the Pact officer dead within seconds of engagement.

Rensaint had kept moving, reaching the fortification then gaining the ramp. The defensive guns had ceased, their ammo-hoppers spent. Tenacious, the Pact clung on despite their disadvantage, though it appeared the last few holdouts were about to be overwhelmed. The flood of reinforcements sweeping from the avenues, soldiers of Lance and Shield Company led by the general, ended any further debate.

At the lord commissar’s beckoning, the private who had manned the guns stepped forwards, the banner pole handed to him. Rensaint whispered something to him that only he could hear.

The banner was raised, las-burns and all, the gryfon rampant on a quartered blue-and-grey shield snapping and rippling on the breeze.

‘Volpone glory!’ yelled the private.

And the cheer that echoed him shook the very ground. It was fury, it was relief.

Culcis didn’t cheer; he limped forwards, his eyes tightening as he squinted in the low sunlight, which beamed through the cloud as if the Emperor Himself had blessed this moment. The private had lost his helmet during the battle, but it was not this minor breach of decorum that had so arrested the lieutenant. No, it was his face – a face Culcis knew, but that could not possibly belong to the soldier holding aloft that banner.

‘Darian?’ he said, his voice lost amid the roar of victory.

Aramis maintained fire discipline standing on the upper part of the hull.

She fired one-handed, headshots with her pistol. Below her, the remnants of the Volpone and other defenders she had managed to scrounge together kept up the fusillade. Less than a hundred men left, almost two-thirds of her scratch army slain or heavily wounded. Aramis bit back her anger, focused on the moment. On survival. Recrimination could wait. For now.

A few mortar teams had made it this far. She kept them back, spotters to the front calling out hasty coordinates. Earthy geysers filled the land ahead with each detonation, ripping into the huddled masses of the beasts. Bodies spiralled upwards, limbs trailing.

Through the slowly dissipating dust clouds, Aramis saw what remained of the herd. It had fragmented into smaller cohorts. Dozens fled, loping and capering into the rad-scarred wastes. How long they would last in such environs, Aramis did not know. She hoped they would suffer.

After a sniper called Lennox had executed the last of the herdmasters, the scant discipline evinced by the beasts had failed entirely. They had fallen to savagery and pack mentality. It was why they had still been hunting amongst the hecatomb left in Godsword’s wake. Slowly, slowly, they began to retreat, the last and the most belligerent of the herd.

Aramis gave the order to cease fire, mindful of conserving ammunition should they meet other foes out in the wilds. As the last echoes of high-pitched las-fire faded on the air, she climbed down from the hull, moving with well-practised assurance.

Every man turned to her as she approached, advancing just beyond the front of the line, Henessey in tow.

‘Scopes, Henessey.’

The adjutant dutifully provided them.

Little could be seen of the beasts now, their tribes scattered and fleeing for the anonymity of the wilds. Aramis marked the coordinates from the scopes’ lens display. She would recommend air support be brought in, and the wilds drenched with promethium until nothing remained.

‘Are they gone?’ uttered a hollow voice she barely recognised. Aramis started, sending a harsh glance at Henessey, but the adjutant hadn’t heard Hauptmann approach from behind either.

‘You have a vulpine’s stealth, sergeant,’ Aramis said. ‘They’re gone.’

‘Pitiful wretches.’

Aramis did not bother to hide her disdain. ‘I feel as much pity for those creatures as I would for the vermin poisoned by a watchman’s traps or the roaches gassed from an old barrack house.’

‘You feel nothing for them?’

‘Only hate.’ Aramis snapped the magnoculars together and handed them back to Henessey. She gave Hauptmann a smile, but it was without much warmth. Hatred was a cold wind for her, a hardening of resolve under ice. It was her armour, and far more effective than any breastplate of augmented carapace.

‘I’m glad you’re on your feet, sergeant.’

He had a weary sort of charm, she decided. And a resilience, but something in him had changed. He had lost most of his men; only a handful were left, a pair of engines between them.

Such was the way of it, of attritional war. No regiment could survive its rigours indefinitely. As Aramis witnessed the last scraps of the Volpone banner burning in the distance, as the flagpole caught light, its shaft already blackened and ready to collapse under its own weight, she wondered how long there was left for the 86th. When weapons could wreak such devastation… The crater she had seen, all that was left of those who had stood within its radius. Men and half-men, reduced to glass…

She walked away, Henessey in her shadow, and left Hauptmann alone to his thoughts.

‘Don’t linger too long, sergeant,’ she called back to him. ‘We’re packing up in five.’

‘To where?’ his voice came back, a ghost on the breeze.

‘Where else?’ she replied. ‘Back to Lodden, back to the war.’

SEVENTEEN

In four days, Lodden had been remade. Deviers had decreed it so. A victory celebration was planned, a triumph in the name of Volpone glory.

As we must salve our wounds, so too must we vaunt our successes, gentlemen.

His words had lit a fire in some, the jingoists and the toadies – or perhaps simply those who wanted to believe and found the general’s rhetoric compelling. And he certainly was charismatic, Culcis could not deny that. Others were less enamoured by his decision to delay. Either belligerent and eager for more death – some men could no longer function without it, the sleepless hours between battle an endless, pale nadir of meaningless existence – or simply compliant, following orders with hollow duty.

The enemy dead were gathered and burned. A desultory pyre at the outskirts of town still trailed with smoke. Culcis had heard the numbers were lower than expected. The defences were repaired and reinforced, the major arteries into and out of the town cleared. Lodden was wholly and utterly occupied. Not only by those who had marched from Ankishburg, but by troopers from Laagar and Vasha too. Token forces remained in the evacuated northern towns, caretakers only.

Few had returned from the excursion to Kobor, though they never actually reached the settlement or had ever intended to. Those who did come back spoke of their experiences little, though Culcis had caught the odd scrap – horror stories of monsters in the dust and the terror of the Godsword’s touch upon the earth. These soldiers had returned burdened, a shadow behind the eyes or in a look that would never truly fade. Scars of the most indelible kind.

A census was taken for the honoured dead, a brief footnote to Deviers’ celebrations. He wanted to recognise their sacrifice, he had said, but the hearts and minds of the living must now turn to what lay ahead. He had made a speech of it on the first day. A damn good one. Men had cheered, but there was no escaping the fact that the war for Agria had become a grind.

The ritually tortured First Sons were taken down and burned to ash. None spoke of them, and those who had volunteered for the task of their removal had been thoroughly interrogated afterwards by both Rensaint and the regimental priest. The remains of the Scions would not be scattered. There would be no ceremony for these men. The ash stayed in a stasis casket, a blessed aquila nestled within. Questions remained, of course. They would be dealt with later by officers of high standing, Culcis had no doubt.

And then there was the other matter, but that was well and truly out of his hands.

Though it was not widely broadcast, Culcis had learned that the square where his platoon had fought against the wirewolves had been sealed off. Scions, the few that could be spared from Deviers’ personal detail, stood guard at the freshly raised barriers. It had been torched, the smoke visible for over a mile when the flamer teams had gone in, the air thick with the scent of purgation. Then came the priests, wielding their prayers and unguents like swords. Cleansing words, cleansing flame. And yet the walls and razor wire erected like a crown around the square remained. As for the K-weapons themselves, demo-teams had rigged them with explosives after the flamers had done their work. The magos took what was left, a cadre of servitors retrieving the scrap before it was committed to secure storage.

Four days and several visits to the medicae for his leg, and to the chapel for the injuries he couldn’t see, and Culcis still had the nightmares. It had been bad at first, Greiss finding the lieutenant on the first night, pent up, near screaming and lathered in sweat. He found he slept little now, preferring the night air and the dulcet susurrations of the camp. A false peace, he knew, but it was a salve all the same.

He thought of Darian on that rampart, the banner of Shield Company in his hand, the raw adulation of the troops. Nearly seven hundred men, all told, once both main companies had arrived. They cheered as their fellows cheered, a soldier always ready and willing to exult in victory even if they had little hand in the actual battle. An unworthy notion had stolen upon Culcis in that moment as he set eyes upon the mil-serve he had taken under his wing: he wished it could have been him.

‘Ah, so this is where you’re hiding.’

The deep voice made Culcis turn. Ghanu sidled alongside him, and offered up a smoke. Culcis hesitated, but only a little, before taking a tabac-stick with a nod of thanks. Ghanu took one for himself then lit them both, Culcis shielding his with a cupped hand to ward off the breeze.

The Ohrek stared into the distance, smoking in companionable silence for a while until he said, ‘Not so long ago, you and I might not have shared tabac like this, lieutenant.’

‘How so?’

‘Well, let us say that the Volpone seldom fraternise beyond their own kind.’

‘Is that what we’re doing? Fraternising?’

Ghanu laughed, and it was a rich sound, a tuneful bass note that put Culcis in mind of warm molasses. ‘What would you call it?’

‘Camaraderie.’

‘A lofty word for shared tabac.’

Culcis shrugged. ‘Well… I am from Volpone.’

Both men laughed and the sound carried away into the night.

‘I hear the auxiliaries have another name for us,’ ventured Culcis.

Ghanu played coy. ‘Oh…?’

The ‘Bastard’ Volpone was a poorly kept secret in camp, one the Bluebloods tolerated for it reminded them of their superiority, not that they needed reminding. Ever since Lodden, Culcis found his view had changed.

He changed tack. ‘I’m sorry for your losses.’

Ghanu’s face darkened with remembrance. ‘Barely two platoons are left of my regiment. That and Captain Ombi’s retinue. We shall rebuild,’ he said, and like a shadow moving away from the sun his expression brightened.

‘I wish I had your hope, master sergeant.’

‘I have belief…’ He turned, held out his hand for Culcis to shake it. ‘And you may know me as Hunna.’

Culcis took his hand in a comradely grip. ‘Armand.’

‘See, Armand…’ said Hunna Ghanu, ‘hope. If you and I, men of opposing kind and station can become friends, then anything is possible.’ He smiled, showing perfect white teeth. ‘If you believe in it.’ He finished his tabac, crushing it between calloused fingers to put it out, and patted Culcis on the shoulder. ‘The nightmares will fade, lieutenant,’ he said, and took his leave.

Culcis lingered, thinking on the master sergeant’s words. He stretched, taking in the evening’s refrain, the distant chirrup of nocturnal rooks and the soft hubbub of soldiers in pursuit of entertainment or simply enjoying the company of others. Music played in the camp, and there was singing.

Unlike Ankishburg, Lodden had not come with a citizenry plying their wares and distractions for weary Guardsmen, but a baggage train of camp followers had reached the town in the wake of the army. Several old grain houses had become home to brewers and vintners who had brought kegs and barrels of alcoholic libations. It wasn’t the Ursa but it was better than nothing. Deviers encouraged them. It would serve his desires well and make more of a spectacle of his victory celebration. Between the other camp sounds, Culcis heard the celebration being prepared. Scaffolding for a stage, a large communal area cleared and hung with lamps. Much of the town had been cleansed, all visible taint of the Archenemy removed and overpainted with Imperial graffiti; one order accreting over the other, its truth pre-eminent, and so was history written.

He took to wandering, strolling the streets, but quickly tired of the solitude. A young woman was cleaning her uniform in a water trough. She wore fatigues, braces over her shoulders, shirtsleeves up to her elbows. She looked like she was Volpone, but Culcis had met very few females in the ranks. He assumed she was one of the reinforcements. A trooper, then. Suds gathered on the surface of the water, sloshing over the edges of the metal trough, a particularly large wave splashing her boots. She swore. Loudly.

‘I could have a mil-serve do that for you, trooper.’

The woman paused, about to turn but then deciding against it. Wiping an arm across her brow, she carried on scrubbing.

‘Labour is good for the soul, or so my old dead mother used to tell me.’

She was a fine-looking woman, thought Culcis. Strong, athletic. Long red hair fell around her shoulders, lustrous and alive. Her pale skin was like creamy opal.

‘Ah, but what of the heart…’

She paused again, a wry smile curling the side of her mouth. A small scar creased the skin there but didn’t detract from her looks. ‘What do you know of the heart…?’

‘Lieutenant,’ Culcis provided, pleased she was responding to his charms.

She turned and faced him, arms drenched in foamy soap-flake residue. Munitorum issue, judging by the bland aroma. Her scent was the greater though, jasmine and sandalwood. Her shirt was partly unbuttoned, the pale skin of her neck visible. Her eyes were rich and dark. Culcis felt a flush of attraction.

‘An officer… I should salute.’ She began to straighten up, but Culcis waved away the formality.

‘We’re off duty now, that isn’t necessary.’

She settled back into a casual stance. ‘Were you taking a stroll, lieutenant?’

Culcis smiled. He had worn his uniform jacket but it was undone and hung loosely on his muscular frame. He had no wife or significant other, soldiering had taken the place of all that, but he enjoyed female company. It had been a while, a Munitorum logistician back at Lanchetek… He couldn’t quite remember her name.

‘It’s a fine evening for it. Perhaps if you’re done with your labours, you would like to accompany me?’

‘Oh, I couldn’t do that, lieutenant.’

‘And why’s that?’

‘Well… I don’t even know your name.’

‘It’s Culcis,’ he said, ‘but please call me Armand. And you?’

‘Ione.’

‘A beautiful name…’

‘Aramis,’ she added, and Culcis felt something shift in the timbre of her voice. She turned around again, fishing in the trough for her jacket, which she now pulled forth and started to wring out. He saw the patches before she uttered the words, and swallowed deeply.

‘Captain Ione Aramis,’ she said, fixing Culcis with a smile as cold as Valhallan snow. ‘A stroll, is it?’ she asked, still wringing the jacket, the curling of her fists against the material as tight as a sailor’s rigging.

‘No… ah, of course not.’

She frowned. ‘Why ever not?’

‘I mean, my apologies, sir– I mean, ma’am. Of course, ma’am.’ He sketched a fairly poor salute.

‘Ma’am is what I call my mother, lieutenant.’

‘Of course, captain. I meant no–’

‘You’re blathering, lieutenant. That’s a poor quality in a man and an even worse one in an officer.’

Culcis kept his gaze straight ahead. ‘I shall address it, captain.’

‘Why are you out here at night? Carousing, is it?’ she said, appraising him with her eyes.

‘No, captain. I couldn’t sleep.’

‘And you thought a tumble with one of the ranks would tire you out, did you?’

‘No, captain. When I close my eyes… I… see them.’

‘See what?’

‘The things that slaughtered my men… the wolves.’

The captain’s demeanour relaxed. ‘You fought the K-weapons.’

‘I did.’

‘Throne, I thought that was just a rumour. How many?’

‘Four…’

Aramis swore under her breath.

‘But one was stillborn before it could do anything but die,’ Culcis added.

‘My company was on the Kobor road,’ said Aramis. ‘I see it still, the moment when the Godsword touched us. Men turned to glass in a breath, thunder like the end times. Smoke so thick it killed the sun. And the burning. Endless burning. Flesh cooking on the breeze. Screaming.’

Culcis had paled at the account, at the captain’s sudden intensity. His voice became a rasp. ‘God-Emperor… I cannot imagine.’

‘Then consider yourself blessed.’ She finished with the jacket, folding it before tucking it under her arm. ‘If I can’t sleep, I wash my uniform. It is… very clean. Something about the water and the mundanity of the task.’ She sniffed, scowled. ‘You reek of foreign tabac, lieutenant.’

‘I have been smoking, captain,’ he admitted.

‘Did it help?’

‘Help?’

‘With when you close your eyes.’

‘Yes, I believe it did.’

‘A hundred different ways.’

‘Excuse me?’

‘To cope. To serve.’

‘Is that what it is?’

Aramis narrowed her eyes, as if taking his measure. ‘Have a good night, lieutenant,’ she said, and left him to the night sounds. ‘Tomorrow, we celebrate our victory.’

The medicae tents were quiet, the late hour and the morphia contributing to their stillness.

Fenk felt little for the stricken troopers as he walked through the aisles between their beds, though ‘bed’ was a generous term for what the wounded slept on. Many didn’t sleep, their eyes open and staring at some past horror that refused to relinquish them to Morpheus. He heard whimpering, and sibilant voices arguing with themselves, but couldn’t discern the source. Orderlies ran the station, an old marketplace given over to a house of the dying. Thinned blood painted stone cobbles underfoot. It all washed over Fenk, slipping frictionlessly off.

Suffering was a part of life, as was death.

The grey host was quiet tonight but it lingered in a corner of his mind, crunched up and sullen. Not even all of this mortality stirred it. Something had changed. Fenk couldn’t quite put his finger on it but ever since he had fought the Heretic Astartes, things had been different. Not fear, not in the way that most men experience it, but more a profound sense of insignificance, a cold ennui.

I am a minnow in an ocean of leviathans…

After half an hour of searching, he found her bed.

Gannika had not woken since Vah’nek had struck her. She looked peaceful, as if she were in state. A metal frame encased her arm, holding it together. Surgical notations marked the skin, in preparation for amputation.

Another man stood over her, not a medic or an orderly, or even one of the dull-eyed servitors administering phials of morphia. It was a Volpone officer. Head bowed, hands making the sign of the aquila. Praying. The soft sounds between the murmured words suggested he’d been weeping too.

‘Good evening, Captain Brandreth.’

Fenk’s greeting clearly startled him, as Brandreth hurriedly wiped at his eyes and turned smartly to present an ashen but otherwise professional mien.

‘What are you doing here, lieutenant, at such a late hour?’ he asked, slipping his chrono from his breast pocket and checking the face as if it mattered at all.

‘I imagine the same as you, sir.’ He looked from the officer to the unconscious commissar. ‘We fought side by side during the retaking.’

‘I see,’ Brandreth replied, also turning to regard her. ‘A hard fight.’

‘It was,’ said Fenk, ‘and made harder by the fact we were alone for the majority of it.’ He turned his gaze on Brandreth. ‘You were late, sir.’

Brandreth frowned. ‘I beg your pardon?’

‘And your uniform looked very smart and tidy upon your arrival.’

Anger creased the captain’s face. ‘What are you implying, lieutenant?’

‘That you arrived for war dressed as if for the parade ground,’ Fenk said, the coldness of his reply unsettling Brandreth. He was afraid, the captain, and had been afraid for a long time. He had lost something, Fenk could see its absence, and it had left him half a man.

Brandreth discerned what was happening, and tried to rally. ‘Are you calling me a coward, Fenk?’ He half-heartedly reached for the sabre strapped to his hip.

Fenk’s eyes followed the gesture of his sword hand. ‘Oh, I don’t think you want that, sir.’

Brandreth hesitated but eventually closed his hand and let it fall impotently by his side.

‘I lost almost every soldier during that battle, sir,’ Fenk went on.

‘None could have stood against a Heretic Astartes,’ Brandreth replied, trying not to sound shaken.

‘So you did see it then? As it slaughtered my men?’

‘I heard… a… report.’ He scowled, anger edged with fear. ‘Now look here, Fenk. I won’t have this, I–’

‘This, sir?’

‘This… whatever this is. It’s insubordination and it won’t go unanswered.’

‘Then answer it.’

Brandreth looked flustered, uncomfortable. Weak, like he had seen the reflection of all of his private inadequacies, and Fenk was the one holding the mirror.

‘I won’t dignify this by listening to it. I’ll have you on charges, Fenk. I’ll make sure you–’

‘Charges, sir? For observing the state of your attire as you entered the battle? I see. Infantryman regulations are stricter than I assumed.’

‘I’m warning you…’ Brandreth retorted, face reddening, hands trembling. ‘I won’t have it. And you’ll bloody well address me as captain.’

‘As you wish, captain.’

Bile pushed its way to the surface, oft the recourse of the fearful and the outmanoeuvred. It manifested as spittle-flung insults. ‘You’re a degenerate, Fenk. An unwanted offcut. An inbred bastard. You should have never been given rank.’

Fenk did not react. He let Brandreth run out of steam first, and watched stoically as he turned on his heel and tried to storm away. But Fenk saw it for what it was, a retreat. He watched the captain depart, all the way out of the tent until he could no longer see him.

Then he turned his attention back on Gannika, leaning down to tenderly stroke her cheek.

‘Sleep well,’ he whispered, before leaving too.

EIGHTEEN

Regara let his eyes adjust to the paucity of light. The air smelled of stale oil and dusty metal. As he walked through the narrow confines of the machine shed, he saw the lumpen shapes of engines and other partially built devices draped in heavy cloth. Half-open crates sat stacked on shelving racks filled with cogs, bolts and other sundries. Old servitor components, all mechanised, lay piled here and there. Cybernetic limbs, hands, half a skull, leather bellows meant to simulate lungs. It was a bloodless charnel house, a machine morgue.

‘Why am I here?’ he asked the darkness, reaching the end of a corridor that opened out into a wide yard. The lack of light wasn’t abject. Low lumens limned everything in soft grey edges, including five silhouettes. Four standing and one other seated. Regara recognised Grussman’s cloying cologne. He assumed the colonel lathered it on to hide the rot of his character.

An auto-sconce flared and hot light bathed the scene. Rensaint had activated the brazier, staring as the dulcet hiss of slowly burning fuel filled the silence.

Deviers spoke first. ‘Major,’ he said, his face half hidden in shadow, ‘thank you for coming.’

‘I assumed it was an order and I therefore had no choice, sir.’

‘It was and you didn’t.’ Deviers cocked his head slightly, as if measuring Regara’s response. ‘But it would be unseemly not to recognise compliance.’

Regara felt a nerve spasm under his eye. Everything about this felt wrong. He took in the rest of the room in a quick sweep. Rensaint standing by the blazing torch, inscrutable; Grussman at the back, ever toadying; Deviers, paler than usual, exhibiting all the hollow bonhomie he had built his impressive career on; and Barbastian, stood to one side, as if reticent to play his part, and marking his old friend keenly.

Regara had received the summons late. He had been about to retire for the evening when Balis had proffered the note. It had granted passage through a First Sons guard post, one that led to a cordoned-off part of Lodden. An escort had been offered, but Regara knew the way. He had been here before, when he rescued Culcis from the K-weapons. What better place for a clandestine meeting.

‘And what am I complying with, sir?’ he asked baldly.

The fifth figure, the one seated, had their arms tied behind their back and a hood over their head. Though the identity of the individual was hidden, Regara could tell from their physique that the prisoner was male.

As ever, Deviers did not immediately elaborate. ‘Do you know how many Pacted we fought at Lodden?’

‘I didn’t fight in every engagement. Hundreds, certainly. Militarum intelligence reckoned on over a thousand.’

Rensaint answered. ‘Four hundred. They engaged an army group of two thousand men with four hundred. Admittedly, the advance parties bore the brunt of it, but we greatly outnumbered them.’

‘They had the terrain, were dug in. Bloody K-weapons, for Throne’s sake. What’s your point?’

‘We’ll come on to that,’ Deviers intervened.

‘I wish someone bloody well would… sir.’

‘Why do you think you’re here, major?’ snarled Grussman, eager for a reckoning. Regara was more than happy to oblige.

‘And the monster in power armour that slaughtered almost two platoons without breaking stride… will we come on to that too?’

Deviers continued, ‘The Heretic Astartes was known to us.’

Regara didn’t bother trying to hide his incredulity. ‘You’ll have to excuse me, sir, but I thought you just said we knew about that monster in advance.’

‘It wasn’t a certainty,’ offered Barbastian, his first contribution to the confessional.

A familiar feeling wormed into Regara’s gut, of being deceived and fed placatory half-truths. He held his tongue, waiting to see what Barbastian would say next. If he’d say anything.

‘The probability was low that we might engage with a Heretic Astartes.’

‘It killed over forty of my men.’

‘Not only yours, major,’ Deviers reminded him. The more he talked, the less vital he appeared. Fatigue dragged on his movements and he paused before speaking as if to catch his breath. Regara hadn’t seen much of the general after the battle but he had received no report of him being wounded, and there was no obvious injury.

‘It’s why the Scions failed,’ said Rensaint. ‘Unforeseen resistance. We won and yet still we lost, major. A miscalculation.’ As the commissar spoke, Regara felt the other Militarum officers stiffen at the gentle accusation of an error in judgement. ‘I asked for you to be brought in, Regara.’

Regara shared a glance with Deviers but he was impenetrably urbane as usual. Barbastian looked aside, a little shamefaced.

‘I am listening,’ the major replied, tying up his anger in ropes of duty.

Rensaint took the lead. ‘The Lodden assault has proven costly. The ambuscades, K-weapons and the Heretic Astartes. You are right, Vasquez, we should have told you what your men were walking into. A tactical misstep, one I am trying to rectify now.’ He didn’t look to the other officers, he kept his eyes on Regara. Just two soldiers having a frank and honest conversation. He went on. ‘Militarum tacticae predicted a tough fight, but the enemy resisted with less and hurt us more than in our harshest scenarios.

‘Current estimates put our fighting efficacy at just under five thousand men, with around four thousand from Laagar and Vasha combined – but they have their own objectives taking out secondary outposts to the east and west, cutting off supply lines to Karcas and Rakespur.’ Rensaint moistened his lips, the air dry and stale. ‘Flatly put, we cannot be so profligate.’

‘In that we are agreed, at least.’ Regara gestured to the bound man in the hood. ‘And this man? Who is he? Why is he bound? Why is he here?’

Grussman edged forward to protest but Rensaint raised a hand, briefly closing his eyes to hide his annoyance at the interruption, and the colonel shrank back again.

‘Do you remember Lieutenant Sakker?’ Rensaint asked.

‘I presume he was the Scion in black at our last meeting.’

Rensaint held Regara’s gaze, which the major took to be confirmation.

‘He took a pair of Valkyries out of camp at Ankishburg three hours before the march on Lodden was due to commence. Twenty men headed for the town, the others did not.’ Rensaint nodded to Grussman, who stepped up reluctantly and removed the prisoner’s hood.

A First Son, identifiable by his slab features and brick of a jaw, stared into the shadows, a man silently raving within his own skin. He trembled, straining against his bonds now the hood was off, mouth opening and clamping shut with clockwork regularity.

Regara scowled. ‘Emperor’s mercy,’ he murmured, ‘what did this?’

‘Honestly, we don’t know,’ said Rensaint, signalling for Grussman to return the hood, which he did immediately, and the prisoner became still again. ‘Another Scion picked him up on a scope outside Lodden. He had been marching for days. No weapons, little to no equipment, just the uniform on his back.’

And it was barely that, reduced to trouser fatigues, boots and a vest.

‘No visible injuries,’ Rensaint went on, ‘physical at least. A closed medicae exam revealed nothing internal and yet…’ The commissar made a face that said, Here we are, but we don’t know how we got here or where ‘here’ is exactly.

Barbastian cut in. ‘As far as we know, he is the only confirmed survivor of the First Sons’ mission. Lieutenant Sakker is still missing.’

‘Throne, Filip.’ Regara shook his head. ‘You sent forty men to do the job of twice that, and then split those men in two and gave them separate missions?’

Rensaint answered. ‘Our ambition outstripped our reach. Recriminations can come later, major.’ He paused, as if confirming a decision. ‘You are about to learn something only Militarum high intelligence and this group of officers know.’

Regara said nothing. He knew he was an outsider not only because of his politics within the regiment, but because he had been part of the initial army group and therefore his circle was different to that of these men. Now they wished to induct him, and as distasteful as all of this mendacity was, he wanted answers. A meaning for all of this needless death. He hoped it would be a satisfactory one.

‘The Archenemy is either cultivating, or already has in its possession, an asset we have designated “Scylla”,’ said Rensaint. ‘Our intelligence around it is limited but the last reports from Imperial spies suggested it, or a sizeable part of its research and development, was located in a stronghold south-west of Lodden.’

‘The briefings about experimentation, it wasn’t just hearsay and propaganda, then.’

‘No, major, it was not. Our belief is that a Mechanicus defector has allied with the Archenemy, and that a piece of arcane technology, predating Old Night, has been unearthed by Archonate reclamation teams. We know the heritors have utilised warp-machinery before, their talent for murder-inventions appears boundless. I understand one of your lieutenants fought such a machine.’

‘A K-weapon?’ said Regara, a little scornful. ‘We’ve been fighting those ever since the war began. Hardly news.’

‘This is different. The Pact are moving troops with alarming precision, almost as if they can predict our deployments and disposition.’

‘And you believe this is the work of a machine?’

‘An unfinished machine. A predictive engine, warp enabled. The Sekkites have been developing infernal technology for years. They do so usually in isolation, seconded to out-of-the-way sites and remote laboratoria, both to reduce the possibility of discovery and also to limit collateral damage. Our forces have uncovered several of these locations and duly sanctioned them with purgation.’

‘The stronghold south of Lodden.’

‘That was the intent.’

‘They were stalling,’ Regara concluded. ‘The Pact never wanted Godsword, not to hold it. They had something else, something worse. And we came close to discovering it.’

Rensaint didn’t answer, all but confirming everything Regara had said. The major continued, ‘Sakker and his men went on a seek-and-destroy, and didn’t return.’

Again, no answer from the commissar until he said, ‘The lieutenant’s loc-beacon is still transmitting.’

Regara felt a nub of cold form in his gut like dirty ice.

‘An expedition will be formed,’ said Deviers. He had been a statue until that moment. ‘Exploratory only.’

‘I assume the “prisoner” has nothing useful to contribute?’

‘He was part of Sakker’s fire-team,’ said Barbastian. ‘He’s also why we have a signal to follow. Sub-dermal implant tracker. Whatever the lieutenant and his men encountered, it did this to him.’

‘Reconnaissance, that’s all,’ Rensaint reassured Regara.

‘You hardly need my approval.’

‘No, but I would like your agreement,’ said Deviers, stepping in again. ‘It is preferable that we are all rowing in the same direction, major. Less chance of turning in circles.’

‘Volunteers only, that’s my stipulation. Do that and we are in agreement, sir.’

Deviers held out his hand, and Regara detected the slightest tremor before the general stilled it. ‘Then you had best find some capable men, major.’

They had found a narrow cell in which to put him. The walls glistened, slick, as if the stone had begun to sweat. No chains, just a heavy door with a grate through which to observe. He had been given food and water, meagre but sufficient. His gaolers had said little beyond giving him simple instruction as he was escorted to his cell. They had stripped him of the uniform he had stolen and the weapons he had taken. For a fleeting, shining moment he had been something more. A hero. He had even held a flag, a propaganda poster brought to life.

A mil-serve he remained, cold, afraid… defiant, though he had not fought as they had arrested him. Rough fabrics garbed his body, a thin blanket his only comfort. Noises from the camp drifted to him on a lonely breeze. He caught snatches of conversation but nothing more. It was enough to discern that a celebration was in the offing. Victory at Lodden, the victory he had helped to win.

Awaiting judgement, his mind wandering to Lenna and wondering if she was all right and safe, Darian almost missed the shadow that eclipsed the viewing slit. He tensed, the bruises on his flesh still sore, the lacerations barely scabbed over. There was a knock against the heavy wood. A bolt scraping against its catch. The door creaking on old hinges.

On the first night, he had received a visitor – or rather an observer – who had watched for a few moments beyond the slit before sealing it shut and not returning again. This was not that visitor, for he was far less subtle and eager to make his presence known and felt.

‘Evening, deg,’ uttered his tormentor, as he had done every evening since Darian had been incarcerated.

Darian stood up on shaking legs, the aches and pains returning as he straightened. He balled his fists, but wouldn’t fight. His tormentor was wide as a tank and less subtle. Rolled-up shirtsleeves revealed brawny arms, a pugilist’s arms. A guard outside held the officer’s jacket and hat; a glorified Volpone clotheshorse.

‘You won’t break me,’ swore Darian.

‘That’s all right,’ said Isaac Shiller, cracking his knuckles as he closed in and blotted out most of the light, ‘I don’t need you to break.’ He grinned. He would enjoy this. ‘I just need you to know your place.’

NINETEEN

It had begun with a feast and music, rippling through a dead town determinedly resuscitated.

Barring the sentries and those unfortunate enough to be on guard duty, the entirety of the Volpone army and its auxiliaries gathered to celebrate.

A massive auditorium had been given over to the Imperials and decorated with their regimental banners. A roofless agora, it stood open to the stars and the silhouette of Godsword hung over all like the metaphorical blade of Dimash. Tables stood in ranks, laid with meat, wine and plenty. A banquet in all but name. Despite the ostensible comradeship, the lesser orders had been segregated. The auxiliaries sat with their own, enjoying lesser fare.

The Volpone arrived polished and trim, the officers more so. They shared a table with the Commissariat but were otherwise sat apart from the ranks. Though dignified, the Fourth Ohrek had no parade uniforms but had made themselves presentable, as had the Tenth Pardus. Only the Slokans, wearing polished silver breastplate and crimson velvet, attempted to compete, but the gilt-edged peacocks of the 37th had so few men left that it made little impact. Deviers had seated them with the 19th Talpa, who arrived reeking of kappa root and scarcely clean, let alone polished. They had made some effort, however.

No place had been made for the Martian priesthood or Ecclesiarchy, both having politely declined the invitation. The former were tasked with the restoration of the macrocannon array, Deviers’ decree that it be functional before the army marched again.

Last of all came the Agrians, a solemn troop, dark of mood and becoming increasingly insular. They spoke in murmurs, drank little and kept to their own. It was only later during the ‘festivities’ that they appeared more animated.

Deviers announced the celebration with a short speech, reminding all present of the brave sacrifice that had seen the town and Godsword retaken. He gestured to the weapon, and soldiers craned their necks to worship, before victuals and libations were served.

Culcis drank sparsely, his taste for wine somewhat dulled after his recent encounters. At every sip, he tasted ash and copper, not fermented grape. He wondered if that would ever change, and grew maudlin. Sitting here, raised upon a stage that overlooked the ranks, he felt conspicuous and unworthy. He ate but it scarcely enticed him, despite the sizzling auroch hide his comrades enjoyed. He noticed Captain Aramis farther up the table but she didn’t acknowledge him, which frankly was just as well after his faux pas the previous evening. There was no sign of Shiller and he wondered what the cruel bastard was doing. At least he couldn’t terrorise the mil-serves, who swept around the Volpone tables with swift and unobtrusive servility.

A girl carrying a silver ewer made to refill his goblet and Culcis had to cover it with his hand. He shook his head, and the girl smiled politely and withdrew. He had seen her before, in the medicae tent where he had found Darian. As he watched her disappear into the throng, he wondered what had become of the lad. Stealing from the barracks, impersonating a trooper. It did not bode well for him, but the thought of the severe punishment Darian would receive sat poorly with the lieutenant. It had never bothered him before, this kind of thing. Why did it gnaw at him now?

‘Are you feeling lonely, lieutenant?’

Culcis scowled. Fenk. His fellow lieutenant sat across from him, a dinner knife in his hand.

‘No more than any man here,’ Culcis replied, determined not to rise to Fenk’s goading.

‘I heard you had a run-in with the captain from the Eighty-Sixth – or was it a run-at…?’

How in the hells did he know that? Fenk had spies in every quarter, it seemed. Either that or he was following him. Neither answer was particularly appealing.

‘Define “run-in”,’ said Culcis.

Fenk smiled, leaning back in his chair, though he kept hold of the knife. It was silver, with a serrated edge for meat. The general hubbub of the feast sufficiently smothered their conversation from eavesdroppers, each officer engaged with another or listening to Deviers as he held forth at the head of the table, though this only reached the ears of the upper-class officers and was not the province of the lieutenants.

‘Ever the romantic, eh, Armand,’ said Fenk, whose wintry gaze gave nothing away.

‘I heard your men took a beating at Lodden,’ came the riposte from Culcis, keen to turn the subject to the battle.

‘And yours,’ Fenk replied, though his posture had stiffened.

‘I was sorry to hear of Corporal Redfern’s death. He was a fine soldier.’

Fenk sniffed, rocking forwards again, and digging into his fillet with the silver knife. ‘He was an animal and a bastard so, yes, a fine soldier.’

It shut him up at least, though Culcis would later regret his callousness. He spoke little after that, though he let his gaze wander. Shiller arrived belatedly, evidently having been given sanction by Deviers, whom he saluted before taking his place at the table. His counterpart in Captain Brandreth had a haunted look about him, and he kept glancing in Fenk’s vague direction, but Culcis had no clue as to why nor a desire to find out.

Several toasts were made, and soldiers rose to their feet and chinked goblets at every long-winded declaration. It was a night of self-congratulatory backslapping. Deviers did so love to revel. It dragged on and Culcis felt the disquiet within him growing in tandem with his boredom.

Matters became interesting again with the fights.

Festivities, Deviers had called them. A boxing match – several, in fact – would have been a more accurate description. The banquet ended, the tables and detritus cleared by a veritable army of mil-serves, and in their place was built a roped-off square of sprung canvas. A harsh sodium lamp glared directly above it, the other lights doused in order to focus the attention. Tiered seats were erected, and in so doing a temple to pugilism was raised and anointed.

Amidst all this, Rake and Dresk were huddled together like conspirators, pooling coin.

‘Twenty-seven pieces…’ murmured Rake, and snapped out an arm to tug on the jacket sleeve of Hanmar, who sat in the stands next to them, smoking. ‘Another ten, Hanmar?’

‘Piss off. I’m saving it.’

‘For what?’ asked Dresk, idly rolling a gold hruk across his knuckles, ever the nimble-fingered showman. It was Agrian currency, another Imperial analogue, but then this was Agria.

‘None of your thrice-damned business,’ snapped Hanmar.

‘But look at him, corps,’ cut in Rake, gesturing to the burly figure of Greiss stripping down to breeches, vest and braces. Dresk had stopped messing around with the coin and had begun to bind Greiss’ meaty fists with cloth. ‘He’s a beast. Is that not right, sarge?’

Greiss gave a huge knowing smile. ‘The man says it as he sees it.’

Dresk fitted a padded glove they had found in the Munitorum stores, then the other, and Greiss smacked them together pugnaciously.

‘If you injure anything, Greiss,’ said Culcis, watching the whole affair from the tier above, ‘you’ll find no lenience from me. You’ll hold a lasgun like any man in the platoon, broken fingers or not.’

‘Right you are, sir,’ Greiss replied.

‘That said…’ Culcis began, and fished a coin purse from his pocket. It was heavy and clinked as he tossed it to Rake, who caught it gratefully. ‘Don’t bloody well lose. Honour of the regiment and all that.’ He winked and Greiss nodded.

Several blackboard placards were displayed prominently in the stands. The fighters, their regiments and their odds were written on them in dusty chalk. A clutch of Munitorum logisticians took scrips from soldiers eager to bet their coin and engage in a little distraction for a few hours. Every regiment was represented, a matter of honour and an antique sabre donated by Deviers himself the prize. The general had decided to ‘slum it’ with the ranks, though he sat in the high tiers alongside Regara and a handful of other officers.

A clarion sounded. The first bout was all but ready to commence.

A roar shook the crowd, resonating around the auditorium and turning Culcis’ arms to gooseflesh. This he could enjoy, he decided. A diversion, and a welcome one.

‘Don’t you find it all a little barbaric, lieutenant?’ posited Hanmar, smoking a delicately flavoured cigarillo. Even the man’s tabac was refined.

Rake and Dresk were leading Greiss down to the ring, the hulking sergeant swinging faux hooks and uppercuts to the delight of a belligerent crowd.

‘Fighting men need to let off steam, corps. All that pent-up violence. It doesn’t make good sense to stopper it.’

‘I quite agree, lieutenant…’ said a voice Culcis instantly recognised, and he felt his sphincter tighten just a fraction. ‘But what of the women? We are all one under the eyes of the Emperor, are we not?’

Aramis passed by with a waft of jasmine and sandalwood. She gave a stern look at Culcis, who felt his cheeks burn.

‘Right you are, captain,’ he said.

‘Indeed I am, lieutenant,’ she replied, her voice fading in the crowd as she found a place up-tier to watch the fight. ‘Indeed I am.’

Hanmar’s eyes were a little wider as Culcis turned back to him. ‘That was her?’

‘Yes, corps, that was her.’

‘Holy Throne…’

‘Not a word, soldier. Not a word.’

Hanmar mimicked a lock and key to his lips, but still muttered, ‘Perhaps this will be more entertaining than I first thought…’

Culcis barely heard him. Another face in the crowd had caught his attention. The golova, Makali, her cossacks and a hefty Agrian contingent surrounding her. She had been observing him as Culcis met her gaze and gave him a mock salute.

Caught between two strong women, one whom he had offended, the other whose intentions were murky at best, the lieutenant shrank back into his seat and willed the evening to be over.

Aramis found Henessey in the upper tiers, the adjutant having saved her a good seat, and made her way over. She soon learned she wasn’t the only field officer in the gallery.

‘I don’t blame you,’ said Shiller. He was sitting alone, a flask in hand, stinking of cheap amasec.

‘For what, captain?’ Aramis replied congenially. She had met Shiller during one of the briefings, quickly sizing up the man and forming a strong opinion about his character.

Shiller smiled, his eyes narrow and hard. ‘Come now… I’m not one to place much stock in camp rumours but I heard about your parley with Culcis.’ He flailed his hand around, lazy with the drink, as if to pre-empt a denial Aramis had not made. ‘A handsome fellow, I grant you. He has weak piss in his veins though.’

‘Is that right, captain? And what might you have in yours? Shit whisky?’

Shiller’s face reddened, not embarrassed. Angry. He wiped a bead of sweat off his upper lip, his mouth contorting into a sneer. He was a heavy man, not all of it fat, and broad like an anvil.

‘Don’t mistake me,’ warned Shiller. ‘I have no interest in a woman like you. A waste of good breeding, if you ask me.’

Aramis felt her jaw stiffen and she balled her fists. ‘I earned my commission, captain. And the rank that came with it.’

‘I don’t deny it, and you are clearly of a house of decent standing, but your place is not war. It is back on Volpone.’

‘Cleaning up after the men, you mean? Or running it, keeping the tithes fulfilled? Tell me, Shiller, where is it exactly you believe I am better disposed?’

Shiller gave a low chuckle, mirthless and dismissive. ‘Your emotions get the better of you, captain.’ He wiped a hand across his mouth.

‘And I think I was right about what’s in your blood. Vinegar-piss whisky and little else besides.’

Cloaked by his own sense of superiority, Shiller wouldn’t be baited. ‘You’re fortunate,’ he said, slurring the word a little. ‘You’d see what’s in my veins if I took the ring.’

Aramis made a surprised expression but there was an edge to it. ‘Perhaps I have been too hasty in judgement?’

‘I’m a fighter,’ he said proudly. ‘Won the regimental tournament four times in my youth.’

‘It looks like you’ve been fighting already,’ she said, gesturing to his scuffed and bloody knuckles.

Shiller looked down but showed no remorse.

‘Beating up mil-serves worked up a bit of a thirst did it, captain?’

Shiller’s lip curled in derision. ‘I’ll do more than that,’ he promised, eyes murderous.

‘I feel luckier already.’ Aramis left him to his whisky and misogyny.

‘I have a feeling,’ uttered Henessey, as she finally took her seat next to him, ‘that Captain Shiller is going to have a disappointing evening.’

Aramis smiled thinly, barely keeping her anger in check. ‘I do believe you’re right, Gavid.’

Her gaze travelled up to the shadow of Godsword. Regardless of the battlefield, she thought, they’re just men playing at being heroes.

This was his battlefield, one of many. He could adapt, had adapted. That’s how you stayed alive in the war. An ever-changing equation that had more than one answer, only some were more profitable than others. Thus far, they had chosen poorly. That needed to change.

Rensaint removed his leather gloves. He was not a vain man, but he wasn’t wasteful either and the gloves carried a certain privileged expense he had no desire to besmirch. Then he took off his jacket, hanging it on a wire armature he had placed within reach. His hat sat squarely upon the mannequin’s head, a strange simulacrum of a commissar forming as he dressed it. Rolling up his sleeves, he revealed military tattoos on lean but muscular arms: the year of his graduating class in the Schola Progenium, the indents of the regiments he had served with. The faded ink ran from wrist to elbow on both arms.

He was alone, for this sort of work demanded solitude and focus. Just Rensaint and his guest. Tied to the chair.

‘I need you to serve your Emperor,’ he told the prisoner, pulling off the hood and watching the Scion’s mania return.

‘You may not think yourself capable of it,’ he went on, ‘but I need to determine if that is true.’ He cracked his knuckles, loosened his shoulders. ‘I know you were trained to resist pain and torture. So was I. We very likely had similar training. That means I am simply going to have to try harder to undo what was done to you.’

The Scion strained against his bonds, chest heaving, neck bulging.

‘Pain is necessary, though please know I take no pleasure in this. I am not a sadist, I am a politician. I need to convince five thousand soldiers that what we are doing is worth fighting and dying for. I need an answer, a better one. And you shall help provide it.’

Sufficiently warmed up, Rensaint slid the brass knuckles onto his hand and made a fist.

‘Prepare yourself…’ he said. ‘We begin.’

And the blows rained.

TWENTY

Greiss lived up to his billing. He flattened his first opponent, a handy-looking Ohrek with a decent right hook but no stamina, and was presently about the business of dismantling his second when a master sergeant from the Pardus acting as referee sounded the clarion to end the round.

Sweating but puissant, Greiss retreated back to his corner where his seconds, Drake and Resk, waited with Munitorum-issue towels and a water-filled canteen. In the other corner, a battered-looking Slokan was tended to by a regimental medic. Culcis thought the man had more bruise than face at this point, but he was refusing to give in.

‘Stubborn, these Slokans,’ observed Hanmar.

‘Can you blame them? They’re hanging on to their last shred of honour. Would you be any different, corps… Would I?’

‘Our man has the beating of him,’ said Hanmar, so engrossed Culcis wasn’t certain he had really heard him.

The lieutenant’s gaze drifted around the stands while the fight was in recess. ‘A beast, wasn’t that what Rake said?’

A handful of officers had begun to leave, amongst them the milksop Brandreth, his blood a little thin for this sort of contest, as well as a few of the auxiliary captains, their interest waning at the same rate as their chances.

A throaty roar rippled through the crowd as the fight resumed and Greiss landed a telling blow, urging Hanmar to spring forwards in his seat.

Culcis furrowed his brow. ‘What happened to “barbaric”?’

Hanmar didn’t answer, too eager to witness Greiss pummelling the Slokan.

And he wasn’t the only one. The Agrian cohort had become more vocal ever since the contest began, their own challenger, a red-oak of a brute, having dispatched the Pardus’ best fighter with desultory ease. It wasn’t just a rush of blood brought on by staged violence; Culcis saw genuine belligerence striving to the fore. He was about to venture across the auditorium floor to let Regara know, when Fenk pushed past.

Culcis swore but kept his composure. ‘Leaving already? I thought you’d appreciate the blood sport, Fenk.’

‘Oh, I do,’ he said, pausing on his way.

‘Prefers to stab his enemies in the back, sir…’ murmured Hanmar, his eyes narrowed at the other lieutenant, who smiled back coldly at the veiled remark.

How the hells did he hear that? thought Culcis.

‘If called for, corpsman,’ Fenk replied, ‘but the truth is simpler. I prefer a fight with fewer rules and higher stakes, to know defeat means death. That’s a strong motivator, and a good measure of a man’s inner fortitude. The desire to live. This…’ he said, as if appraising the contest, ‘this is just spectacle with nothing more than pride at stake.’

With half an eye on the Agrians, Culcis wondered about that last part.

Greiss felled his opponent, the burly Slokan hitting the canvas like a shot auroch. The referee called it, and Fenk slipped away amidst the cheers and adulation. In his absence, Culcis looked for Regara, but the major had already left.

‘Something amiss, sir?’ asked Hanmar as the lieutenant rose from his seat anyway.

‘Nothing, corps. Too much wine at the feast,’ he lied. ‘I’m just headed to the latrines.’

Culcis watched the Agrians every step, hollering as they pushed their champion at the head of a growing mob and towards the ring.

It had been a long evening, and an even longer war.

So it was with no little relief that Regara retired to his billet, an old town house once owned by a scribe or notary, if the ink-stained furnishings were any judge. It was small, rustic but comfortable. Balis had found material for curtains and hung them expertly. There was even a large steel tub next to a hearth, a fire crepitating behind the grate.

Though he had tried, Regara could not put the clandestine meeting of the previous night from his mind. His thoughts strayed to it, to the faces of the men he had named afterwards. Not a one had refused, as he knew they wouldn’t. Requesting only volunteers had been a foolish gesture on his part, a notion of free will. In the Militarum, a man is free to serve and that is where his freedom ends.

‘Only in death…’ he said in a low, gruff voice and thought of Voke, whom, despite his faults, had still died with his honour intact. ‘Could any of us really ask for more, Balis?’

‘Death, my lord? Or duty?’

The valet had begun to run a bath, a pleasant steam rising off the surface of the water. Thin of frame and face, Balis had the plain features of a commoner but there was nobility in his bearing. An old man now, greyed around the edges, he still went about his service with alacrity and purpose.

‘Either, both… I’m not sure I discern the difference.’

Regara had stripped down to his uniform leggings and shirtsleeves, the rest of his attire slung upon the back of a chair for Balis to tidy and iron.

As the tub slowly filled, Regara reached for his gadulka. He held the thin neck of the instrument pinched lightly between the fingers of his left hand, its bowl nestled into his lap, the right hand taking up the bow.

‘Would you mind?’ he asked. ‘It will carry across the camp as you go about your duties.’

‘Far from it, sir,’ Balis replied with genuine enthusiasm. ‘You play beautifully.’

‘You’re my valet, not my flatterer, Balis.’

‘It’s true,’ he said, ‘I have little ear for music…’

Regara laughed and felt a lightness that had eluded him for weeks. Balis bowed, removing the major’s uniform from the chair and taking it with him as the lilting refrain of the gadulka played him out.

As Regara plied the bow across the strings he teased long, lingering notes into the evening air. A sorrowful legato to echo his mood.

‘I never tire of listening to you play…’

Though he looked up at his unannounced visitor, Regara did not stop. He maintained the pitch, the shifting of his fingers and the angle of the bow a careful choreography that drew out a gentle threnody for the dead.

Barbastian took a seat, and patiently waited for the musician to finish.

‘I am out of practice,’ said Regara gruffly, placing the instrument in its case.

‘It takes me back though, Vasquez. To the old days.’ He had a bottle and two goblets.

Regara raised an eyebrow. ‘Is that the ’55?’

‘Part of a commemorative batch, distilled for Slaydo’s interment as Warmaster. From Deviers’ private stock.’

‘Well, well, Filip…’ Regara took a proffered goblet and let Barbastian pour a measure. Regara inhaled deeply, relishing the flavour, and held up his drink for the toast.

‘Old friends…’ said Barbastian. His eyes flashed in the firelight. ‘Gratefully reunited.’

Regara nodded, a little reluctant but relenting. ‘Old friends…’

He took a pull, smacking his lips and sucking through his teeth. He blew out a breath.

‘That’s bloody magnificent.’

‘I thought you’d approve.’ Barbastian gestured to the bath. ‘I’m not disturbing you? The door was open.’

‘Not at all. Balis leaves it that way, he knows I like the night air.’ He gestured to the steaming tub. ‘I think he must use a flamer on the water, though. It’s bloody unbearable unless I let it stand for an hour first.’

Barbastian laughed. It was good sound. ‘A fine valet.’

‘He is,’ Regara agreed. ‘Been in my service for decades.’

‘A long time…’

‘And is that why you’re here, Filip, to recount old times?’

‘I don’t really know why I’m here, Vasquez,’ he said, getting up out of the chair and walking over to where Regara’s phonogram sat on his desk. ‘I have one of these…’ He slid his fingers across the polished wood, tracing lines and angles.

‘I’ve heard they’re popular amongst the officer class.’

Barbastian half turned to look at Regara. ‘Have you ever recorded anything on the cylinder?’

‘Speeches, briefings… that sort of thing.’

He smiled. ‘Your music?’

Regara shrugged. ‘Now and again.’

There was a moment of companionable silence between them, before Barbastian said, ‘I have missed this.’ Then his expression grew more serious. ‘And I am sorry for the deception.’

‘Ah,’ said Regara, leaning back in his chair, ‘so we come to it then. An assuaging of guilt. If that’s the case, you can leave the bottle.’

‘Take the bloody bottle for all I care!’

‘Hit a nerve, did I?’

‘You’re an obstinate man, Vasquez. And you hold a grudge like a damn greenskin.’

Regara did not deny it, but his feigned insouciance faded.

‘I seek amends, that’s all…’ Barbastian’s sudden edges softened as he lifted his goblet. ‘A friend in the war. You remember those?’

‘Barely…’ He chinked his goblet with Barbastian’s and felt the bad blood between them ebb.

‘Would you play another? A little less mournful, perhaps?’

‘Every man is a critic,’ Regara replied but a wry smile pulled at the corner of his mouth. He began, a frenetic staccato that saw the bow dancing like light across the strings.

And then they heard the explosion from deeper in the camp and all thought of music ended.

Greiss staggered as his head snapped sideways. Blood painted canvas in a red arc. He dodged the next blow, a hammer aimed at his bludgeoned face. One eye had swollen shut, gummed with blood. He reeled, frantically back-pedalling, trying to find room. Drake and Resk hollered from the sidelines, shouting instructions, warnings. He tried a counter-swing but his impaired depth perception saw the blow cut air. His opponent’s reply was savage, pummelling the body until it resembled tenderised meat. Greiss tried to use his arms to shield himself but they sagged like leaden weights, and he fell. One knee hit the floor and he made the fatal sin of using his hand to support his weary frame. An overhead swing crashed into his shoulder like a pendulum and he crumpled, all the way down this time, until his face touched bloodstained canvas.

Culcis had stopped halfway through the crowd, more like a baying mob by now, a sea of roaring Bluebloods urging their man to rise. To fight. For honour, for pride and all that hollow sentiment that soldiers cleave to in their darkest moments. Culcis had become entangled by it, wading through the bloodthirsty throng. He heard Rake, a shout like the peal of a bell, so singular and loud that it pierced the static. It made him turn, stop. Greiss had fallen. Throne, he looked like hammered shit, his black and purpled flesh marking out continents of pain on the map of his battered body.

He considered turning back, or heading for the ring itself. Hanmar had left his seat, the corpsman reacting by instinct. An injured man, a comrade, in need of his arts. They had to drag Greiss back into his corner, a stumbling, punch-drunk mess that refused to yield. They fed powdered stimms up his nose and he brightened fiercely, a sudden jolt that tripped his heart like a circuit and got him on his feet again.

Hanmar was arguing with the others, Rake holding the corpsman back whilst Dresk shouted into Greiss’ ear, but the large man kept shaking his head, determined to carry on. It was more than just the 50th, it was the Bluebloods’ honour that was on the table. Volpone glory.

‘Stop this…’ Culcis murmured, and even the crowd around him had simmered, as if sensing something. The Agrians roared all the more, and a few Volpone began shoving their mouthier rivals, turning their impotence for the fate of their kinsman into anger. The cooler heads of the line officers wisely intervened but the thread binding the two sides together was fraying.

The clarion chimed. Greiss got three steps out from his corner and stumbled. His opponent looked unscathed, the brawny cossack like a pillar of rockcrete. Tan skin like beaten leather, a beard that trailed down his chest like a hangman’s rope, he had a foot or more on Greiss and several inches across the shoulders. An anvil of a man, and just as unyielding, just as pitiless. He had tempered Greiss, the Volpone’s champion, and now he would break him.

Ensnared by the spectacle as much as the men around him, a terrifying thought seized Culcis by the throat and made it hard to breathe.

What if it’s revenge?

Uzra’s death had not been atoned for, and no culprit had been found. The Agrians wanted justice but they would take retribution instead. It didn’t matter whom. Searching the crowd, Culcis found no sign of Makali, so he had no idea if the golova had orchestrated any of this. Finding anyone in the unruly mass would have been difficult. Even Deviers had been swallowed by it.

Greiss fumbled his footing again, a slip that saw him almost fall. He got up by himself, but unsteadily, his eyes apparently faraway as he looked to a horizon only he could see. After one further step, the referee intervened with a hand on the sergeant’s chest. Greiss scowled, ineffectively batting away the referee’s hand with sluggish sweeps of his gloved fists.

The cossack meanwhile waited patiently, a killer dormant in the oak of his body, poised to act.

Culcis found himself heading downwards whilst the tension grew below as it did above. He reached the ring quickly, making far better progress when not fighting to cut across the tide. It was hot under the lights and men sweated in their stripped-down uniforms. The stink of blood and body odour was heady, nauseating.

Greiss was swearing, but slurring his words like a drunkard.

‘Emperor’s bloody mercy, Rake,’ Culcis snapped, ‘how did you let it get this far?’

Rake, and his cousin Dresk, looked pale as Valhallan snow. ‘He’s stubborn when his mind is made up, sir.’

‘Taming a bullgryn would be easier,’ Dresk cut in.

Culcis ignored them, moving on to Hanmar, who had managed to get Greiss to sit down so he could assess his condition.

‘He’s barely sensible.’

Greiss was murmuring, incoherent. Up close, the punishment to his body looked much worse. He was stitched together with thread and scraps of ruddy gauze. But he pleaded, in the fleeting moments of lucidity, the one eye he could still open saying, Please… let me fight.

Culcis laid a hand on the big man’s shoulder – it was hot like fire to the touch – and gently shook his head.

‘Any more of this, sergeant, and it’ll be the morgue, not the medicae. I can’t allow it. Honour be damned,’ said the lieutenant. ‘I’m ending this now.’ He turned, about to call over the referee when Captain Aramis intervened.

‘I propose a substitution,’ she uttered simply, having made her way down from the upper tiers during the furore. The referee frowned. ‘Take him out, sub me in,’ said Aramis, elaborating on the point. She had begun to unbutton her uniform shirt, revealing a vest underneath. Only now did Culcis realise she had brought her adjutant with her, and he had a pair of padded gloves hooked over his shoulder by the strings.

‘Ione…’ he started to say, but she cut him off.

‘You address me as captain,’ she said firmly but without anger.

‘Captain,’ Culcis corrected, ‘you can’t mean to do this.’

Aramis spoke to Culcis but looked at the referee as the adjutant started to wrap her hand. ‘Militarum pugilism code states that if the opponent agrees then a substitute may stand in for another fighter if they are unfit to participate.’

‘Substitution is usually before a fight, not during,’ said the referee, clearly awkward at being spoken to by a woman officer.

‘That’s not explicit in the code,’ said Aramis, as her other hand was bound.

The referee looked to Culcis, desperate for some help and unsure how to handle the situation, but the lieutenant had no leverage. ‘Please reconsider,’ he said.

Aramis pulled on a glove, her adjutant lacing it. ‘I do not require rescuing, lieutenant.’ She donned the second glove and it was pulled tight. ‘Not by any man.’

Then she stepped up, tying her hair back, making her intentions clear to the Agrians, who watched with amusement.

‘Well then?’

The referee shrugged, effectively putting the question to the other side. In a rare moment of emotion, the hulking Agrian smiled. And nodded.

Aramis entered the ring with a deft sort of grace that suggested she was born to it. Her second – a man Culcis had since learned was called Henessey – looked calm but had an edge of apprehension, like he was holding his breath.

Greiss had been wheeled away on an old ammo cart, Rake and Dresk pulling, Hanmar staying with them all the way to the medicae. Up in the stands, neither Deviers nor any of his cohort had made any sort of move. Culcis sensed the general wanted this as much as any of the Volpone stunned into abrupt silence. Even the Agrians had simmered, though a few made snide comments, gesturing to the obvious mismatch in the ring.

She had to crane her neck to meet the Agrian’s gaze, a child regarding a giant. It was like a fable brought to life, but Aramis looked far from intimidated as the referee laid out the rules of the contest.

They broke apart, Aramis calmly retreating into her corner. Culcis caught her eye – he must have looked deathly pale – and she winked at him.

He’ll kill her… he thought. He’ll kill her and all this will turn to madness.

The clarion sounded.

Aramis quickly advanced, body low to present a smaller target. She weaved aside from a desultory right hook, planting a trio of rapid body blows into the Agrian’s left side. He weathered them with barely a grimace, a shoulder barge pushing Aramis back onto her heels and off balance so she barely dodged the follow-up swing. Culcis saw the veneer of quiet confidence slip. Seizing his advantage, the Agrian pressed his attack, a flurry of blows that rained against air, but one glanced Aramis’ shoulder and she staggered.

A roar erupted from one part of the crowd, as the rest held their breath or looked to their officers to intercede, but there was nothing Deviers or any of them could do. They had allowed Aramis to commit to this course, she would have to see it through.

The Agrian moved well for such a large man, his long strides covering the expanse of the ring easily and quickly. It severely impeded Aramis’ advantage in speed, though she slipped in close to land a pair of jabs to the right flank. He let out a grunt, his movement slightly stiffening, but otherwise appeared unaffected. He flung her back, using his bulk and superior strength to boss her around. She was ready for it this time and danced away and out of danger. A haymaker veered close, its passage disturbing a strand of hair.

A second swing followed the first, the Agrian putting in more effort. His face pinched with pain and then turned to stone again.

Maybe she did hurt him?

Then came a third swing, a thunderous cannon of a punch that Aramis had to use both forearms to block. She cried out, skidding backwards on the canvas, half slipping on Greiss’ still-drying blood. Scenting weakness, the Agrian came for her, an overhead followed by an uppercut that she barely dodged. A rapid return jab caught him in the solar plexus and elicited a sharp grunt. He backed up a step, breathing hard.

A cut above Aramis’ left eye bled a jagged line down the side of her face but she kept her eyes on the Agrian, who came on again as relentless as a storm, exerting his strength and superior size just as he had done with Greiss.

Unlike Greiss, Aramis didn’t try to compete in an arena where she was obviously outmatched. She ducked away again, skipping sideways, looping under the heavy blows that rattled like pistons, trembling the air. She landed another jab, finding a way inside the Agrian’s immense reach, sharp and quick like a sting. He winced, a bruise rapidly blossoming in the place where she had struck. She darted back before he could counter.

The clarion sounded, ending the round.

Aramis returned to her corner, breathing hard and beaded with sweat. Henessey mopped the blood off her face and tended to the cut above her eye.

‘You’ve made your point,’ said Culcis. ‘Stop this. I don’t much care if you outrank me. What will it prove when this ends in your death?’

‘What part of “I don’t need saving” did you fail to understand, Culcis?’ she said, staring down her opponent, who looked a little ragged himself. As his seconds rebound the wrappings on his hands and lathered unguents on his bruised ribs, Culcis could tell the Agrian was reappraising the other fighter.

‘You’ve played your cards now,’ Culcis continued, ‘you won’t be a surprise to him any more. He knows what to expect.’

Aramis held off the cloth wiping the blood from her face so she could turn and look Culcis in the eye.

‘Who said I had played any of my cards, lieutenant?’

Culcis shook his head. ‘This is insane. You’re going to get yourself killed and then this entire place will go off like an incendiary.’

‘Then you’d best be ready for when it does,’ she replied as the clarion sounded again and the second round began.

The Agrian swept in hard with a flurry of jabs that Aramis struggled to weather. She evaded well, though one punch scraped her shoulder and she dropped it just a fraction. A savage cross sailed by her head again but rather than back-pedal out, she crept in, inside the Agrian’s guard. His arm pistoned like it was spring-loaded but wrapped across the back of Aramis’ neck, a wet slap of flesh instead of the bone-shattering impact he had aimed for. She shuffled around the Agrian’s body, letting his momentum carry him off balance with the ferocity of the failed cross.

And then she struck, unloading a flurry of heavy jabs into the bruised ribs so fast it made it hard to count. A yelp of pain escaped his lips, panic slowly contorting his features. Aramis chained her punches, the flurried jabs blending into a sharp cross that struck her opponent across the jaw, opening him up as his guard collapsed and a viper-fast hook hit his face even as it was turning from the first hit. Another cross, low to the body. Something snapped, releasing a pinched cry of agony. Then another hook, into the stomach. His body jackknifed, surrendering to the pain, and as his chin dipped Aramis unleashed a brutal uppercut.

Bone cracked, and the jaw bent sideways, the left cheek bulging to accommodate a violent dislocation of the mandible.

He didn’t fall straight away, the mind too slow to heed what his body was saying. He faltered for a few seconds, listing this way and then that, before the legs bowed then buckled, simian arms hanging limp and ineffectual. Canvas trembled, a felled oak brought to ground, his unconscious form unmoving.

Utter silence reigned in an arena of over four thousand. A single shout stirred the tumult that followed.

‘Volpone glory!’

Then they were all shouting it, a cry of disbelief and pride, but not Culcis. He looked to the crowds, to the Agrians who felt cheated, twice slighted in their eyes. Denied justice and now vicarious retribution. In the end it was too much.

After what happened, no one would remember who threw the first punch, but a brawl broke out amongst the spectators, Agrian and Volpone. Heathens against the genteel, though to Culcis’ mind the barbarity was equally apportioned. Deviers called for order, but even his voice found little purchase on minds given over to fury. Grussman and a squad of Guardsmen went with him, heaving men bodily as they strove to reach the heart of the violence and put an end to it.

No one saw Rensaint stumble into the agora, dishevelled, a gash upon his forehead. They saw his quarry, or at least Culcis did. A bloodstained man in slate-grey fatigues and a black vest. First Son. Tempestus Scion. Raving. Madness in his eyes, he plunged into the throng of warring men. He broke a wrist attached to a hand that tried to hold him, then crushed a nose in the face of one who got in his way. He snapped the neck of a third, so fast Culcis was still processing what had happened as he choked a fourth with a savage blow to the throat. Slow realisation wormed its way through the crowd and some of the brawlers stopped fighting, suddenly alert to this new threat.

‘Sentiwa mai!’

The raving became words, but none that Culcis knew. He was moving too, making for the crowds, wishing he had a pistol…

‘Sentiwa mai!’

An object in the Scion’s hand, small and innocuous. Deviers headed to the cause of the commotion, Grussman and the others a step or two behind him.

‘Sentiwa mai!’

The object was a frag grenade, its priming light blinking red. Red for danger. Red for fire.

Rensaint fired a gun, an old stubber that discharged thunderously into the air. It echoed, rolling through the agora, and soldiers turned to see him take aim. And what an Emperor-blessed shot it was, a single bullet, a heart shot that dropped the Scion where he stood.

And for half a second, Culcis dared to breathe.

During his exhale, the grenade exploded.

TWENTY-ONE

They were laid side by side and in two rows. A grubby white sheet covered the bodies in lieu of a funerary shroud, barely hiding the disfigurements of their deaths.

Twenty-nine dead, seventeen killed instantly, the rest dying of their injuries and only holding on long enough to beseech the Emperor for His mercy or to wail for the loved ones they would never again see.

Cold seeped into Hauptmann’s bones as he regarded the quiet dead, who retained the shapes of men under that coarse fabric but who would go to the Throne absent limbs or facial features. An old salt store served as a morgue, the stone and its contents a natural preservative but it couldn’t rob the air of decay entirely.

He hadn’t been a part of the revels or seen the fights. He had been writing letters. Facile words designed to soften the pain of grief. Strong drink helped to numb the hypocrisy of it. And he did that alone, too. He found no comfort in company, not even his own unit, though there were precious few of them left anyway.

His citation for bravery had arrived from the office of the general, a piece of platinum in the shape of a two-headed eagle. A note written by an aide but stamped with the Byzamund seal declared the general was looking forward to his presence at the feast. Hauptmann had left it in the Pardus barracks, together with the medal, discarded on his bunk.

This though, this he had to do. Hauptmann didn’t mind the dead. At least they kept their peace and their own counsel. Ever since the earth had turned to glass and the world around him turned into noise and fire, Hauptmann had felt nothing but absence. He became an empty thing and so sought out other empty things.

Closing tired eyes, he watched them die all over again…

Roper thrashing as the fire caught on his clothes, a promethium spill lighting him up like a pyrotechnic, his cries cut short as he choked to death on the smoke from his own burning flesh.

Garrison upended from his mount, raging and kicking as the beasts fell upon him, then screaming as they started to feast.

Mathiss annihilated in the blast, turned from a man to a grainy shadow where a man had once stood in the beat of an eye-blink.

Only Lennox left, a young man no more.

A plume of breath shuddered from Hauptmann’s chest, fogging the air, just another pallid ghost amongst all the rest. He held a crumpled pict. Fire had seared its edges. He crushed it close, standing in the salt store with his head bowed, and wept, for everything and everyone he had ever lost.

A light burned in the half-dark, bringing him to his senses, a blade of sodium brightness cutting through shadows and alighting on those shrouded faces in still repose. As the light found Hauptmann, he squinted, holding up a hand to ward off its beam.

‘My apologies, sergeant,’ said Aramis, her voice familiar enough to identify her. ‘It is late, or rather early, I didn’t think anyone else would be here.’

‘No need to apologise, captain, but I’d be obliged if you would stop blinding me.’

‘Yes… of course.’ She doused the light, and came to stand by the cavalier’s side. She walked stiffly, trying to mask her pain. He had heard about what she did during the fights.

‘Back when we ran scouting missions, we would often be called upon to venture into enemy-held territory,’ Hauptmann said. ‘We couldn’t use lamps, and every bit of chrome or metal was dulled, the engines baffled to limit noise. No light, no sound. We were phantoms… You had to learn to adapt, see in the dark. Old habits, I suppose, when amongst ghosts.’

‘Unquiet souls, sergeant? You think these men are ill at rest?’

‘I think they are dead, captain, and it doesn’t much matter either way to the living.’

A few moments of silence passed between them, until Aramis said, ‘I never had an opportunity to speak to you after…’ Her words trailed away like a road abruptly cut off.

‘Little to say.’

‘And are you… Have you seen the regimental priest or…?’

So many trammelled paths, leading to nowhere.

‘I don’t think I ever left that fire, captain,’ he said, voice thick with emotion. ‘I close my eyes, and I see it. Feel its heat on my skin. Then the screaming as their flesh burns and runs like wax, until all that’s left is ash.’ He turned, his eyes moist in the ambient light. ‘Have you ever seen anything like that?’

‘The dead can’t hurt us, Hauptmann.’

‘No, they only remind us of our failings and regrets.’

‘I make it a point to have neither.’

Hauptmann laughed, not bothering to hide his scorn, but his laugh became a wracking cough shuddering through his body like a mortar barrage. Aramis made to help him, but he held her back with an upraised hand, his bitterness winning out.

‘Spoken like a true aristocrat,’ he said eventually and could almost feel the air bristle around Aramis.

Her concern turned to irritation. ‘Wealth and standing has its own burdens.’

‘You don’t even see it, do you?’ he said, choking back the phlegm and wiping his mouth. ‘The privilege.’

She became indignant. ‘I won’t be held to account for the place of my birth or heritage.’

‘It’s right in front of you, on the back of every servant, every flaunted luxury, every advantage you’re given.’

‘I don’t have every advantage,’ she countered, but Hauptmann would not be persuaded.

‘You think you are different, Ione. Yes, I know your name. I learned it out of respect, should I ever need to use it. Can you say the same?’

Anger contorted Aramis’ features, anger that warred with shame. Anger at herself.

‘I cannot.’

‘Velas. It was my father’s name and his father’s before him. And my son too is Velas. He is my legacy. I have no lands, no title, no privilege. Just him.’

‘And I should feel guilty for mine?’

‘No, but at least open your eyes and recognise it for what it is.’

Hauptmann left, checking his chrono. He had a duty to attend. Wings up in forty minutes. He patted his pocket, checking it was still there. A packet of parchments wrapped in twine rustled to his touch. Throne, he felt bone-tired; hot and cold at the same time.

He walked from the salt store, past the dead in their ragged shrouds, and then past nine other bodies, only these had been draped in silk with a laurel wreath anointing every brow, clutched in the outstretched claw of a gilded gryfon rampant.

The lamps burned low, casting little light and feathering the edges of shadows. They hid him for the most part, his skeletal visage rendered grey by the light and his pallor still visible but split in darkened symmetry.

The darkness hinted at a large room, finely appointed with exquisite furnishings, but any detail bled into nothing beyond the warm corona of light surrounding the bed and its decrepit occupant.

A claw reached out from beneath the bedsheets, wizened like a dried twig, the skin wrapped over it like old paper.

‘Merciful Throne…’ Regara made the sign of the aquila. Since the attack, the transformation was… arresting.

Deviers had lost much of his former vigour. An emaciated thing lay in his bed, bone sharp and gaunt. Regression, the medics had said, brought on by physical trauma. After what must have been centuries, his rejuve had reached and surpassed its restorative limit. The years were literally catching up with him.

A polished wood cane, vintage and expensive, lay propped against a padded wingback chair near to the bed. Glancing at the dour sentries arrayed around the general’s quarters, Regara sat down in it. He had heard the explosion, heard it and ran to it, as did so many others not in the agora that night. Upon his arrival, he had found panic and carnage. Dead men blown halfway to the hells, limbs and other parts estranged from the greater whole. A warzone, which had struck Regara as profoundly ironic in a bitter sort of a way.

Medics scrambled, rapid triage was enacted. And then he had seen Deviers, wounded but alive. A pale imitation of the vital figure Regara had known. Perhaps his health had been failing before then, the truth of his inevitable decline hidden in the shadows of the machine yard and shielded by his entourage ever since. Grussman had dragged him away in short order and between that moment and this, Deviers had shrunken to a cadaverous version of his former self.

At first he appeared not to realise Regara was present, the rebreather strapped to his face covering much of his expression, but then he slowly turned his head as if the bones might crack or crumble to powder. Rheumy eyes narrowed as they aligned on the major’s face. A hand like gnarled, brittle oak pulled away the mask and Deviers let out a shuddering breath.

‘Only in death…’ he rasped, his choice of words as chilling to Regara as they were appropriate given he had spoken their echo to Balis not hours before.

‘Is it heresy to admit I loathe that aphorism?’

Deviers’ smile cracked his skin like it was emaciated leather. ‘Not to a dying man,’ he said.

Regara conceded with a nod but could not reconcile the man before him with the one he had seen on the stage back at Ankishburg. ‘How is this even possible?’ he asked.

‘I have lived beyond the years of most men, major. Even the miracles of Mars must bow down to nature at some point. And a cluster of shrapnel in the side is hardly conducive to a long life either.’

‘I admire your pragmatism.’

‘And is that all you admire?’

Even on his deathbed, he sought the adulation of his audience.

‘Is that really why you summoned me here, sir? To flatter you? I am surprised Colonel Grussman is not present. He makes a better flatterer than I.’

A phlegmy chuckle hissed past Deviers’ withered lips. ‘That he does, and does well.’

‘I am sorry, sir. For whatever worth that has. It is no way for a man of your standing to perish.’

‘Ah, should it have been in fire and death, eh? A golden aquila gripped in my fist, a banner snapping in the wind, a thousand clarions proclaiming my glory…’ He drifted, suddenly wistful, and Regara wondered if his mind, as well as his body, had succumbed to the cruel vagaries of borrowed time reclaimed. ‘I won’t lie, major, that would have been a fine end, but we are seldom given what we deserve. I have regrets…’ he said, eyes wandering again as if imagining another time, another life.

‘Grussman,’ said Regara in an attempt to bring Deviers back to the moment at hand. ‘Leadership will pass to him, I assume?’

‘It will… but it should not,’ said Deviers, his candour disturbing Regara almost as much as his appearance. ‘Grussman has been a friend to me for many years, but he is a blunt instrument. Effective but unsubtle. He will need steering from his more reckless impulses.’

Another Voke, thought Regara disdainfully, arrogant and overreaching. Of how many of the more esteemed houses of Volpone could the same be said? Heredity could be a curse, but one that blighted others rather than the bearer.

‘Then I pray for us all, for I find him an unworthy man and less than worthy officer.’

Deviers laughed, a death-rattle cough that wracked his body in spasm. A medic began to encroach on the scene but was sent away with a stern look, the general having lost none of the potency of his influence. After a few seconds he recovered, bloody spittle drooling from one corner of his mouth that he made no effort to clean away.

‘That’s why I like you, Regara… Conviction. How liberating it must feel to be so bold. How limiting.’

‘Am I to hear all of my shortcomings, sir?’

‘No,’ said Deviers, his mood abruptly serious. ‘I would ask a favour of you, major.’

‘Name it, sir.’

After a brief silence, Deviers licked his lips. He spared a look at the guards but they were statues all, ears as stone to any words he would utter in this place of death. Thin fingers ferreted around the rumpled bedsheets, searching, and pulled forth a scroll of parchment emblazoned with the House Byzamund seal. An official document. Regara took it as it was offered, his thoughts reeling but still utterly unprepared for what Deviers said next.

‘I would have you hear my confession.’

A man would die tonight, Culcis knew this with absolute certainty as he moved through the camp.

He had tried the barrack houses, the officers’ quarters, the makeshift taverns, even the chapels but found no sign. Ahead of him, a black-slated silo that served as camp armoury, one of several magazines Regara had seen established throughout Lodden. A pair of guards wearing Slokan uniforms stood outside, stern-faced and tight-lipped. Culcis would interrogate them anyway, try to find a lead.

If that failed, the medicae tents still had a large intake. The Slokan medic, Morgan, he thought, had seemed reasonable back in Ankishburg. Perhaps he would know something. It hardly mattered now, as a glance at the sky saw night greying towards dawn. Another would have to be called to be witness. It sat poorly with Culcis, though he knew Militarum law, specifically that of Volpone. The dawn brought death, unjust and ignominious. It was no way to reward a hero.

The law be damned… thought Culcis, saluting as he approached the Slokan guards.

An hour before dawn, they took him from his place of confinement. He went accompanied, shackles placed upon his ankles and his wrists, a ragged smock to sheathe his body that did nothing to arrest the scything of the wind. Had he felt it, it would have chilled him but his mind and his flesh had long since grown numb with the gradual acceptance of his fate.

They had waited for the revels to end, not wishing to taint the celebration with the unpleasantness of what was to come. How civilised of them. But come it had, and five days after he had stood in the ruins of Lodden with a banner in his hand and shouting for glory, Darian arrived at the site of his execution.

Eythor stood like a revenant in a bare muster yard, his boots muddy with the sodden earth from the rain that had begun in the early hours. He wore the black of the Commissariat, so sleek and shiny it looked like darkly glistening skin. A peaked cap with its silver skull hid his eyes but not the ghoulish smile curling his thin lips, the wizened flesh like that of a mummified corpse stretching to accommodate the twisting of facial features. He stood apart from the four-man firing squad, arms folded neatly behind his back.

As his gaolers took him through the archway that led into the yard, Darian saw the rest of his court. Shiller, of course, an eager look in his eyes, a heavy cloak slung across his broad frame to ward off the weather. Raindrops plinked tunefully against his helmet. Colonel Grussman, too. A ninth generation of the royal house of Ermantine wouldn’t have wanted to sully his hands with a deg’s execution. Good form must be observed, however. Two officers in addition to witness the deed, Isaac Shiller doubtless first to volunteer for the assignment. His second had yet to arrive, an irritation the captain did not possess the decorum or self-awareness to hide. He fidgeted, rising up and down on the balls of his feet, flipping the catch of his pocket chrono in a vain attempt to make the hands turn faster.

By the time the other witness marched through the archway, Darian had been pushed onto his knees with his head down. They left him shackled, the metal biting into already red-raw skin. He glanced up through lank strands of hair, the rain grown heavier and running in rivulets down his nose. Captain Ione Aramis of the 86th. Fifth generation. A relatively young house, matriarchal. Her grim expression suggested she had no desire to be here or let this draw out. Darian could not blame her. Nor did he.

Shiller’s wide-eyed expression suggested he had not been expecting her.

The court of execution assembled, Commissar Eythor began the remarks of condemnation.

‘We are brought here to this place of judgement in accordance with the tenets of Militarum law and Commissarial justice,’ he said, voice like a dry breath escaping a corpse. ‘In accordance with the articles of Volponian military conduct, the accused has been found guilty of larceny and the impersonation of a soldier of the Imperium. The sentence is death by firing squad.’

Rough hands pulled Darian to his feet, ushering him firmly to a worn wooden post, the only feature in the barren muster yard. He saw other figures watching him from across the way. A pair of Agrians – a female officer, the one he had seen at the Quarter in Ankishburg, and a hulking cossack. Purplish bruising covered his face like a rash of birthmarks, and half-sewn cuts would leave scars. They didn’t bother to hide but stood in the open, their feelings inscrutable. A glance at the wooden post before he was turned and tethered to it revealed fresh burn marks, and Darian wondered who else had been executed that morning.

He should rail against it, shout indignant protests at the injustice, but he knew Volpone and he knew the men who cleaved to an antiquated code made to keep serfs in their place. Darian had stepped out of his, and his temerity would be severely punished.

‘Have you anything to say before sentence is carried out?’

Four troopers wearing visored helms and in full regalia stood to attention, their weapons shouldered, poised to be readied then fired. Darian stared at them, examining the instrument of his death.

‘I serve the Emperor, and meet Him with honour.’

Shiller snarled. ‘You have no honour, deg.’ He looked at Eythor. ‘Be on with it.’

Eythor gave a slow nod. He signalled to the executioners who snapped their lasrifles into firing positions, the movement practised and as one. Four priming capacitors sounded in unison, a shrilling chorus escalating towards a lethal crescendo. Crimson beam energy coalesced down the barrels, four sparks of light preparing to emit.

They took aim.

Darian closed his eyes, and thought of Lenna. I am His worthy servant…

‘Wait!’ a stentorian voice rang out, and when the prophesied death did not come Darian opened his eyes.

Major Regara had entered the yard, clutching a roll of parchment. He had come alone but in a hurry, judging by his pained expression and reddened face. He exchanged the briefest of nods with Aramis.

‘Explain yourself, Regara,’ Grussman demanded. ‘Sentence is imminent.’

‘Read it, colonel…’ He held out the parchment, which the colonel took with a displeased glance and proceeded to read after he had broken the wax seal. He hesitated just before unfurling it, noting something significant on the seal, but it was deftly done and scarcely noticed.

Silence fell as the colonel digested every word, Shiller growing more agitated by the second but powerless to intervene. When Grussman had finished, he read the letter again and looked up. He had paled in the cold weather, a stiffening of his posture that had grown so taut his spine looked ready to snap.

‘Is this everything?’ he asked.

Regara nodded. ‘Everything he gave me.’

‘This is impossible.’

‘I heard it from the general’s lips himself. His signature confirms it.’

‘But… his son?’

Regara nodded.

Darian felt struck, a sudden light-headedness making him glad he was bound. Thoughts spiralled off, only to return and cascade into one another.

His son.

Grussman ruminated, as if chewing at some old piece of food recently dislodged that he didn’t like the taste of.

‘Cut him loose,’ he said curtly, as Darian’s mind reeled, and stalked from the assembly yard without another word.

An old shrine, like those often found at a roadside, stood in the lee of a gnarled Ankish oak. A winged statue of a primarch was its only feature, a ring of candles arrayed around it, worn down to the nubs, their wicks extinguished. It was far from the main camp, right at the edge. Culcis had only found it because a few of the troopers he had questioned had told him they had used it themselves. A place of quiet reflection, solace for the mind.

One can never know the travails of others. It is seldom obvious in a look or a word. Such things are hidden, because they are made thus. Weakness is a form of heresy to some, a failing to be papered over and false resolve painted atop. Layer upon layer of denial, a dam against the horrors.

So when Culcis looked up and saw the stout branch and its burden, he wondered at what horrors the dam had held back and why it had broken so thoroughly.

A man had died tonight, but not in the executioner’s yard. He had died here, alone and in the shadows, hanging by the neck from a gnarled Ankish oak.

What horrors? Culcis thought, looking at the fear etched so profoundly on Archivald Brandreth’s lifeless face.

TWENTY-TWO

Darian sat on a bench in an old grain house, eyeing the dusty floor, his hands down by his sides. They had taken him here after his reprieve and left him, doubtless trying to decide what to do with him. He was alone, a flickering lumen-lamp on a table the only light source, the darkness a blanket across his thoughts.

He barely registered the knock against the half-open door when it came, a crisp clear rap and a silhouette suddenly standing in the archway.

‘Son…’

For a moment, Darian dared believe his father, the great and vaunted general of the Volpone, Horator De Nesk Deviers himself, had come to explain his newfound heritage and answer the myriad questions swirling in his mind like a gas grenade.

But it wasn’t him, and the speaker realised Darian’s disappointment.

‘Hanmar,’ he said, canting his head by way of apology. Darian recognised him from the barrack house, an olive-skinned man, possibly from the Punab region of northern Volpone, with a dancer’s poise. He brandished a neatly folded uniform in his arms. ‘Brought you some clothes.’

Belatedly, Darian realised he must look something of a state, clad in little better than sodden and dirt-encrusted rags.

‘Thank you,’ he said, accepting the gift.

‘There’s a decent pair of boots too,’ Hanmar added with a glance at Darian’s mud-black bare feet. ‘Should fit well enough.’

‘Why is this happening?’ asked Darian. ‘Why am I here and not dead?’

‘Your father…’ Hanmar ventured awkwardly. ‘I thought you knew… that they had told–’

‘They did. I don’t understand, though.’ The clothes sat on the bench untouched, the boots on the floor next to his cold feet.

‘I’m not sure I am the best person to provide an answer. I can try to find the lieutenant, he’ll–’

‘My mother…’ Darian began, ‘she never told me about him. Never said. She was a camp follower, a… I think the polite term is courtesan. I knew what she did. What she had to do to keep us alive. I never judged her for it. I loved her. But I wished she could have told me, said something.’

‘I’m sure she would have wanted to. Were you young when she died?’

Darian nodded. ‘Her name was Meriss Armitage. A lowborn daughter of a lowborn man. I never knew my grandfather but I knew he had little, just as we had little. She got sick, an illness of the blood,’ said Darian, his gaze drifting back to the haze of pre-adolescence. ‘I remember the sisters of the chapel taking me away through dingy corridors that smelled of counterseptic and death. I think I knew then, what was going to happen. That I would be left alone. I still feel alone.’

‘I can’t speak to any of that,’ said Hanmar, ‘but I do know Lieutenant Culcis and that he is a good man. And if he vouches for you then that is good enough for me, and it’s good enough for Greiss, and for Dresk and Rake. We’ll take you in. I know what it’s like being an outsider.’

‘And what if I’m rejected, if I have no place amongst you or my own kind? What then?’

‘Some will,’ said Hanmar, frankly but not unkindly. ‘They won’t want to see a lowborn wearing that uniform or carrying a lasgun. Some may even hate you because of what you represent to them, but I promise you this now, if you fight for us, embrace us as your brothers, then we will do the same and you will never be alone again.’

Darian nodded, tears in his eyes, and looked at the bundle of clothes.

Hanmar unhooked a scabbard from his belt. It was ornate, well made, an antique. ‘See this…’ he said, and edged out the blade a few inches. The silver plating shimmered in the light, refulgent with tongues of captured flame. ‘This sword is an heirloom. It has been in my family for generations, handed down always to the eldest son. I have a large family back in the Punab, I’m here fighting for them. And I had six older brothers, all dead. This blade came back from the war, and they did not. I had hoped to be a scholar, but I knew when I set eyes upon this sword that it was mine by birthright, and that I had no choice but to join the tithe and the Crusade.

‘I left my home, my family, everything I knew. Forever. I felt alone, but I found a brotherhood, and so will you. We’re all orphans here, Darian, complicated or not, and we fight for each other. For everything we hold dear,’ he said, reverently sheathing the blade and reattaching the scabbard to his belt. ‘This reminds me of who I am and why I am here. For his own reasons, your father has spared your life. You can question that or you can use it.’ He smiled, warmly and compassionately. ‘Now, get dressed. You’re supposed to report to the drill-master for basic training. You wanted to fight, you’re going to get your chance.’

Hanmar left, leaving Darian in contemplative silence.

For years, he had known his place. Even though he railed against it sometimes, and looked on the Royals with envious eyes, at least he knew his part and how to play it. No more. The ground had shifted, his once firm footing teetering at the edge of a precipice into the unknown, a hundred or more questions the fog obscuring his path.

But Hanmar was right. He could either let those questions devour him from the inside out or he could use the second chance he had been given.

I want to fight.

Darian got to his feet and started to strip away his old clothes like a skin that no longer truly fit.

Much later they moved through a low mist that clung to the ground like sulphur. Ahead, a forest of shorn trunks, the trees beheaded in some cataclysmic blast from earlier in the war. Stumps remained, hefty and fire-blackened, rows upon rows of them.

Darian took position behind one, the shattered old oaks large enough to hide a fire-team if they crouched. He kept his head low, lasrifle pressed up against his chest, listening in the eerie twilight. The air smelled of churned earth and loam, with an overly ripe aroma of wet mulch and leafy matter that made him feel sick. He thought about reaching for the rebreather hung around his neck but none of the other soldiers wore theirs so he held off, wanting to fit in.

‘A little peaky there, private…’ said Rake, a playful tone in his low voice, his cousin Dresk not two steps behind, a heavy stubber slung over his shoulder like a piece of swaddled lumber.

Hanmar slid in beside them, a comradely glance in Darian’s direction. His three chevrons marked him as acting sergeant in Greiss’ absence. Four days in the medicae and he was still not fit to carry a rifle, despite the lieutenant’s assertions that he would make him, broken fingers or not. This Darian had learned in the Chimera’s troop hold in the long transit through Mireland.

The convoy had managed sixteen miles through mud and swamp before they had reached the dead forest, the sundered boles too wide and too thick for the Pardus to cross. A Centaur support tank had attempted to uproot a stump with a dozer blade and tow cables but it was slow, ineffective work. Sappers had been deployed instead, shoulders slung with axes and blasting charges to remove the hindrance. Godsword effectively covered any approach, the Martians having restored and re-blessed the ancient weapon back to function, though visibility was greatly obscured so any assurances the rank and file drew from that were minimal. There had been no cause to use it, though: every outpost, every settlement the forward scouts had found was either abandoned or destroyed.

‘They are pulling out,’ Grussman had said, an overhead conversation between officers around a map table in the middle of a scratch camp ten miles into Mireland. ‘The bastards… we have them on the run.’

Not everyone agreed with that assessment. Dissent came from eyes and exchanged looks, not mouths, but Darian had seen it all the same as he had passed the officers returning to their regiments after the briefing, him snapping crisp salutes at every gaze that fell his way.

They recognised him, or some did. Those that bothered to look. Disdain, respect, cool disregard all came his way. A few mistakenly still thought he was Unsworth, who had raised the banner at the victory of Lodden and become a hero. Darian didn’t feel heroic, he was just relieved to be alive and in a uniform. He felt cold and wet as the mist sank into his bones.

‘The stench…’ he said, grimacing. ‘What is it?’

‘War,’ said Rake glibly, hefting the ammo box he carried onto his shoulder to keep it from the groundwater amassing underfoot. ‘That’s how it smells. Like death and shit.’

‘Thick enough to chew, is it not?’ said Hanmar with a smile, the olive-skinned corpsman ever urbane even in this wretched swamp. ‘It will be worse further in.’ He patted his rebreather mask. ‘Then you’ll need this. You have been appropriately oriented in its use?’

Darian wasn’t sure if ‘appropriately’ was the right word. His training had been cursory and hasty from the regimental drill-master but he felt he had retained most of it. In truth, he had always felt born to this, to soldiering, to war, and in the last few days that had turned out to be accurate. He had yet to meet his ‘father’, though he suspected he had encountered him without his knowledge at the time, the memory of the mysterious visitor to his cell returning often during the night hours. Rumours persisted of the general’s failing health, many asserting a shrapnel injury from the tragedy in the agora had laid him low and catapulted Colonel Grussman to overall command. Others suggested a heart attack. In either case, he was not on the field and received no visitors, nor asked for any.

His absence left a curious hole in Darian, one he still wasn’t sure how he felt about.

‘On Monthax, second tour for the Fiftieth, we fought for six straight days in dense jungle,’ said Dresk, his voice reasserting the present. ‘Mud and filth and undergrowth, like wading through wire. Lagoons as far as the eye could see. Foul, brackish waters. Insects as large as your hand and hungry as the hells. Mean bastards. Remember that, cousin?’

‘I thought my feet would never be dry again. Air that tasted of rank sweat, worse than Greiss after a long march, so thick it actually shimmered, and heat like a heavy cloak.’

‘As I recall your complaints were vociferous, Rake.’ Culcis crept back into formation, having slipped out to confer with Regara and command, who occupied a refused position, sixty feet from the line. He patted Darian on the shoulder. ‘You’ll adapt. It’s the Guard way.’

Darian nodded, only slightly reassured. He liked the lieutenant. Culcis had a firm, fair manner, just as Hanmar had intimated. A second son of an esteemed house, he was known for his handsome looks and good humour but demonstrated strong leadership and tactical acumen that Darian had come to respect in his short tenure as a soldier.

Not everyone fostered the same opinion. Several dirty looks had come their way from the Agrian sappers they had been charged to protect as they cleared a path for the tanks, directed, Darian was sure, towards Culcis.

Rake and Dresk had spoken of it a little, the two troopers loose-tongued especially after a few glasses of vresk. A feud, they had said, a slight not forgotten, related to a dead Agrian hetman called Uzra that Culcis had locked horns with on a couple of occasions. The grudge festered.

A bird call arrested further introspection, echoing down the line, and saw Culcis give the order to advance. Two platoons moved as one, their pace steady but unhurried, put at ease by the all-clear from the forward scouts.

Darian felt far from easy, though, as he waded deeper into the mire, the mist thickening around him.

The Ohrek ranged ahead, disappearing into the banks of mist as the Volpone followed in their wake. As soon as he had set up sentries, Culcis issued commencement orders to the Agrians and a horde of labour gangs descended with pickaxes, det cord and sticks of explosive. They worked efficiently within the guard cordon established by the Volpone, all eyes outwards as the Diggers toiled in the swamp heat.

Almost all. A pair of cossacks, two he recognised from the golova’s retinue, sent their ire his way. He would speak to Regara about it when he had the chance but command was stretched after Brandreth’s untimely death. His agonised face still haunted Culcis, like so many other dreams of darkness he had accrued. A surfeit of horrors he would gladly be rid of.

He rubbed at his leg, the injury sustained to the wirewolves – for he could not think of the creatures dispassionately enough to refer to them as ‘K-weapons’ – acting up in the damp. A faint chuckle passed his lips. In idolising Regara, he had hoped to be like him; suffering from a similar injury had not been what he had in mind.

A round of charges went off, splitting a wide tranche of stumps for the axemen to rend. Steel plating followed, evened out with sandbags underneath, and so a makeshift roadway formed. A hetman whistled, signalling his approval of the work, and the Pardus vanguard rolled out.

They moved slowly and ponderously, their weapons turning in lazy arcs, the tankers jutting from the turret hatches wary and quiet. A few chewed on thick cigars and puffed aromatic smoke that only partly obscured the reek of the forest. Colonel Ganza led them out, barrel chest out-thrust as he surveyed the land ahead like a fearless explorer bound for the unknown. He nodded to Culcis in passing, a king upon his war altar, deigning to acknowledge his subjects. Let him feel superior; his most recent meaningful action had been retreat.

Culcis saluted him anyway, in concession to his rank.

The Agrians had almost finished. Culcis engaged comms.

‘Ghanu…’

A momentary bout of static preceded the master sergeant’s voice on the other end of the vox.

‘Nothing but mist, my friend.’

‘Is there an end to it?’

‘I hope so, I can no longer feel my feet.’

‘I have spare boots in the Chimera… About three miles back.’

‘I think your boots might be a little small for me, eh? Though your officer’s cap would be plenty big enough. Mine is leaking.’

‘Pity, I’m already using it.’

‘Perhaps we can share it, lieutenant? It is… how did you put it? Camaraderie.’

Culcis gave a wry smile. ‘A lofty word for a shared hat. I tell you what, Ohrek, I’ll give you the name of my haberdasher when we’re both back at camp.’

‘I swear if you had just insulted me, I would not know.’

Culcis laughed, finding solace in Ghanu’s good humour, but felt Shiller’s eyes as the captain prowled the back of the guard cordon.

‘Hurry it along, lieutenant. You can fraternise with the commoners when we’re out of this bloody swamp.’

Culcis cut the vox, lingering only long enough to confirm his platoons would hold until the Ohrek had scouted ahead.

‘They’re here, you know, Culcis,’ said Shiller, having moved close enough for the smell of his alcohol breath to pervade. ‘The Pact. A damn battalion somewhere in these woods.’ He stared into the mist as if trying to find them.

‘It’s a large region. Our paths might not cross, captain.’

‘Like two leviathans drifting through the same ocean?’ Shiller said, quoting a line of Volpone poetry by Stirk, his voice briefly faraway as if softened by remembrance.

It was a slim hope, thought Culcis, lost in his own thoughts then, and the road ahead was long.

The gloaming made shadows of men. Even the tanks looked like slow-moving rocks, grinding laboriously through a river of mist.

Regara’s gaze found Darian amongst the throngs of troops moving carefully through the sundered forest.

A son of an esteemed royal of Volpone, the Byzamund House of Konisburg no less. It beggared belief, but the proof of it was before him in Volpone grey, a Praxis-pattern lasgun in his hands. It had stirred grievances, the pardoning and subsequent commission, and not least of those was Grussman’s, who had always hated the degs but was loyal to Deviers. It had tied him in knots, and still did. He masked it with duty, devotion to his newly attained rank and position. A blunt instrument determined to beat the war into submission.

That thought terrified Regara more than any wirewolf or Traitor Astartes.

‘How many miles, major?’

Regara turned at the naming of his rank, a scowl on his face at the slow progress of the army. ‘Two, sir.’

He had taken to calling Grussman ‘sir’, for though Regara despised him and recent engagements with the man had not persuaded him otherwise, he would observe the appropriate manner and measure of respect. His breeding demanded nothing less. They stood in close proximity, in the back of a command Salamander, peering out over the armoured lip of the forward glacis.

‘Heathens,’ Grussman cursed under his breath. ‘Lackwit oafs. Commissar,’ he snapped at Eythor, the desiccated corpse of a man turning towards the enquiry, ‘muster the discipline masters. Let’s put the lash to them, see if that doesn’t hurry things along.’

‘Whipping the Agrians will only antagonise them,’ said Regara.

Grussman raised an imperious brow, but Regara wasn’t about to give him another sir. One was more than enough. Nonetheless, the colonel still expected an answer.

‘Our alliance with the natives is thread-thin as it is. We need them onside, and willing.’

Grussman was about to object when Rensaint interceded. ‘I’ve observed these people, general. They are proud and would not take well to humiliation.’

‘Very well,’ Grussman uttered at length, a slight sneer stretching and deforming the scar across his cheek, earned in the agora from the frag grenade that had killed over twenty men and injured dozens. ‘How else to stir them, I wonder…’

Regara had yet to ask Rensaint what he knew of the attacker, but apparently the man had got loose and begun babbling before the killing started.

Sentiwa mai.

It was not, to the knowledge of the lex-savants at least, one of the Archonate languages or dialects but then they knew so little of it, and understood even less, that this was hardly a definitive statement. Something had overcome the Scion, broken him, and his death had sent several others to the morgue.

‘Regara,’ said Grussman, a cruel smile turning his features again as an idea formed, ‘I want you in an advance post, alongside the troops.’ His eyes widened with sadistic amusement, knowing how the damp and moisture pained the major’s injured leg. ‘Keep order. You have a way with the common born and their like, and even the Diggers respect rank. Inspire them.’

Regara saluted his assent, his expression studiedly neutral as he was about to climb down. An adjutant made to follow but Grussman’s words stopped him.

‘The corporal. I will have use for him.’

‘As you wish, sir,’ Regara replied, exchanging a meaningful glance with Rensaint. He’s all yours now…

‘Remarkable, isn’t it…’ uttered Grussman, loud enough for the major to hear as he departed, ‘how a deg can become a gentleman and escape a firing squad but for a lucky chance. I wonder,’ he continued, his voice slowly fading as Regara got further away, ‘if the position could be reversed?’

Tugging his collar up around his neck, Regara strode into the forest and only breathed again when his hand had left the hilt of his sabre.

TWENTY-THREE

The Valkyrie flew with engines baffled, running dark and staying just above the cloud layer like a night bird gliding on the wing.

Hauptmann had rolled back the side hatch, clipping in to prevent any mishap should the aircraft need to bank or manoeuvre suddenly. But the skies were clear, the V’heduak patrolling elsewhere or having quit to some other part of the island entirely. It was a mercy, for the Archonate air cadre were ruthless and tenacious.

He closed his eyes, letting the wind buffet him and fill his senses with white noise, a voiceless thunder that smothered his thoughts and left his mind a peaceful blank slate. No screams, no smell of burning… at least for a while. His hand found the clutch of parchments in his uniform pocket and the dead returned, as if summoned by the ink on paper that told of their ending and offered hollow consolation. Old feelings of loss resurfaced, like bodies left overlong in a river, bloated with regret.

The crumpled pict wormed its way into his gloved hand without Hauptmann realising, and he thought of Chari, her hair swept back on a frontier wind, their son cradled in her tanned arms.

‘I drink…’ said a voice from the hold interior, the Tunnel-Rat, 19th Talpa. Hauptmann thought his name was Pikk or Pakk or something like that. Remarkably, he wore a lieutenant’s badges and Hauptmann wondered briefly if he had stolen the ragged jacket to which they were pinned.

‘I beg your pardon?’

The Talpa had a greasy flask in his cloth-wrapped mitts. A sloshing emanated from within, the liquid redolent of fyceline.

Hauptmann politely refused.

‘Good for forgetting,’ said the Talpa, scratching at the tattoo on his cheek, a mournful shadow passing across his dirty face.

And blindness… thought Hauptmann but kept that to himself, smiling instead.

‘Or I smoke the kappa.’ He bared liquorice-black teeth.

Neither vice sounded particularly appealing. Hauptmann spared a quick glance to Lennox, hoping for moral support, but the sniper had his feet up on a bench and was snoozing peacefully, an easy smile on his face. Oh to be young, and less burdened. He showed the Talpa his pict.

‘My family,’ he said.

The Talpa stared at the faded image for a long time, eventually nodding. ‘’Tis good,’ he said.

‘How so?’

‘That you are here and they are not. No place for a family, this war.’

Hauptmann found no argument there, but it didn’t ease his grief. A grubby hand hastily wiped on grubbier fatigues came his way.

‘Pukk,’ uttered the Talpa.

‘Hauptmann,’ Hauptmann replied.

The Talpa smirked. ‘Funny name…’ and swilled back his illicit grog.

It took six more hours to find the loc-beacon, one of the First Sons poring over the signal returns on a radar unit that turned his face the colour of sweaty emerald.

‘Here!’ he said curtly, his counterpart Scion in charcoal and black sitting up and hurrying over to the dulcet screen.

Hauptmann had learned their names were Zarek and Venetor. Apart from their hair, one fair, the other dark, they could have been forged from the same mould, their ruthless edges left untrimmed. There was a potent physicality to both men, even more so than the Bluebloods, who had thoroughbred bodies like slabs of perfectly wrought muscle. This wasn’t breeding though, it was grown, actually crafted. Hauptmann could almost smell the stimm sweat wafting off them. They had not elucidated about rank, or much else really, beyond the fact that Zarek was in charge of the operation and Venetor his second-in-command.

The remainder of the seven-man team was made up of a pair of Slokans in warm crimson and silver carapace armour. These two didn’t speak much at all, though happily conversed in their own tongue, often sharing a joke that more than once Hauptmann had thought was at his or the Talpa’s expense.

‘Confirm reading…’ said Zarek, his chiselled face rendered like green marble in the radar light. The ping from the unit perpetuated, getting steadily louder.

Venetor corroborated the loc-ident and nodded, his eyes fierce and exultant.

‘Throne, we have him.’ Zarek turned his cold eyes on the others. Even Lennox was stirring. ‘Arm up and be ready. We move as soon as we’re down.’

It appeared they had found Lieutenant Sakker.

Eddies of swirling dust obscured the departing Valkyrie as the troopers marched out.

The First Sons took point, Zarek out front, a Tempestus volley gun held in a low grip. Venetor was at his shoulder, clutching a hellgun. They moved fast and smooth through the rugged terrain, almost like automata, and further dehumanised by their rebreather and visor-masked helmets.

Hauptmann’s own rebreather hung around his neck, the sergeant preferring a scarf to ward off the grit on account of it feeling less claustrophobic. A breeze had kicked up from somewhere, its katabatic zephyrs sending dust in all directions like a lazy sandstorm. It chafed but was otherwise no more than a mild irritant.

He coughed, surprised to find a little blood flecked on the edge of his scarf.

‘Everything all right, sir?’

Hauptmann nodded to Lennox, the lad a few feet behind him and to his right.

‘Must’ve bit my lip.’

Lennox had brought his sniper rifle, but it was piss-all use on the move and in these conditions so it remained slung across his shoulder, a combat shotgun favoured instead. Pukk roamed the other side, his position similarly refused. He had an axe, a pick hooked to his belt, and a shit-shovel of a lascarbine on a strap that he carried one-handed. Possessing neither rebreather nor scarf, he kept his head low against the wind.

Rearguard was the two Slokans, both trailing crimson cloaks that had yellowed at the edges from the dirt, the heavy-armoured bastards like small tanks and wielding siege-grade autoguns in their gauntleted fists. Each man wore a ‘fright mask’, a snarling death-visage meant to inspire fear. They did not look so fearsome slogging through the dirt in their ornate panoply.

A hand signal arrested the march abruptly, Zarek’s clenched fist apparent to all.

He gestured ahead, a hand just above his eyes in a silent instruction to ‘look’. It took a moment, Hauptmann peering into the mustard haze, just the faint song of the wind lamenting in his ears, and then a structure began to appear. An outline at first, but then more detail as he discerned architectural characteristics from mere silhouette.

An old fort. It had dilapidated crenellations, the merlons and embrasures of the walls sunken down to rubble in places in spills of tired, old rock. Despite the disrepair, it appeared solid, a combination of stone and metal, bleached starkly by the elements. No outer wall, no gate, just a roundish tower jutting from the earth like a sword.

No sentries either.

‘Looks deserted,’ uttered one of the Slokans, a brutish sort, dark eyes glittering behind the anonymity of his mask. The voice came out distorted, a feral resonance worsened by the inbuilt breather. He and his compatriot had moved up from the back ranks to stand upon the edge of the shallow defile that looked down on the fort like all the rest.

Zarek stared a moment longer, a handheld auspex scanner pinging softly, before turning to Hauptmann.

‘Pardus Mechanised is a scout unit, isn’t it?’

Hauptmann nodded. ‘Amongst other things.’

‘Not any more,’ said Zarek, and it took all of Hauptmann’s resolve not to strike him. ‘I need you to reconnoitre that fort.’

‘Draw out any trap or sentries, you mean.’

‘Call it what you will, soldier.’

‘That’s sergeant-cavalier,’ Hauptmann replied indignantly.

‘Not here it isn’t.’ He gestured for the Pardus to move out.

Hauptmann obliged; it was either that or kill him. Pukk started after him, head low against the wind.

‘Where are you going?’ asked Zarek, but he didn’t intervene.

‘Stretch my legs…’ He looked around the barren wastes. ‘Nice weather for a walk,’ he said, and followed Hauptmann into the defile.

‘Stay close,’ Hauptmann murmured, Pukk trailing behind him, and glanced up to the edge of the defile. The First Sons and Slokans had spread out across the ridgeline but a sniper sight watched every step the scouts took, Lennox waiting patiently at the other end of the scope. Hauptmann gave a small nod to his friend and countryman. That easy smile again in return.

‘You think it’s deserted?’ asked the Talpa.

‘No, I do not.’

They trudged on. The drifts had gathered here, collecting in shallows of dust and grit that rode up to the ankle as Hauptmann approached the fort. A round wall presented itself, an ironbound door the only entrance. It wasn’t sealed, or even properly shut, and banged gently on its frame, hinges creaking like scraped piano wire.

He nudged it with his boot, Pukk observing keenly and as silent as a shadow. He nodded to Hauptmann, his readiness unspoken.

No pressure plate, no trigger cord…

The door opened, revealing an unadorned circular chamber and a lozenge-shaped metal hatch in the ground. Faint, ambient light caught its edges. The hatch led down. And it was sealed.

Hauptmann used the vox. ‘Bring blasting charges.’

A few minutes later and everyone stood around the hatch, a few feet back, hugging the edges of the room – with the exception of Venetor, who was rigging a line of det cord. A bandolier of krak grenades hung off his body as he stooped but they wanted the hatch breached, not the fort collapsing.

He scurried back, eyes on the group, and counted down with his fingers.

Three…

Two…

One.

A plosive spurt and the hatch fell loose, shorn from its frame. After a few seconds it hit the ground below, the noisy clang echoing back up a narrow shaft.

Zarek’s stablight strafed the darkness, revealing a ladder leading down to a grated deck plate and nothing else. He waited, listening until long after the echo had faded.

Still nothing.

Venetor had the auspex now, its signal return silenced but an urgent screen pulse indicating the loc-beacon’s proximity. He gave a shallow nod.

The Slokans went first, heavy armour to the fore, autoguns slung on their backs as they descended rung by painstaking rung. It took over twenty minutes for everyone to traverse the ladder. Hauptmann arrived second last, just ahead of Lennox, who was a few feet further up the shaft as the sergeant-cavalier’s boots touched metal.

What became immediately apparent was how much larger the footprint below was compared to that above, as a vast subterranean chamber spilled out into seemingly endless darkness.

‘Cold…’ hissed one of the Slokans, breath pluming.

Stablights ventured outwards, their grainy beams criss-crossing and overlapping in a gulf of blackness. Eventually one found a wall, the condensation on it shining like glacial ice.

They left Lennox at the ladder, guarding the only known egress, and he gave Hauptmann a look as the sergeant-cavalier glanced over his shoulder as he was departing.

Watch yourself, it said.

Using the wall, the rest followed the periphery of the chamber but when they found nothing it became obvious they needed to move inwards. After several more feet, Venetor checked the auspex. The dull light barely lit the screen, its soft pulse quickening like a heartbeat in cardiac arrest. Venetor panned the device but static rippled across its face, the depth fouling the signal until it cut out completely.

Deeper in and the darkness began to feel almost residual, its soft tendrils clinging, like it was darker than it should be or the stablights were losing power, but Hauptmann thought it just a quirk of the chamber, which was metal throughout like a ship’s cargo hold… or a meat locker.

They reached the centre, and it felt pretty far from where they had started. Hauptmann assumed they must have passed a column or support because he had lost sight of Lennox.

‘Guns up…’ whispered Zarek, and the company obeyed as one, a flurry of ineffectual stablights preceding their advance. The light barely reached ten feet. One of the Slokans rapped his lamp’s casing but Venetor hissed a warning and he stopped. The beam flickered, as if passing through a patch of interference, but stayed on.

Old burn marks seared the metal underfoot, which rose up in a wide and expansive platform.

‘How big is this place?’ Hauptmann heard a Slokan murmur. He had been wondering the same thing, and tried Lennox on the vox but the signal was dead. He made this known to the Scions, who exchanged a stern glance with each other.

‘I saw no Valkyrie in the vicinity,’ offered Venetor, still baffled at the blank auspex. ‘Maybe Sakker shed his loc-beacon and he isn’t here?’

He sounded worried, which sent a chill through Hauptmann and an urge to bolt that he fought down. Zarek stared wide-eyed, caught on the threshold between decisions, before moving them onwards.

Streaks and blemishes on the metal continued, but appeared too thick to be made by fire. Pukk stopped to run his finger through one. It came back dark and glistening faintly.

‘Sange…’ he said, sniffing fervently like a rat sensing danger.

The air grew colder, freighted with a wet copper odour.

They came upon the first of the machines shortly after. Disused, dormant, like nothing Hauptmann had ever seen. Not Mechanicus. Edged and spiked, a metal frame with straps and articulated limbs. Like a torture rack.

Sakker was bound in one. Bloodless, emaciated, he had the stillness of the dead. His neck had been arched back, a studded iron circlet across the forehead preventing movement. Both arms were strapped down too, and the ankles. Two metal limbs extended from the back of the machine and ended in three articulated talons that attached to Sakker’s eye, pinning the lid open.

Venetor had been about to move in, when Zarek put an arm across him. He was looking at the ground, his lamp straying to something daubed on the deck plate.

Sentiwa mai.

Or, more precisely, Ssentiw a ma I.

An outstretched hand lingered at the light’s penumbra. Hauptmann swept his lamp over and revealed another of Sakker’s men, dead, stripped back to fatigues and vest. His head had lolled on the side to reveal over-wide eyes that would never close. The rest of the missing Scions lingered nearby, trapped in the machines, heads back, eyes held open, looking upwards.

Pukk craned his neck, and Hauptmann followed the Talpa’s gaze and found his own face staring back at him.

A mirror ceiling arched above them. Huge, vaulted. It was made up of shards, mismatched flects of glass fused together into a patchwork mosaic.

Ssentiw a ma I.

‘I am a witness,’ said one of the Slokans, the truth of the message revealed in reflection.

A witness to what? thought Hauptmann.

‘To the all and the everything,’ the darkness answered.

TWENTY-FOUR

Vauga, the Imperium called him.

Regara had read the man’s file, thin as it was. A damogaur, he had a reputation for sadism and ritualistic murder. Not uncommon amongst the Pacted, but Vauga also registered on the Assignment, though his actual rating on the Morianic scale had been redacted by the Ordos. According to Militarum intelligence, he had occultist ties to a minor Sanguinary faction called the Tongues of Tcharesh and was allegedly a former student of Heritor Asphodel, or a petty imitator. Claims differed on that part. Though the late magister had been slain during the Verghast conflict over twenty years ago, a war in which the Bluebloods had played a significant role, men like Vauga ensured his legacy endured.

Vauga had come to Gnostes and his army stood between the Volpone and passage through Mireland.

And the first Regara knew of it was the red swathe.

It crept under the mist, a veil beneath a veil, heavy at first then rising as a bloody fog. It unfurled across the army with eager virulence like rippling red fabric. An Ohrek died first, choking on the poison before he could lift his mask. He fell back as if shot, his death caught at the edge of Regara’s magnocular lens.

The major turned, only quick enough to see the scout’s splayed fingers swallowed by the swathe. Others followed, gurgling and rasping their last breaths, a dozen or more by Regara’s count, before the order sang out.

‘Masks! Masks!’

It resonated through the ranks, men dispersed amongst the severed trunks relaying fear down the line as sure as any contagion. A gas attack, that insidious horror and the promise of an ignominious death. Fingers trembled, some slipped…

Regara pulled on his rebreather and heard the quickening of his fear rebounded back at him through its plastek confines. Already stifling in the sundered forest, it only grew worse behind the partially fogged lenses he now looked through.

He raised Culcis on the internal vox.

‘Sound off, lieutenant.’

‘Vox good. Vox good, sir.’

It came back crisp, close. That was something at least. He reached the platoon, took command. Shiller had third and fourth platoon and huffed across the closed-system vox, slurring his vowels.

‘Bloody gas, the blackguards.’

Regara’s response was curt, as it needed to be. ‘Captain, signal the advance.’

A horn blast rang out, Shiller’s breath filtered through a facial vent. Then two more. Then they were moving to engage, quickly adapting from guard to assault positions. The well-drilled Volpone doing what they did best.

The Agrians fell into disarray, many fleeing the gas attack, their masks standard-issue and only partially effective. A few strays collided with the Volpone units, who barged them aside, putting their well-nourished physiques to harsh effect. Others rallied, a handful of cossacks and their golova maintaining order. In either case, the Diggers were in retreat.

Regara pushed on, unwilling to be distracted. His only instinct was to push forwards, and engage. The world had feathered around the edges, sound and light dictated by rebreather mask, perception shrunk to a pair of ocular lenses and the death rattles of men too slow or too ignorant in the face of danger.

He couldn’t find the enemy at first, the air was too thick, too red.

Las-fire whipped out, ending all that. Sporadic at first, it chimed against the armour of the Pardus tanks, leaving burn scars but little else, then intensifying like gentle rain that grew into a deluge, irresistible once it peaked.

Then Regara saw them, edging from the mist, the red swathe parting like some gossamer veil of hell admitting its daemons unto the world. Brutish, scarred, they wore iron helmets and spiked metal cuirasses over oxblood flak armour and uniforms. Grotesks glistened, the faces of old nightmares, anointed with blood. The air had become an eldritch gloaming, soft light lending the Pact’s advance an eerie, unreal quality.

Vanguard forces had engaged, some hand to hand, such was the suddenness and proximity of the attack. Mostly Ohrek and the scout cadres. A few Talpa, the vicious bastards and some plucky Agrians caught on a limb when the attack hit. Cries ululated, dulled and flattened by the crimson fog, like men dying at the bottom of a well or in some half-heard ethereal place abutting reality.

They had to push up and reach the beleaguered vanguard. Consolidate. Fight back.

A stray bead flashed Regara’s shoulder, searing his uniform. He snarled.

‘Return fire!’

Savage light erupted from the Volpone ranks, and the air succumbed to heat and fury. Regara sweltered, the mask sticking to his skin, adhering so tightly he thought it had melted, become part of him. He saw a private wrench off his rebreather, suffocating in his own terror. And then suffocating for real, spewing blood and matter as his organs liquified and his flesh ran like wax. Others wizened, their emaciation evident in the concavity of their cheeks. Reduced to husks before they fell. Every death held a different grim story.

The red swathe funnelled on, crashing like a dread wave against the Militarum forces. A primal hunger drove it, a terrible animus that wanted only suffering and pain. It drank of it, expanding, reaching…

‘Throne, it’s coming for us.’

Regara heard Shiller over the vox, willed him to gather his bloody wits.

‘Fight them!’ he roared, urging on the Bluebloods. ‘Get to the vanguard, form up and make ranks. Fight!’

He didn’t know how many the Pact had but he doubted it was equal to the Volpone and their auxiliaries. The ambush levelled things, but only for a time. Restore order, retaliate with strength and the battle was theirs. Gazing through steamed-up plastek, he saw his rallying point.

The tanks.

The Pardus had closed all hatches, hermetically sealing themselves up in their war machines, but they were strung out, too far ahead of the main forces and vulnerable. A few fired off sponson guns, but the swathe was fouling auto-targeters and most of their shots skewed astray. Turrets boomed, as Ganza fought to make their artillery superiority count, sending spouts of dirt and water pluming. Bodies too.

Out of the fog, another threat. They ran low and fast, like rats. Lighter armoured than the other Pacters. Regara shot at one but it jinked away, as if presciently warned. Metal flashed, serrated and sharp. Scarred hands gripped a grenade. An explosion bloomed, the side of a battle tank blown out in a cascade of smoke and shrapnel. No one staggered out. The crew died in their seats, drowned by the swathe.

Ganza pressed on, his Conqueror trying to forge a firing line, but the road the Agrians had raised was narrow. Tank tracks fouled on mud or ran up against hefty stumps and stalled. It was a mess. A second tank blew. Fuel reserves cooked off. Regara threw a hand up to ward off the sudden flare of light, a powerful blast knocking him onto his back.

He felt a hand grab his forearm and lift. Culcis looked back at him, eyes firm through the dirt-flecked lenses of his mask.

‘To the Pavis,’ grated Regara, still catching his breath. The tanks were being torn apart.

Another explosion lit up the twilight, casting dead faces in monochrome. Long shadows stretched like rubber, only to recoil a few moments later.

Aramis ran through the dark and light, her troops at her heels. She felt every ache anew, every blow she had taken in the ring. Throne, it hurt like the hells to push herself, but if she didn’t then brave men would die. Her platoons ranged across the far left flank, the captain’s hurried route an intercept with the Volpone core. But they were too far out and needed to close.

A few skirmishers roamed this far but they were outriders and soon fell back before determined Imperial opposition. Aramis cut one down that had dared to loiter in her path, slitting them from crotch to crown. Burnt meat tanged the air, muddied through her breather.

A squadron of Sentinels advanced with them, the long-limbed engines better suited to the terrain than the bulkier Pardus engines but not as hardy. A missile struck the chassis of the forward-most walker, turning it to scrap and leaving the dismembered legs standing ponderously bereft of their body. Underslung multi-lasers from the surviving machines stuttered in reply, raking the Pacters and pushing them back. She heard a regimental priest shout a blessing to the Emperor.

Aramis kept pace with the walkers, her breath huffing inside her mask. It was hard going, slogging through the mire, boots splashing, slipping on mud. One man fell, impaled himself on a fallen branch. She didn’t go back or even slow. They had to drive on, consolidate with the core. The ambush had come at the worst moment, as all ambuscades invariably do. The Volpone were strung out, disorientated. Coalesce and they could mount a viable counter-attack. Remain broken up as they were and the enemy would take them piecemeal.

‘Not on my damn watch,’ she growled, huffing through her mask, then louder to her men, ‘Move, move!’

She had eighth and ninth platoon of the 86th, Henessey at her side. Her men shot on the hip, lasguns held low with one hand bracing the stock, chattering on rapid fire. Then she saw the flank of the enemy army revealed before her and the robed magister at its heart, and her objective changed.

She vox-cast orders to all her platoon leaders and sergeants.

‘Priority target in the field, on my marker. Volpone glory!’

Culcis knew these warriors. Bastards, every one. He’d fought them on Titus, and old memories of that war stirred in his gut like rotten oysters.

Blood Pact grenadiers. Jaegans. Each one had a dead man’s trigger, designed for shock and awe. Different by degrees to the more formal military stylings of the Death Brigades, the Jaegans roved in loosely dispersed packs and had more in kind with their ancestral hunter-barbarian forebears than most of the common Pacted. Long-blades for close work, akin to a dirk or trench knife, and a bandolier of grenades. Disorientate, terrify, fall back. Repeat.

Against the Pardus tanks, they would wreak utter havoc.

A Jaegan slipped out of the fog and he nearly missed it. An instinctive shot took the warrior in the throat. He went up like a tripped landmine, broken apart like kindling.

Ten more feet of hoofing through the mud and first and second platoon reached the Pardus. Six more tanks had been destroyed, their hulls agape, the crew within shot or gassed to death. Twenty or more remained in the vanguard, left in train to defend themselves or in the throes of trying to escape. Culcis followed Regara through a graveyard of vehicles, their inner parts spilled from their mortal wounds like organs. Fires lit a false night, redolent with burnt flesh and hair. Risking a glance over his shoulder, he saw Hanmar and the others coming up behind. Even Darian, the lad pale behind murky eye-lenses but his eyes fierce.

‘Protect the tanks,’ bellowed Culcis, his voice muffled even across the vox, ‘then consolidate this position.’

A pack of Jaegans sprang into a side alley made by the flanks of two sundered vehicles, knives out and bloody. Culcis fired off four quick shots, all mortal wounds. Another six made it through and Darian got one, spearing it through the chest with his las-beam. Regara took another, a bolt-shell turning the grenadier’s upper torso to blasted meat. The rest went for the major, having spent their payloads and trying to take out an enemy officer.

They hadn’t reckoned on Hanmar. His antique blade danced like silver light and it was over in a rapid flurry of deft sword strokes. Four dead Jaegans lay piled up around him. Seconds had lapsed, the merest distraction dealt with.

They moved on, sixty men or more weaving between the scorched-black carriages, a hull-down labyrinth of narrow avenues and dead ends of torn metal. Other Jaegans roamed the cluster of tanks too, darting away after delivering their devastating payloads. The Volpone rooted them out, firing snapshots down the false thoroughfares of adjacent vehicle walls.

It took almost fifteen minutes before they cleared out the rest of the enemy grenadiers. A few scattered back to the lines, using the red swathe to their advantage, but the fog was thinning, its integrity decaying. Rake and Dresk chased after them with rounds from the heavy stubber but caught only a handful of stragglers.

‘Really crawling out of the woodwork, major,’ commented Rake, as he slammed another box mag into the heavy stubber’s breech.

‘Like roaches, only uglier,’ added Dresk, his eye pressed along his iron sights.

‘As ugly as Greiss, anyway,’ said Hanmar, and most of the men laughed.

Regara didn’t. Culcis saw his face as severe at hot iron, his gaze searing.

‘A sortie, nothing more,’ he said, though the las-storm had ebbed in recent minutes. ‘The bulk of the enemy are up ahead. We have to push up behind the Pavis.’

A hatch was thrown open, arresting further orders. Ganza leaned out of his Conqueror, face flushed and angry. He spared a glance for the Volpone but the colonel’s blood was up and he bellowed an order to advance on the main army emerging from the fog.

‘Armour forward!’ Chest puffed, chin up, he had an aristocratic sneer to put any Blueblood to shame.

Enough makeshift road had been laid for three tanks abreast and Ganza led the Pavis like he was the point of their armoured spear. He drew and levelled his sword, a fine silver-bladed spatha with a chased gold hilt, evoking the spirit of a cavalry charge of old. Engines roaring, increasing pace, the Conqueror rode hard, its battle cannon thundering in rapid succession. Hefty divots chewed through the Blood Pact ranks, scattering bodies and turning men to mist. Amongst the infantry platoons, stalk tanks roamed, and their pulse lasers lashed at the Pavis armour but found it hardy and near-inviolable.

‘He’ll ride right through them, major.’ Culcis had seen the fury in Ganza’s eyes. The indignation. He was a proud man, and he had been battered for much of this war. Now he yearned to hit back, to clench his mailed fist and smash aside whatever was in his way.

‘Get on his heels, then. We’ll ride the cover the tanks provide, use them to reach the Pact. On them, on them!’

The order rang down the line and companies came together, pushing hard. Slowly, slowly, the Volpone and their allies started to consolidate. Shiller’s horn clarioned, the infantry flooding after the tanks to exploit the imminent break through the Archenemy lines and a moving shield wall.

Culcis ran on, caught in the surging madness.

The Pact held, that was the thing that struck Aramis as she came in on their flank. They occupied a defensive position, a partially raised embankment with a low revetment ringed around it. Heavy shelling had ripped out sections, the craters swiftly filled, the dead either trampled or heaped up like makeshift sandbags. Razor wire glistened, knife-sharp and bitter. Aramis reckoned on at least five hundred men, barring any losses from the Pardus barrage.

Hit the flank at the same time as the core of the army, everyone coming together as one. Overwhelm in one swift assault, that was the plan. She had made good ground, her and her troops. She felt it in the burn of her muscles, the sweat down her back. And there was still that magister to consider.

For now though, her eye was drawn elsewhere as the Pavis came on with ironclad fury. Throne, but Ganza rained down on them like the Nine Devils of Horus, his armoured stallions given their head, voices crying thunder and death.

Yet the Pact still held, dug in but bleeding, weathering the storm. They replied in kind, heavy weapons chugging out rounds. One of the tanks suffered an unlucky hit, a blow to its tracks that turned it sharply and exposed its lighter flank. A collimated beam from a battery of lascannons skewered it and sent fire spitting into the sky from the resulting explosion.

The rest drove on, glory in their hearts. A few stray volleys came her way, and Aramis gave the order to take cover and advance, before her platoons took too much fire.

She was not alone. A lieutenant, Fenk she thought was his name, had two platoons in his charge. Nearly a hundred, and the priests in addition to that. The main thrust moving up behind the armour had five times that. Another hundred or more on the other flank, commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Barbastian. God-Emperor, it had looked simpler on a map. Three forces, two ranging wide. Run the flanks, meet in the centre. Textbook. Here, in the mud and the terror, it was anything but.

Fenk sent a look her way, and she gave the signal to move up.

‘We take their flank,’ she told Henessey, needing to voice her thoughts, to hear something other than her rasping breath from the pain in her ribs, ‘and keep on going, roll right across them until we hit Regara’s contingent. If Barbastian does the same on his side, we’ll crush these bastards in an Imperial vice.’

‘Volpone glory, captain,’ replied Henessey, his face almost as pale as alabaster.

‘Volpone glory,’ said Aramis, slashing down with her sword and ordering the charge.

His legs felt leaden, his overtaxed muscles burning from the effort of hefting the four pounds of mud clinging to each of his boots.

They never told you that, thought Darian, as the las-beams zipped overhead like lethal fireflies and he tried to keep the tanks between him and an early demise. The drudgery of war, the sheer mindless slogging before you even get to fight. Throne, he’d seen soldiers die trying to cleave the mud off their boots, before even raising a lasgun. Ignominy the reward for succumbing to the drudge.

He had lost count of how many of the enemy he had killed. He remembered the first one in this fight, her grotesk smiling in parody of her savagery. She had Guard fatigues, stolen from some corpse or else she was a traitor, though he didn’t recognise the uniform. Daubed in blood and unnameable filth, he doubted it resembled what it had once represented. He had shot her in the face, the split mask revealing she was female. Such hellish fury in her bloody eyes and mouth. It had made a mess of her, that first las-beam, cauterising skin and burning flesh. Parts of her lips had fused but still she raged. A shot spat from her weapon, a bullet that whipped by Darian’s ear, a high-pitched insect buzz that seared the lobe. His second shot killed her, the las-bolt finding her eye and bursting it in a welter of vitreous matter. It cored out her skull, flash-frying the brain inside.

He’d barely had the time to register her death before he had killed his second, and his third. And on they went.

It felt different to Lodden. That had been frantic, terrifying, but it had had a shape to it, a scheme he could understand. God-Emperor, he would never forget the Traitor Astartes, the smell and heat and presence of it, but this was another thing entirely. He had heard the term ‘meat grinder’ many times in his tenure as a mil-serve around the camps. Only now in the sucking morass of Mireland did he fully understand what that meant.

The tanks were advancing at pace, Colonel Ganza exhorting his machines to charge. Everyone was charging, all running towards the Pact army, towards death, hearts afire with glory and adrenaline. Darian felt it spike in his chest, that urgent thunder of it running through his veins. It overcame the drudge, kept his legs moving, gave him strength he didn’t know he possessed.

Through gaps in the armoured shield wall, he caught glimpses of the horde beyond. They occupied a raised, defensive position, ranked up in firing lines and giving the Pardus hell. At the centre, surrounded by the stoutest defences and a cadre of heavy-armoured Death Brigade, stood a robed figured. He had a mix of flak armour and mesh chainveil beneath, his grotesk a much more ornate version of the ones worn by his cohorts. Every scrap of bare, muscular skin bore the evidence of scarification. This man was a damogaur, an officer of the Pact, and in this fight, their leader.

He climbed the reinforced revetments as the tanks began to close, seemingly unperturbed by the massive ordnance, which unerringly bent around him or simply dissipated into iridescent powder. Darian squinted, sweat in his eyes, his vision retarded by the smearing on his goggles. It must have been the smear that tricked him into seeing that impossible shimmer distorting the air, that unearthly radiance that negated every shell, withered every blast. Not a field of any kind – Darian knew what those looked like and remembered the ozone reek after every activation. It wasn’t that. A force field left a mark, a sort of temporary imprint on the air, something that could be gauged and understood. Physics. This put him in mind of an opening, a doorway into another place, an unplace, like a reflection against glass. It remade the shells and energy blasts, or unmade them, as if they didn’t exist or had never been deadly munitions at all.

It only seemed to enrage Ganza, who drove ever harder as the gap between the Volpone infantry and the Pardus armour widened. He wanted to crush them, grind the enemy’s bodies under his tracks. Tank shock had broken heavy formations, Darian had read about it, but those were men or craven xenos – the damogaur had something unfathomable at his disposal. He inhabited both the real and the unreal.

And he wasn’t alone. A coven of hunched, robed women clambered up after him. They were tall despite their obvious disfigurement, their thin frames mummified in form-fitting leather. Each wore a grotesk like the rest of the Pacted, but theirs were narrower to match the angle of their faces. A sickle-shaped opening just below the nose revealed a slash of a mouth the colour of intestines.

His acolytes.

The damogaur raised his arms, hands reaching as if clutched around some imagery globe. The witches emulated him.

Lieutenant Culcis cried out just as the damogaur brought his hands together.

‘Bludvayne!’

Darian didn’t know what it meant but he figured it must be bad.

Red lightning sparked across the damogaur’s muscled body and the witches died as one, collapsing like empty cloaks that had slipped their coat hooks. The air resonated like a pane of glass about to shatter.

The tanks disintegrated, pushed together like a concertina. Metal folded like paper, turrets collapsed, tracks crumpled. Crewmen were reduced to mulch and ground bone.

It took a few seconds for the explosion to hit, a long drawn-out moment that lingered like an opera singer’s top note, dramatic and terrible all at once. Everything slowed in that sliver of a moment… Culcis springing off his heels to try to shield the major from the blast, Drake and Resk throwing their bodies to the ground, Hanmar falling to his knees as he began to pray…

Darian moved too, shrinking down instinctively, making himself small, turning his face from the firestorm.

The infantry charge collapsed, the tanks were all but gone. A split second of silence followed, then a roar, so loud it deafened meaning.

Then the earth fell away, plunging and shaking as a wave buffeted his body and cast him like a kite untethered into mist and shadows.

TWENTY-FIVE

A shot whined over Hauptmann’s shoulder as he plunged through the darkness. It struck someone behind him, a low grunt presaging the thud of a body hitting the ground. He gave a silent prayer of thanks to Lennox, the sniper’s night-sight watching them from somewhere ahead.

He had little sense of direction, this place smothered it, but he ran anyway, the stablight on his weapon jerking spasmodically.

One of the Slokans had died first. After that voice, the man had turned, heavy autogun raised and about to strafe… His head disappeared. It simply broke apart, like a grenade had detonated inside his skull. Hauptmann still felt the flecks of matter and bone chips clinging to his uniform where they had stuck to him.

Venetor let off a burst, hot las streaking the darkness. He hit nothing, his beams raking metal and stone. More scorch marks to add to the rest. An impact to his chest spun him. He made an ungainly half pirouette before Hauptmann saw the charred remains of his torso, like something had taken a bite out of him. As he collapsed, Hauptmann sounded the retreat.

Pukk needed little convincing, cracking off shots in indiscriminate panic with his shitty lascarbine. The other Slokan tried to stand his ground, pride and a burning need for revenge fixing his feet. He got off two shots before the flames took him and then he was just burning meat.

Hauptmann caught a glimpse of them then, as the fire flared and faded. Definitely Pact, but of a different caste to the others. Good armour, better weapons. And something else, long-limbed and hunched, lurking behind the warriors.

They ran, because what else could they do?

Another shot clipped the metal deck plate clanging madly with his frantic footfalls, and Hauptmann changed direction. Pukk went with him. Zarek was gone; dead or alive, he didn’t know.

Then he saw the glint of a sniper sight like a lighthouse beacon and made for it. A slew of hard rounds pranged in front of him, forcing Hauptmann to turn again, but he had found his north star now and rallied to it. They are trying to herd us, he realised belatedly as Pukk got siphoned off in a different direction. Hauptmann called out to him but got no reply. He was on his own. Him and Lennox, cavaliers to the end, retreating to fight another day. Hauptmann was a pragmatist above all else; he’d take discretion over valour any saint’s day.

That glint again, and another sniper’s bullet whipping fast and near. It put down another pursuer, the figure crumpling noisily to the deck. The ladder loomed ahead; Hauptmann could just see its edges and the narrow halo from the shaft. He ran harder, though every breath burned like a hot razor. Throne, it felt like miles rather than yards.

Another round coughed from Lennox’s rifle. Another kill. The lad had a knack and an iron nerve Hauptmann knew he personally lacked. Some men are made for killing, they’re just naturally disposed to it. Others have it thrust upon them, the need to survive forging something callous in them that enables the taking of another life. Hauptmann was the latter but Lennox had a rare thing. A soldier’s cold instinct without loss of humanity. He fought for his Emperor, as all good soldiers of the Imperium do, but he also fought for his wife back on Pardua, for the sons and daughters he wanted to have, for hope and an end to war. Lennox was the kind of man who would put away his rifle when the fight was done, and take up tools instead, create and not destroy. So young, so gifted.

Let him have peace, thought Hauptmann. God-Emperor, let us escape this hole and let him have peace.

So close. The ladder resolved fully as if proximity to it, to what he knew was real and true, bled away the unnatural darkness. He didn’t see Lennox, and assumed the lad had mounted the ladder and was on his way. Hauptmann made for the halo beneath it. Another few steps and he’d be there.

A light flared, so sudden and bright he staggered.

The ladder disappeared for a few seconds behind magnesium brightness. When he had recovered, Hauptmann slowed and stopped running.

They had Zarek. He was on his knees, hands bound behind his back, gagged. Pukk knelt beside him, afraid, frantic. Then Lennox. His eyes held an apology, but Hauptmann gave the slightest shake of his head. The lad had nothing to be sorry for.

A Pact warrior was tying his hands, as another appraised his rifle, weighing up the spoils. Three more stood behind them, one for each man. They wore heavy armour, bloodstained and daubed in sigils that hurt to look at for too long, like the rest of the Pacted, but better made. An officer stood apart from the others, his scarred hand on the pommel of his sword. A row of spikes crested his helm and his grotesk gleamed like polished silver. He rasped an order.

Hauptmann didn’t understand the guttural dialects of the Sanguinary tribes but he knew an ultimatum when he heard one. Surrendering to the Pact was ill-advised. He had heard stories, seen the cruciform bodies lashed to iron octeds. They hadn’t killed them yet, which meant they needed them for something. Hauptmann took no comfort from that, but alive at least they could still fight.

‘It’s not your fault, lad,’ he said to Lennox as he lowered his weapon.

A rifle stock to the back of the knees put him down like all the rest. Rough hands yanked his arms back. Wire bit into his wrists as his bonds were tied.

He wished Lennox had never come to this war, that he’d never left his young wife.

‘Never the last ride,’ he said, just as his captor applied the gag.

Lennox smiled that easy smile of his, like warm sun on a cold day.

One of the Pacted asked a question, the words a collision of hard consonants and cut vowels. The officer answered in Low Gothic so Hauptmann and the others could understand.

‘We only need three,’ he said, and shot Lennox in the head.

TWENTY-SIX

The leg was severed. The old phantom pain remained, accented by fresh agony as artificial sensors bonded to actual nerves fired off like flash flares in Regara’s head.

He glanced down, ears ringing, dimly aware he was lying on his back surrounded by debris. A piece of shrapnel had missed him by inches. Heat still radiated from it. Others had been less fortunate. Fire crackled nearby, and the air was heavy with the smell of burning promethium.

The realisation of what had happened was beginning to dawn when Regara felt himself lifted up. His bionic dangled by a stubborn wire, sparks sputtering from the ruined bio-mechanical interfaces, and dragged after him like a dutiful hound on a leash.

‘Cut it…’ he growled through clenched teeth, biting down against the pain.

Culcis appeared in front, his uniform torn and a gash across his left arm.

‘This will hurt, sir.’

‘It bloody well stings a bit right now.’

He sliced through the wire with his bayonet, one sure blow. Unable to stop himself, Regara cried out, but at least the pain had ebbed.

‘Are you injured, major?’ said Hanmar, the corpsman at his side as he jabbed a morphia vial in Regara’s shoulder.

‘Just the leg.’

They got him behind a chunk of broken tank armour and stopped. Las-fire whipped past, forcing Dresk to duck as he tried to set up the heavy stubber. Taking advantage of their enemy’s disorientation, the Pact had started to advance, moving up through fields of destruction to finish off what the damogaur had started.

Beyond the scant cover, it was carnage. Every tank in the Pavis vanguard had been neutralised, many outright destroyed. Regara heaved himself up onto one leg, taking a metal spur from Culcis as a makeshift crutch.

‘We have to rally our forces, restore order.’

‘How, major?’

Regara turned to fix Culcis with a glare like ice. ‘Any way we can, lieutenant.’

The Volpone assault teetered on the edge of disaster, split down the middle by the destruction of the Pardus, scattered and broken. A few units had already started falling back, the Imperial forces haemorrhaging men as well as blood. Others fought on but it was hardly coordinated. They had fought through the ambush, taken out the tank-killers only to fail anyway.

Snapping his fingers, irritated, Regara called for the vox.

‘Shiller… Captain Shiller, respond.’

There were a few seconds of static before Shiller came back.

‘Major, this is Shiller. We are royally shafted here. Bits of Pardus everywhere.’ Weapons fire rattled in the background from both sides. ‘We are holding. For now.’ He paused then asked, ‘What was it, Vasquez?’

‘Psyker weapon. Vauga’s on the Assignment. Now we know why his rating was redacted.’

Shiller swore colourfully. At least the explosion had sobered him up. He sounded composed, alert. And afraid.

Reports were coming through as the Volpone tried to string together some kind of response.

‘Flanking forces under Aramis and Barbastian are on the way,’ Regara told him.

‘Have you managed to raise Colonel Grussman?’

‘Not yet.’

‘We need those reserves.’

‘He’ll commit them when he’s ready. For now, it’s just us and the flankers. We need to coalesce our forces, get them back up the middle again, hit when the flankers hit. What’s your fighting strength?’

Another pause as Shiller consulted an adjutant. ‘I can scrape up four platoons.’

Regara had three, give or take a few men here and there. It would have to suffice.

A gulf of fiery wreckage stood between one half of the Volpone army and the other. Of the Pardus tanks, there was almost nothing left. A few crewmen had managed to escape the destruction, but most of them crawled or lurched a few uneven steps before collapsing.

In the panic to escape almost certain death, Darian and a handful of Volpone troopers had become separated from the main force. He couldn’t even see Culcis or Regara.

He heard the distant bellowing of Shiller some way behind him. That bastard. Darian saw the hatred in the captain every time he set eyes on him. The man’s knuckles had not yet fully healed from the savage beatings he had dispensed. It didn’t matter that Darian had royal blood coursing through his veins, that his father – a man he had never met, let alone knew beyond the propaganda reels – had acknowledged him out of some belated sense of guilt or reparation. To Shiller, he would always just be a lowly deg, unworthy of his respect. For hurting him the way Shiller had, Darian hated the man back. For hurting Lenna, he wanted to kill him.

God-Emperor, Lenna… He hoped she still lived. Retribution would have to wait. Shiller was busy mustering the platoons, trying to forge some kind of military strength to throw back at the enemy. They were moving, of course, the Pact. Seizing upon their sudden and devastating advantage.

Darian looked to the twelve men around him. They had gathered behind a broken trunk, one tall and thick enough to hide them. An assortment from different squads. One of the men had a sergeant’s rank pins and appeared to be in shock.

‘Sergeant…’ Darian ventured, pulling a lascarbine to him that wasn’t his but at least had some charge. ‘Sergeant…’ A low fire exchange had already begun, but it was half-hearted. The Pact wanted to engage close quarters, and gut the Imperials where they stood, scattered and afraid.

The sergeant had a narrow face, blond hair and green eyes. Name of Krozer. He was gasping for breath, a mask strung loose around his neck, cradling his sidearm in both hands.

‘Sergeant Krozer…’ Darian crept towards him, careful to keep his head down. ‘Sergeant, we need to–’

Krozer pushed the sidearm under his chin and fired.

Several troopers recoiled in shock. Blood flecked the side of one’s face.

Darian took a moment to compose himself. Shiller was still way behind them, shouting orders. He glanced through a gap in the trunk, the tiniest aperture affording him a narrow view of the battlefield beyond.

Ganza lived. Something was wrong with his legs, but he had raised himself upright on his elbow, ornate sword in the other hand but without any leverage to really swing. Ahead of him were the damogaur and his men, stalking their prey as the rest of the Pacted fanned out, hunting their own kills.

Looking back, Darian quickly surveyed the troopers and found what he was after.

‘Corporal,’ he said, ‘I need that vox.’

The corporal returned his gaze, half his face washed with Sergeant Krozer’s blood. He blinked and the absence in his dark eyes fled, replaced by something else.

‘You’re Unsworth,’ he said. ‘You fought at Lodden.’

‘A lot of us fought at Lodden. The vox, corporal.’

He handed it over, something like awe in his expression.

‘And I’m a Deviers,’ Darian corrected, taking a moment to familiarise himself with the boxy device, ‘the son of Horator De Nesk Deviers.’ It felt strange to say it aloud, and even stranger to acknowledge the truth of it.

Several of the troopers bowed their heads in recognition. Darian ignored them, and focused on the vox-crackle as he got the thing working.

Shiller barked at him immediately, ‘Krozer, where in the shitting arse of Sebastian Thor are you?’

‘Sir, Krozer is dead. This is Private Deviers.’

‘How?’

‘Sir?’

‘How did he die and how are you in charge, deg?’

Darian bit back a response, reminding himself of the pressure Shiller must be under.

‘Self-execution, sir.’

Shiller murmured something unflattering at the other end of the vox then louder he added, ‘Well, where’s Corporal Akner?’

‘Holding the vox.’

‘Then tell him to get his arse back to my position immediately. I need every man, private. Even you. We’re pushing back, regrouping with Major Regara.’

‘Sir, it’s Ganza.’

‘Who?’

‘The Pardus colonel, sir.’

‘Are there any of those poor bastards left?’

‘A handful, sir. He’s here, close by, sir. If I don’t do something, he’ll die.’

‘And such is bloody war. Tell Akner to get his arse back here, and you sorry excuses for soldiers with him. You and I will discuss your conduct later.’

Darian knew what that meant but he didn’t let it distract him.

‘Sir, it’s the damogaur, sir. I can see him. He’s right in front–’

‘I don’t give a gentle shit if it’s Horus himself! Here. Now. That’s an order, deg.’

The vox cut off, leaving Darian to rage silently into cold static.

‘What do we do?’ Akner didn’t look ready to slog back to Shiller only to have to return. He looked like he wanted something else. Purpose. And just like that, because he had picked up the vox, they were looking to Darian for leadership.

He glanced through the knothole in the trunk, Ganza framed by its ragged edges and the damogaur looming over him like in some classically painted Imperial tableau. As Darian watched, the damogaur grunted to his men, who pressed on, leaving him alone with the colonel. He had a ritual knife in one hand, the blade savagely serrated. It was only when he clenched the metal talisman around his neck and looked up to the churning heavens that Darian realised what the damogaur intended to do.

Ganza was to be a sacrifice, one meant to attract the eye of the gods.

There was only one god, or so Darian had been taught, He who dwelt on Terra in eternal watchful slumber over the souls of all mankind. He had seen things though, heard rumours as all soldiers do, of other gods, older gods that the Blood Pact revered as fervently as the Imperium did the Master of Mankind. And though the commissars would execute him for admitting it aloud, Darian believed these gods had power.

He remembered what he had seen when the shells and beams dissipated before they had struck the damogaur and his cohort, like a film laid across what was real, offering a faint yet terrifying glimpse into an elseworld. A doorway, one that opened out rather than in.

‘Ganza is a colonel in the Astra Militarum,’ said Darian, knowing what must be done. ‘It is our duty to try to save him.’

A pale-faced trooper spoke up. ‘With a dozen of us? How can we–’

‘The rest of the army is coming.’ Darian pointed sharply behind them.

‘Then let them rescue the colonel.’ He was young, the trooper, a shadow of downy hair framing his chin.

‘They won’t reach him in time.’

‘You’re not in charge,’ the youth went on. ‘Our orders were to fall back and regroup. Why should we listen to you?’

‘Because it’s our duty, soldier,’ said Akner, ‘and I have rank here. Captain Shiller doesn’t have boots on the ground here. We do.’ He exchanged a look with Darian and gave a slight nod of respect. ‘Deviers, you are vanguard. Lead us out.’

Darian saluted, a foreign feeling growing within. ‘At once, corporal.’

He realised then, as the men formed up behind him, that it was pride.

Her charge had faltered, having met unforeseen resistance, the Pact galvanised after the humbling of the Pardus. She had given up on the magister, having lost sight of him in the madness that followed whatever he had done to the tanks. Reserves had begun to move but they were too far back to make a damn difference, and the rest of the tanks were trapped behind the burning mess of their vanguard and would not deploy.

It was up to those on the field to wrest this back from the shitheap it had become.

Aramis surveyed the ragged battle line through scopes, her myopic view unable to properly convey just how much trouble they were all in. One decisive blow had rendered the armour useless, split the core of the army in half and hindered any immediate reinforcement. The flanks had been left dangerously exposed, a well-crafted pincer reduced to a scrappy, misaligned and failed assault. She saw men regrouping and reckoned on it being Regara’s doing, but it was slow and the troops were badly scattered.

As her gaze alighted on a figure estranged from the wrecked vanguard, she tightened focus. It was Ganza, crawling backwards, one hand on the hilt of his sword, the other clawing at the earth as he dragged his useless legs after him. The damogaur followed, imperious, threatening. His robes caught in a breeze flecked with ash and flaring chips of cinder, parting to reveal his military garb beneath. Chainmail armour, a pistol, blade in a leather sheath.

She could only watch, her impotence a leaden weight in her gut. The Pact had stepped up their aggression and her platoons were being held. Several men were dead, caught in the open ground between both sides, some of them priests. The order to withdraw and hold cover had been bitterly given. It was that or risk a total rout.

A hand on her shoulder got her attention, but her eyes remained ahead.

‘We’re strung out, captain,’ said Henessey, ‘roughly a hundred men in uncertain condition.’

‘And Fenk?’

‘The lieutenant is still with us. Holding on the right. He reckons on forty left in his charge.’

Aramis swore. ‘Have him ready his troops for assault. Ganza’s out there, though it may already be too late.’ She lowered the scopes, and looked askance at a kneeling priest. A large chainblade sat on a cloth in front of him. He prayed to it, the catechisms tripping over his murmuring lips like incantations. Preparing his soul for the Emperor.

‘Can you feel that, Gavid?’ she asked as soon as Henessey had finished speaking over the vox with Fenk.

The air had changed, grown thicker and heavier like in the moment before a storm. Clouds boiled overhead, tinted red in the strange twilight fallen across the battlefield.

Henessey didn’t answer but made the sign of the aquila across his chest.

Aramis had fought the infernal before. She had seen what the witch-kind could do, on both sides. She thought of it as a well, a great and fathomless well within which resided the power to bend and reshape what was known, to cheat natural law. She had no understanding of it, and no desire to learn. But it was dangerous, and could be drawn upon in different ways. Ritualism, for instance.

She didn’t need scopes to see Ganza’s fate as the damogaur bore down on him, a toothed blade in his hand.

Ganza screamed as the knife bit. The damogaur straddled him, knees pinning the colonel’s arms, his muscled frame hunched over like a feeding predator. He carved, slowly, intricately, murmuring an imprecation with every deliberate stroke. Smoke exuded from the wounds, just a trickle at first but thickening with every second.

Ganza writhed, almost beyond the capacity to give voice to his agony, the proud man reduced to a wailing shell. He screamed, and it was as if an echo overlaid the sound, a second deeper voice uttering alongside the first, only slightly out of sync.

Fifty feet or so separated the dozen Guardsmen from the damogaur. They scurried at first, Darian moving quickly but cautiously as he tried not to draw attention. Halfway across the wreckage-strewn earth and the damogaur’s head jerked up, as if warned by some unearthly prescience.

He was not alone. Three heavy-armoured Pacted lurked just below and out of sight until the Volpone had broken cover. They reacted now as the damogaur called upon them, his voice a reverberant basso of guttural edges.

The air between both sides grew hot, threaded with killing light.

Darian felt it sear his cheek, bit back the pain and pushed on. A las-storm engulfed the damogaur, but splashed ineffectually against some unseen barrier like rain hitting a pane of glass. The Pacted killed ten of the twelve Volpone before Akner finished the last of the bastards with a frag grenade. He died a second later, shot through the eye by the damogaur’s sidearm.

Only Darian remained, close enough to stab with his rifle’s bayonet. The blade shattered on impact, turned aside by the damogaur’s wards. A knife slash nearly opened Darian’s throat and he fell back hard, his enemy so close he could smell the blood on the man’s clothes, his armour, his every trapping. The cloying stench of warm iron suffused Darian’s senses. Overwhelmed, he gagged, and would have died to a ritual blade had Ganza not rammed his combat knife into the damogaur’s side.

A trembling of air, a sudden near-imperceptible shimmer of a warding broken…

Ganza died, his neck slit so wide it yawned like a second mouth. Scrabbling, Darian found the hilt of the dead colonel’s sword and swung it in the Emperor’s name. The blade hacked into the damogaur’s neck, an ugly cut, lodged in bone. A muffled cry issued through the grotesk, resonant and metallic.

Bracing a boot against the man’s shoulder, Darian heaved the blade free and swung again. Red matter sprayed him, swathing the front of his uniform, his face and hands. Still the head remained attached. He sawed it loose, releasing flints of bone, and at the third stroke took Vauga’s head, and with it the battle of Mireland.

TWENTY-SEVEN

Culcis stood amongst the dead, watching the priests dispense mercy to the wounded. An eerie quiet had descended over the battlefield, which not so many hours ago had rung to the sound of fire and fury.

He found another lying nearby, face down in the murk, and rolled him over.

Not him. Pain contorted the dead man’s face, and made claws of his fingers still clenched in the throes of frozen agony.

‘Please not like that,’ Culcis murmured.

‘Sir?’ ventured Rake.

‘Keep looking,’ Culcis replied, and on they went.

Hanmar raised a hand to get everyone’s attention. ‘More over here…’

They had dispersed over a wide area, sifting through the blood-clogged dirt and ruddy channels for the dead. There were plenty of them. For the badly wounded, a stretcher, and if not that then the gentle peace of an Ecclesiarch’s silver athame.

Summary execution, desultorily delivered, awaited the Pact survivors, those not deemed worthy of capture. Most were not, and even those found ways to commit suicide before questioning. Vauga’s death had broken them and as the triumphant declaration of ‘Volpone glory, Volpone glory!’ clarioned around the field, the enemy had lost heart, falling into disarray and retreat. The berserkers fought on, too maddened to relent. Heavy-weapons teams put them down like dogs.

Culcis and the others had emerged from cover at the sounding of Shiller’s war-horn, and they had found a soldier on a ridge, a foreign officer’s sword upraised in his hand and bellowing for victory.

It appeared Darian had not strayed far from his father’s noble roots. Though a bastard, the thickness of his blood and his courage was beyond doubt. It was quite the sight, Culcis had reflected at the time, the lad standing like that, his enemy dispatched at his feet, so armed, worthy of the propaganda reels. The charge that followed had been decisive and merciless. The reserves, though committed by then, had not been needed. It was a slaughter, and Mireland was won.

But at a cost.

Ganza’s body had been amongst the first removed, the last remnants of the Pavis forming an honour guard for their slain colonel. They wrapped a Pardus flag over him to hide the horror of his wounds. One of the men took care to hold up Ganza’s head. Rumour had it the neck had been all but severed. The wreckage of the Pardus Tenth’s desolation was still being cleared. So utter had the destruction been that it would take days.

Another task for the Diggers, thought Culcis.

He followed to where Hanmar led them, the urbane corpsman at odds with this drudge and filth but taking it in his stride nonetheless. He stopped at a clearing, a clutch of bodies there. A few floated on their backs like driftwood, the barest traces of putrefaction fattening their flesh with corpse gas. They were Ohrek, all of them, a cadre of scouts caught unawares by the red swathe. One had crawled; another man lay beside him, his face shot out and gaping like an excised pit. His would-be rescuer remained face down in the mud and Culcis stalked over to him, possessed by a sudden and all-consuming desire to know this dead man’s identity. Hand shaking, he turned him over and his skin grew cold at the sight.

Culcis sagged onto his haunches, then slipped to his knees as he met the face of Hunna Ghanu, a look of quiet repose upon his features. If not for the lack of breath and the grey pallor in his skin, one could almost believe him asleep.

‘Who was he?’ asked Dresk, as he came in to stand beside his cousin.

‘One of the Ohrek,’ said Hanmar. ‘A sergeant, I think.’

‘A friend,’ Culcis corrected. ‘Please…’ he said, rising to his feet, ‘help me carry him.’

The Volpone hesitated but a moment, then, with sombre dignity, bore Hunna Ghanu from the fields of the dead to his final rest.

Fenk roamed the battlefield alone, far enough away from the orbit of priests and the other mercy killers. He knelt, careful to keep his uniform dry of the brackish water in the shallow trench, and closed the dead private’s eyes with two fingers as they glided across his face. He did so without looking, instead watching Culcis as the lieutenant and his men lifted a dark-skinned Ohrek from amongst the slain. He recognised him – Fenk had a good eye for faces – but didn’t know the soldier’s name. He watched as they carried the dead man from the field in solemn procession, struggling every now and then as a boot became stuck in the mire or Rake stumbled over his own feet.

How reverent you are, Armand, he thought. All that guilt you carry as well as that cold body…

Fenk’s eyes scoured the field, ever vigilant, but there was no one nearby or even getting close. No one saw him, an invisible shade haunting the sundered forest.

His gaze alighted on a group of Agrians watching Culcis and his troops, a dark look on the natives’ faces. He knew these men too, though not their names. They had such unusual names, the Agrians, that felt strange on the tongue. They were cossacks, and one spoke quietly to his neighbour as the others looked on, apparently at their labours. A great road had begun to take shape that would ferry what was left of the Pardus tanks across the Mireland and further south into Agria. Shouldering hammers and picks, one with an industrialised nailgun, they made a passable attempt to appear engaged in their work but in truth they were hunting. Fenk recognised the look they had; he had seen it before, knew it intimately. A desire for murder.

As Culcis and the others moved out of sight, the Agrians broke up as if at some unspoken pact, and left for other parts of the field.

Fenk watched them go, quite happy in his little trench with the dead. He glanced down at the private and a glint of something caught his eye, partly smuggled beneath a lapel. A leaf-shaped pin from Ackerstadt, if he wasn’t mistaken. The lad hailed from the Volpone Veyduh, the southern greenbelt land responsible for the majority of its crops. Fenk took it and, as he was rising, put the pin absent-mindedly into his pocket.

The wind stirred, flecks of rain chilling the air, and Fenk pulled up his collar and canted down the visor of his cap. He couldn’t leave, not yet. The grey host was calling, and he was powerless to do anything but answer.

TWENTY-EIGHT

Word had spread swiftly around the camp.

Darian returned weary from the battle, wanting nothing more than to bathe then sleep, if he could. Men stopped him as he walked. They wanted to shake his hand, clap him on the shoulder as if he were an old comrade reunited. Bask in his reflected glory. A crowd gathered on the way to his barrack tent, soldiers he didn’t know. They smiled warmly, sharing jokes and anecdotes. Darian was struck dumb by their adulation. He smiled too, echoing the men around him, laughing when they laughed, falling silent when they grew solemn. It was a dance to an unfamiliar tune.

‘They are saying you slew Vauga with one blow.’

It came from behind him as the first of the crowds were dispersing. A woman’s voice.

‘Did you?’ she asked pointedly. She was tall, broad-shouldered. Her silver helm was cradled in the crook of her arm, long red hair bound up in a tight bun behind her head. She was striking and obviously formidable. Darian fought to bring forth his words, awkward and slightly cowed by this woman.

‘I can scarcely remember, sir,’ said Darian.

She smiled a satisfied smile, neither warm nor cold.

‘Some are saying you are a brave for what you did. I agree. The Bluebloods need brave men.’

‘And women.’

She smirked. ‘And women.’

Darian glanced past her, at a clutch of soldiers standing at the periphery who had not partaken in the theatre of histrionics. These men muttered under their breath and threw venomous looks. He knew what they called him, what they would always think of him. Shiller lurked amongst them, but didn’t linger.

‘Not everyone sees it as you do, sir.’

She followed his gaze in time to see the captain tromping off, ruddy-faced and doubtless in search of a drink.

‘To them I will only ever be a deg.’ His voice was bitter, his eyes narrowed and hard. ‘I could slay Horus himself and they’d still think that way.’

‘Prejudice is ingrained and men of standing, justified or otherwise, do not like others encroaching on what they perceive as theirs.’

He knew then why her troops followed her. He would have followed her in that moment. She had presence and a worldly wisdom Darian found reassuring. Inspiring.

‘They would rather I be in the ground, another pauper in a grave like all the rest. I am a cheat to them, my father’s influence the only reason I am in this uniform.’

She laughed wryly. ‘And how do you think they ended up where they are? Their ranks, their stations?’ She began to walk away. ‘I think I like you, Deviers. You have your father’s unassuming charm but none of his learned arrogance. Hang on to that.’

Darian watched her depart. She was Ione Aramis, an officer of the 86th. He didn’t know her heritage but her bearing was noble. He hoped he could aspire to it.

A few of the soldiers still called his name as he passed through the rest of the camp, and he raised a hand in acknowledgement or gave a swift salute in reply. Unease fomented within him. I am no hero, he thought.

He had watched Ganza die, throat opened like a kitbag, red as a sunrise within. He had taken the man’s sword and killed the damogaur, hacked off Vauga’s head in three messy blows. His skin still itched with sprayed blood. It was far from triumphant or heroic. It was ugly and desperate. He had been trying to save Ganza. Afterwards, he couldn’t stop shivering and Culcis had lent him his cloak. It still draped around his shoulders like some greater hunter’s mantle, only Darian knew the lie of it.

The lieutenant and the others had gone back into the fields of the dead, looking for slain comrades or else to help the priests give the dying a merciful death. Others had gone too, though by the feral look in the eyes of the Talpa, Darian wondered if they would not be scavenging instead.

For every moral act, war gave up a base one to counter it.

Cooking smells, faint on the air, drew him and he found one of the few mess tents. Dingy lamps lit the interior, the atmosphere close and subdued. An Ohrek mess sergeant stirred a large drum of meaty broth and even the Volpone were eating it, though it was a far cry from filleted steak and sautéed greens.

Darian noticed Greiss, the burly sergeant, eating eagerly from a large bowl. His face was bruised and sutures cross-hatched his skin, but he was otherwise hale. Greiss beckoned him over and Darian was about to join him when a table of Pardus tankers recognised him and rose to their feet. They began to clap, though their expressions remained solemn.

Others in the mess tent took note, turning to regard Darian as a murmured hubbub gathered momentum around the room.

One man cried out, ‘For the hero of Lodden and the saviour of Mireland!’

‘Volpone glory!’ they rejoined.

‘Volpone glory!’

Feet stamped, mugs rapped on tables.

‘Volpone glory!’

Even the Pardus shouted now. Darian hastily nodded his appreciation and left.

He headed away from the heart of the camp, not stopping until he reached the baggage train. Much had already been unloaded, the tents and supplies, clean water, victuals. Darian watched the servants work, his old life feeling more distant than ever. They kept their eyes down and on their labours. He might not be officer class but to them he was still a Royal, and thus a man to be wary of.

A girl struggled carrying a heap of sheets and blankets, the fine material marking it out as destined for Volpone barracks. She stumbled, half blind, face hidden behind the towering linens and Darian reached over to help her.

‘Steady there…’ he said, before he saw her face and his heart caught in his throat.

‘I apologise, sir,’ she uttered profusely, eyes downcast. ‘Please, I didn’t mean to touch you. I’ll get on my way, be more careful in the–’

‘Lenna,’ said Darian, his voice a half-whisper, ‘it’s me.’

The girl blinked, her expression blank. ‘I’m sorry, sir. I don’t think I know you.’

He took off his private’s cap. ‘It’s Darian.’

The scales fell from her eyes but her elation swiftly faded and she looked away.

‘What you must think of me…’

Darian took the sheets and blankets, setting them down on the storeroom floor.

‘Think of you? I have done nothing else, Lenna.’ He held her face gently, turned it to look at him so she could see his sincerity.

Tears rolled unfettered down her face. ‘God-Emperor, Darian…’ she wept. ‘I thought you were dead.’

His face darkened briefly. ‘I almost was, for a while.’ He smiled. ‘I’m in the army now. Volpone Fiftieth.’

She frowned. ‘How? What happened, I don’t–’

‘I tried to find you, but so much has changed.’ He licked his lips, choking back tears of his own. ‘I have so much to tell you.’

But Lenna shrank back, ashamed by her servile condition.

‘You shouldn’t talk to me, Darian. It won’t go well for you. You’re Royal now… though I can’t begin to fathom how. But know that no one is more pleased for you than I.’

‘Lenna, please…’ He went to reach for her but she stepped back again, the shadows of the storeroom enfolding her.

He was about to step again when an overseer shouted at her.

‘You there… girl!’

A logistician in Munitorum olive drab bellowed at her from across the storeroom. He had a data-slate crooked in one arm, taking inventory.

‘Pick those up,’ he began, but paled when Darian intercepted him. ‘Sir, I didn’t realise you were there.’

Darian berated him, tearing strips off the logistician, who quailed before his anger, apologised profusely and left for some other duty, whether he had one or not.

When Darian turned to find Lenna, she had already fled.

TWENTY-NINE

The med-tent reeked of chlorine and counterseptic. Regara’s leg had been removed, or what was left of it anyway, his flesh stump cleaned and dressed. It had taken a couple of days to get him to visit the medics, his desire to see the battle through and manage part of its aftermath greater than the need for pain relief.

A tech-priest lurked nearby, his mechadendrites shaped like a pair of callipers. He had just taken the major’s measurements and sent instruction via binharic Lingua-technis for a replacement limb to be made according to specification. Such augmetics were rare amongst the common soldiery but not to an officer, and certainly not to a Volpone. A thing of chrome and gilded beauty would be forged, calibrated and fitted in relatively short order. Regara merely had to wait.

Through an open flap in the tent, he watched the Agrians tramp into the field again, tools slung over shoulders, materials dragged on iron sleds as they took up axe and hammer. More rain today, though it was light enough but with a sky’s darkened promise overhead. A road would be built, regardless of weather, the wreckage of tanks cleared, and what was left of the Pardus would be able to advance. It had taken three days so far, and Grussman seemed none too keen to linger, but he had little choice as he needed to regroup and plan. The loss of the Pavis was a blow, no other way to regard it.

They numbered a handful of war engines now, idling in a dwindled pack, waiting for the miles of flakboard and steel plate to be laid and relaid. A second lieutenant called Bragga was in charge now, what with Ganza killed in action. They had burned him, as was their way. The shame of it, such decimation of their former strength. How they still held their heads up, Regara did not know.

He glanced away, unwilling to share in their degradation, even vicariously, and alighted on the only other inhabitant of his med-tent.

‘You will get used to it,’ he said. A woman in vest and fatigues looked up at the sound of his voice as she bent and extended a fresh bionic in slow repetition. ‘Gannika, isn’t it?’ Regara went on. ‘Rensaint’s aide. We met at the Quarter, back in Ankishburg.’

‘Yes, sir,’ Gannika answered, trying to make a salute with her arm but falling just short. She scowled.

Regara smiled. ‘It will get easier.’

‘I would give my body for the Throne,’ she said, ‘but I had not imagined doing so one piece at a time.’

‘That is how we serve in the Militarum, didn’t they teach you that at the Schola Progenium?’

Gannika grimaced in what may have been an attempted smile then gestured to his missing limb.

Regara patted the stump. ‘Nacedon, many years ago, when I was a younger man. Still aches when it gets cold. Yours will too, probably.’

She regarded the bionic like it was a foreign entity. ‘They said they’d calibrate it, the red priests.’

‘I daresay they’ll murmur a few prayers, sprinkle it with unguents…’

Gannika cocked a brow. ‘You sound disdainful, major?’

‘Merely ignorant. The mysteries of the Omnissiah are profound and unfathomable to a man such as I.’

‘“It is better to conceal one’s knowledge than reveal one’s ignorance.”’ Barbastian strode across the camp, his half-cloak catching in the breeze like a banner. ‘Or so I’ve heard it said by some Imperial scholars.’ Tousled blond hair trailed across his handsome face and he swept it away with a velvet-gloved hand. He wore sparse armour, limited to a silver shoulder guard, and favoured a fine grey waistcoat under his uniform jacket, though the former looked reinforced.

He had a quiet confidence, did the lieutenant colonel. A cultured man, he knew much about victuals and wine, music and art. He had more martial talents too, of course. Swordsmanship, skill with pistol and rifle. The soldiers under his command followed him because they loved him. The equation was simple enough to fathom. Filip Barbastian had an air about him; he provoked hope. Deep down most men in the Guard just wanted to live, to survive the next battle. Barbastian instilled the belief in them that this feat was possible. He had sent men to their deaths, Regara had seen him do it, but they always went willingly, as if following the siren’s song.

‘And which am I doing, Filip?’ Regara asked, and nodded to the man who accompanied him by way of greeting.

Gannika sketched a quick salute, wisely using her flesh-and-blood arm.

Rensaint ordered her at ease. ‘A little of both, I’d say,’ the lord commissar answered for the lieutenant colonel. He wore his black longcoat, a silver-headed walking cane in one hand.

Regara noticed it at once. ‘Having trouble, lord commissar?’

‘Caught some shrapnel during the… incident. Hurts when I walk for too long.’

‘“Incident”? Ever politic, eh, Owyn?’

‘I have a silver skull on my cap for a reason, Vasquez.’ He gave a wry smile but they all felt the bitterness of memory, of sifting through the aftermath of the grenade blast. It still defied meaning, as did the mindless babble of the man who had pulled the pin and unleashed death and blood. Perhaps they would never find out why.

Regara appraised them both, a motley pairing of Volpone dandy and avian Prefectus. ‘I assume you’re not here to school me on philosophy, gentlemen?’

Rensaint gave a sharp but surreptitious glance to Gannika, who left the tent and went on her way. The red priest had long since departed into the shadowy depths, chirping in fits and squalls of harsh binharic, and so the three men were alone.

Regara gave a thin smile. ‘Not a social call then, Filip?’

Barbastian looked down at Regara’s missing leg. ‘I always did hate that thing. The metal, the wires… it wasn’t you.’

‘The old leg is dust, just like Nacedon.’ He waited patiently for Filip to elaborate while Rensaint quietly kept his peace.

‘You’re off the line until the leg is replaced. The Fiftieth will be under Major Aramis until further notice.’

Regara paled. He thought he’d be taken off field duties but assumed he’d still fulfil strategic and command.

‘Major Aramis, the female officer from the Eighty-Sixth?’

‘Field promotion. She’s the replacement for an officer called Pallard,’ said Rensaint.

‘Pallard has been dead for weeks.’

The lord commissar could only offer an aphorism. ‘The wheels of Imperial bureaucracy grind ever slow…’

‘Granted, but where then am I to take up a post?’ asked Regara, carefully bridling his anger.

‘The auxiliaries,’ said Barbastian. ‘I’m sorry, Vasquez. I tried to dissuade him.’

‘That’s the bloody Diggers! Grussman… that bastard.’

He shuffled to the edge of the bed where he was sitting and reached for the metal crutch leaning against the frame. Barbastian gave him a despairing look.

‘Throne, Vasquez, don’t be rash.’

Regara slid off the bed, picking up his jacket and slinging it over one arm, the other draped over the crutch.

‘I am never rash,’ he replied coldly, ‘never,’ and proceeded to belt on his pistol and sabre. The blade rattled with sympathetic anger in its sheath as Regara jerked it around his waist. He jutted his chin at Rensaint. ‘Is that why you’re here, to stop me from shooting him?’

‘Are you?’

‘Am I what?’

‘About to shoot him. I actually came to offer moral support and see to my aide, but now you mention it…’

‘If he dies, he dies the Volpone way.’

Rensaint stepped forwards, his expression serious. ‘What does that mean, major?’

‘Nothing,’ snapped Regara. ‘I am letting off steam. On Volpone, honourable men settle their differences with a duel.’

Rensaint frowned, nonplussed. ‘You’ll duel the colonel?’

‘Of course not. It’s a figure of speech.’

Barbastian crouched to help Regara with his boot, lacing and clasping it tightly around the major’s ankle. ‘It seldom comes to bloodshed,’ he explained pointedly, though his eyes were on Regara. ‘Attempts are first made at reconciliation. It’s rare for one man to kill another.’

‘You mean like I killed his damn uncle? That rare, Filip?’

Rensaint’s eyes narrowed. ‘There’s history between you?’

‘It was over fifty years ago, I was a reckless boy,’ said Regara. ‘And there’s history between most Royal Volpone households. My father settled the debt, bludwaage was averted.’

The silence held an unspoken question, which Barbastian answered as he finished up with Regara’s boot.

‘It literally means “balanced by blood”, a vendetta. If an accord cannot be reached, one man cuts another’s cheek like this’ – he mimed it, his thumb standing in for the knife – ‘just a nick, nothing deeper, to signal the slight is not forgiven. A duel follows.’

‘Yours is a violent culture,’ observed Rensaint.

Barbastian made a face suggesting, you have no idea, before he got out of Regara’s way.

The major limped purposefully from the med-tent, bound for the camp interior.

‘I promise I won’t kill him,’ he said to Rensaint, ‘or you can shoot me yourself.’

Grussman was sitting at his desk when Regara entered the command structure.

‘Major…’ the colonel began magnanimously, not looking up from his quill and papers. His brow furrowed as he reviewed a stack of reports, an auto-quill dancing lividly over a piece of parchment consolidating all the pertinent information. ‘What can I do for you?’ he added. ‘I hope you’re feeling recovered.’

‘You have revoked my command,’ Regara stated flatly.

Grussman kept his eyes on his work. ‘I have merely suspended it.’ There was a barely touched bottle of vresk on the table that looked like one of Deviers’ private stock. Regara wondered what else Grussman had pilfered.

As well as the desk, there were cabinets, a hololith table and several wall-mounted maps and charts. No phonograph, no books. The colonel was all business in his elevated role. He had a private weapons rack, an armature for his uniform, but that was all.

‘And the field promotion for Aramis?’ asked Regara.

‘Overdue, she has excelled.’

‘I have no disagreement with that.’

Grussman at last looked up, setting the auto-quill to dormant. ‘Then what do you have disagreement with, major?’ His eyeglasses perched at the end of an aquiline nose, his hooded gaze as green and dark as an ocean trench.

‘I am being sidelined.’ It was bold, but Regara was angry.

‘You are recovering from trauma. I accredit your current behaviour to this factor, also.’

‘They’re my command, the Fiftieth.’

‘Aramis is a capable officer.’

‘She is overstretched.’

‘It is what’s best for the regiment. You’ll return soon enough.’

‘And when will that be, might I ask, sir?’ As he had made his way through the temporary array of prefab billets, munitions silos and cook tents, Regara had learned the magos had been dismissed. Without his expertise, the fabrication of a replacement bionic would take weeks, instead of days.

‘As soon as you’re back on your feet. Sorry, foot.’

Regara caught the curl at the edge of Grussman’s mouth, felt his jaw clench.

‘A situation which would be dramatically expedited by the presence of our magos.’

‘Ah,’ said Grussman, glancing at the chrono in one corner of the desk, ‘an undertaking that could not be avoided delays the magos. The lesser tech-priests will stand in, of course. Until then, you’re with the auxiliaries. I sent Barbastian to relay the order. I assume he missed you.’ Regara could tell by the quirk of Grussman’s lips that this was a lie.

He took a breath, unclenched his fists. The crutch dug into his armpit, it ached all the way to his shoulder and chest. Grussman had no chairs other than the one he was sitting in. Visitors were expected to stand in his presence.

Regara’s voice grated. ‘There’s no honour in it!’

‘And you are half a man, Vasquez!’ It was the first time Grussman had raised his voice during the exchange, but he softened his tone quickly as if suddenly remembering his position and therefore what was expected of him. ‘I cannot have a Volpone officer invalided as you are on the front line. A cripple cannot lead men. They will not follow you.’ He smoothed his moustache, licking his lips as he glanced at the bottle of vresk. ‘Service to the Militarum and by extension the God-Emperor Himself is honour enough,’ he said, his voice placatory, but Regara could tell he was enjoying this. ‘Or it should be. I understand you’re upset, major, but I have to balance the needs of the army, not one officer.’

Regara wanted to say more but it would be a pointless exercise. He’d done what he came here to do, look Grussman in the eye and confirm what he thought was true. Anything else would be reckless and foolish.

‘Of course, sir,’ he said between clenched teeth, ‘I understand. My desire is to serve the Imperium.’

Grussman smiled, and there was something triumphal in the curve of his mouth and the narrowing of his eyes as he did it. Regara was careful to keep his hands firmly locked behind his back.

The colonel glanced again at the chrono just as an adjutant appeared at the entrance to his chambers. Grussman shooed the corporal away, saying, ‘Yes, I’m ready,’ then turned his gaze back on Regara. ‘You might as well stay for this, major.’

The door to the prefab command centre lurched open and several officers began to file in, Barbastian and Rensaint amongst them.

Regara gave a curt nod then looked away, his knuckles white behind his back.

The entirety of the Volpone upper echelon command waited patiently. At length, Grussman came to stand in front of his desk, facing the semicircle of officers, a king in his own court. He gestured to his adjutant, who engaged the hololith table, revealing the Militarum officers of the western and eastern fronts as flickering and grainy projections.

It began prosaically enough with the reports from Colonel Staddish of the West Army Group. Vogner Staddish had replaced Deviers when the southern front had been deemed of greatest strategic importance and the general’s redeployment had followed. Staddish was a veteran with several campaign honours. He had the broad, well-nourished frame typical of Volpone stock, and thick, dark eyebrows. Even without the hololith vox-output he was quietly spoken, hinting at some old injury that had ravaged his voice. Evidently, the man usually wore a vox-amplifier, a grisly Mechanicus augmetic that turned his face into a cybernetic horror, but the device wouldn’t sync well with the hololith’s audio. Raw scarification hinted at through the grainy resolution suggested he wore it painfully. Staddish spoke of a ‘trying few months’ and ‘little headway’. Voke’s missteps earlier in the war had left him with bare bones as far as fighting men were concerned. Compounded by further casualties to guerrilla attacks, the operations to disrupt Pact supply and reinforcement had only been partially successful.

Major Enghart of the East Army had a similar story, though he expressed doubts at how reliant the Pact forces were on resupply, seeing fewer and fewer forces of significant military strength and citing that most of their engagements had consisted of frustrating and costly skirmishes. A younger man with a haughty disposition and a carefully groomed moustache, he punctuated his words with bombastic vim and vitriol, trying to catch Grussman’s eye so he would perceive in him something others evidently had not, given the East Army was largely confined to chasing down stragglers and overseeing the security of Imperial-held assets.

Then matters turned to the South Army, and here Barbastian took the stage.

‘Our losses have been severe,’ he began grimly, ‘not least of which the Pardus, the Pavis comprising the majority of our armoured strength in the region.’ He looked to Grussman, who stood like a statue, his face permanently stern. ‘Despite the victory at Mireland, it is a blow and a hard one to recover from, considering the road ahead.’

A few eyes went to Bragga, the de facto leader of the Pardus remnants and one of the few non-Volpone in the room, but the man kept his gaze just below the faces of the other officers, his expression pinched.

‘Resistance is entrenched, light but well organised,’ Barbastian went on. ‘I won’t dress it up, general, our resolve is at a low ebb.’ He flicked a glance at Rensaint at this remark, but the lord commissar gave nothing away as he listened pensively.

‘Conventional wisdom would suggest we consolidate our gains and await reinforcement,’ offered Staddish, his voice ghostly through the vox.

Barbastian agreed and said as much to the general. ‘There are reserves to the north and others on Gnostes at large that could be called upon.’

Grussman shook his head, a gargoyle defying the apparent immobility of its own form.

‘We broke them at Lodden and at Mireland. I won’t countenance any further delays and waste this advantage. We must stay determined and end this war on our terms.’

Barbastian was quick to make amends. ‘No one here disputes the military efficacy and commitment of our troops, colonel, but those victories were costly. The loss of the Pardus alone–’

Grussman cut him off. ‘I have spoken. No relenting. We push now and we push them all the way to Karcas. That’s it. If we let up, they will punish us for it.’

Aramis, freshly minted in her elevated role, spoke up. ‘Gannad will be a much harder prospect, sir. Lodden was a battered and shell-blasted town, Mireland a scrap of marsh with a few hastily dug entrenchments. Gannad is a fortified position and will be well garrisoned.’

‘Are we to shirk every time we face stern resistance?’ asked Grussman, though he turned his mild ire on the room, not just Aramis. ‘I won’t deny the Pact have given us the runaround but to fight them man to man, our strength matched against their defences, I would take that opportunity. To do otherwise would be to accept defeat before a shot is fired.’

‘No one here in this room is advocating that, general,’ Aramis rejoined. ‘But as Lieutenant Colonel Barbastian asserted’ – she exchanged a quick glance with him – ‘the morale of the men is low. They are fighting in dirt, dying in filth.’

‘War is dying in filth, major,’ said Regara, the first thing he had uttered since the council had begun. He tried to keep his tone civil, but Aramis’ askance look suggested he’d spoken with more bite than intended.

In the end, Shiller rescued him. ‘Not for the Volpone, it isn’t,’ he said, a palpable heat radiating from his ruddy cheeks, the air around him thick with the smell of cheap amasec. ‘We’re above all that.’

‘Perhaps it’s time we weren’t,’ Aramis replied.

‘Meaning?’ asked Regara.

‘Meaning we’ve fed off our lessers long enough. I have no issue getting mud on my boots.’

‘Nor I,’ said Regara, engaging despite his better judgement. ‘Have you issue with your heritage, Major Aramis?’

‘I once told a man I would not apologise for it, but now I am not so sure.’

‘Sympathy for the commoners is one thing,’ slurred Shiller, ‘but surely you’re not saying they’re our equals?’

A few chuckles at this, even Barbastian raised a wry smile. Bragga of the Pardus said nothing.

‘We inspire,’ said Regara. ‘Act as exemplars to our lessers.’

Grussman interjected, content at first to let the discussion play out but eager now to press on. ‘All the more reason to tilt hard at Gannad,’ he said. ‘Victories inspire confidence, even more so once the Volpone standard is flying over that damn stockade. We have lost ourselves in the mud and filth. We need a reminder of what Volpone glory means. That begins with the end of Gannad.’ He turned his attention back to Barbastian. ‘What’s our strategic position?’

‘According to Militarum intelligence, there are several minor outposts en route to Gannad. These will have to be sacked and cleared before we can press on to Vegath’s Maw and then the bridge itself.’

‘Then we find a way,’ said Grussman flatly, temper just fraying at the edges. ‘I do not care how. It must be done. I won’t fail. We won’t fail. We cannot. Our honour is at stake.’

‘What of Godsword?’ asked Shiller, ‘can that be brought to bear?’

‘It is a symbol and nothing more,’ Regara said bitterly. ‘It doesn’t have the range to reach Karcas.’

Barbastian nodded. ‘Its purpose was to anchor Lodden and hammer the Pact as far as Mireland. A purpose it never served.’

‘Do not concern yourselves with Godsword,’ said Grussman, a secret behind his eyes that he wasn’t about to reveal. ‘Tell me how we breach Karcas.’

Barbastian went on. ‘We believe the Pact have withdrawn most of their forces to Gannad and the border wall at Karcas. This will be heavily reinforced. We don’t yet know why they have been pulling their troops back, perhaps it relates to Scylla, but it’s clear their plan is to bleed us slowly with feints and raids. If that continues we will not be in a fit state to take Rakespur.’

‘Which brings us back to reinforcements from the other fronts,’ said Staddish in a rasping vox-crackle.

Enghart looked about to contribute, having gauged his moment carefully, when the audio fizzled out and then the visual feed, much to the young officer’s mute annoyance. The last sight of the major was Enghart ferociously berating his staff outside of projection range.

Barely anyone noticed.

‘If we wait, we only give the Pact even more time to dig in and fortify their position. We have the ascendancy here!’ Grussman smacked a fist into his open palm for emphasis, warming to his role as orator. ‘Let us take it and send these bastards back to the hells.’

It had all the verve of Deviers, but not the flair or the common sense. Grussman suggested a hammer, bluntly wielded, when they needed a careful incision into a place of weakness.

Rensaint cleared his throat, the pipe he had been smoking cupped in the bowl of his hand and lightly smouldering.

‘A glass spear, however well tempered and thrown, will always splinter when it strikes rock.’

‘What by the Nine Devils is that supposed to mean?’ said Grussman, becoming increasingly exasperated.

‘Only that we hold the glass spear and the Pact are the rock. But I agree that we cannot wait. Cessation of hostilities will set us back months, even years. Beltane and Thrake… it could all end up being for nothing. I am not a military strategist, though I have the training. I do not possess the experience here in this room, but I understand the hearts and minds of soldiers and what motivates them.’

He paused, a clever moment to ensure he had everyone’s attention.

‘We must turn our glass into steel,’ he said, his gaze touring the room, and as his regard reached Regara the major caught a true measure of the man for the first time.

Rensaint’s eyes caught the light and flashed with a vital lustre.

‘Now let me tell you how.’

THIRTY

It took a while before Culcis found the right barracks. Night had drawn in. After casualties had been tallied, and individual squads dissolved and absorbed into larger bodies to make them militarily viable again, recognising the old shape of the regiment had been almost impossible. It had been days, and still he kept getting lost. This was it though, the part of the camp devoted to the 86th and 50th Volpone, a soup of some four and a half thousand men scattered across prefab barrack houses and tents.

The light in Fenk’s lodgings remained doused. Culcis had been watching it for the last several minutes, ostensibly warming his ungloved hands on an electro-brazier. It wasn’t a lie, ice in the air gave it a bitter chill and he tugged his collar up a little higher. An added benefit was that it also hid his face from any passing troopers. No one bothered him; he kept his eyes low most of the time.

After a sufficient duration had passed, Culcis pulled on his gloves and walked across the camp grounds. Upon reaching the barrack house, he paused momentarily to listen and then entered. Darkness met him and he cursed as he banged into a chair. Eyes adjusting to the gloom, he made out a sparsely furnished room, neatly arranged and everything in its place. He’d need to be careful, and he worried briefly about the chair he had dislodged but quickly dismissed it as paranoia.

On the table there sat a simple shaving kit, the bowl and razor cleaned, the cloth greying with use but washed and folded. A metal mug stood next to a can of recaff, again washed and tidied to one side. Getting down onto his knees, Culcis searched under the bed and found a standard-issue kitbag. Inside it were spare socks, a storm cloak and spare uniform. A plastek case briefly aroused interest until it turned out to be nothing more than a utensils kit. An ammunition belt and bandolier were slung over the chair back but done so neatly, across the exact middle of the backrest.

Empty, then…

Culcis stood, letting out an exasperated sigh. He sat on the bed, hoping a different perspective might yield something he had missed, and considered risking a little light from the sodium lamp on the table.

Then he felt it, a creak of… wood? Certainly something yielding to his weight. Not the frame, it was metal and sprung with wire. A thin mattress was upturned easily enough but revealed nothing in its absence but the floor of the room. Nothing under the blankets either. But Culcis had felt it, hadn’t he? As he had sat down, the frame had shifted and…

Leaving the mattress upturned and resting against the wall, he sank back into a crouch and proceeded to run his hand around the thick frame. He did it blind, his hand under the bed and searching by touch alone. When his fingers brushed against the wooden box, Culcis knew he had found what he was looking for.

Carefully removing the tape that had been used to fix the box in place, he brought it slowly into the ambient light. Even in darkness, he could see it was ornate, Volpone red-oak like hardened vermillion. A simple brass clasp held the lid shut. Also locked. It would have been so easy. His knife under the catch. A little pressure… But then Fenk would know, and it might be nothing.

He cursed, knowing there was nothing else to be done, and left quickly, only lingering long enough to put the room back in order. Everything was returned as he had found it, even the red-oak box; Culcis only took his baseless suspicions with him. He had no proof, only a feeling, and one could not accuse a man – especially a fellow officer – on such a basis; he needed more.

Culcis had been considering the means of accomplishing that as he hurried back through camp when he noticed the cossack in front of him. The lieutenant had taken a circuitous route in an attempt at maintaining his anonymity and had strayed into a part of the camp reserved for the magazine and Munitorum stores. It was quiet, and at this hour, seldom travelled.

The boxy silos created narrow alleyways and cramped thoroughfares from one store to the next. Culcis was caught between them. He hadn’t thought to bring a weapon; even his knife was back at the barrack house, along with his sidearm. A glint of steel revealed the cossack found himself better prepared.

Culcis turned on his heel, too savvy to risk a confrontation in such close confines, and found a second cossack behind him, similarly armed. He knew both men, of course, at least by sight. Uzra’s men. And they had come to kill him.

Culcis backed up slowly, careful to keep both cossacks in his eyeline. They advanced with deliberate menace, eager to draw this out, make him suffer. Make him fear.

After the wirewolves, Culcis had no fear left to give. These men didn’t scare him, but that didn’t make their knives any less sharp or his chances of survival much greater.

‘I suppose it would not matter if I told you I had nothing to do with your hetman’s death.’

‘Condemned men will say anything to save themselves.’

‘As emphatic a reply as any…’ Culcis murmured under his breath, tensing for a fight. He edged closer to the first cossack, hoping to goad him on.

The lunge was fast, the blade skidding across the lieutenant’s midriff as he sidestepped, tearing his uniform and drawing a thin red line in its wake. Culcis winced at the sudden pain, but trapped the cossack’s arm and smacked his forearm hard against the man’s wrist, disarming him. The blade clattered on the ground.

His ally was already coming though, having seen through the lieutenant’s ruse a little too late, but not so late he couldn’t slash at him when Culcis was off balance. Deeper this time, the cut raking his chest and eliciting a sharp cry. The second slash carved left to right, forcing Culcis to flinch back or be gutted. A well-placed kick to the armed cossack’s leg sent him howling, the kneecap shattered. Thick arms wrapped around the lieutenant’s shoulders and the air was punched from his lungs as the first cossack tried to crush him. No… not crush him. Hold him.

The other cossack might be lame but he still had a knife. Blood rimed the jagged edge. His blood. Culcis pushed back, staggering the man holding him, but couldn’t get loose. He kicked out at the aggressor in front instead and the knifeman reeled, his nose bloody.

‘It won’t buy you peace!’ Culcis raged. ‘This is murder, unlawful killing. You’ll be hung.’

Neither cossack answered. They didn’t care about the rope. It was in their eyes, Culcis saw it – the desire for redress.

One of ours for one of theirs… The arithmetic of revenge was banally simple.

Culcis struggled. To die like this in some backwater place… He searched for a light, for anything, but refrained from shouting out. I will have my dignity, he said to himself and thought of all the things left undone, of every regret. Then he saw the knife again.

A flash presaged the cossack dropping the weapon in a hiss of pain and pulling his wounded hand against his body. The stench of seared flesh filled the air, the rapid burn and cauterisation of a lasgun, the telltale shriek already fading.

‘Nice evening for a walk.’

Fenk appeared from the end of the camp that led to the former battlefield of Mireland. He aimed a laspistol, his long tapered fingers hung loosely around the stock and trigger. A gentle coil of smoke unfurled from the barrel mouth. He held it outstretched like a duellist, almost lazily, as if he knew he could kill these men as easily as breathing. Culcis tried to breathe too, in relief, but a darkness lived in Fenk’s eyes, an abyssal black reserved for deep-ocean predators on the hunt. He could not determine if he were now in lesser or greater peril.

The cossacks apparently felt the same trepidation. The one with the burnt hand didn’t move; the other, who had his back to Fenk, tried to turn and lessened his grip.

‘I thought I was the only one abroad tonight.’ He said this to Culcis before his gaze fell upon the others. ‘No moons, no stars…’ he continued, ‘just the endless void above us.’

‘Feg off,’ uttered the cossack with the injured hand, belligerent despite the gun in his face. ‘No business of yours here.’

‘I have a fondness for knives,’ Fenk went on, as if the other man hadn’t spoken. ‘Yours look sharp. That serrated edge…’ He sucked in an excited breath. ‘I bet it really tears, doesn’t it? Pares skin, flesh from bone. A filleting blade. I wish I had a knife like that.’

Something like avarice flashed in his cold eyes. All the while he kept the weapon trained. The effort of holding it must have been straining his arm but Fenk showed no sign of discomfort.

‘See this?’

The cossacks exchanged an incredulous look.

‘MG-variant laspistol. Forged on Accatran. It’s a heavy sidearm. High energy expenditure. Very powerful, but no recoil. That shriek when the coils charge and release… the scent as it burns skin. I mean, you know,’ he said, nodding and smiling, goading the wounded cossack to agree, then in a more sinister tone added, ‘don’t you?’

He reasserted his grip on the stock, grew still.

‘At this range, a laspistol will flash-fry the contents of a man’s skull instantly. Have you ever smelled cooked brains? It’s quite something. Rancid, of course, but something.’

The first cossack released Culcis, a nod to his partner, and the two men backed away.

‘Keep knife…’ said the one with the shattered kneecap, his friend helping him to limp away. ‘See for yourself how it tears.’

‘I think I might,’ Fenk murmured.

As the cossacks fled into the camp, he lowered and holstered his pistol.

‘Did you find what you were looking for?’ he asked.

Culcis felt his heart lurch, acutely aware of the hurts to his body, and not relishing the thought of taking on Fenk right now.

He could have lied, said he was performing a patrol or getting some air.

‘Not yet.’

Fenk smiled, an adder’s mouth curling at the edges. It didn’t reach his eyes, which remained predatorily cold as he stooped and retrieved the knife.

‘That’s a pity,’ he said, rising again. ‘I don’t think those men like you too much.’

‘They think I murdered someone.’

‘Oh?’

‘They have the wrong man.’

Fenk frowned. ‘Is that so? They didn’t appear to care overly. Fortunate I came along.’

‘And where were you, lieutenant?’ Culcis asked, looking past Fenk’s shoulder to the darkness at the edge of camp and the old battlefield beyond.

Fenk’s smile returned, broader than before but with less mirth.

‘I’ve always liked you, Armand,’ he said, easing by the other lieutenant without a second glance. ‘Always…’ he uttered, voice swept off by the shadows and the night, leaving Culcis with his wounds and his life.

Darian had eaten alone that night, uncomfortable with the attention in the mess hall. He didn’t feel like a hero, far from it. He had managed to scrounge up a little grub from a clutch of Agrian natives, who seemed uninterested or indifferent to his name and ancestry. The anonymity was comforting.

He wandered now, a full stomach still something of a novelty, roaming the camp. Sleep was a futile exercise in frustration and, in any case, whenever he closed his eyes he saw Ganza begging for his life and then that bastard looming over him. Three ugly blows, a messy execution, and they lauded him for it. He might as well have been chopping wood for his lack of efficacy.

Mil-serves hurried to and fro, their business in the night hours as well as the day. Perhaps that was another reason why he couldn’t sleep. Idle hands. Ordinarily, he would have been scrubbing or carrying or polishing. A ream of duties as long as any banner pole. To sleep, to have freedom, even leisure… it was a foreign country to Darian, ill at ease with the skin into which he was born and now the mantle of nobility he had inherited.

Lenna was not amongst the busy servants, and finding her amongst thousands would be a difficult task. Assuming she would even speak with him if he did achieve the impossible. Throne… her face, like a scalded felid, terrified. Am I a foreign country to her now? Darian wondered bleakly.

A victory party was in full swing, and its bawdy revels wrenched Darian from his maudlin thoughts. A barrack house. His barrack house. He had come full circle and in his absence, his comrades had decided to blow off some steam. He saw the culprit at once, Rake leaning against the doorway, a goblet in his hand. Catching sight of Darian, he beckoned him. The light was welcoming, and it would be easy to embrace it, the warmth of their camaraderie.

But the dead wouldn’t leave him and his skin wouldn’t stop itching in a uniform he hadn’t earned, so he turned on his heel and walked away.

Rensaint stood in his way, like a crow perched in the street before him.

‘It doesn’t rest easy, does it?’

‘Lord commissar?’

‘Fame. Prestige. Take your pick.’

‘It is… unsettling,’ Darian admitted.

‘That will change, believe me. But make no mistake, Darian, you showed everyone the measure of your courage at Mireland. I see great things for you, great things, if you would allow me to guide you?’

Darian hesitated, but he wanted this, didn’t he? The chance to serve, to be worthy.

‘Why would you do that?’

‘Because each of us has a purpose. Mine is to instil greatness or help men find courage when they lack it. I see a purpose for you, Darian. You have but to grasp it.’

‘I want that,’ said Darian, as a sense of longing stoked within him, to belong, to be someone. ‘More than anything.’

Rensaint smiled, cold and piercing. ‘Then let me teach you.’

THIRTY-ONE

The scent of clover wafted in through an open window, the heat and light of Pardua’s sun shimmering gently against the half-turned blinds. It was morning, and a warm bed cradled his body, the aroma of strong recaff on the air. Soothing murmurs came from the room next door, the clatter of dishes, a table being prepared.

Chari…

She was near, whispering softly to their gurgling baby boy, mother and son enjoying the fruits of a peaceful and intimate moment.

Let me be with you….

Outside the hab, a ship was coming. Engines vibrated on the breeze, growing louder. The blinds rippled harder, a rattling staccato that drowned out mother and son.

Let me stay…

A faraway drone became the shriek of landing jets and the churn of stanchions unfolding beneath a mustard-yellow hull.

Just a little longer…

He could almost taste that bitter recaff; Chari always brewed it too long. It reminded him of home before the reek of petrochem and fyceline overwhelmed it. Then he didn’t taste much of anything at all, until the light flicker coming through the blinds faded and the soft lambency of the room drifted away, leaving only blood.

Hauptmann jerked awake, half choking, coughing into a red-raw throat, every inch of his body aching like pummelled meat. There was blood on the floor, his blood, a red pattern of coughed-up splashes.

Something stroked his cheek. His fingers came back wet and he realised they were tears. Hot stone surrounded him, a room with a single iron door and slitted apertures in the walls. He was unbound, alone, though his boots had been taken. And his weapons. He still had his uniform, worn and roughed up though it now was. A wad of parchment in his breast pocket pressed against his chest. They had left those too.

Eyes slowly adjusting to the dingy chamber, Hauptmann lurched to his feet. A little light bled through the apertures. As he tried to peer through one and get some sense of his bearings, he smelled spoiled meat and ozone. Whispers, faint and rasping at first then growing in their urgency and fervour, manifested in his mind and he recoiled. It wasn’t a language he understood, he wasn’t even sure it could be understood, but it felt… it felt hateful. Harmful.

Silence returned.

The memory of Lennox returned too. The lad’s eyes had been fearless up to the end, though Hauptmann thought he remembered grief in them too. Grief for what would never be or could never have been. Another letter for his already burgeoning stack. He would gladly have offered himself in exchange, an old man for a young one, and wondered briefly what had become of Pukk. The Talpa had been alive when Hauptmann had last seen him.

It didn’t take long for him to get an answer. The iron door to the room creaked open and two Pact soldiers thrust a scrawny, ragged-looking Guardsman inside before slamming the door in his wake.

Hauptmann caught him, the Talpa’s body limp like a rag. They had stripped him to the waist. Pukk’s skin was deathly pale and glistening with feverish sweat. His tattoo stood out like a birthmark. His pupils had narrowed to pinpoints in the sclera of his eyes. Fear bled off him in a numbing aura.

‘I thought you were dead,’ said Hauptmann, easing Pukk onto his back.

‘I have seen…’ he rasped, his eyes faraway.

‘Seen? Seen what?’

‘In the glass, I have seen…’ He began to tremble, gasping for air. ‘I don’t want to, I don’t want to. Please… please don’t make me look. Don’t make me…’ He reached up to his face and for a moment Hauptmann thought he might try to claw out his own eyes but instead he scratched at his forehead.

‘Itching…’ blathered Pukk.

Ligature marks on his skin suggested he had been bound by the wrists, ankles and head. Same straps as the machines where they had found Sakker and the others.

‘Merciful Throne…’ breathed Hauptmann as he caught a glimpse into his own future.

Pukk stopped scratching and turned over onto his side. Shaking despite the heat, he wept into the darkness.

THIRTY-TWO

The last of the outposts had fallen, though they had been poorly manned and defended. A nuisance, no more than that, but each one a small cut, a little bleed to sap Imperial strength and leave it weak.

Or that had been the intent.

After a few weeks the South Army had swept away all resistance, imbued with a resilience and determination not seen in many months. Not since Voke’s catastrophe. It was nothing short of miraculous.

Deep into Pact territory, tall stakes lined Gannad Road. Men had been tied to them, set afire and left for the raptors to feast on. The wretched saurian birds fled at the sight and sound of the armoured column, flocking into the air with disconsolate shrieking and the flapping of leathery wings.

The rugged terrain shook the chassis of the Salamander command tank, shook its occupants too, the armoured tracks crunching the debris of destroyed buildings and human bone. Not all the bodies were Pact either. Ahead of the vehicle column, a pyre had been raised across the road and was still burning. A cohort of Diggers had set about it with shovels and picks. No corpse was buried. No rites afforded. The dead were left to smoulder on the roadside, and in the wake of the tanks the raptors returned with squawking hunger.

Darian could still smell the burning flesh on the air, though it was miles hence. As he stood up in the flatbed of the command tank, he breathed deeply to try to clear the stench from his nostrils but Agria had changed over the passing weeks. Gone were the scents of wood and earth, of leaf and stone. In their place, smoke, the tang of char, promethium and scorched human meat. It choked him, almost as much as the silver gorget around his neck and the matching cuirass clamping his body.

The thought of it, his fine trappings, drew his mind back to Lenna. He hadn’t seen her since that evening in the camp and the look in her eyes, of shame, even fear, still haunted him.

What would she think of me now? he wondered, longing for his old life and the drudgery that came with it. He had entertained a fancy, that he would take Lenna with him somehow, fix her to the coat-tails of his advancement, and she would rise with him. Reality had revealed that as a fiction dreamt of by a boy, a foolish and romantic notion. Lenna had her place, and Darian his. Rensaint had taught him that at least. Their orbits had shifted, parting like two celestial bodies never destined to realign.

The sword rattling at his side brought him back. The weapon had belonged to his father, or so he had been told. A cavalryman’s sabre, it had a chased gold hilt and an inlaid ruby pommel. A Blueblood captain had given it to him, though he had no idea how she came to have it. In any event, it was his sword now, a part of his trappings, as well as his rank. Both it and the sword hung awkwardly but the thought was short-lived as the calls came back from the line, interrupting Darian’s meditations.

Agrian sappers ranged ahead, the last of the Ohrek and the paltry scraps of the Talpa acting as guards. A hefty-looking Centaur pushed aside the largest chunks of debris, its ploughing dozer blade like a knife cutting through rock. The sappers swept for mines beforehand, and cut the coils of razor wire that would otherwise have ensnared the Centaur, shovelling aside the dead and the ruins of a sundered civilisation.

‘You should sit, captain.’ Rensaint’s words were collegiate but firm enough to be considered a command.

Darian hadn’t earned that rank. Privately, he wondered if his father had pulled strings from his deathbed. Rensaint had told him it was nominal but also necessary. The men would not aspire to a private or corporal. They would not follow a lowly trooper. But he felt it was dishonest, as wrong as the privilege the Bluebloods enjoyed over their lessers.

I am no hypocrite, thought Darian, eager to voice his discontent but ultimately deciding not to.

Instead, he asked, ‘How far to Gannad?’

‘Eight miles, give or take.’

‘Then this is our last march before we reach it?’

‘Does that scare you?’

‘I don’t fear war or death,’ he said truly, the stark evidence of it surrounding him. ‘I only want this to be over.’

‘As we all do, but please,’ Rensaint insisted gently, ‘won’t you sit?’

‘Are you worried a sniper’s bullet will kill me?’

‘Frankly, yes.’

Darian sat down.

The lord commissar had crafted a compelling narrative, the son of a beloved general of a noble house, claiming his birthright by winning the war for Agria. At every small victory, Rensaint had been present, ready with a flag to thrust into Darian’s hand, as he had done at Lodden when all of this had started. Back then, he had been a mil-serve masquerading as a soldier, his thoughts awash with aspirations of glory. He had accepted the flag without question and in a daze of self-adulation. That had changed, and now all Darian could see was the mendacity of it all. His deeds were amplified, transmuted by Rensaint’s cunning alchemy into hero worship by the ranks. An endless propaganda reel, projected against reality and designed to obscure it.

Worst of all, it was working. And Rensaint knew it. Throne, the lord commissar had told him what he would do and Darian had agreed to all of it.

‘It suits you,’ said the lord commissar, referring to Darian’s armour. A hefty belt cinched the waist, a gilded buckle in the shape of a gryfon’s head clasped it tight. Darian adjusted it, though it still didn’t sit right.

‘Belt’s a little much,’ he remarked, somewhat sourly.

‘You are a talisman,’ said Rensaint, ‘I’ve told you this many times, and a vital piece of the war effort.’

Darian looked up from his fidgeting. ‘I have to look the part, is that it?’

‘You have to be the part.’

‘I feel like a fraud.’

Aside from the crew, who were inside, the vehicle’s only other occupant was Gannika, though the commissar cadet kept her own counsel, her eyes ahead and clear of judgement as she had been taught by her drill-abbots at the Schola Progenium.

Rensaint patted Darian on the shoulder, his comrade, his mentor. His master.

‘You asked for my help, and I gave it to you. Purpose. A place. I know this is strange, but you lit a spark in these soldiers. You inspired them. A victory at Lodden, another at Mireland. Now this. Momentum is with us.’

‘I only ever wanted to serve. To fight. For Volpone, for the Imperium.’

‘And you have done. Well. You have your father’s blood, Darian,’ said Rensaint, wafting a small snuffbox under his nose to ward off the worst of the befouled air. He offered it to Darian but he politely refused.

‘Then why haven’t I seen him? If I have fought well and now inspire these men,’ he said, turning to Rensaint, ‘why has he not asked for me?’ A part of him wished he had sought out his father’s billet that night he had met with Rensaint, instead of his aimless wanderings.

The commissar’s expression darkened. ‘Illness plagues your father, Darian. I fear the Emperor will call him to His side soon. But,’ he said more warmly, ‘I know he is proud of everything you have achieved.’

‘Is he?’ Darian replied acidly. ‘I have never met him to ask it of him.’ He faced forward, his gaze alighting on the tanks in the vanguard.

Grussman rode out in front, the general’s vehicle a few places further along the convoy. Whatever he thought about Rensaint using Darian as the army’s talisman, he didn’t say. At least not to anyone’s face. Instead, he stared at the road ahead as if imagining his manifest destiny coming ever closer.

Outriders in Tauros jeeps ranged either side of the column and behind the command vehicles, a long train of armoured transports ferrying the entirety of the Volpone host and their auxiliaries. At the rear were the last of the Pavis, comprising a handful of Conquerors, heavy mortars and a reduced battalion of flame tanks.

Several of the men straddled the outer hulls of the transports, hanging on guide rails or swathes of rigging. Few spoke, consumed with their own thoughts. But many did look to him and in their eyes Darian saw something that terrified him more than any other horror he had witnessed in this war. He saw them regard him with hope.

Overhead, a Valkyrie flew in low, drawing his and everyone’s eye skywards. Another litter drop. Rensaint had them making passes all over Agria, across every warfront.

Too late now did Darian realise his notions of war and glory were falsehoods. Lie layered upon lie, every true and ugly deed muddied through the lens of propaganda, that vital engine that kept war oiled and filled men with as much hate and vainglory as they could hold. Burgeoning vessels, all of them, bound for the grind, and most a pointless death in a land with an unfamiliar sky. And here he was, the crux of that pitiless wheel.

The leaflets descended like paper planes, fluttering and riffling on the breeze. One landed on the front glacis of the Salamander and Darian reached for it. A waxy scrap of parchment printed in grainy sepia declaimed, Liberation for Agria! Victory is near!

And then Darian saw himself, arrayed in armoured panoply, a Volpone banner snapping from the standard in his hand. An artist’s rendering, idealised, distorted and propagandist in the extreme. A halo shone around Darian’s head, a laurel wreath crowning his skull. A cloak draped his shoulders like the mantle of a ruler. And beneath his slightly upraised boot – though why all heroes needed to be depicted as such, he did not know – the decapitated head of a Blood Pact damogaur, its mask cracked down the middle.

We shall overcome! it declared.

He wanted to destroy it, to crush it in his fist. He would have shed these trappings, pulled on a trooper’s uniform, taken up a lasgun and marched into the fields with the rest of the hopeful damned.

‘Wars are won with the fist,’ said Rensaint, watching him, ‘but they are waged in the heart and in the mind.’

Darian didn’t answer. He let the parchment go and it caught on the wind, dragged around in circles until it spiralled down and was ground underneath heavy tracks.

Culcis snatched a piece of parchment from the air and turned it over to look at it.

‘They are saying he slew Vauga with one blow,’ whispered Rake, peeking over the lieutenant’s shoulder. ‘Fought the damogaur single-handed.’

He half leaned from the open side hatch of the Chimera, the chill breeze lessening the heat of the inner hold.

‘Why are you whispering, you idiot?’ snapped Dresk, the dim interior lighting contorting his face so it appeared even more irritated.

‘I don’t know,’ Rake replied, scowling, ‘it sounds more scurrilous.’

‘Why is that better?’

‘I don’t know,’ he repeated, louder. ‘Why does it matter?’

‘The Emperor’s hand guides him, I think,’ said Hanmar, eyes down, rocking gently in his seat. His utterance prompted the others, even Culcis, to make the sign of the aquila.

Almost thirty Blueblood soldiers sat in companionable quietude, their minds on the war ahead.

‘Do you believe it, sir?’ asked Greiss, the burly sergeant glad to be back amongst his comrades and they glad to have him, despite their protestations to the contrary about his snoring and general odour. His wounds had healed well, the medics had said, though Culcis had seen a slight tremor to the man’s left hand that would be with him until he died. He could shoot, fight, kill. That was all that mattered.

‘It doesn’t matter what I believe,’ Culcis told them. ‘It’s glory, isn’t it. And who would not want to revel in that? “I was there,” they will say. “I was there when the son of Horator Deviers slew Vauga and won the battle of Mireland.” Men worship heroism.’

‘That’s a cold assessment, lieutenant.’

Culcis cursed silently. Aramis had the ears of a felid. She turned her stern, matriarchal gaze on him and he tried not to wither before it.

‘Perhaps these men merely wish to believe in something greater than themselves, some purpose at hand. Hope, lieutenant.’

Culcis wasn’t certain Aramis believed in any of what she’d just said, but it was an officer’s job to maintain morale as well as discipline in her troops. Her troops. Not Regara’s. His demotion, for what other word could be used to describe what had been done to him, had landed like a frag grenade, causing confusion and spitting shrapnel everywhere.

Shiller had laughed. In the three weeks since they had struck camp at Mireland, Culcis had heard him chuckling to himself ceaselessly, a rival’s misery another man’s balm to his own hurts. His mirth had lessened when he had found out Aramis had been promoted above him, but Shiller was a pragmatist and knew he had reached his ceiling. He took what he could get.

‘I didn’t say it hadn’t done good, major. The army is galvanised. For the first time in a long time, the troops believe we can win.’

‘Will win,’ she corrected him. ‘Will.’

‘Of course, sir,’ he said, folding the parchment and putting it into his breast pocket. Imperious as the artist had made Darian look in the propaganda piece, something else struck Culcis about the lad’s eyes. Sadness. He had envied Darian at Lodden, and could scarcely reconcile the affable mil-serve who had stripped and reassembled Greiss’ lasgun in the barrack house, but now he pitied him.

‘It doesn’t matter much now,’ offered the sergeant, meticulously checking his weapon’s scope and barrel. ‘He is Rensaint’s creature. He belongs to the Prefectus.’

‘A morale officer will always seek that which motivates the troops around them,’ said Aramis. ‘They will employ one of two methods – fear or inspiration. We should feel fortunate that the lord commissar has chosen the latter.’

‘It’s been effective so far,’ Hanmar conceded, opening his eyes.

‘We’ll know soon enough,’ said Aramis, her own gaze fixed on Culcis as if seeing his doubts laid bare. ‘Gannad awaits.’

THIRTY-THREE

A fortress loomed ahead, glimpsed between the plosive eruptions of a heavy mortar barrage. Regara could think of no more fitting an appellation for it.

Thick, high walls surrounded it, and a wrought-iron door – wide enough and tall enough to admit an Imperial Knight – barred immediate passage. It housed a well-trained garrison, if Imperial intelligence was to be believed. That particular agency had failed them on several occasions during the war, but in this instance it appeared the logisticians and their cogitation engines had the right of it.

Gannad comprised both gatehouse and bridge, the latter also ringed by several gun emplacements and heavily barricaded defences. Dark rock had been used in its construction from the granite-rich hills west of Vegath’s Maw, the miles-long chasm only spanned at this singular point. Its strategic value was therefore high, and Grussman meant to take it. The local quarry stone, its coal-black hue, also gave the gatehouse its other, more sinister, name – the Burned Keep.

Six battle tanks could cross the bridge abreast with ease, though the approach was much wider and easily double that, Imperial spotters confirming this from the air but venturing no closer for fear of the Pact’s parapet-mounted anti-aircraft guns. Grussman had put this to the test almost immediately, discharging the last of the Pardus armoured strength and hammering the outer emplacements and entrenchments until nothing remained but flattened earth and split rockcrete. The Pact had withdrawn most of their troops by this point, even the Sanguinary barbarians sagacious enough to know their ruinous gods couldn’t protect them from the steel-cased mortar shells of the Militarum.

Regara watched it through magnoculars, handing the scopes back to a Volpone corporal called Vernly whom Grussman had deigned to afford him as his adjutant. Vernly was stout, slab-browed and hooded-eyed like most Blueblood stock, but he was efficient enough.

‘Pity they aren’t able to breach the wall,’ said the woman on the major’s other side, ‘then we could sit back and let the tankers do all the work.’

‘They’ll get their chance,’ Regara said grimly, nodding to Vernly to sound the muster.

‘And now so shall we,’ said Golova Makali, her grin as wide and sharp as a sickle moon when Regara turned to her. She jabbed a finger at his leg. ‘Can you fight with that thing?’

It was a basic prosthetic of articulated plastek and polished wood. It bent and moved as a flesh-and-blood leg but had none of the potency of a bionic. He also couldn’t feel with it. A light rain had begun to fall, dousing some of the fires kicked up by the mortar barrage and Regara winced at a returning ache. Even bereft of his old bionic, the pain lingered like an unwelcome guest. He was beginning to think it was psychosomatic. He sighed ruefully at the irony of it.

‘I’ll fight a damn sight better with it than without it.’

‘Ah, you could rest on my shoulder, Volpone,’ Makali replied, her gallows humour infectious.

‘I may hold you to that,’ Regara told her.

A look and a nod from Eythor signalled that the auxiliaries were ready to advance. The wizened commissar neither laughed nor spoke. As ever, he was a corpse-like husk, a skeleton in a long black coat and cap like some fascistic scarecrow erected on a muster field to terrify the troops into line. Truth be told, the Agrians needed little encouragement. They had built roads, swept mines, cleared debris and dug trenches. They had yet to fight in earnest, and now Grussman was giving them that chance.

Regara saw it for what it was, and so he thought did the golova. She didn’t seem to mind, but then he could not swear by her mental stability.

A rippling flag caught his eye, homespun by the Diggers and held proudly. A shovel and pickaxe stitched in grey on a brown field. The auxiliaries numbered six hundred native soldiers, sworn in according to the agreement signed by the United Agrian Fellowship, and equipped by the Departmento Munitorum with standard-issue flak armour and M35 Galaxy Short-pattern lasguns, possibly the most ubiquitous weapon in the entire Imperial arsenal.

It would serve, Regara reminded himself, the assurances of old briefings returning to him now in the seconds before the attack. He eyed the ranked Volpone more than fifty feet behind this false front, the rows of Pardus tanks a distant ridge of armoured hulls.

An opportunity for honour, the note from Grussman had read, delivered to Regara’s quarters under cover of darkness, the fact of his words being turned back on him not lost on the major. Orders had followed swiftly. The auxiliaries under his command would take first assault. A cripple cannot lead men, but Grussman didn’t consider commoners to be men.

Reach the gate, set charges, detonate them.

Simple enough, were one not to consider the Blood Pact garrison determined to kill everyone before that happened. Oh, and they had to run like the hells once the breachers were in place or risk being caught up in the punitive Imperial barrage that would follow. Grussman might as well have dragged Regara to that muster yard back at Lodden and let the firing squad have at it.

‘I think you must have angered the wrong man, major,’ said Makali, as if reading his thoughts.

‘I’ve been doing it most of my life,’ said Regara, not missing a beat. ‘No sense in changing now.’

She laughed, her mirth profoundly fatalistic, the assault clarions already sounding.

Smoke thickened the air, making it hard to breathe. Jabs of light burned through, their brightness softened but no less lethal.

A heavy contingent were holding the gate, sixty Blood Pact in armour with man-portable siege weapons and anti-personnel guns. They had hidden during the initial barrage, dug in deep and shielded by several layers of ferro-plate. Within fifty feet of the gatehouse, the Pacters had swarmed from their foxholes, taking up barricaded positions, shoving aside the broken bodies of their previous occupants.

Vernly had died quickly, a shot through his left temple rendering any further service from the adjutant null and void, so Regara had the vox and was trying to restore order.

‘No, feint left. Feint! Take two platoons. Sixty men.’

Head down, one hand cupped over his ear, he fought the urge to snap the vox in two.

They had found some cover, though the Agrians were spread across the width of the gatehouse approach road. Above, just visible through the veil of smoke that had become more hindrance than help, the Burned Keep glowered like an implacable black fist of rock. Shots rained from the parapet, fired aimlessly into the grey obscuring cloud. Combined with the heavy fire coming from the front, the Diggers had effectively stalled.

‘I said sixty men! Sixty!’

Makali took the vox, Regara too dumbstruck in the moment to reprimand her. She spoke quickly, her Agrian dialect a slew of harsh vowel sounds and even harder consonants. When she was done, she handed back the vox and clapped the major on the shoulder.

‘You are used to commanding your Royals, Volpone. Agrians don’t think like you. Don’t talk like you.’

‘What did you tell him?’

‘Sixty men around the left flank, feint attack to draw attention.’

Regara stared for a moment, despite the whipping heat of las-beams streaking not so far from their heads, and said, ‘From now on, you take the vox.’

The golova smiled, sketching a casual salute.

A few moments later, the intensity of the Pact fusillade lessened, some of it directed instead at the Agrian platoons harassing the flank of the embedded enemy position in front of the gate.

Through Makali, Regara sent a second, larger flanking force around the opposite side, and then further troops to the left. He had to move them piecemeal, keep the Pacters guessing. He wanted to create the illusion of a pincer and he had to do it fast, because the smoke from the canisters launched by the three brace of Chimeras had begun to dissipate.

‘I need a fire-team, six of your best and you,’ he told Makali as the flankers were moving into position.

It happened fast, six battle-hardened Agrians that had the look of soldiers, if not the finest equipment. Each one carried a bulky det-pack on their back, lugged to the front line at Regara’s relayed order. Makali had a seventh and Regara took the eighth and final breaching charge as it was proffered to him.

‘How far do you think?’ he asked, squinting through the smoke, willing his eyes to penetrate its depths but increasingly anxious as it thinned.

‘Maybe forty,’ said Makali. She dug an elbow in his ribs and gestured to the det-pack as Regara turned to chafe at her. ‘You think to run with that?’

‘I’m going to bring down the gate with it.’

‘How fast are you on one leg?’

‘I have two… after a fashion,’ he conceded.

‘You have one. Please disagree if I’m wrong.’

‘I’m also still in command of this unit.’

‘True enough. How many?’

Regara’s frown asked an unspoken question.

Makali patted her det-pack like an old friend. ‘Of these boomers.’

‘As many as possible. I’d take all eight, if you asked.’ He pointed to a dial on the breacher’s metal housing, then held up his other hand with three fingers splayed. ‘Three-minute fuse. Enough time for us to leave before the barrage starts.’

Makali looked dubious about that, nodding again to Regara’s prosthetic, a not-too-subtle hint that she thought his foot speed insufficient for the task.

‘You’re bloody mad, Volpone,’ she said, and sniffed at the air. ‘Best be off.’

Regara glanced ahead. The heavy contingent still held the gate but large gaps yawned in their defence as a result of the casualties they had sustained. An even larger one had formed in the middle, the Pact’s guns pulled left and right to meet the oncoming threat of the Agrian flankers.

Fifty feet or so behind, Eythor waited with a Volpone heavy stubber battery. Ostensibly the gunners were there to chew up any Pact who slipped through the Agrians, but Regara knew better.

‘I concur,’ he said, and was about to head out when Makali gripped his shoulder and he turned again.

‘Know this, Volpone. If you die out there I’m not bringing back your body for a shiny funeral.’

‘Noted.’

As one, they ran into the smoke.

The first detonation trembled the ground under Culcis’ feet as a flare lit the smoke billowing around the gate in orange and umber.

At the second and third, he heard an order shouted down the line. Command signified, which meant it had come from the general. The fourth through seventh detonations rolled up the left side of the Burned Keep’s gate, blasting hinges, and were followed by a six-strong battery of Griffon heavy mortars grinding into position.

By the time the eighth and final detonation sounded, mere seconds later, the tanks had begun to elevate their main guns, tracking for range and accuracy. A commander poked his head from one of cupolas, a pair of magnoculars pressed to his face like an extension of his goggles.

‘Sir…’ Culcis ventured, the smoke beginning to clear, revealing the Agrian forces still engaged with the remnants of the Pact outer defenders. They had got clear of the breach explosion but had become ensnared with the obstinate enemy. Somewhere amongst that morass was Regara.

Aramis glanced over, her eyes shaded by the lip of her helmet, but from her expression she had seen it too. Palpable tension rippled through the Volpone ranks, at least those loyal to Major Regara.

‘Vox!’ she commanded, and Corporal Henessey was quick to provide. ‘I need to speak with Colonel Grussman immediately,’ she snapped, barely waiting to put the receiver to her ear.

The request was relayed, a vox-crackle announcing the communication had patched through successfully.

The 50th, or at least four companies of them, lined up on the left flank of the assault, a sizeable gap between them and the 86th, of whom Aramis also had operational command. Grussman’s command cadre were further down, right in the middle, with the 101st on the extreme right. Behind all that, the rest of the Pavis. Mortars at rear echelon, flame tanks at the vanguard with what was left of the Conquerors acting as flank guard.

They had a good vantage from where they stood in the line, the 50th, and Culcis hoped that the general’s decision to prompt the heavy mortar was on account of the fact that he didn’t. Facts on the ground, they called it. Officers had been known to change their minds for less.

‘Major Regara is still in the field,’ said Aramis, her tone clipped and anxious, eyes squinting.

Culcis listened, his breath caught in his throat as the Griffons made final adjustments. He couldn’t hear what was on the other end of the line but assumed it was either Grussman or one of his aides that Aramis was talking to.

‘That’s not enough time…’ She paused, cut off by a response then resumed, her mood agitated. ‘With respect, sir, they cannot simply be expected to “hunker down”. It’s a damn mortar barrage.’ Another response, Aramis reddening with anger. ‘I understand the concept of suppression, sir. I know the strength of the garrison.’ The reply that followed saw Aramis grip her sword hilt. ‘Yes, sir,’ she said through clenched teeth. ‘Understood, sir.’

She didn’t look back at Culcis, but fixed her eyes ahead.

‘We’re to hold here. Barrage imminent.’

Culcis let out the breath he hadn’t realised he had been holding.

‘He’ll be killed, major.’

Hanmar was on his left and murmured a prayer.

‘They’ll be damn well killed,’ said Greiss, the sergeant twisting his grip around the lasgun pressed close to his chest.

‘We hold,’ Aramis reiterated firmly, though her frustration was not directed at her command squad. She snarled, ‘And damn it all to the hells.’

They were taking too long. A glance back through the dissipating smoke told him the gate was done. One of the breachers had failed, a lot of noise, a lot of fuss but no bite. That’s why they had seven more, and each had made its mark. Hinges and bolts had been reduced to cored metal, radial scorch marks stretching the length and breadth. Much like a pugilist that had taken one blow too many, the stout iron door rocked on its heels. One more hit would see it fall.

That’s what the Pardus were for, that and the horde of defenders ranked up behind the gate and ready to go tooth and nail.

Grussman would spin it as damage limitation. He’d praise the dead annihilated by the Imperial barrage, laud them for their sacrifice. A few slain so the many could be preserved, and the Militarum war machine grinds ever on.

All of this went through Regara’s mind as he saw the Griffons line up into a firing echelon. The expulsion plumes from their cannons looked like the beginning of a victory parade, each a two-second interval apart, meticulously spread for maximum saturation. He calculated they had maybe ten or twenty seconds before impact and then there’d just be fire and noise and nothing.

Tough to reach safe distance in ten seconds, even without a crooked leg.

Another las-bolt zipped past, like paint smeared on canvas, except the paint was superheated light that would burn off your face. More followed, the air stitched with lethal incandescent threads. A handful of Pact riflemen had them pinned. That and the heavy stubbers chugging rounds out like a damn forty-gun salute.

Regara felt a tug on his shoulder, Makali beckoning as she ran back in the direction of the gate. That way was death, straight into the teeth of the Pact guns on the wall, las coming down in sheets like lethal rain. But not all of it. Most struck outwards, towards the Volpone lines, as spiteful as it was ineffectual.

He rose up onto his heels, heel, and ran after Makali. A few Agrians went with him, chasing his limping gait, seeing what the golova had seen, what Regara now saw.

Ten seconds must have lapsed, though time felt like syrup rung out through gauze in those final moments. He heard, practically felt, the parabola of uncaring mortar shells as they arced through the air.

It took another four seconds to reach the foxhole. Three more for Makali to kill the three Pact soldiers with the same level of ingenuity as her, and three more for Regara to throw himself inside, pressed hard against plated rockcrete and packed earth as all the fury of the Militarum’s ordnance thundered down upon them.

It roared, shaking the ground, rattling bones. Regara roared with it, he roared until he was hoarse, until all that came out was a rasping, red-raw croak of sound. He shut his eyes against it, against the dreadful and endless cacophony of death.

THIRTY-FOUR

They were falling like wingless, suicidal fireflies, flailing as the flame tanks roved amongst them. The Pact had no defence against it, even their manic resolve split to breaking as the Hellhounds took their fill, cleansing and burning to rid the bridge of all resistance. Pockets remained, instigating short-lived firefights, but were soon swept away, the cracks of their guns dying like defiant doomed echoes. Entire platoons fled before the tanks, blinded by smoke and heat, running heedless and headlong to their deaths over the edge of the bridge.

Like fireflies. Beautiful, thought Fenk.

The gate had fallen to the barrage, smashed asunder by the sheer brute force of the Pardus armoured division, or what was left of it. The Conquerors rode in straight after, a slow-moving shield wall of ablative armour for the infantry to advance behind.

Nothing lived in front of those tanks.

The Hellhounds came in after, once the gatehouse was secure, a pack of them hungry for retribution like all the Pardus. Fenk could understand that. He didn’t really relate to the concept of an ‘eye for an eye’, he was self-aware enough to realise his emotions were so remote that vengeance and restitution didn’t properly register, but he could appreciate the need to inflict pain and suffering.

Unsworth had led the charge, of course. Fenk had difficulty in reconciling the silver-clad soldier with anyone other than the private whom he had met at Lodden, but he knew this was Deviers’ heir, or his bastard, or some such in between. He stood atop one of the lead battle tanks, sword raised like a conquering hero. Fenk thought he seemed older and yet also more adrift and alone. And he was very much alone, singular in what he represented to the Volpone. Even the traditionalists, the ones who had derided him as an upstart and unworthy of raising, could not deny the potent symbol he had become. The sight of him there, stood above the ranks in defiance of fear and doubt – he had become a rallying cry, shouts of ‘Volpone glory! Volpone glory!’ pursuing him wherever he went. It stirred the men, of course, the Imperium ever the gifted propagandist.

Fenk was second order, leading the kill-and-recovery sweeps in the wake of the armour and the spear-tip of infantry that followed it. He had fixed his bayonet and roamed within the yawning arch of the gatehouse, stabbing Pacters and gazing coldly at the purging of the Gannad bridge beyond.

A corporal called for him; Fenk couldn’t remember his name. After Redfern he had taken less of an interest in the men that served under his command, deciding it wasn’t worth the effort when either he or they would be replaced imminently.

‘Corporal,’ he said flatly, walking over to the officer. He was young, fair-haired and grey-eyed, a Volpone facsimile straight off the manufactory line. Fenk saw nothing remarkable about him.

He was gesturing to a mound of rubble, Pact and Agrian bodies strewn within it. When the natives had signed up to fight for their homeland, they hadn’t reckoned on the callousness of the Volpone aristocracy. The corporal was blathering about something, Fenk only half hearing as he descended into the depths of his own thoughts. He waved him silent though when he saw the gap in the mound, the edge of a plated hatch peeking through and the pale fingers of someone buried underneath, scrabbling to get out.

Fenk began to dig quickly, snapping orders at the corporal to summon more help. A cohort of Agrians arrived, and the tools of the sappers were put to work. Bodies were dragged and lifted clear. Not all came away intact, and a macabre pile of limbs and parts began to amass. Few paid it any heed, though they’d revisit the sight later in their dreams, focused instead on shifting the rubble.

When at last the hatch was clear, Fenk and two other soldiers got fingers underneath and strained to lift it. Bluebloods stood close by on station, lasguns aimed into the dark beneath the hatch should the occupants be unfriendly. Dust raining from the flat plane of metal, it landed with a heavy clang, revealing a foxhole of Imperial troops blinking with dirt-smeared faces into the light.

Fenk was breathless when it was done and so took a few seconds to address those within.

‘It appears, major,’ he said, ‘that you may have missed most of the battle.’

It was over, barring the last gasps of a defeated foe.

From his vantage on the battlements, Darian looked out upon a sea of fire. The flames rippled on his armour, trapped as vivid reflections. Blood tainted the silver vambrace and breastplate, none of it his. The red stains sent a shiver of unease through him.

Such death… he thought as the last of the Pact resistance was chased down and destroyed. He barely saw anything beyond fire and smoke, and a haze of heat that shimmered the air. Relief and fatigue warred for dominance over his battle-weary frame. His shoulder ached; a bullet at almost point-blank range deflected by his pauldron had left a mark. It ached too from the swinging of his sword that hung like a sated beast in his loose fingers, the blade slick with gore. In his other hand, he held a banner that snapped and whipped on the hot breeze like it was alive, the gryfon rampart strutting and snarling across its tightly woven fabric.

They bellowed for it, the men below. They bellowed for him, though the fervour of their voices was lost behind the sounds of battle that rolled across the bridge ahead of them. He imagined this view might have been stirring once, even beautiful in its way. Now it looked like a road only to hell and mankind’s eternal damnation.

He raised the banner, for it was expected – no, it was his duty. Rensaint had intimated as much on several occasions. And they roared, voices peaking, a conjoined release of pent-up fury and fear expressed through the glorification of a flag. A flag.

It had meant something once. To serve his world, his Imperium, but this experience did not align to that of his childish imaginings. There was no glory in this, only more horror. And he knew, to his own profound dismay, that he was becoming inured to it.

They had taken the gatehouse swiftly, Darian at their head, a host of First Sons Tempestus Scions acting as both retinue and guard. Rensaint and his aide fought with them, the lord commissar never far from Darian’s side, ever eager to hold his talisman up to the light.

Darian had fought hard. He had killed many of the Pacted. Yet his victory felt staged, managed. Rensaint had puppeted the narrative, throwing up a ring of ablative armour around Darian in the form of the Scions, who funnelled and dealt with threats at the lord commissar’s silent command. Twelve of their number lay dead. Two with skulls crushed on the bloody, debris-strewn courtyard below. How many had stepped into harm’s way to protect him? How many had died for Rensaint’s propaganda reels?

‘They risked their lives for me,’ said Darian, his voice not loud enough for the cheering masses to hear. But his words weren’t meant for them.

‘As was their duty,’ Rensaint replied. He stood on a lower part of the battlements, a stone stairway cut into the outside of the rock between them. He was beckoning a tech-priest, a servo-skull held delicately in the Martian’s piston-like fingers. ‘And they performed it well.’

‘As did I?’ Darian asked bitterly.

Rensaint gave him a sharp look. An absent flick of the hand sent the tech-priest on its way as the lord commissar took possession of the skull.

‘You sound disillusioned.’

‘I feel disillusioned.’

‘In spite of the great victory we have won? Karcas is within our reach, then Rakespur and an end to war on Agria.’

The anger faded, an emptiness replacing it. ‘It is a grim undertaking, all of this slaughter.’

‘War is not like the songs, Darian,’ said Rensaint, taking on the mantle of mentor. It fit so easily, as did many of the commissar’s adopted roles.

‘I have heard none… but I was never that naive.’ He remembered the medicae tents, and the poor Talpa screaming as they wrenched the shrapnel from his body. He remembered Lenna, then fought down the image of her face when he saw her last. How long ago his life amid the drudgery of camp now seemed.

‘Then how may I counsel you better?’ asked Rensaint.

‘It’s this… all of this.’ He shook the banner out of irritation but so far up the soldiers adulating him in the courtyard only roared the louder, shaking their weapons in sympathetic unity.

‘The banner?’

‘A prop.’

‘And what are banners but props symbolising the fealty of a regiment, of a world? Men will die for banners.’

‘I have seen the propaganda reels, the leaflets.’

‘I know you have, I showed them to you,’ said Rensaint, his tone collegiate as he mounted the stairs with servo-skull in hand.

‘They are lies, or at best half-truths, that paint me as some invincible hero, a saint in all but name.’

‘Invincible is it?’ He raised an eyebrow, playful.

Darian huffed. ‘You know what I mean.’

‘What do you think propaganda is, Darian?’

At that the anger rushed back, hot and burning on Darian’s skin. ‘Don’t patronise me, lord commissar. I have not the stomach for it.’

Rensaint held up a hand, his expression contrite. ‘I apologise, you are right. The battle has left me weary, that’s all.’ The cuts to his uniform, the abrasions against his armour all testified to that. ‘I only mean to say that a half-truth can serve a greater good. War is grim, it is slaughter – your words, not mine. Truth, Darian, is what people want to hear. It is whatever fits best with their belief in what is real and what is right. Men don’t want truth, they want something that feels true, that supports their notion of what the galaxy should be when it is in balance. They need something to believe in, but that thing must be what they already consider to be true. Do you understand?’

Darian nodded, his fury ebbing as it always did when the lord commissar spoke his consoling rhetoric.

A vid-picter whirred, lodged in the eye socket of the servo-skull, and he turned his attention to it. Anti-gravitic impellers groaned into mechanical life and the macabre thing took uneven flight, Rensaint releasing it like it was a dazed moth let back into the night. It whirled and drifted around Darian, its crude cranial engine clicking as the grainy light of the vid-picter lens strafed over him, absorbing every detail. He heard it magnify and retract, taking in the banner, the blade, even the look of cool disdain on his face.

Rensaint would add the politics later, fashion the narrative.

‘This one shall be holo-cast,’ he said and watched the servo-skull keenly, a director at his art, ‘before the troops advance on the Karcas border wall.’

‘Have you ever considered,’ said Darian, ‘what would happen if it fails? If, in spite of everything, we still lose.’

‘I haven’t,’ Rensaint replied honestly, ‘because I do not countenance failure. Have faith, Darian, in yourself, in what you represent to these soldiers. The Emperor is with us in this, He wills us to–’

A shot rang out, a cold crack of a hard round snapping on the wind, cutting Rensaint off mid-speech. The air fizzed around Darian, shimmered, and the smell of burning arose, of metal warped by heat. He reeled, the impact of the shot staggering him into the parapet.

A bullet fell to the ground, clinking innocuously as it hit stone underfoot, a heavy-calibre shell fashioned to bore through tank armour and that would rip a hole through a mortal body and leave it gaping and ruined.

Rensaint’s face had turned white as Darian’s eyes met his, before the mask slipped into place again and the colour returned. ‘Are you hit?’

Darian stared, still shaken.

Rensaint advanced a step. ‘Are you wounded?’

‘No…’ He looked down at the belt cinched around his waist. Not a belt at all. Refractor field generator. Insurance.

Something like relief passed over Rensaint’s face before he addressed one of the Scions. ‘Take him down from here immediately.’ Then to Darian, ‘Raise your hand.’

‘What? I–’

‘Raise it. A fist.’ He showed him. ‘Don’t question, act.’

He raised his hand, held it up for all to see.

As the last dregs of the battle faded and the fires began to ebb, the sniper was found and killed, the shots drowned out by the adulation of the crowd.

‘Now,’ said Rensaint, a hungry glint in his eyes, ‘you are invincible.’

THIRTY-FIVE

Regara had barely left the medicae, the stitches still buried in his face, the small strips of gauze like off-white patches layering his skin. His ears had yet to cease ringing completely, the bombardment a dull echo in his cochleae. He walked with a limp, needing a cane to steady himself and not just on account of his leg. Having chosen one with a sword hidden in the shaft might have been a mistake though. Every step sent agony up his spine, his back still badly bruised and scarcely healed. The pain meds could come later. He wanted to be raw for this, like an exposed nerve.

He had a piece of folded fabric tucked under one arm. It was thick, dirty, scorched. A battlefield leaving from Gannad and, as it turned out, a gift. One he would repay in kind.

Regara found him in the vox-station engaged in hololithic discourse with a grainy rendering of the Martian magos, his manner brusque and unyielding. An argument. It proved brief, the meeting either nearing its end as he had entered the vox-station or curt to begin with.

A handful of vox-operators busied themselves at the periphery, listening to the headsets cupped around their ears, turning dials to improve audio clarity and otherwise heedless of the colonel in their midst. Grussman wore his uniform without panoply, dressed down with an unbuttoned jacket and no officer’s cap to help mark his rank. Lost in his thoughts, he didn’t notice Regara until he was standing in front of him.

‘Major,’ he said, taking off his eyeglasses to massage the bridge of his nose, ‘the hour is late. I am surprised to see you up.’ He went to pour a drink, a round bottle of Konis brandy sitting on a desk and within reach. There was only one glass but Grussman offered a pour to Regara, who refused.

Grussman shrugged it off, poured one for himself anyway. Taking a sip, he said, ‘I’ve ordered reinforcements from the West and East Army Groups. Staddish didn’t like it much but it’s not as if he had much choice, is it?’ He grinned, comfortable in his power. ‘Enghart was a good man, though. He could go far, that one.’ He took another sip of the brandy, sucked through his teeth as the alcohol bit. ‘Sure I can’t tempt you?’ He cast around, looking for someone to procure another glass. ‘Never a bloody deg around when you need one, eh?’ He puffed up his chest, smoothing down his jacket. ‘Big day coming, big day…’

Only then, as he was preening and imagining the coming glory, did he appear to notice that Regara had yet to speak.

‘So, major,’ he began idly, ‘what can I do for–’

Regara tossed the folded fabric in front of Grussman like an offering and it rolled open, revealing the half-burnt flag of the Agrian Diggers. Dust and dark flecks marred the shovel-and-pickaxe emblem. Then he turned as smartly as he could and stalked away.

‘It’s just war,’ Grussman called after him, too disinterested to remonstrate with him.

‘Yes, it is,’ Regara said to himself and left the vox-station behind.

He felt their contempt as he walked through the camp, barely fettered and not, he admitted, without cause. Though the dust had settled on Gannad, the ashes of an emphatic Imperial victory still redolent on the breeze, other matters of much longer standing remained unresolved.

Not for the first time since he began his walk, Culcis regretted not bringing Greiss or Hanmar. Even Drake and Resk would have been better than nothing, but they were all back with the other Volpone, making the most of their downtime before the march. Grussman had so ordered it, a rare respite that saw most troopers engaging in anything but as they indulged in this unexpected freedom before the trials of what would follow. Culcis could see it as he walked. It lay to the south, the next battle. The scouts reckoned on seven miles away. Seven miles across sparse terrain, the border of Karcas. Fires lit the wall in a flickering candescence, white against dark, cold flares in the night like icy beacons. It had never been breached and its gate had been sealed, entombed behind granite. A formidable barrier. Rumour around camp held that Grussman had an answer to that, but none knew what save the general himself, and his hand of covenants stayed close to his chest.

The smell of cook fires turned his head, the heady aroma of gruppa ladled into earthenware bowls and passed around tribal circles. Culcis walked around them, staying to the edges. Muttered words passed between the Agrians but none stopped him or voiced a challenge. He found her sitting alone, a bowl in her lap, a flask of something alcoholically potent, judging by the smell of her breath, held lazily in one hand. As her glassy eyes fell upon him, Culcis guessed she had imbibed more than a little.

‘What do you want here, Volpone?’ She slurred, but only a fraction. The flames from the cook fires danced in her eyes. ‘Not good for you to be here.’

Nearly six hundred had perished in the bombardment but that wasn’t to what she referred.

‘Better here than in a dark alley,’ he said.

She glanced down at the weapons belt cinched around his waist.

‘I would ask are you headed to war, but we both know the answer to that.’ Makali set the bowl down; a few of the other Agrians stirred but a glance from their golova kept them at bay. ‘Though I am intrigued why you would come here to find it.’

‘Not to find it, to end it.’

‘Oh?’ She wiped her mouth with the back of her forearm.

‘In my culture, it is called bludwaage.’

‘Ah…’ she said, settling back down again, an easy smile on her lips as she took a pull of her flask. ‘You want to balance the scales.’

Culcis frowned, momentarily confused. ‘I didn’t realise you spoke Konis.’ He referred to the native tongue of the capital, Konisburg. ‘How?’

‘I don’t, but I listen.’ She offered the flask. ‘You want to partake, Volpone? You look like you could use it.’

‘I have no interest in your local grog.’ He sneered the last word without meaning to. It was a common word, unused to his tongue.

Makali sneered in turn. ‘I liked your superior better. You measure yourself to him, I think.’

‘Whom?’ asked Culcis, his eyes darting around the shadows, expecting trouble at any moment. This wasn’t unfolding as he had thought it would.

‘You know…’ She patted her leg with the flask.

‘Major Regara?’

Makali nodded. ‘Regara, yes. He is a good man, a wise man. I like him, even though he is a cripple.’

Culcis slid two inches of steel from his scabbard. She tsked and tutted, shaking her head.

‘Come now, Volpone, what will you do with that?’

‘I’m not here for you.’

‘And yet you have me.’

‘End it,’ he stated flatly, ‘end it or I shall.’

‘End what?’

‘This vendetta.’

‘I have no vendetta.’

‘Your cossacks then.’

‘They are not mine.’

‘They follow your orders, attacked me like dogs in the street when I was unarmed.’ Culcis eyed the dark again but no one moved, though all eyes were on him. ‘So I come to end it. Here, now. With honour.’

Makali moistened her lips as she reached the end of her indulgence.

‘You Volpone and your honour. There is no honour in death. Or in glory. It is just death.’

‘Then why does the death of your man matter so much?’

‘Because you had no right to it. His death was not yours to claim.’

‘But I didn’t kill this man, this… Uzra,’ he said, struggling with the name.

‘I know that. I’ve watched you long enough to know that, but I’m afraid that hardly matters, not to them.’

‘Then bring them out,’ Culcis demanded, ‘and let us see this done.’

‘I cannot “bring them out” any more than I can stop them coming for you. I don’t order these men. They have their own will. They choose to follow me… out there.’ She gestured to the darkness and the plains beyond the border wall that would be a battlefield come morning. ‘They are not here, Volpone. None who are care for your bludwaage,’ she said, her pronunciation flawless. ‘Recompense was promised, justice. It has not been delivered, and so we are where we are. They will come for you when you are unready. They will kill you as he was killed, alone and unarmed.’

‘And if I kill them first?’

‘More will come.’

‘And if it’s during the act? If I prevail and survive?’

‘Then there will be two more dead cossacks in the earth, but I doubt others would follow.’

‘You only doubt?’

‘I don’t know their minds.’ She turned her face back towards the cook fires. ‘You won’t find what you’re looking for here, Volpone. Begone, and pass my regards to your major. I hope he makes use of his gift. He is a fine man that one. I shall think of him later,’ she said, yawning as she brought the flask to her lips.

‘You are a savage breed, you Agrians.’

Culcis left her behind, Makali and the cook fires and barbaric culture he did not understand, but he felt the barb in her final words to him.

‘And yet you fail to see your own savagery.’

Aramis met him on the outskirts of the Agrian quarter.

‘You look like you could use a drink,’ she said, emerging from behind one of the tents. The section of camp designated for the Bluebloods was clean and well tended. Mil-serves roamed like silent waiters, attending to every task. Even the tents themselves were richly appointed, those reserved for the officers more like prefab structures boasting furnishings and ornate electro-sconces. The scent of fine meats wafted on the evening air from a nearby refectory tent.

‘You are the second woman to offer me that tonight,’ Culcis replied, his mood sour.

Aramis pulled a surprised well, I never face. ‘Your charms must be improving.’

He scowled at her, and she raised her hands in a placatory gesture.

‘That was uncalled for, I apologise.’ Her wry grin suggested she felt otherwise.

‘Really, sir. I prefer to keep a clear head.’

‘Your head is anything but clear, lieutenant.’ She caught his arm as he made to walk on, and their eyes met. ‘No ranks, no agendas. Just a drink.’

‘Is this a ploy?’ asked Culcis, squinting as if to see the truth of her intentions. ‘Some jape at my expense? I have not the disposition for it. Not tonight.’

‘A drink,’ Aramis reiterated, and gently steered him in the direction of the refectory tents. ‘I know so few of you in the Fiftieth, and Gavid is poor company around wine.’

Culcis raised a questioning brow, prompting her to elaborate.

‘He doesn’t drink.’

They laughed and found the nearest refectory tent.

It was dingy inside, a low hubbub of voices providing a subliminal hum to the bawdier exclamations of troopers deep in their cups. A gadulka was playing, a corporal Culcis recognised but couldn’t recall the name of playing a lively song that a clutch of men sang along to. An inksmith plied their trade, having set up shop in one corner where the sodium lamps blazed brightest. A brawny trooper gritted his teeth as the smithy tattooed his upper arm, the auto-needle an insect buzz in the background. He would do decent business tonight, the inksmith; a line had already begun to form. Every man wanted the same, the gryfon rampant. It had become his sigil; the hero of Lodden, the saviour of Mireland, conqueror of Gannad. Darian Deviers, son of Horator De Nesk Deviers. Volpone glory personified.

‘Tempted?’

Culcis smirked but shook his head. ‘I expect I’ll be one of the few that abstains.’

‘It’s said to bring luck on the bearer.’

He turned to face her. ‘Then where’s yours?’

‘Oh,’ she said knowingly, and gestured to a table, ‘I don’t believe in it.’

‘It or him?’

They sat down, a little out of the way, and Aramis ordered a bottle. The mil-serve brought it promptly.

‘I saw him kill Vauga, you know.’

Culcis leant back, intrigued.

‘It was not the stuff of poetry or song,’ she elaborated. ‘It was ugly and Ganza played his part in it too, the poor dead bastard, but a headless corpse is a fairly ineffective talisman.’

‘You sound cynical.’

‘Just tired, and probably more candid than is wise.’

‘Morale has improved.’

‘And I salute the Prefectus in their cunning arts,’ she said.

Culcis looked around. Several new faces were present with new regimental designations. Reinforcements from the west and east, Staddish and Enghart doing their bit. One of the east intake caught Culcis’ eye, young, like a raw recruit. Dark-haired, which was unusual for a Volpone. He sat alone and seemed to be looking for someone. When his gaze fell upon the lieutenant, he stared back, unflinching.

Something about the raw recruit’s manner felt awry. A soldier could usually spot another soldier in their carriage, in how they acted. This one had none of the usual hallmarks, and Culcis was about to mention it to Aramis when a crowd bustled in, a rabble of Talpa come to receive their ink. For a moment he lost sight of the recruit, and by the time the Tunnel-Rats had passed the soldier who was not a soldier had gone. Culcis briefly wondered if he had seen him at all as he massaged the bridge of his nose, grimacing.

‘Everything all right?’ asked Aramis.

‘Just need some sleep,’ he said, aware that he had barely caught more than an hour or two ever since the wirewolves. He regarded the bottle, hoping the peaceful oblivion he craved was somewhere near the bottom. It was of decent vintage. Not cheap, even by Volpone standards.

‘Pushing the boat out, are we?’ he said as Aramis poured two glasses, and putting the strange encounter from his mind.

‘What else are Militarum wages for?’

‘You know, I am seeing a different side to you, major.’

‘Ione.’

‘Ione,’ he corrected. ‘The last time we spoke using our first names you had a mind to put me in my place.’

‘You were an arrogant prick, Armand. I see some personal growth though, so there’s hope for you.’

‘Such a relief.’

She smiled, a little sad, a little weary. Her mood changed, became less frivolous.

‘They say this might be the end of it.’

‘The war? Voke said that about Lodden.’

Aramis nodded. ‘If you believe the talk, this is it. The border wall represents the last true bastion of the enemy. Rakespur will fall quickly after it’s taken. The fortress is little better than a ruin.’

‘If you believe the talk.’

‘Yes, the talk.’

‘I don’t think you brought me here to discuss tomorrow’s battle.’

‘Are you a Konisburg man, Culcis?’ she asked, her conversational dancing keeping the lieutenant on his toes.

‘I have spent time in the capital, before I shipped out. I studied there, military history.’

Her eyes widened a little, and she leaned back, the glass cupped lazily in one hand. ‘My, my, a scholar.’

‘Not exactly. The subject interested me, but the female intake at the universitariat was prodigious.’ He gave a facial shrug, part apology, part insouciance.

Aramis gave a snort of laughter. ‘Of course. There are only women at the universitariat now, barring a few of the lectors of course. The men are all gone to war, singing “Volpone Glory” all the way to the Departmento recruiters.’

‘You’re here.’

‘My family is at Pascolon. If I wanted to keep the lands bequeathed to me by my late husband, I needed a military commission. And rank. So I achieved both, but I don’t relish either.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘Don’t be. My husband passed long ago and I am a damn fine officer. I’ll make a difference in this war. By my sacrifice, my family back on Volpone is kept safe. I cling to that in the small hours when sleep will not come, but you know a thing or two about that,’ she said, and Culcis was reminded of their first meeting during one of his nocturnal wanderings.

‘I saw it in your eyes,’ she explained, recalling that night, ‘a man trying to mask his pain, not a gadabout on the prowl.’

‘I could have been both.’

She drank, conceding the point, and poured another. Then one more for Culcis too.

‘I feel numb,’ she said. ‘Numb to loss, to pain. Throne, sometimes I wonder how I can feel at all.’

‘Anger is a feeling,’ said Culcis, his quiet voice at odds with the words.

‘I can’t live by anger alone.’ A pause and then, ‘There will be no search,’ she said at length and apropos of nothing. This was the root of it then, the reason for their drink, and Culcis saw his own pain reflected in her face.

‘Hauptmann and the others,’ he assumed.

‘Designated mortis relictus as of this evening, hence…’ She held up the glass, already half drained.

‘I owed him money,’ he said, and felt stupid for doing so.

‘You knew him?’

‘We played cards now and then, covenants. It had been a while. He was a bastard at cards. Hard to read. Always beat me.’

‘He was the first face I met upon redeployment. I gave him fuel.’ She smiled at that, but it was melancholy like all the others. ‘Did you know his first name was Velas?’

‘I always just called him Hauptmann.’

‘I should like to have known him better. I regret I’ll probably never get the chance.’ She raised her glass. ‘Velas Hauptmann.’

‘Velas Hauptmann,’ Culcis replied.

‘May the Throne watch over him.’

A brief companionable silence fell between them until another voice intruded.

‘Such a waste…’

Isaac Shiller stumbled into sight, wobbling the table as he collided with it on unsteady feet. Russet-cheeked, dishevelled, he had been at it a while. His breath was so potent a Chimera could have run on the fumes.

‘A waste of what?’ said Aramis, her annoyance thinly veiled.

Shiller pulled an ugly face, slurred, ‘Can’t decide.’ He leered at Aramis, seemingly unconcerned that she outranked him.

‘I think you should leave, Isaac.’ Culcis scraped his chair back and stood. ‘Let me escort you to your lodgings.’

‘Sit your arse down,’ snapped Shiller, dismissive. ‘And you’ll refer to me as captain.’

‘When your conduct is befitting your rank, he will,’ said Aramis, but gestured for Culcis to resume his seat, which he did.

‘A waste of your station…’ Shiller slurred, as if the last part of the conversation hadn’t happened. He smiled, a lopsided, sleepy curl of the mouth. ‘Out here in these slums. It’s unseemly.’ His lip curled. ‘What makes you think you belong with any of us?’

‘Now see here, I don’t care what bloody rank–’ Culcis began, about to rise again until Aramis gestured for calm and he sat still, simmering.

‘You smell like you’ve drunk enough for the three of us, Shiller,’ she remarked, turning her attention to the captain, taking a measured sip, ‘and it has impaired your already mediocre judgement. You see, I know your kind, the bullying hypocrite, the sort of man too afraid to face the ghosts of his lesser nature and so he hides them behind some vice or other.

‘The kind of man who beats on the weak and the frail and the ones who can’t fight back so that he can feel strong. In charge.’ She barely moved throughout the tirade, save to take another sip. She didn’t even look at him. ‘I could pull rank here, chastise you in front of all these men and do it noisily. I could reprimand you for being a piss-arsed drunken lout who’s forgotten his breeding and has mistaken vulgarity for presence. I won’t. I don’t need to. I see you, Shiller. I know what you are. Now leave, before I lose my temper and I really dress you down a peg.’

Shiller seethed, his face even redder than before, fists clenching and unclenching with impotent anger. He looked about to say something but turned away instead and left without another word.

Culcis watched him depart, his turn now to make the well, I never face. He also said, ‘Well, shit… that was quite something.’

‘I think I’ve had enough drink,’ said Aramis, her eyes on his. ‘At least here.’

‘What do you propose?’

‘I’m tired of feeling numb, Armand. I want to feel something else… or just something.’

‘I know what that’s like.’

‘I have a bottle of vresk, nicer than this one, back in my lodgings.’

‘I would gladly share it if that’s what you’re asking,’ he said.

She held his gaze. ‘Well, I won’t promise sleep…’

Aramis left, finishing off her drink, not waiting for the lieutenant.

After a few moments, Culcis followed.

Fenk didn’t partake in the revelries. He haunted the fringes, the shadows, instead. A massive intake of recruits and reinforcements had come in from the other army groups and he watched them trail into camp in their perfect ranks. These soldiers had seen little of the war so far. He could tell by their bearing, the raised chins and unblinking eyes. So proud. Grussman was leveraging everything he had on this, pulling every string. He didn’t want to be another Voke. But he spent men like coin and he was an inveterate gambler on a winning streak. He liked risk, enjoyed the thrill of it.

The grey host stirred, an itch rather than a compulsion, though the time was coming. He would have gladly killed Mattias Grussman, given the chance.

As if the thought of the man had brought him forth, Fenk’s attention turned to movement in the dark. Quiet, unassuming. Clandestine. And definitely Grussman. He walked briskly and away from the crowds. None saw him, save Fenk, but the general was unaware he was being observed. A simple uniform, rest attire, nondescript.

Fenk followed.

He knew how to pass through a camp unremarked and unseen, but Fenk had to admit that Grussman knew his arts, too, in staying hidden. After a few turns and a fairly circuitous route, the general arrived outside an officer’s tent. It wasn’t Grussman’s, and that in itself was curious. A light burned softly within. Fenk sank back into the shadows as Grussman turned, looking to see if he was being watched. Believing all was well, he parted the tent flap and Fenk caught the suggestion of other men awaiting him by the shape of the shadows within. Narrowing his eyes, he thought one of them might be Major Enghart, meeting his master at the door like a good lapdog.

‘Fascinating…’ uttered Fenk, and slipped back into the night.

THIRTY-SIX

It appeared in the hour before sunrise, a plume of smoke indicating its passage south, stark and black against the faint pre-dawn light. Drizzle smeared the air on the outskirts of the camp, made it miserable and cold, but the delegation of officers and their attendants didn’t grumble; they scarcely even moved. A stage had been raised to keep their fine boots out of the mud, a rare bit of pomp insisted upon by the general. A canvas awning cloaked it but did a poor job of keeping out the wet and the wind. Banners fluttered, their fabric made heavy and sluggish by the rain.

Grussman stood proudly, arms locked behind his back, chest out, a mil-serve in a soaking uniform holding a black umbrella over his head. He looked like a man who had, until that moment, been uncertain in his works, but who now believed he had accomplished something no other could.

Aramis turned up the collar on her storm coat, Henessey in her peripheral vision doggedly refusing to shiver. Rain dripped languidly from the rim of her officer’s cap and she breathed into her cupped hands, trying to coax a little warmth.

She noticed Rensaint a few feet behind the general. His cadet stood in his shadow, at heel, her bite considerably sharpened by the bionic serving in place of her severed arm. She brandished it plainly, the rain running off shiny plasteel in bright rivulets. Rensaint was without his protégé though, the bastard son of Deviers conspicuously absent from proceedings. He had a subdued air, the lord commissar, as if in deep contemplation about weightier matters, but Aramis had always found his kind in the Prefectus hard to read. Perhaps he was regretting giving the talisman of glorious Volpone the night off.

Of the other officers in the crowd, only Shiller caught her eye. His slanted gaze in her direction slid away the moment he realised she had seen him but the desire for retribution in his eyes and posture stood out like a flash grenade.

Let him stew, Aramis thought.

Another warm breath failed to stir much feeling in her half-frozen fingers and she quietly cursed.

‘I’ve felt Valhallan winters with less bite than this wretched morning.’

Aramis turned, surprised to find Barbastian at her side. The man had a light tread.

‘Lieutenant colonel,’ she said, making a quick salute.

‘Major,’ he replied genially.

He was well attired as always, wearing a fine grey wool storm coat with gold thread piping and a high brocaded collar that encircled his neck like a gorget. A heavy cloak of vermillion kept off the worst of the weather, and he held a black umbrella in a velvet-gloved hand. His skin was supple, well tended. He was immaculately groomed and smelled pleasantly of musk and cinnamon.

Barbastian had always struck Aramis as a foppish officer but that didn’t tell the entire story. She knew little of substance about him, but what she did know she liked. Despite his apparent vanity, he had genuine resolve that she found some Volpone lacked, on account of their comfortable lives and entitled upbringing. None of that from Barbastian, though she understood he came from a high-ranking house of Royal Volpone. Konisburg, like Culcis.

The thought sparked a recent memory.

She had left Armand in the early hours, asleep in her bed. He looked like he could use it, so she hadn’t disturbed him or left a note. She hadn’t the heart for sentiment but had been grateful for his company. He would find his way back to his own barracks, a moment of shared humanity between them and nothing more.

‘I should congratulate you on your field promotion,’ said Barbastian, pulling Aramis from her thoughts. ‘We haven’t had a chance to speak properly since Mireland. How are the Eighty-Sixth and the Fiftieth?’

Despite the ostensible bonhomie, Barbastian looked distracted, even troubled, like he was going through the motions of polite conversation by way of a learned response rather than genuine enquiry.

‘Lean and eager, sir. Though I think the Fiftieth won’t be with me much longer. I had expected to see Regara here, but heard he was still in medicae.’

Barbastian’s expression pinched a little, as if reminded of a different worry he had tried to quash.

‘It’s a damn miracle he’s alive at all,’ he said candidly, before immediately retracting his statement. ‘I apologise, major. This war has been testing on us all.’ Again, that darkness to him. A weight. His gaze fell on Grussman and hardened. The general was like an Imperial statue chiselled of arrogance and bombast.

‘It was reckless,’ Aramis said boldly, assuming the general was the cause of the lieutenant colonel’s distraction. ‘The order. I saw it given. He did it heedlessly and without pause.’

Barbastian looked like he wanted to reprimand her for this dissent, his eyes on her suddenly sharp. She withstood it, looked back, daring him to disagree.

‘Be mindful,’ he said, taking the milder course. ‘We serve the Imperium, not ourselves. To all intents and purposes, the general is the Imperium.’

‘Yes, sir,’ said Aramis, allowing a mote of contrition into her voice, ‘of course, sir.’

But she didn’t agree with that, in Grussman’s pre-eminence or his fitness to lead, and neither did Barbastian, though the words remained unsaid. A shadow fell across him as his mind turned inwards again.

A clamour arose in the distance, prompting them both to look forwards. A procession of warriors had begun to materialise out of the rain, silver-and-red armour glinting with icy droplets, the lantern glow of fusion weapons and the copper gleam of volkites like beacons in the gloaming. They marched in perfect order, a cohort of robed skitarii, the Mechanicus’ own foot-soldiers. Pale visors flashed in bucket-shaped helms, suggesting something cold and inhuman underneath. Equine Serberys and lanky Dragoon walkers loped either side in two cavalcades. Above, a flock of winged pteraxii whirled and circled.

Aramis had dealt with tech-priests before; they were often strange, and not only on account of their cyborganic appearance. She had never fought alongside their troops though, and to her the Mechanicus skitarii and their auxiliaries were like something created in a laboratorium and barely human at all.

She reckoned on six hundred warriors. Martians did like ceremony and this had every hallmark of one, but as impressive as it was, it paled into insignificance next to the weapon they escorted. It rolled on thick iron treads, immense and daunting. It had imposed itself on the horizon far in advance of its retinue, a slow-moving edifice of hard metal and softly glowing fusion capacitors. Towering, it dwarfed the stage and those upon it, the air thrumming with energy output. To have done this, to have wrenched it from the foundations of Lodden and fashioned tracks to drive it, an engine to move it…

She balked at first at the sheer audacity, the terrible majesty. So did the other officers, and Grussman stood taller, as if drinking in their awe and finding it empowering.

Godsword had come to Karcas.

THIRTY-SEVEN

Darian sat alone and contemplated the wall. Even seven miles away, it was daunting. A seemingly unending barrier of ferrocrete and granite, ten feet thick and much taller than the gatehouse at Gannad, it severed the Karcas region from the rest of Agria. Hard, grey mountains flanked it east and west like monolithic capstones, the place of their joining to the wall lost to the night, but it was still an incredible expanse. It had been raised early in the occupation, so the briefings claimed, and taken years to construct. He had never seen a fortification of its like but tomorrow the Volpone would try to take it. And Darian would lead them.

The men revelled at camp, joined by throngs of reinforcements from the other armies, whose transports had been arriving throughout the night. He heard their songs, their voices of premature celebration like ghosts on the early morning breeze. Few would sleep. Few could. He was amongst them, but preferred solitude to revelry.

How different his life had become. The yard where he had knelt awaiting the executioner’s bullet had never felt so far away. All for the crime of stealing a soldier’s uniform and lasgun. It seemed petty in retrospect. His trappings had since grown more opulent than those borrowed garments, his armour alone worth more than an officer’s yearly stipend. It was the finest thing he had ever owned, a near-inviolable protection that fended off more than blades and bullets.

It had built a barrier between him and Lenna, too. That and his recently found noble standing. She had disappeared from camp, it seemed. Darian thought she was avoiding him after their last awkward encounter. He missed her. So the armour stayed in his barracks until he had to wear it, too painful a reminder of what he had given up and too precious to be wasted when the propaganda machine wasn’t turning. The politics especially left a foul taste in the mouth. It had turned him from a soldier into a spectacle, and put a gulf between him and the one true friend he had. The desire he had once nurtured to belong, to serve and find a purpose felt more remote than ever.

‘I am alone…’ he said to the darkness.

A man answered. ‘In the end, we are all alone.’

The major had some cuts and bruises, his usually handsome face a scar-threaded mess, but he would heal. He gestured to the stack of Munitorum crates where Darian had perched.

‘May I?’

‘Of course, sir.’ Darian shifted up unnecessarily.

Regara took a seat and let out a long easing breath. He no longer wore the prosthetic Darian had seen him with at Gannad. In its place was a chrome-plated bionic, still gleaming. It whirred and growled as it moved. The major winced, causing Darian to frown.

‘It’s just pain,’ Regara explained, ‘fresh forged and still it aches like the Nine Devils. I blame the rain.’

A light drizzle fell across the camp in gentle veils, but Darian had barely noticed, so lost was he in his thoughts.

‘Perhaps the magos can make an adjustment?’

‘I doubt it,’ Regara replied, sanguine. ‘The cold, the damp, the damn air itself… I think the ache is there to remind me of what I lost. At least that’s how I’ve come to think of it. An old, annoying friend, like a guest who won’t leave but I haven’t the heart to throw out and end up needing the company.’

‘I see, sir.’ Something about Regara struck him, not melancholy exactly, but a sort of weariness. Perhaps his injuries had taken more of a toll than he let on.

‘That is to say,’ Regara continued, ‘that we all must reconcile with loss. Remember it, cling to it, for it teaches us. The lessons are different, depending on what’s been taken. For me, it’s a reminder of humility.’

‘I’ve never had much to lose, I don’t think. My mother died when I was young, and she was everything to me. The camp became my life, a mil-serve without a house.’ He paused, considering. ‘There was… someone. A friend, maybe more. She and I… well, it feels like another world. A different life. Now I just feel the weight of what others will lose if I fail.’

Regara listened, nodded. ‘It’s a heavy burden.’

‘One I never asked for.’

‘Of course you did. You asked for it when you put on that uniform, when you retook Godsword.’ Regara looked him in the eye, stern but not unkind. ‘And when you saved me by dragging my sorry arse into a crater outside Lodden. Heroism isn’t a cloak you put on or a uniform you wear when it suits you, it’s innate.’ He leaned over and tapped Darian’s chest. ‘In here.’

The pride in Regara’s eyes warmed him, a feeling long absent in Darian’s upbringing. Tears welled, revealing the boy behind the hero’s facade.

‘You remind me of him, though I didn’t see it before. I don’t suppose I was looking for it. Your father, I mean.’

‘You know him?’

‘I do. As well as any can, I suppose. He is a fine man and an even finer general.’ He gripped Darian’s shoulder. ‘But paternal instincts are not in his blood.’

‘Rensaint says he is ill.’

Regara’s face darkened, and he let his hand fall away.

‘Grievously, I’m afraid.’

They had taken Deviers back to Lanchetek, far from the front lines. Crusade command had wanted him removed from Agria entirely but the old general had insisted. He would see out the war even from his deathbed, his puissance diminished but not his influence. Eirik had larger problems and no one else had the will or the authority to countermand the old war hero. Darian had learned all of this from Rensaint, absorbing the information without comment.

‘Then it’s probable I’ll never meet him.’ He turned away, emotions knotting like tangled ropes. ‘I think I should feel sadness? Or anger? But all I have is an absence of feeling.’

‘To me, he was, is, a great man,’ said Regara. ‘I will mourn his passing, for the Sabbat Crusade will be the poorer for it.’

‘I should hate him, but I’m only alive because of his grace.’

Regara had no answer for that; his gaze found the wall instead. ‘This Throne-forsaken war, may the Nine Devils take it,’ he said at length, and rose gingerly. ‘God-Emperor, I am stiffer than flakboard.’ For the first time, Darian noticed the cane Regara carried.

‘Do you need some assistance, major?’

‘No, just a decent bath and dry clothes. Maybe a strong drink. Or two. Are you staying?’

‘A while longer, I think.’

Regara nodded, as if giving tacit approval.

‘Horator Deviers casts a long shadow, but it needn’t define you. I would try to remember that,’ said the major. Regara gave Darian a last look and then walked away, limping back to camp.

Darian returned to the wall, lost in its endless expanse, and saw the sun cresting the horizon. Bound up in its light was his fate.

THIRTY-EIGHT

Pukk had gone. They had taken him sometime in the night, though Hauptmann found night and day hard to determine, time having lost all meaning in the confines of his cell. It could have been days, even weeks. He had no gauge. The first he knew of Pukk was waking to an absence of the Talpa’s gentle whimpering.

He rose groggily, unsure of the hour and aching from having slept on bare rock. He was far from rested. Dreams had come to him during those fitful hours in the dark, bloody dreams of old wars and men long dead. They haunted him as grey revenants, cold-eyed and hollow-cheeked, demanding to know the manner of their demise. Hauptmann told them, every one.

Impaled on razor wire… Dismembered by a mine… Shot through the eye by a sniper…

He relived every moment, every savage death until they merged into an unending horror.

Burned alive when the fuel tanks blew… Shredded by a frag grenade… Incinerated by a plasma misfire…

Waking exorcised them, though the memory of their ragged faces lingered on for hours after, slowly fading like mist before the dawn.

A pipe in one corner of the room dripped languidly, arresting his thoughts. Hauptmann shuffled to it, taking his fill. The water was brackish and tinny but it was all his captors afforded him. He had considered it might be tainted but not drinking it would condemn him as surely as any poison in the water, and so he pressed his mouth to the pipe and supped greedily like a lapping dog.

After he was done, he sagged against the wall, squinting at the harsh light filtering through the apertures. It was a sickly yellow but at least he could see and read by it. He took out the letters, the ones he had stuffed into his pocket, the ones the Pact had not seen fit to remove. Wiry penmanship scratched across the page of one, revealed as he unfolded it. They all began the same, a line or two of empty platitudes, expressions of regret and sorrow, of pride and sacrifice.

This one was for Private Vennak. He had served as a voxman on the Leman Russ battle tank Sunderer, and died on the road to Kobor. Hauptmann had spared his widow the details, instead concocting a more palatable fiction by which to remember her husband. She didn’t need to read about the skin burning from his bones or the desperate screaming before he finally succumbed. These memories were for Hauptmann to harbour, every grey-faced boy held within, crying for home, for mothers and fathers and wives.

He stopped, closing the letter, closing his eyes as he fought to keep from crying out. Not in pain but in anger – the anguish of futility had never felt so close, but he forced himself to go on because it was better than the silence of his other thoughts and the reminder of where he was and what would likely happen to him.

He unfolded another letter, and his heart pushed up into his throat at the name.

Reynald Garrison.

Devoured by beasts…

Ever happy to share a smoke if he had one. He had dirt under his nails did Garrison, which to a Parduan meant he was a man of earthy grit and stoic humour. Hauptmann remembered a recon mission on Monthax. His unit had ditched their mounts at the jungle’s edge and had to proceed on foot through swampland. It was heavy canopy, thick with foliage. An Archonate ambush would have done for them all, a four-man execution squad, except Garrison had caught wind of it first. Ambushers became ambushed. Garrison killed three himself, and Hauptmann shot the other. Quiet, fast, lethal. A finer scout Hauptmann had never known. It mattered little when the beasts took him and tore him up like so much meat.

Then he thought of Roper.

Incinerated in burning promethium…

And Mathiss.

Atomised by a macrocannon blast…

And Lennox.

Shot in the side of the head at point-blank range…

He didn’t have letters for all of them, but he still saw their faces. Hauptmann crumpled up the paper, pressing it to his face, shouting into it until the shouting turned to convulsion and he was spitting up blood and anointing the parchment pages in flecks of crimson. All because of that damned rad-storm.

A faulty breather, he could never have known.

Velas Hauptmann.

Radiation poisoning…

The scrape of a bolt pulling clear of its socket made him look up, as the cell door ground open and two guards in Pact armour and snarling grotesks hustled in. Hauptmann recoiled, scurrying back, kicking and clambering on his elbows. He lurched onto his feet, took a swing and missed. A hard punch to the gut bent him double.

He heard a guttural warning, something in their language he didn’t know but understood. They seized him then, one guard for each arm. Hauptmann kicked, raising hell, but he was weak from the poison in his blood, from malnourishment and fear. Feet dragging, they took him.

Once past the threshold, the light hit. Grubby lumens and flickering sodium lamps, but after the near dark of his cell it burned. So much brighter outside, and the world tinged red, like light passed through blood behind glass. He couldn’t look at it at first but then he acclimatised. He was brought to a large room, reminiscent of the chamber below the old fort. Panic spiked, and Hauptmann struggled until a cuff to the head subdued him, nearly knocked him unconscious. Dazed, he saw prisoners. All Militarum. Each was bound to a metal frame.

Edged and spiked… Like a torture rack.

Every regiment was represented. He tried to find Pukk but there were too many and his vision was blurring. A few were hooded, unmoving. Hauptmann couldn’t determine if they were alive or dead. He heard talking, gibbering, an Archonate officer in a long dirty coat and half-mask listening to one of the prisoners, scribbling notes on a clipboard. Hauptmann recognised mission plans, tactics, engagements that had already happened and then some things he didn’t know, couldn’t have known because they were yet to be or might never be. He couldn’t explain it but there was something about the room, about how it seemed larger than it should be, a liminal space of strange angles and queer resonances. Several of the captured soldiers were gazing upwards, necks craned. They trembled in their shackles, softly chanting, ‘ssentiwa mai’…

I am a witness.

Old memories returned like bad eggs, churning in his gut. ‘A witness to what?’

Hauptmann lifted his head. It felt like an anchor was strapped around his neck and he strained with the effort. A ceiling of stars was unveiled above, a firmament of cracked glass, of fathomless flects.

They had already bound his wrists, his ankles, his neck; imprisoned him in the metal frame like all the others, his eyelids pinned back.

And as the stars unfurled, collided, merged, he saw and he knew. And at last, he screamed.

THIRTY-NINE

Furnace heat swelled around the foot of the wall. Perspiration beaded Culcis’ face, his sodden uniform sticking to his back. His armour shimmered with reflected discharge from the refractor field. It had the look of something arcane and medieval, a literal mantlet on a wheeled carriage accompanied by six pavisors in red Mechanicus garb. It lit the air, turned it actinic, made it stifling, but held off the deadly rain from above.

Mounted Pact guns hammered the Volpone, massive shells and energy beams battering the aegis generated by the man-portable shield array as the troops ran for the wall and the blind zone, where the heavier weapons lacked the firing arc to target them.

The refractor field was large enough to cover a platoon in close formation, thirty men sweating and swearing beneath a barrier of violent energy. Dozens threaded the front line, swathes and swathes of Imperial soldiers crouched under flickering fields, awaiting the order to ascend.

A horn blast rang out, augmented by a vox-emitter, and a unit nearby threw mag-grapnels to begin their assault. The iron teeth of the grapnels bit, the inertia of magnetic attraction ensuring they stayed that way. Cables tensed and thirty men climbed. Then thirty more further up the wall, and another and another. Platoon by platoon, Volpone grey in abundance, hundreds and hundreds, too many for the naked eye to calculate.

Las-beams snapped up from below, withering in their intensity, herding the wall defenders behind crenellations. Still they returned fire, washing the wall face with energy beams and solid shot, scything down attackers until they fell in an avalanche of bodies.

A secondary cadre of attackers had erected ladders, the rungs spiked so they tugged at stone and held it. Twenty had mounted them as the deadfall of men from above collapsed every ladder, fifty or sixty Volpone plummeting to their deaths, or else crushed by the bodies that crashed over them.

This was but one section. Hundreds more told grimmer stories.

A grind is how the drill-sergeants used to put it, the meat grinder of war, the leveraging of one number of men against another until attrition tips the scale and a bitter stalemate becomes a slaughter. Morbid mathematics, Culcis had often thought of it. From his officer’s training he knew siege warfare was brutal, the trade-off between inches gained and blood shed the meanest and most profligate.

He hunkered down, awaiting the order. Shiller had the vox-horn, and looked up with bleak resignation at the dire scenario they would soon face. His bloodshot eyes told the story of the previous night’s indulgence but no amount of vresk could dull the senses to this.

A shriek overhead had them crouching, shrinking into near-foetal position as the heavy mortars thundered another barrage. It struck a section of the wall, close enough to shake the earth and spill dust clouds either side. Culcis choked, pulling up a scarf around his mouth to ward off the worst of it. Greiss had turned white, his eyes wide with barely contained panic.

‘Are we headed up, sir?’ asked Hanmar, voice muffled by the echoes of slowly subsiding ordnance. Rake and Dresk stood nearby, hunched up, promethium canisters strapped to their backs, a flamer hooked to the side.

Culcis held up his palm flat. Wait…

Shiller raised his fist for them to hold, then put the vox-horn to his lips.

Over a hundred men were on this section alone, supported by a cohort of fifty Agrians digging trenches and filling them with seismic charges. The bombs rippled in a daisy chain across the wall mountings, trembling earth, heaving dust, but to little practical effect. The natives would remain under the aegis, sapping and undermining, though none had reported finding the base of the wall yet.

A glance to Culcis’ left revealed a clutch of Agrian auxiliaries over in the next section who, unlike their sapper countrymen, carried lasguns and had no picks or shovels. They would defend the sappers from enemy sorties. He recognised the golova amongst their ranks, Makali giving him that enigmatic look she usually wore.

‘They will come for you when you are unready,’ she had said.

Maybe the cossacks wouldn’t wait for him to be unarmed and alone? Maybe they’d just try to kill him here? He couldn’t see them but soldiers milled everywhere, and the air was foul with smoke and dust. It was controlled chaos.

Culcis looked up instead, the tension like a knot tightening in his chest. He fought to keep his breath steady, though his heart punched like a piston-hammer.

One deadly step at a time…

Another mortar barrage followed the previous one, the seconds in between stretching into hours. It hit the wall section nearby in rapid succession, a decent chaining of explosive shells that sent Pacters reeling from their posts.

This was it.

The vox-horn blared, shrilling like an inhuman scream, and all thoughts of murderous cossacks fled from his mind.

Culcis bellowed the order, though his cries were all but obliterated by the sounds of battle. They ran the short distance remaining to the wall. His mag-grapnel found purchase, like a dozen others, the cable taut in the instant before he began to climb.

Encumbered by lasgun and a grenade bandolier, every step took effort. The soldier ahead of him, Vedris, slipped and nearly took the others with him. They reached almost eighty feet, halfway to the summit of the wall, before the shooting started. It came from enfilading positions, the angle to the assault platoons too narrow for the defenders directly above them to draw a bead. Slanting las-beams whipped in. Seddik fell, the trooper shot through the arm and losing his grip. He screamed all the way down, his body crushing two men beneath him who had been waiting to ascend.

Two more were hit in close succession. Then another and another. One of the dead became entangled, his foot looped around a cable, hanging by the ankle like a butcher’s carcass. Hanmar, on the rope adjacent to Culcis, cut the dead man free and the body fell like all the rest.

‘Climb!’ urged Culcis, bellowing to be heard. ‘Climb!’

Vedris got a better grip and, hand over hand, clawed back a few feet. A shot to the neck ended him, blood spattering Culcis’ upturned cheek like rain. Then the dead man tipped back as gravity exerted itself, and the lieutenant pressed his body flat against the wall, and shouted, ‘Incoming!’

Vedris took out one other on the cable, a corporal too slow to react. They tumbled groundwards, embracing like lovers.

Culcis climbed.

After nearly three shoulder-burning minutes, he gained the battlement at the summit of the wall. Hanmar had got there ahead of him and Greiss, the two men helping their fellow troopers over. Several more died in this moment, shot as they were leaping onto the battlements. Skirmishes had broken out across the length of it. An explosion a few sections over lifted men of both sides into the air, bodies flung outwards in ungainly parabolas. Billowing smoke occluded the rest.

Culcis scarcely had time to react as a hooked blade swept in for his neck. He turned it, his sabre unsheathed on instinct, and shot the Pacter through the heart with his pistol. At his side, Hanmar killed two others, his blade-work as economic as it was deadly. Greiss blasted another, the burly sergeant burning ammo on rapid fire as he fought to make a space to exploit. They were hemmed in, Archonate fighters either side. Sporadic gunfire cracked left and right. A bullet buzzed close by, hot and loud. All sound disappeared behind the tinnitus whine in Culcis’ ear before rushing back. The fighting grew close, hand to hand. Sidearms predominated. Somewhere a chainblade started up.

Until Rake gunned the flamer and turned the air in front of him into burning promethium. Men became candles in its rippling light, smeared brown smudges lost to haze and fire. They collapsed, surrendering to smoke and heat. A few, blind and panicked, leapt to their deaths. Culcis morbidly watched them flailing as they hit the ground.

A momentary efflux of enemies bought by Rake’s flamer gave a few seconds of relief.

‘It’s a bloody cauldron, sir,’ shouted Greiss, slamming a fresh clip into his lasgun. ‘I think they’ve been saving themselves for this fight.’

Culcis nodded to his sergeant. He glanced to the side, several sections east to where Darian and his cohort had just climbed the parapet. He led them like he was born to it, which, the lieutenant supposed, he was.

‘Bring us victory,’ he uttered, returning his attention to his men. ‘Leave them, corps,’ he said to Hanmar, the field medic having crouched to tend to one of the wounded. ‘We need to push on.’

Hanmar made the sign of the aquila over the stricken trooper’s chest and retrieved his sword, wiping it across his uniform until it shone.

‘It’s a heavy damn price,’ he said.

Scattered throngs of Blood Pact troops milled in the courtyard, which was strewn with half-raided ammo caches and supplies. Most of their strength was on the walls. They were throwing everything into this defence, a last-ditch effort to hold the Imperium at bay.

‘They know they’re beaten,’ replied Culcis, ‘and are testing our resolve.’

His gaze strayed to beyond the wall and, not so far away, the grim shadow of Rakespur. It was an isolated and decrepit ruin, like a dead man’s hand reaching from the grave. On the Imperial side of the wall, flickering with grainy bluish luminescence, stood a hundred foot hololith of Darian Deviers. Banner upraised, sword unsheathed, it had been carefully crafted by Rensaint and his propaganda machine.

Perhaps the truth would live up to the story. Seeing Darian on that wall, fighting as he did, made Culcis dare to believe it. Men cheered for it, either way, a ghost rendered in light.

A las-burst yanked Culcis back to the moment as a trooper in front of him took a hit and peeled away, turning and then falling into oblivion. Reinforcements were moving up, peppering the Volpone attackers with heavy stubber fire, wielded by gene-bulked Pact heavies. A platoon was driven off the wall, men flung outwards, some pushed, some jumping like sailors abandoning ship. Fire chased them as the enemy pushed their own burner teams to the front.

A pair latched on to Culcis’ platoon, a masked sirdar jabbing an order towards Greiss and a squad of Bluebloods. The sergeant had taken a knee, lasgun braced into his shoulder, and was hammering shots into the burners, but they advanced like human tanks, armoured head to foot, ponderous but inexorable. Their flame units were crude things, long-necked and with flared muzzles, black streaks across their heavy plate like warpaint, the grotesk doubling up as a breather mask.

Shiller was bellowing, the words lost in the tumult, fighting like a red-faced devil. He was trying to forge a path away from the burners, hewing down Pacters with his sword and showing Culcis how he came to be a decent captain despite the fact he was a wretched man.

It wasn’t enough.

The flame spurt plumed, expanding from a thin spit to a wide swathe. Screaming followed, Volpone burning then falling. Greiss had thrown himself flat, the heat searing his back before Culcis put a las-bolt through the burner’s fuel intake and the tank went up in a fireball. It took out the second burner too, the explosion shaking the entire wall section. Several Pacted died in the blast, including the sirdar, bones turned to kindling, their bodies spread across a scorched black smear.

Hanmar ran to help Greiss, who was staggering back, singed but otherwise alive. The dead lay everywhere, their uniforms almost indistinguishable from one another, a growing hecatomb.

‘Bloody Throne…’ gasped Shiller, his breathing laboured as he took a pull from a flask hidden beneath his breastplate. He snarled as Culcis’ eyes fell upon him. ‘I’ll let the Emperor be my judge, lieutenant,’ he said, and added sadly, ‘may He protect us all.’

The captain stormed off, barking and cajoling the men, asserting order.

They were losing.

Culcis caught his breath, but respite was fleeting. A discordant clarion ripped through the air. More of the Pact were coming.

FORTY

Aramis gained the wall, heaving herself up and over through a hail of bullets and crackling las-beams. A Blueblood took a kill-shot to the chest and fell back, pinning her beneath his dead weight. Armoured and laden with full kit, it was like pushing against an anvil. Fighting the urge to cry out, Aramis yanked hard on the trooper’s belt to try to roll him but the corpse barely moved. She pushed, grunting with effort but it was like bench-pressing a tank. Breath hitching, she pushed one more time, muscles burning in her arms, and heaved…

A sliver of light spilled into the crack between her and the body. Hands reached in alongside her own, and together they hauled the corpse aside.

She was met by Fenk, who looked down at her without emotion as he offered her his hand.

‘Lieutenant, my thanks…’ she gasped. ‘It appears even the dead are against us.’

He smiled coldly.

‘Well, we wouldn’t want to make it too easy, major,’ Fenk replied as he helped her up.

She nodded, stopping short of clapping him on the shoulder before he carried on.

Two platoons of Volpone had formed a firing echelon and were shooting two ranks deep in perfect order. It effectively cleared the wall section and gave the rest of the troopers unmolested seconds to join them.

Henessey hurried over. ‘Are you all right, major? Should I summon a medic?’ He looked about, as if to do so, until Aramis calmed him.

She realised there was blood on her uniform and had been initially distracted, watching Fenk as he headed back into the fray, calmly discharging his sidearm, every shot a kill. He barely blinked, as if killing were as natural as breathing. For some men it was, those who in war had left a piece of their humanity behind, and Aramis saw that trait in Bertram Fenk.

‘Not my blood, corporal,’ she said at last, putting Fenk to the back of her mind, and drew her sword.

A glance west along the battlements revealed a fierce struggle for the wall’s main command section. Through a scope, she caught a glimpse of Darian, refulgent in his silver armour, a beacon of glorious light. A banner rippled in his wake like a gonfalon announcing his presence. A retinue of First Sons surrounded him as well as a cadre of Volpone veterans. Rensaint and Gannika were his right hand, the Prefectus aiming to win the propaganda and the physical war in one emphatic blow.

She pulled her eye away. Her forces were east of the main push and the craggy mountains towered above them, casting a long shadow. Archonate defences were thinner at this end of the wall and if she could breach and overrun them then Dagger and Spear Company would sweep the courtyard. A long flight of stone steps led down to it and was held by scattered Pact troops clustered behind hastily raised barricades.

‘That’s our ingress,’ she said, aiming her sword towards the stairs. ‘Volpone glory!’

Aramis shot a Pact trooper, cutting off the top of their skull as she charged. The corpse tumbled and she surged on, stabbing another through the chest, before kicking them against the flakboard mantlet. The barricade capitulated against the impact, it and the dead trooper spilling down the steps. Like a mudslide, it swept up other soldiers caught in its manic swell. A Pacter went to throw a grenade but Fenk shot him in the stomach and the close explosion tore enemy troopers from the stairway in a loud blast. Light shrapnel pattered Aramis’ armour but she forged through it, leading her men without hesitation.

A sirdar stepped forwards, cutting down two Bluebloods trying to engage her with bayonets before she met Aramis. A bloody daubing across her helm marked her as section commander, a cleaver-sword glistening wetly in one hand. Upon sighting the Volpone major, the sirdar drew a second blade, a falx, its hooked edge stained with old blood. Twirling both weapons artfully she brought them together in a crash of steel, metal ringing loudly across the stairway.

Aramis raised her jewelled sword in salute… and attacked.

The flurry of blades snapped like silver lightning, metal clanging shrilly with every collision of blades. Two swords against her one, Aramis fought defensively. She adopted a duellist’s posture, her officer training extending to fencing as well as pugilism, and turned her side towards the enemy to present a narrower target. For every attack, she countered, a swift lunge that bit armour, skin. Nothing but flesh wounds. Chaos raged all around, Pacters and Bluebloods engaged in savage close-quarter exchanges, but none interfered.

She backed off as the sirdar unleashed a chain of heavy blows, mindful of the stairs behind her and conscious that one stumble would end the duel. Her sword darted, parrying attack after attack, her dauntless patience unswerving until at last she drew an error and the sirdar made a hasty lunge. It overbalanced the Pact officer, who was unable to recover as Aramis stepped aside and stabbed her opponent through the heart. She withdrew the blade as swiftly as a whip, giving the sirdar a few seconds of boastful ignorance before the grin faded on her scarred mouth and she collapsed.

Discipline, what little there was of it, broke down after that. The frenzied attacks quickly faded, the Pacters taken apart by staunch Volpone precision and order. A rout followed, Aramis shoving the corpse with her boot, the dead sirdar rolling like a barrel down a ramp. The barricades gave way, upended or abandoned as the enemy accepted their futility and fled. The Bluebloods took the vacated ground, moving with stoic efficiency and the courtyard in sight. Two platoons had set up positions on the edge of the stairway, and fired calmly into the morass of Blood Pact below.

Heavier troops, diverted east to meet the threat assailing the Archonate flank, killed the routers as they spilled into the courtyard and rallied whatever was left. They were Death Brigade, elites clad in thick crimson carapace who showed a discipline and precision the equal of Militarum Scions.

The Volpone vanguard, with the major at their head, gained the edge of the courtyard. Supply crates and barrels provided scant cover for both sides, a short-range firefight erupting between them. Through the ferocious weapons exchange, Aramis saw a figure being herded through the enemy throng. She caught sight of Munitorum-issue fatigues and boots, dirty with use, a man in chains, his head covered by a crudely stitched leather hood.

‘Henessey…’ she called, trusting her aide’s eyes over her own.

The corporal found her in moments and was quickly by her side, hunkering behind a supply cache where Aramis had taken position, las-fire splashing against the crates and drums.

‘God-Emperor,’ he said, ‘that’s Militarum. That man’s a prisoner. Talpa, I think.’

Aramis bellowed down the vox, notifying all squad sergeants of the danger. Shots cracked either side of the hooded Guardsman, who stumbled blindly into the firestorm. The Death Brigade followed, pushing the prisoner ahead of them. Others joined him, emerging through occluding smoke, a narrow phalanx of six human shields.

It was sickening, and Aramis took no small pleasure in killing the Pacters who fell beyond this perverted aegis. Closer they crept, always one man behind each prisoner, a long-hafted goad driving them on. Only when the dishevelled Talpa was within thirty paces did Aramis notice the hook attached to the man’s hood and the thin line of wire tied to it.

Henessey saw it too and she felt his hands upon her shoulders, pushing her to the ground as the wire went taut and the hood pulled away.

As if the light had roused them from awful torpor, the prisoners spoke.

‘Sentiwa mai!’

A vice of fear clamped around her gut, as she was propelled back to the agora when the mad First Son had set off a grenade. There were no explosions here but men died all the same. A Blueblood fell as if poleaxed. Aramis caught a glance at his face, skin drained to white, eyes milky orbs in their sockets. Then another. And another. There was maddened screaming, how many afflicted uncertain, their identities unknown.

‘Henessey,’ she growled, gripping her pistol, but Henessey didn’t answer though he held her down, arms rigid. The rest of him was shaking, bolt upright, blood streaming from his ears, nose and eyes. It took a few seconds for Aramis to realise he was already dead, bleached white and wide-eyed. Only when he began to shrivel like a carcass left overlong in the sun, did she understand.

She had to prise his dead hands away, Gavid Henessey who she had known for years, who had been her aide and confidant. Then she stood but kept behind the crates and drums, a chorus of deranged voices getting closer.

‘Sentiwa mai!’

To look upon them would be to invite death. Aramis knew it in her marrow, the flock of fallen Bluebloods she could see staring into hellish oblivion.

Their last sight…

She felt the presence of the afflicted – for what else was it but some kind of Chaos-bred infection? – draw near. Heard their breath, their wild chants. The edge of a scuffed Militarum boot emerged at the end of the crate. Aramis shut her eyes, too afraid to look, and fired blind.

A muffled grunt and the body fell.

She relaxed a fraction but another of the afflicted had got behind her. She turned too slowly, the pistol bark a desultory echo before strong hands seized her arm and throat. Lashing out, she felt a jawbone snap but the pressure increased on her neck and the weight of her assailant bore her to the ground.

A snarl. ‘Sentiwa mai…’

Warm spittle flecked her cheek. He stank of stale sweat and dirty cloth. Eyes clamped shut, she wondered why she wasn’t already dead, why the Pacters hadn’t slaughtered her where she lay, and realised she wasn’t fighting the Death Brigade. They had merely unleashed the threat. The hoods, the goads… the Archonate troops were susceptible too.

She rammed her knee into her attacker’s gut and the grip around her throat eased enough for her to unsheathe the knife from her boot. Reversing her grip on the knife, she waited for an intake of breath as her attacker made to chant again and jammed the serrated blade into his mouth.

He gargled, a tumble of broken syllables, half drowned in his own blood, and fell still. Aramis hefted the corpse aside, now light and emaciated without its feverish vitality to make it a threat. She risked a glance, one eye half open. A dead Talpa lay on his back next to her, a smudge on his left cheek that might have been a tattoo. The dirt made it hard to be sure. His eyes had burned out as if by a fierce heat, and from within. A gash on his forehead had a similar ocular shape, also seared black and gaping.

Her knife lodged in his mouth hadn’t killed him, not outright. Whatever they were, these poor bastards, they didn’t last long. Dead Volpone surrounded her, the vanguard whittled down to scraps. Fenk lived, and was gathering up whatever was left and forming them into a fighting retreat.

Aramis was about to protest but quickly realised the parlous state they were in. Almost half their number slain with Death Brigade creeping through smoke and fog. Las-beams began zipping in her direction. She nodded to Fenk as she caught his eye, her expression thunderous as she bellowed into the vox.

‘Fall back…!’

FORTY-ONE

The Pacted warrior died on the edge of his sword. Darian shucked the body loose, leaving a smear of gore against the blade and letting it tumble off the battlement into the courtyard below.

Resistance was fierce on this part of the wall, the Archonate warriors almost all Death Brigade and thus well trained and highly disciplined. At the outset of the Sabbat Crusade, to see such a force amongst the supposedly barbarian Sanguinary tribes defied belief for many, that the Archenemy could learn and adapt to Militarum tactics so effortlessly. After years of fighting the Blood Pact, the Imperium had learned the error of that assumption.

They had singled Darian out, a host of warriors eager to gut him on their savage blades. He had despatched every one, his own sword an azure fire amidst the battlefield gloom. Clouds had gathered overhead, portentous, as if nature itself sensed the import of the moment.

Here, we will end it, he had heard said and on countless occasions. Grussman had a plan, or so it was believed.

Darian saw that plan enter the field far beyond the shadow of the wall and the soldiers fighting ferociously to take it.

Godsword.

It looked different to how he remembered it at Lodden. Then, it had been an amorphous machine of cables and power conduits, of curved metal behind ramparts too close to properly comprehend. Here, beheld at a distance, it was destruction incarnate. Trundling on immense, segmented tracks, its main cannon aimed to the sky, it was an engine of war to dwarf all others. Deific in more than name alone. A cohort of Mechanicus troops marched alongside it, both as religious devotees and defenders. As he fought, Rensaint and the other commissar at his side, Darian caught the flare of power building in its capacitors and knew it was being primed to fire.

A shot lashed against him, spilling harmlessly across the refractor field. He had grown used to its protection, the strange heat wash of energy dispersion or the flash of rapid ignition as bullets disintegrated against its barrier.

Only a few tried to kill him at distance, most preferring close quarters. Darian turned one blade, hacking down with his own and severing a limb. The smell of cauterised meat rose nauseatingly before disappearing behind smoke and metal. He stabbed another, a quick thrust that parted heavy armour with ease, tearing it open like canvas. Blood sizzled as it met the blade, the stench like overcooked liver.

A scarred hand reached out to drag him down. Darian cut it off at the wrist. He parried a burring chainsword, shattering it in a blur of exploding shrapnel. It was a grind with much spent and little gained by either side, the Pact too entrenched and well fortified to capitulate, the Volpone too determined to be repulsed.

Darian found himself tiring, despite the advantages of his peerless arms and armour. And for a moment, he began to doubt. A brief cessation in the fighting, as the First Sons bore the brunt of the Archenemy counter-assault, allowed a moment’s grim reflection.

What if we lose? What if I am unworthy after all?

Rensaint’s presence at his shoulder reassured him, as if the lord commissar had read Darian’s heretical thoughts.

‘The Emperor is with us,’ said Rensaint, though like many others he looked overtaxed and grey with effort. Only Gannika appeared undiminished, the commissar amidst the harshest fighting, her bionic arm like a reaping metronome gripped around her chainblade.

Rensaint forged ahead, urging Darian with him as he disappeared into the battle.

Darian took a few moments to catch his breath, bone-tired from effort, before he reaffirmed the grip on his sword.

He is with us… he thought and ran after the commissar. But what if we are losing?

An explosion rocked the battlement, sudden and ferocious. White light blazed, all-consuming, and Darian felt himself lifted and carried on a surge of heat and force before hitting the ground hard. Ears ringing from the blast, he found himself on hands and knees a few feet from the wall edge. He had lost his sword and couldn’t find Rensaint.

The dead surrounded him, dismembered and ripped apart. It must have been a det-charge, something big. It had hit both sides, the explosion’s potency enhanced by the close proximity of the combatants. An oily smear of slowly dissipating energy rippled across the refractor field, the only reason he still lived.

Groggy, he struggled to his feet and found his sword. Darian reached for the hilt and felt something punch him in the chest. He staggered, reeling from the impact. It had breached the refractor field… The impossibility of that left him numb. A warm sensation was blooming in his chest, his fine armour split like a burst pipe, silver turning pink then red as his life spilled from the wound. Still back-pedalling, the momentum slow to dissipate, Darian was only half aware as a sense of dislocation stole upon him.

I’m hurt. I’m dying.

The wind whipped around him, tossing his cloak, then came a lightness as of nothing and the heat rushing through his body grew abruptly cold.

Culcis moved up alongside Shiller, snapping off shots with calm precision. In contrast, the Volpone captain huffed in his armour, beet-red and sweating profusely.

‘Shitting hells, I need a damn drink for this.’

He had since tossed his flask in a fit of pique, the liquor within drained and the empty vessel only reminding him of its redundancy.

They were close to breaking through and joining up with Banner Company, attacking the wall’s main command section. But it was like a cauldron and Culcis felt their resolve fraying to its limit. He had nearly lost sight of Darian, who was in the thick of it now and trusting to Rensaint and the Scions to help him see out the battle. A sliver of silver shone still, a reminder of his presence.

A sudden blast shook the battlement, felt all the way back to where Culcis and Shiller were trying to force a breach. It was bright like a dying star, and Culcis turned away to avoid being blinded. He was still blinking back the harsh after-image when he saw a lonely figure stand up amongst the dead, a silver beacon, its light guttering. The figure reeled, shot, perilously close to the edge, and Culcis looked on aghast as Darian Deviers lurched back and disappeared.

The body fell with silent grace, like a kite abruptly starved of wind. Regara watched it numbly from the command line. As it hit the ground, swallowed by the morass of other bodies, the horror of what it meant seized him and the breath caught in his throat.

A cheer rang out, baleful and demoralising. It reached Regara on the command line, it touched every Imperial soldier fighting and dying on the wall. The fulcrum of the battle shifted on its axis; he almost felt it on the air as palpable as the growing actinic charge of Godsword.

And in that moment, Regara experienced a revelation that left dread in its wake.

Godsword had not been abandoned, it had been left behind deliberately for the Imperium to reclaim.

Grussman felt none of this, apparently unfazed as Regara turned too late, as imperious as ever as he gave the order that would define his entire career.

He uttered it calmly and across the vox, deaf to the major’s shouts.

‘Fire…’

Cataclysm tore through the Imperial line as Godsword ripped itself apart.

FORTY-TWO

Enghart had died in the explosion, caught at the edge of a blast that annihilated the Mechanicus, reducing them to ash. Even the magos had perished. The Martian contingent of the South Army had diminished drastically in a split second of apocalyptic malfunction. Enquiries would probably outlast the war, for the Mechanicus was nothing if not fastidious in its desire for over-analysis, but the conclusion would be the same. Godsword had lain in Archenemy hands for over three days; it should have been dismantled and decommissioned, never fired.

None had been left unscathed by the weapon’s self-immolation, even the soldiers on the wall who had only seen it and felt the distant heat prickle their skin, who had turned their eyes at the burning light of a false sun. It had left a mark, a near-fatal wound.

It was the unseen wounds that dug deepest. Grussman wore the evidence of his openly alongside the livid scar across his cheek. Unlike Voke, he did not acknowledge his failure but rather tried to hide it behind anger and frustration. His gambit had been Godsword, his great strategic coup. It had betrayed him, betrayed them all, and now they had to sift through the aftermath for a means to move forwards.

As Grussman pored over the map table, Regara noted the general had not moved or spoken for several minutes. The hololithic light appeared to drain him, a bleak grey cast over a dour and inanimate face. He could have been carved of granite.

It had been a few hours since the mass retreat and the camp was now filled with the sorry remnants of the South Army. Defeated, wounded. A twofold loss. The scale of it was difficult to countenance and like any man who finds himself out of his depth and having overreached, Mattias Grussman wanted to look anywhere but at his own incompetence.

He slammed a fist down onto the map table, upending his recaff and causing the image to judder out of phase for a few seconds. A mil-serve made to clean up the brown puddle streaking down the side of the table but Grussman’s scowl saw them retreat back into the shadows from which they had emerged.

He returned to the hololith, brooding, impotency bleeding from every thwarted gesture. Still he said nothing but just stared at the grainy tri-D image of the Karcas border wall, as if in this scrutiny he could wrench forth a plan. Except Grussman had had a plan, and that plan had failed beyond all reason. And so he stared, and the chrono ticked away the seconds in the background.

Rensaint coughed as if to clear his throat, meeting Grussman’s hollow gaze as he looked up.

‘Our hold here is tenuous, would you not say, general?’

Grussman’s eyes darted to Barbastian, seeking an ally, but the lieutenant colonel said nothing. He seemed haunted, only half present, as if his mind still wandered in the aftermath of the explosion.

‘Nothing has changed,’ Grussman uttered coldly to the room. ‘Karcas will be breached. Rakespur will fall.’

‘Much has changed,’ said Regara, meeting Grussman’s stone with some steel of his own. ‘We lost almost three thousand of our troops. A third of that during the retreat. Another six hundred or so lie injured, the majority too severely to fight.’

‘Regrettable… but this is war.’

‘Granted, but surely you must agree, general, that a response is needed?’

‘I have a response,’ answered Grussman baldly. ‘We attack the bastards again and rout them.’

Regara frowned, wishing very much that he had a flask of vresk and not a mug of recaff in his hand. ‘We cannot simply tilt at the army manning the Karcas wall and will it to capitulate.’

‘Why not? Are we not the Emperor’s hammer? I believe we will overcome.’

Regara held his temper, the general’s blunt and puerile logic as infuriating as it was misguided. He changed approach. ‘What of morale then?’

‘What of it?’

Again, he bit his tongue and breathed out before answering, ‘The loss of Deviers cannot be dismissed out of hand, he was–’

‘A deg, major,’ said Grussman, ‘that is the word you are reaching for. He was a servant and a bastard of noble blood. He is nothing.’

Regara felt his face redden. The desire to kill this man had never been more present in his thoughts. At least Voke had the decency to shoot himself.

Grussman glowered and for a fleeting moment Regara thought he had spoken his thoughts aloud.

‘I will see to morale,’ said Rensaint, sensing their enmity. ‘There’s strength in martyrdom if properly channelled. Devotion can be turned to wrath and that will serve us just as keenly. Perhaps more so.’

The other officers in the room, many keeping their own counsel, nodded at that.

Again, Regara had to remind himself of how ruthless a political officer could be, no matter what outward face they presented. He liked Owyn Rensaint, found accord with much of the man’s thinking, but he was still Prefectus and that made him other to an officer of the Militarum.

‘It is settled then,’ declared Grussman, as if this somehow amounted to actionable strategy. Barbastian kept his peace, still refusing to meet the general’s gaze.

‘There is another matter,’ said Aramis.

The major had fought at the wall along with Rensaint, and had a few cuts and scrapes. She had been instrumental in the retreat, ensured it stayed orderly despite the onset of panic as word of Deviers’ death had spread down the line like a contagion. Her pallor had greyed since the battle and dark rings circled her eyes like kohl. It was grief, and she hid it beneath a mask of soldierly conduct. They all did to a lesser or greater extent, those that had known Darian.

‘At the southern side of the wall, part of Dagger Company gained the courtyard. Our advance stalled when we encountered an enemy asset. A group of captured Militarum troopers…’ She paused, trying to find the words. ‘They had been altered, though not physically… not at first. Turned into a weapon. It was unperfected and only lasted a short time before the troopers… burned out but if I had to lay a wager…’

‘Scylla,’ said Rensaint, nigh on confirming it.

‘I believe it is, sir. I believe this is the weapon the Archenemy has been trying to harness. A means of containing and unleashing warp… magic. Far-fetched that may sound, but I can think of no better way to define it. Men died in droves with a glance. They simply expired. No wound, nothing to defend against it. They stood and then they fell. I cannot explain it.’

‘Our list of challenges mount,’ said Barbastian at last, earning a barbed glance from Grussman for his tone.

Several officers in the room muttered to one another under their breath, Shiller amongst them, drawing their own conclusions. Culcis kept his eyes forwards but his jaw was a tense line. Bragga held to the stoic silence that had characterised his tenure as commanding officer of the Pardus, whilst Cobel Ombi of the Ohrek murmured a quiet prayer before making the sign of the aquila.

Regara had reviewed the major’s report. It was sparse on detail but he saw trauma between the gaps in her account, the things she hadn’t written down. Perhaps couldn’t. Classified as a ‘K-weapon’, Scylla had proven ruthlessly effective even in what appeared to be its embryonic state.

‘Respectfully,’ she said, ‘if the Archonate army has more of these weapons in its arsenal and they manage to perfect it then our position in this war is greatly beleaguered.’

‘All the more reason to act now to take the wall and then Rakespur after it,’ said Grussman to reassert his authority. ‘We have to renew our attack.’

‘The men are at the ragged edge,’ countered Regara. ‘To thrust them back into the grinder and with so much yet unknown about this new K-weapon…’

‘And what would you have me do, major? Should we cower? Should I kiss every bruise and scrape until our wounds are salved? Perhaps you would like to do it? Or would you have us depart Agria instead, and leave this war to another regiment? I understand the Vitrians are eager to have a turn.’

‘We should at least reconnoitre. If this weapon is more widespread and active than we believe and our attack premature – before we even have a means of bringing down the wall – then our efforts will fail. The cost of that could be disastrous.’

‘Your lack of belief in the courage of your countrymen is disconcerting at the least, Regara. It is borderline seditious.’

Regara ignored the comment, seeing it for the goad it was.

‘I suggest only a respite, an opportunity for a plan that amounts to more than a headlong charge.’

‘Have you ever considered that is precisely what’s needed?’

‘In no historical account has such a tactic ever prevailed,’ Regara countered. ‘Almost always, they have ended in defeat and worse.’

‘Then we will make our own history, major, all other accounts be damned.’ Grussman inhaled deeply through his nose, puffing up his chest like a vainglorious bird. ‘Two days,’ he said, his final edict. ‘Two days to lick our wounds and then we attack again.’

His gaze swept the room like a search lamp, rooting out potential discontent, but when it reached the place where Barbastian had been standing the lieutenant colonel had already gone.

Evening was drawing like a grey cloak around the camp when Regara left the mess hall. Ordinarily, he would have taken a drink in his quarters but he had craved the presence of others, even though he had imbibed alone. The low hubbub of voices in quiet conversation, together with the heady fug of smoke and liquor, had helped to lubricate his thoughts. A sombre mood reigned, almost funerary, the tables of the mess hall only half full and occupied by soldiers peering like lugubrious drunkards into the dregs in their glasses, or else at their half-supped remains. The men wanted to drink but found they had little taste for it.

An army mourned and could find no outlet for its grief.

The muttered talk, a susurrus of maudlin voices, turned to strategic withdrawal and the abandonment of everything they had gained. And sacrificed. A bitter pill for sure, like arsenic in the veins. It was with a certain finality then that Regara drained his glass, the Konis brandy leaving a burn in his throat that made him wince but wasn’t entirely unwelcome. The time has long passed for this, he decided. Men were dying and the graves would overflow until the dead outnumbered the living if he did not act.

I must, although it is abhorrent in its way.

He was halfway back to his quarters on the other side of camp when he met Culcis coming the other way.

‘Lieutenant,’ said Regara genially. He noted Culcis had Makali with him and appeared agitated. She had that effect, he conceded, adding, ‘Golova.’

Culcis gave a sharp salute, Makali a lascivious smile. Regara hadn’t the heart to tell her she was charging at the wrong hill.

‘This is fortunate,’ he said, ‘I had a mind to speak with you, lieutenant.’ He kept walking.

Caught off guard, Culcis hurried into step behind the major, an insouciant Makali trailing them both.

‘Sir, a matter of some import has been brought to my attention. It concerns the border wall at Karcas.’

Regara looked askance at him, raising an eyebrow.

‘An opportunity, sir, one we might turn to our advantage. It is our belief that–’

‘A crack,’ said Makali, pushing her way in front. She frowned in half-hearted apology. ‘Left to you, lieutenant, it would be morning by the time you finished.’ She turned back to Regara. ‘A fissure in the rock. We found it a few moments before your defeat.’

‘Our defeat?’

Makali shrugged. ‘We Agrians are just here to dig ditches, major, isn’t that so?’

Regara let it slide. ‘Tell me about the fissure.’

She scurried to keep up. Despite his leg, Regara took long strides. ‘It’s to the west side of the wall, eighth section. My guess… a natural fault resulting in a weaker foundation.’ She grinned, pale and savage as a scythe. ‘Those seismic charges pack a punch, eh?’

The slap to Culcis’ shoulder was met with a disconcerting look but Makali carried on undeterred.

‘If I can get my hands on something really big…’ Her eyes widened, before winking at the major, who stoically ignored the gesture. ‘A det-charge, maybe two… maybe three and…’ She whispered a long drawn out kaboom! whilst miming a large explosion with her hands. ‘That combined with a large enough seismic charge should be enough.’

‘A bomb that size… They’ll see it coming. How do you propose to get it to the wall, let alone prime it?’

‘A night attack with a small group could slip by unnoticed, just enough to carry the bomb. Maybe a few to safeguard it also. No more than a handful of men,’ said Culcis, trying and failing to reassert his position of authority in the conversation.

‘And we will need a distraction, something to draw their attention,’ added the golova, ‘a damn loud one.’

Regara paused in sight of his quarters, considering all he had heard.

‘Take what you need on my authority. Make every preparation.’

Culcis saluted, about to go with Makali when the major’s voice chimed.

‘Not you, lieutenant. I have need of you. With me.’

FORTY-THREE

The air smelled faintly of musk and cinnamon but deadened the moment Regara activated the privacy field. It was a small disc-shaped device that inhibited vox-thieves and other listening equipment, softening all noise within its shallow area of effect. Culcis felt his teeth itch, grimacing at the low throbbing in his skull.

‘Takes a little getting used to, but what I am about to say must not be overheard,’ said Regara, pulling a scroll tube from a drawer in his desk. The lumens were low, the soft light playing across wooden furnishings and the rows of books. A phonogram sealed behind its protective case sat in one corner, a gadulka propped against it.

‘What is this about, sir?’ asked Culcis.

‘Do you trust me, Armand?’

Culcis felt a twinge of apprehension at the use of his given name but answered, ‘Utterly.’

‘Good, then I shall say it plainly and ask only that you listen.’

Culcis nodded.

‘Mattias Grussman is unfit to lead this army.’ And there it was, Regara had said aloud what most of the other officers were thinking. ‘His mistakes have cost us dearly, inflicted needless death and suffering. He is about to make another. A grievous one. I cannot allow this. I cannot let Volpone men and women die for the sake of that man’s vainglory.’

He gently pushed the scroll tube across the desk. The wax seal at its join was purely aesthetic, a concession to the arcane. It would not open without specific biometric parameters first being met.

‘A sealed letter,’ Regara explained needlessly. ‘It must reach Horator Deviers at Lanchetek and only him.’

‘Is he still alive, sir?’

‘I damned well hope so. This will end badly if he is not. I need his backing for what must come next. No, he lives. If anyone asks, the courier need only say it is notification of the death of his son.’

A brief silence fell at the mention of Darian. Though Culcis wasn’t his commanding officer, he could not help but feel partly responsible for what had happened. He saw in Regara’s eyes that the major felt the same way.

‘I will see it done, sir.’

‘Not you, lieutenant. That will raise questions. Use a mil-serve, preferably one you trust. I need you to find Barbastian and Aramis. Bring them here but do it quietly.’

Culcis frowned as the pieces fell into place, though the picture they suggested disturbed him. ‘Sir, forgive the impertinence but it appears as if…’

‘I am planning a mutiny? That is precisely what I am doing. Speak now if you have any objection and know that I will not hold it against you’ – a pistol appeared in the major’s hand, aimed at the lieutenant – ‘but that I’ll also have to confine you to these quarters until such a time as you can be released.’

Culcis heard faint movement behind him and saw Balis, the major’s manservant, unarmed but impeding his escape.

‘It cannot continue, Armand. This profligacy and callousness. Another Voke would be disastrous.’

Culcis had to moisten his lips before he said, ‘What do you mean to do?’

‘Whatever I have to.’

A pause. An ill feeling forced its way into the lieutenant’s gut. He knew what Regara proposed was necessary but the mendacity, the plotting… It sat poorly, but there was no decision to make.

‘Then, what else must I do?’

Regara lowered the pistol, with a small gesture to Balis, who went back to his duties.

‘Nothing more than I have asked for now. If this is to be a bloodless act then I will need other officers who share my view onside.’

‘What about the Prefectus?’

‘This is a Militarum matter, I don’t believe Rensaint will interfere.’

‘Then I should go at once.’

‘Quietly, Armand. Much depends on this.’

Culcis nodded, took the scroll and left.

Outside, Culcis had walked only a short way from Regara’s quarters before a voice stopped him cold.

‘It took him long enough.’

Culcis turned, feigning confusion as he came face to face with Bertram Fenk.

‘What are you talking about?’

He still hadn’t put out of his mind what he had found in Fenk’s room, the mysterious box and its even more mysterious contents. A part of him greatly wanted to question the other lieutenant about it but that would mean admitting to his illicit search and Culcis had no desire to let Fenk have any leverage over him.

‘You don’t have to say it out loud, I know.’

A chill ran through Culcis’ bones but he maintained his composure. ‘Are you following me, Fenk?’

‘Sometimes.’

Alarming as that revelation was, Culcis needed to be on his way and made to move past him. ‘Stand aside, I haven’t time for games.’

Fenk moved quicker, barring the other lieutenant’s path. ‘Will he kill him?’ he asked and Culcis felt his own heart stop in his chest.

He caught a breath and in a quiet voice, said, ‘I don’t know.’

‘Then you’ll need help.’

‘Better that you forget all about it.’

‘Armand, you are entirely too honourable for subterfuge. Believe me, this is something I know. I am an expert at moving around unnoticed.’

Culcis’ expression turned sour.

‘You can trust me in this.’

‘I do not trust you, Bertram, and that is the problem…’ He sighed, regretting his next words before they had left his lips. ‘But it appears I have little choice.’ This was already getting out of hand but nothing could be done about that now.

Fenk smiled that adder’s smile, the kind a predator gives to its prey. ‘That’s the spirit.’

‘I need Barbastian and Aramis.’

Fenk nodded, understanding immediately. ‘I know where to find them.’ He grinned, eyes lightless and cold as he produced a silver coin. ‘Shall we flip for who gets the pretty one?’

Aramis stood head bowed, hands clasped at her waist. A prayer eluded her and she exhaled in frustrated silence, the air making phantoms of her breath. She had met Shiller coming the other way as she entered and the man had not even acknowledged her presence, his hatred a cold and impotent thing that would see no satisfaction.

He might be a bastard, she had reflected, but at least he pays his respects to the dead.

Darian Deviers lay on the mortuarium slab, cold and unmoving. He looked peaceful in repose, a gilded laurel wreath placed about his head like a crown. It had become a shrine, his resting place. Soldiers had left tokens, a polished bullet, a tiny effigy of the Emperor, a pile of coins, a strip of ribbon. It all meant something, she supposed, though Aramis had brought no offering herself. She had barely known him but that didn’t stop her feeling sorry for the way his life had ended. As with all beacons, he had eventually been snuffed out and in his wake, only darkness. Though it wasn’t the hero she had come to see, but a friend.

Gavid Henessey had no laurel nor hoard of offerings. He had a veil and the slab upon which he lay. It did not look like him; the dead rarely do. A shell remained, a twisted and broken shell that had known pain and fear before it died.

So quick, she hadn’t even realised until…

Aramis made a fist, her jaw clenched. Then, taking a solitary coin from her pocket, she placed it reverently on the dead man’s chest and quietly turned to leave the room. Only belatedly did she realise she wasn’t alone.

‘What are you doing here, lieutenant?’

‘Tell me, major,’ said Fenk, as he pulled away from the wall where he had been leaning, ‘how do you feel about rebellion?’

The place looked quiet and Culcis wondered if Fenk had been mistaken when he said the lieutenant colonel was here. He tried not to overthink how the other lieutenant knew this or why he kept such close watch on the officers in the camp, though Culcis suspected Fenk watched everyone. It was hard to shake the unease plaguing him about his suspicions, but without proof they were just that. He knew the other lieutenant had saved his life against the cossacks and Fenk might be many things, but a liar was not one of them. Though he didn’t trust him, he did believe Fenk would keep his promise, and that would have to suffice.

Regara’s words tumbled through his mind, an act of treason to prevent a greater one. Sometimes what is right hides behind what is necessary. It might be unpalatable, even uncomfortable, but it didn’t change that it had to be done. Turbulent seas lay ahead, with Culcis a sailor in a skiff facing off against a coming storm. All he need do was not drown.

As for the earlier part of Regara’s instructions, Culcis had left the scroll with a mil-serve called Treagher who he knew to be discreet, and then made straight for the civilian chapel at the outskirts of camp. It was a plain affair, designated for the baggage train hangers-on and the mil-serves, a prefab stone blockhouse with an Imperial eagle engraved in the keystone above the arch. Candles flickered within, an illusion, for Culcis heard the hum of the electro-sconces that kept the lights burning. Two rows of ordinary wooden pews ran either side of the nave and led to a chancel where an altar stood crested by a bronze statue of the Emperor as the healer, His hand upraised as if to bless the faithful.

The chapel was unoccupied but for a single figure who knelt, head against the pew in front of them, as if in prayer. Culcis stepped quietly down the main aisle, aware of the sanctity of this place, regardless of how infrequently it saw use, and keen to leave the man’s solitude undisturbed for as long as possible.

Only when he drew closer did Culcis start to realise something was wrong. It was the odd cant to Barbastian’s body, almost as if he had been propped against the pew, and the stillness of his form. A light flare in one of the sconces hissed across the chapel and Culcis almost shouted in alarm. His heart quickened when he saw the wet shine to the clutched rosarius in Barbastian’s hands. They had been pressed together in the sign of the aquila and far from being closed in prayer, the lieutenant colonel’s dead eyes stared emptily at the blood pooling around his knees. It had left a stain down his jacket and shirt, the high collar dishevelled, and underneath his throat had been slit. A knife lay to hand, stained with blood.

‘Holy Throne…’

That’s when Culcis heard the footsteps enter the chapel behind him.

He turned sharply and met the angry face of Isaac Shiller.

‘What are you doing here, Armand?’

‘I might ask the same of you, sir.’

Shiller scowled, irascible from all the vresk he had evidently imbibed. ‘Trying to find a bloody drink.’

‘In a civilian chapel?’ Culcis was flailing. He needed to get rid of Shiller. Fenk was right, he was bad at subterfuge.

‘Maybe I was looking for something else. What’s it got to do with you, lieutenant, where I choose to–’ His bleary gaze drifted over to Barbastian and he drew his sidearm. ‘What is this?’

Culcis raised his hands. ‘I found him this way.’

‘Shitting saints… his throat,’ said Shiller. ‘Did he kill himself?’

‘I don’t know. It looks that way. I only just arrived myself.’

Shiller eyed him curiously. ‘Why didn’t you say something?’

‘You surprised me. Now can I put my hands down?’

Shiller lowered and holstered the pistol. ‘Sorry, Armand,’ he said and came over to where Culcis was standing. He regarded Barbastian, the man obviously dead. ‘God-Emperor… the rate officers are committing suicide, we’ll have none left by the time the war’s over.’

Culcis murmured a quick prayer as he knelt down by the body. The skin still felt warm to the touch. Barbastian hadn’t been dead long, but the chapel was empty and he had seen no one leave.

‘Did you see anyone outside, Isaac? Anyone watching the chapel?’

Shiller shook his head, staring at the gaping wound in Barbastian’s neck.

‘Poor bastard,’ he said and licked his lips, in need of a drink. For once, Culcis could relate.

Leaning closer, careful to stay out of the slowly widening blood pool, he noticed something catch the light, stashed under the pew in front, and reached for it.

‘Something down here…’

Culcis’ hand came out cradling a wax cylinder that shone dully in the flickering candlelight.

Shiller’s brow furrowed. ‘What is that?’

‘It’s for a phonogram, I think. Used to record speech, music. I’ve seen Regara use one.’ He turned his head to face the captain. ‘Evidently, Barbastian did too.’

‘Why would he hide something like that?’

‘That’s a good question.’

Culcis looked around, found the vox-emitters either side of the chancel embedded in the mouths of two stone cherubim.

‘They use it to auto-cast hymns for the degs…’ said Shiller, following the lieutenant’s lead as Culcis mounted the narrow stage and began searching for the machine slaved to the emitters. They found it quickly.

‘Here…’ uttered Shiller, and after a few moments of trial and error managed to get the unit open and insert the cylinder. It worked on the same principle as a phonogram but was enclosed, encased behind plastek. Dead air persisted for a few seconds as the cylinder turned, then the needle found the groove in the wax.

It began innocently enough, with the mournful strains of a gadulka, and then the music stopped abruptly and was replaced by voices, Mattias Grussman’s amongst them.

Both men listened in silence, scarcely breathing until it was over.

The dead air returned, compounded by the stillness of the chapel until Culcis remembered to move and turned off the machine. Shiller stared, first at the machine and then at Culcis, who saw the slow inertia of cogs feeding into cogs in his mind.

‘We have to notify the Prefectus,’ he said, sobering quickly. He reached for the cylinder but Culcis, having taken it from the machine, held on to it. ‘Now, lieutenant,’ urged Shiller.

‘What about Regara?’

‘What about him? This recording must be heard by the lord commissar immediately.’

‘He’s the commanding officer of the Fiftieth, Isaac, and Filip Barbastian was his friend.’

Shiller shrugged it off. ‘Do whatever you need to. Have a couple from the ranks to watch the chapel if you must, but I’ll have that cylinder.’

Culcis handed it over, numbness spreading throughout his body as everything began to unravel.

FORTY-FOUR

They were waiting for him when he returned to Regara’s quarters. Culcis had needed to make a stop on the way to enlist Greiss to guard the chapel. He didn’t tell him why but gave him strict orders not to enter. No one but he or Shiller was to be granted admittance. Greiss looked confused but behaved like a good sergeant and went to rustle up some help before he headed to the chapel.

The memory of it played through Culcis’ mind as he saw Aramis sitting in a chair and conversing with the major, Fenk leaning against the wall, half lost in shadow like a damn wraith. Culcis almost didn’t see him. If Regara thought anything about Fenk’s presence and his unlooked-for involvement, he didn’t show it.

‘Armand…’ the major began, an edge of concern in his voice, ‘you’re late, though your accomplice vouched for you,’ he added mildly, glancing towards Fenk.

Something in Culcis’ face must have betrayed him because Regara’s demeanour changed as soon as he saw it. Aramis saw it too.

‘What is it? What’s happened?’ she asked.

Regara said nothing, but his expression grew taut like a stretched mask. He barely moved.

‘There is a problem,’ said Culcis.

‘I sincerely hope we aren’t about to get arrested by the Prefectus,’ said Fenk, who had stopped leaning against the wall to pay attention.

Culcis met Regara’s hard stare and felt the weight of it like a Pardus tank. ‘It is a delicate matter.’

‘These are all delicate matters, lieutenant,’ snapped Aramis, losing patience. ‘Out with it.’

Regara spoke up, uttering the question on everyone’s mind but that no one had the courage to ask until that moment. ‘Where is Lieutenant Colonel Barbastian?’

Culcis fought the urge to lower his gaze. He owed Regara that at least.

‘I am sincerely sorry, sir… Lieutenant Colonel Barbastian is dead.’

Stunned silence filled the room, made heavier by the leaden privacy field.

Aramis cursed under her breath. She stood and started to pace. Fenk did and said nothing, a statue in the half-darkness.

Regara’s jaw stiffened, his face having turned to stone and impossible to read. ‘How did he die?’

‘I only found his body,’ Culcis explained. ‘His throat had been slit.’ A nerve trembled in Regara’s cheek but still he didn’t react. ‘It appeared…’ Culcis swallowed back the dryness in his throat. ‘It looked like suicide, sir.’

‘Filip Barbastian would never kill himself,’ Regara declared matter-of-factly, as if he were stating that ice was cold.

‘Shiller has gone to fetch the Prefectus.’

Aramis stopped pacing at that, her face a barely contained grimace of anger. ‘How is Shiller involved?’

‘He’s not,’ Culcis explained. ‘At least, he wasn’t. He arrived a few moments after I did. Barbastian was already dead.’

Regara nodded, as if absorbing nothing more unusual than a field report.

‘You should all leave. Return to your quarters, say nothing of this.’

Aramis shook her head, her frustration boiling over. ‘That’s it? Grussman isn’t fit to lead a marching band. His recklessness has cost countless lives. You said so yourself, major. I am here at your request.’

‘I said, say nothing!’ Regara snapped, his voice like a whip-crack that stung the air. Regaining his composure, he added more quietly, ‘It’s over. Without Barbastian, we’re done.’

Aramis swore loudly, then apologised.

Fenk was already halfway to the door when Culcis uttered, ‘There is something else.’

Shiller waited outside to be granted admittance then came at Rensaint’s call.

‘Enter…’

The lord commissar was glistening with sweat and dressed down in sparring apparel, a simple pair of charcoal-grey fatigues and a dove-grey vest. A mil-serve was setting a well-scarred cuirass of flak armour onto a mannequin in one corner of the room. Rensaint’s foils and other blades stood next to it, arranged carefully in a black-lacquered weapons rack.

‘Do you spar, captain?’ he asked idly, busying himself with pulling off a pair of leather gloves. He sat them on the desk, and reached for the wine that the mil-serve had dutifully provided. There was something vaguely familiar about her, a small slip of a thing, waiflike and feeble. She barely met Shiller’s gaze, which the captain thought was most assuredly for the best. For her. He only liked a mil-serve to acknowledge him when he wanted something. At all other times, they should be beneath his notice, as unremarkable and silent as a pauper’s grave.

‘On occasion,’ Shiller lied, or at least he had not done so in many years, content for war to keep him as lean as he needed to be, though even he admitted he had lost a step or two. The dead weighed on him, despite all of his caustic bluster. He hated Voke for the callous disregard of the soldiers under his command; good, honest Volpone men of noble blood. They deserved better. It made what he would have to say next easier.

‘I am here on a serious matter,’ he said.

Rensaint looked up from unlacing his boots. The mil-serve had begun to towel off his body, but shrunk into the shadows at his slightest gesture. ‘Ominous…’

Shiller’s gaze followed the girl. ‘It is of the utmost importance and secrecy.’

Rensaint nodded, understanding. ‘You may leave us,’ he uttered. ‘Thank you, Lenna.’

The girl bowed sharply before departing.

‘What is this concerning, captain?’

Shiller waited until he was sure the two men were alone and then produced the cylinder.

‘I have evidence of conspiracy.’

Rensaint set down his wine. ‘Conspiracy to do what, captain?’

‘Murder, lord commissar, and it is already done.’

Rensaint regarded the proffered cylinder in Shiller’s hand.

‘I have something here than can play that, if your intent is for me to hear it.’ He gestured to the phonogram he kept on his desk. ‘Major Regara recommended one to me and I confess that I have found it pleasantly diverting.’

‘There is a secondary matter.’

‘Oh…?’

Shiller took a breath, moistening his bone-dry lips. He yearned for a drink, something to take the edge off.

Rensaint must have seen him eyeing the wine. ‘Take a cup if it’ll hasten this moment, captain.’

He did, and drained it, then poured himself another which he sipped more slowly.

‘Filip Barbastian is dead,’ he said baldly, ‘slain by his own hand.’

Rensaint gave away no emotion.

‘And this?’ He nodded to the cylinder.

‘The two matters are related.’

‘Then you had best play it, captain.’

The recording began with Barbastian’s playing, a lilting threnody giving way all too suddenly to the scratchy voices of three Volpone officers.

‘It is for the greater good, we must do this.’

That was Grussman, his bullish tone unmistakeable. Rensaint looked up at Shiller but the captain said nothing.

‘You are talking about murder, Mattias. We have already been through this.’

‘He is a deg, Filip. Nothing to us. Must a man of breeding stop to think before he shoots a stray dog?’

‘He is the blood of Horator De Nesk Deviers.’

‘A bastard, one of many. We all know Deviers’ reputation.’

A third voice intruded, voicing his agreement but otherwise saying little of import.

Rensaint gave him a questioning glance.

‘Major Enghart,’ Shiller explained, ‘East Army Group,’ to which the lord commissar nodded as he listened on.

‘…and also a talisman to our troops.’ There was slight pause, as if Barbastian were seeking outside counsel. ‘This cannot be the only way.’

‘You’ve seen the border wall, Filip. It is almost impregnable.’

‘The Pact will fight like hellions to hold it, even with Godsword at our backs.’

That was Enghart again, his manner as oleaginous as his bombast. A toadying career soldier, determined to grease his way up the ranks. Shiller had known many such men, and despised them all.

‘Our faith must match their fanaticism.’ Grussman again.

‘So you would make a martyr…’ Barbastian’s disgust was almost tangible, although for the other officers or himself it was difficult to discern.

‘I would make him into whatever he needs to be to win us this war. A boy cannot lead this army to victory. He dies at Karcas, Filip, and we will ride his sacrifice all the way to Rakespur. I need only your sanction to move forwards. Enghart has already pledged his. It is the Emperor’s will, Filip. None are greater than it.’

‘Even you?’

‘Even me.’ The smile in Grussman’s voice suggested he wasn’t being entirely truthful.

‘What choice have I?’

‘None, Filip. None.’ Here Grussman took on a darker tone.

Barbastian let out a shuddering breath. ‘God-Emperor forgive us…’

A low purr of activation hummed across the recording, only partly audible. A device of some kind, though Shiller still could not place it.

‘You are serving your Imperium this day, Filip.’

‘Tell me one thing, Mattias, now I am bound to your devil’s bargain.’

‘Name it.’

‘Once you have unleashed it, can you bring it to heel?’

‘Let me worry about that.’

There the recording ended, the cylinder having reached its terminus.

Rensaint listened without comment, his face studiedly neutral. ‘Is that all of it?’

Shiller nodded.

‘Who else has heard this?’

‘Only myself and Lieutenant Culcis.’

‘He is Regara’s man, isn’t he?’

Shiller confirmed it. ‘He has already gone to tell the major. He and Barbastian were…’

‘Old friends, yes, I am aware.’ Rensaint stared pensively for a moment. ‘Shiller, this is disturbing news.’

‘I assume I was right bringing this to you, lord commissar?’

Rensaint nodded but his mind was already elsewhere.

‘Speak to no one of this, captain. No one.’

The door loomed like a gravestone, heavy with the weight of what lay beyond.

Greiss and Hanmar guarded the exterior but possessed enough good sense not to impede Regara as he had approached the chapel. Both bowed their heads out of respect, Hanmar making the aquila across his breast, but Regara paid them little heed. His attention was on the door, knowing that once he crossed its threshold nothing would be the same. His heart crashed in his chest like an erratic parade drum and his breath snagged in his throat, swelling into a tumour of grief so large it threatened to choke him.

Regara betrayed none of this, his stern mask intact as he walked up to the door, pausing only for a second, and then went inside.

At the soft thud of the door finding its frame, he was alone with Barbastian. Kneeling before a chapel pew, his old friend looked still and somehow bled of all his colour, though the savage cut across his throat added a swathe of crimson. The blood had begun to darken in the air, reduced to a ruddy mark that ran the length of Barbastian’s front, his shirt and jacket irreparably stained.

Crouching down, afraid at first to touch him, Regara did his best to straighten the unkempt collar. Using a cloth and bowl of rose petal water, meant for penitents to wash their hands after confession, he gently dabbed at the bloodstain, the sheer length and extent of it abhorrent for reasons he could not articulate even to himself. He worked carefully and slowly, and although it could never be cleansed completely, it looked better than it had.

As he smoothed the shirt and jacket, he felt something tucked away in the inside pocket. His heart convulsed when he saw it was a note addressed to him.

Dear Vasquez,

Please do not think ill of me for this.

And let it be a matter of record that I always did love your wonderful music.

Sincerely, your friend,

Filip

Such an incongruous message, and not one that read like a suicide note, but Regara had no capacity for analysis in that moment. A cry rose up within him, a surge of emotion so raw that he had to clench his fists so that only its strangled remnants escaped his throat. Hot tears threatened and were quickly mastered, but the hollow inside him would be much harder to overcome.

He rose unsteadily, reaching for his cane, though he didn’t really need it. The leg worked fine, he just hid behind that cane – a metaphorical crutch as well as a literal one.

Through the haze of his agony as he stared down at the body, the sight of it somehow askew with reality, Regara knew one thing for certain.

Filip Barbastian had not killed himself. He had been murdered.

FORTY-FIVE

After meeting with Rensaint, Shiller decided he was in no mood for company and eschewed the native stills and camp hostelries. His mind lingered on Barbastian like a vid-picter stuck on freeze-frame. No matter how hard he tried to banish the image of the yawning red chasm of the man’s throat it would not leave him.

It felt wrong. Not the act itself, though Shiller had no truck with suicide because he saw it as weakness. No, plenty of men suffering the rigours of a long war had taken their own lives. Brandreth, he could believe. That despicable worm had blood as thin as pale piss. The fact he had chosen to off himself dangling from some half-blasted stump at the edge of Lodden came as little surprise. That he hadn’t done it sooner was the genuine revelation.

But Filip Barbastian… the man spent overlong preening and owned more shirts and cloaks than the Guard had lasguns, but he was no coward. So to see him like that, opened up by his own hand and spilling out all over the chapel floor sent a tremor of unease through Shiller. A good officer slain, another senseless loss to add to the multitudes.

Shiller dragged off his officer’s cap as he entered his own quarters, exhausted and in need of a drink. It was modest compared to Rensaint’s accommodations but had its comforts and spoke to the wealth of his bloodline and standing. Fine as it was, it could not distract from his current predicament.

All manner of shit was about to hit the turbo fan, Grussman at the heart of it. Shiller had thought to ally himself with the general and perhaps find favour and advancement. That ended in the chapel, shattered in a few minutes of scratchy audio recording. A confession no man, save Barbastian himself, knew they were making.

What exactly the lieutenant colonel had been pressed into remained elusive. For now. Shiller had no doubt that Rensaint would find the root of it.

Barbastian’s exact words returned to him, the dead man’s voice, as well as his deathly countenance, impossible to excise.

Once you have unleashed it.

Shiller pondered that as he slumped into a plush chair that cushioned his back, and reached for a decanter. The vresk sloshed around, half gone already, and the captain saw his face reflected in the faceted glass. He was a shambles, worse than he had thought. Not only dishevelled and in need of a change of clothes, but unshaven and unkempt.

He poured himself a drink.

‘Deg…’ he called loudly, summoning whatever mil-serve currently attended to him. A young girl stepped into view, having pressed the captain’s spare uniforms and polished his boots.

Or at least, she appeared as if she had been at her labours. There was something familiar about her but Shiller barely acknowledged the mil-serves unless he was shouting at them, and even then only fleetingly.

‘Warm a bowl of water,’ he told her, ‘find cream and my razor. I am in need of a shave.’

He leaned back in the chair, his thoughts adrift like motes of dust in still air, and after a few minutes the girl returned with all the items Shiller had requested. A towel was wrapped around his neck and upper chest. Then the gentle splash of water as the blade was washed, the light fragrance of the cream as the girl lathered it.

‘Nice and close, you hear me,’ he said, taking a long pull from his glass.

A flash of light caught Shiller’s eye briefly, the lumens striking the unsheathed blade of the razor.

‘Of course, sir,’ said the girl, and as the blade touched his throat Shiller remembered where he knew her from.

Fenk roamed the camp periphery, a welter of thoughts running through his head like little firecrackers of incongruity that he fought to make sense of.

He had considered going to the chapel. Sneaking by Greiss would be no challenge but if Hanmar was with him that might be harder. The corpsman had a keen eye and good instincts. He was also lethal with a blade, and for that he had Fenk’s respect. In any account, Regara would soon be headed there wanting to see Barbastian’s corpse for himself.

A man was dead in unusual circumstances and for once Bertram Fenk was not responsible. The grey host remained dormant, perhaps sated, or even distracted as Fenk became embroiled in something larger than himself. At least now, he had an even better excuse to kill Mattias Grussman. Not that he needed one.

That could wait, however. Questions remained, and Fenk did not like not knowing. He brought to mind the meeting he had witnessed, or at least Grussman’s visit to Barbastian’s quarters, and he assumed this was when the recording had been made. Culcis’ recollection had been detailed, but not exact. A visit to Barbastian’s own quarters might yield some answers, but a man was dead and Fenk had no desire to draw unwanted attention. Culcis already had his suspicions but that did not concern him. The lieutenant had no proof and would wait to act until he had, schooled as he was by Regara’s morals and ethics.

And so Fenk found himself at the literal fringes, the Agrian wasteland rolling away in the shadowed distance. He was hunting, and had been for the last few hours. Irrespective of how it may have looked, someone had killed Barbastian. A man who wished to end his life did not slit his own throat. Much could go awry with that. There were easier methods. Less messy. And if nothing else, Barbastian detested mess. It left a singular conclusion. A murder meant a murderer, but finding one in a camp of several thousand trained killers would be improbable at best.

Instinct brought Fenk here, to the edges where the hidden things could often be found. Contraband, illicit spoils of war, even caches of stolen coin or narco. He had seen it all, and always at the edges, beyond the watchful sight of the Prefectus and their ilk. But Fenk wasn’t in search of any of that; instead he sought a body.

Culcis had described a thing ‘unleashed’, a dog given its quarry. Barbastian was its quarry but to wander unseen, unremarked in a camp of so many, that required infiltration and the most effective method of fitting in was taking the place of something that should already have been there.

It took Fenk almost four hours, searching in the darkness with only the distant candescence of the camp lumens to guide him, before he found the burial site. A shallow grave, a scattering of earth, just enough to conceal the body of a young mil-serve girl.

FORTY-SIX

Regara did not consider himself a man prone to extreme emotion. He had always kept his humours well managed like the buttons on his parade uniform, tight and in perfect order. But a cold tributary of anger ran through him as he entered the practice yard and stalked to where Mattias Grussman was standing.

The general kept company with three First Sons, the thickset and well-muscled Scions stripped to leggings and vests much like Grussman himself. Sparring attire. Each had a rapier sheathed to his waist, the practice yard little more than a delineated scrap of earth at the northern edge of camp that served as both training ring and arena.

Grussman looked up at Regara’s approach, evidently surprised to see the major but quickly realising his anger.

‘Vasquez,’ he said genially, ‘I’m afraid you’ve missed the last bout. Devek here ran me close but I think the commissar’s tutelage must be paying off. Rensaint is quite the teacher. He may even outclass you.’ Devek sported several cuts and bruises, and grinned savagely at Grussman’s mention of his name.

Good bad dog…

Regara answered with a sudden flash of steel, his knife licking out like a whip to bite Grussman’s cheek, the colonel hissing at the sudden pain.

The Scions, wrong-footed at first, quickly closed ranks but Grussman staved them off with a conciliatory gesture. He ran his thumb over the cut Regara had given him, regarding the shallow beads of blood it left on his skin.

‘You mean to fight?’ he asked, though he knew the ritual well enough. ‘Kill me, like you killed my uncle.’

Regara had retreated eight paces as per the code. ‘Yes,’ he said without embellishment.

Something dark flickered behind Grussman’s eyes then as he drew the sword he had been using in the practice yard. The other three men took this as an order to mimic him.

‘What about my friends here, Vasquez. Will you kill them too?’

Regara looked unperturbed by the sudden shift in odds. ‘I only need you.’

‘Before I kill you, and believe me, I will enjoy it, what is this all about?’

‘A debt to a friend.’

A flicker of recognition passed over Grussman’s face that he could not hide. He had never been particularly politic, a man encumbered by his own inadequacy, his words as maladroit as his manner. Regara knew, he knew then that Mattias Grussman had ordered Barbastian’s death and in that moment it did not matter why, only that Filip was avenged.

He drew the sword from his cane, a fine needle of silver that whistled as he swept it through the cold evening air. A light snow had begun to fall, gentle flakes drifting like wisps of cloud. Regara felt them melt as they brushed tenderly against his skin.

Four blades rose up to meet his one.

‘Stow your weapons.’

Rensaint’s strident voice came from across the yard as he walked over to the men. None amongst the First Sons would disobey the Prefectus. They sheathed their swords immediately and stepped back.

‘Rensaint… thank the Throne.’ Grussman feigned relief that convinced no one. ‘Here just in time to instil some sense into the major.’

‘Not you, Mattias,’ uttered the lord commissar as Grussman was about to sheathe his own weapon. ‘I am not an expert in Volpone culture but I have garnered some knowledge of your ways during my time assigned to the Bluebloods.’

Grussman gave him a murderous look but Rensaint had armed himself, though was yet to draw his serpenta.

‘Isn’t it customary,’ the commissar went on, ‘that bludwaage be waged one man against another? Are these not the rules of the duel once it is called?’

‘You bastard, Owyn. You betraying scum, I should have you–’

He didn’t have time to finish; Regara was on him.

Grussman had been paying attention in his lessons. He countered Regara’s quick thrust and found a riposte that the major was forced to parry. Swift sword strokes lashed out like little silver flashes, exploding each time a blade struck the other and chimed like a clarion.

As soon as he had recovered, Grussman went on the attack, launching a flurry of blows against Regara’s carefully marshalled defence. He was sweating, the general, face flushed with exertion, but a savage grin crept over his features as he pressed the major back. Never once did Regara let his composure slip, despite the rage he felt.

‘I never did care for my uncle,’ Grussman rasped through hot breaths. ‘He was a bastard, like we’re all bastards, Vasquez. The difference between you and I,’ he panted, confident in his superiority as the heavy attacks rained down on Regara’s guard, the major sidestepping and retreating with increasing desperation, ‘is I’ll be the bastard left standing and you… you’ll be–’

The words died in his throat, swallowed in a gurgle of blood. Grussman blinked dully, apparently unaware that Regara had disarmed and impaled him through the neck in a single deft counter.

His legs folded under him as Regara withdrew his blade and Grussman pawed at the wound, a serpent’s fang punched through his jugular. At last, the reality of his end asserted itself upon him and he looked past the major to glare at Rensaint, eyes full of accusation.

‘What did you do?’ Regara demanded. ‘Can it be stopped?’

Grussman turned his ire on him, snarling through bloody clenched teeth. Then he slumped over onto his side and died in a steadily widening pool of his own blood.

Regara wiped his sword smartly on the dead man’s clothes and looked to his judge, but Rensaint’s attention was on the First Sons.

‘Consider this summary execution for the crimes of conspiracy and murder,’ he told them. ‘Remove his body. Do it discreetly.’ As the Scions moved to obey, he turned to Regara. ‘Are you ready to lead these men and finish this?’ he said. ‘You are the ranking officer now.’

‘I expected a different kind of sanction.’

‘I know what Mattias Grussman did.’

‘Shiller?’

Rensaint nodded.

‘We still have little idea as to what Grussman may have done.’

‘It ends with him.’

‘Perhaps…’

‘Regardless, we must look to the war.’

Regara conceded that much but now it was over, he felt the adrenaline fleeing his body and wavered unsteadily. Rensaint reached out as if to help him but the major’s raised hand stopped him.

‘I need a moment.’

‘You and I will need to talk. Soon.’

‘I have sent a sealed message to Horator Deviers in Lanchetek,’ he confessed. ‘I had planned a more bloodless transition.’

Whatever Rensaint thought about that, he didn’t comment. Instead he said, ‘I never took you for ruthless, Vasquez, though if asked I shall plead ignorance to what you’ve just said.’

‘Every man has more than one cloak. We become what we need to be.’

‘Wisdom from Deviers?’

‘My father. He said it to me the morning before Grussman’s uncle murdered him.’

The commissar shook his head, his gaze straying to the red earth left in Grussman’s wake. ‘My opinion remains unchanged on one thing.’

Regara’s silence held an unspoken question.

‘Yours is a violent culture,’ said the commissar.

‘I think…’ said Regara, turning his back on the sorry scene, ‘I have had my fill of violence.’

Rensaint called after him. ‘You had best make room for more. We aren’t finished yet.’

Regara didn’t answer.

Regara returned to his quarters strung out and bone-tired. As he entered the comfortably appointed rooms, he felt the subliminal hum of the privacy field. In his grief and anger, he had forgotten to deactivate it. A scent clung strongly to the air, bound in part by the deadened atmosphere that had trapped it like a butterfly in amber.

Musk and cinnamon…

Regara breathed deep, his body trembling as he fought back a pain that came in waves. It was a war he would not win.

Filip.

In the scent, something of the man lingered, clasped ephemerally like a tide lapping a shore but soon to retreat. Regara held on to it for a few more seconds, savouring this morsel that remained and the memory it harboured.

He turned off the device and slowly the scent faded, taking Filip Barbastian with it.

Then he sank down, shaking with the force of it all, and let grief devour him entire.

FORTY-SEVEN

Sleep came fitfully for Culcis, when it came at all. His mind was awash with old horrors and of a mutiny stillborn and a dead man that should still be breathing. He had relieved Greiss and Hanmar late into the evening, having waited outside with them for Regara to leave the chapel.

He had hoped to see Aramis but the major had her own inner demons to wrestle with. Ever since Henessey had died, a change had come over her. She had always been severe but in the right circumstances softer facets of her character would appear. Now a coldness radiated from her that might never thaw. A look had passed between them as they had gone their separate ways after Regara’s quarters, leaving Culcis wanting to say something meaningful, but he could find no words of comfort.

Fenk had disappeared like the wind, present one moment, an absence the next. With little other recourse, Culcis went back to his quarters, glad at least to be alone. The surfeit of tents and other lodgings, due to the fact that the graves would soon outnumber the soldiers in the barracks, meant privacy for all of the officers if they wanted it.

Culcis wanted that steam-house he had promised himself and freedom from the nightmares that plagued him but he would settle for solitude.

The nightmares will fade.

Yes, Ghanu, but you’re dead and now you’ll dream forever so what do you know?

A sympathetic twinge in his leg came as an unwanted reminder of the near-death encounter at Lodden and had him staring endlessly into the ceiling of his room, lying back, hands across his chest like a corpse in repose. So when he heard the figure quietly enter his sleeping quarters, Culcis was already alert and reaching for his pistol.

He lay still, his breathing at ease, his eyes closed, and waited for the intruder to come to him. Their padding footsteps barely raised a sound, and would be easily missed by even a light sleeper. The hour was late, so late that no sane person would still be awake. Culcis did not count himself amongst them. The laspistol felt solid beneath his pillow, and he had let one arm drift up to it as if in sleep.

For a fleeting moment, he hoped it might be Ione, having infiltrated his quarters to surprise him, daunted by that same harrowing he himself felt and needing to assuage it. He discounted that as soon he smelled starch and sweat on the air, not jasmine and sandalwood. Culcis began to inch his hand closer to his sidearm, his fingers touching the cold solidity of the metal secreted under his pillow.

They will come for you when you are unready. They will kill you as he was killed, alone and unarmed.

Well, Culcis was ready and he was armed.

Let the bastards come.

A disturbance of the air close to him raised sudden alarm. The cossacks had moved quickly and stealthily. Culcis felt something reach out, its presence like a threat, and his hand snapped out to grip vice-like around a narrow wrist. Quickly, he activated the lumen, but let go of his laspistol and left it under the pillow when he saw who it was before him.

‘Lenna?’

He knew the mil-serve girl from when he had fetched Darian from outside the med-tent. It felt like an age had passed since then, but he recognised her and released his grip at the sudden fear on her face.

‘What are you doing here?’ he asked.

‘I came to find you,’ she replied demurely and immediately there was something off-kilter about her demeanour. Almost like it was performance, an imitation of how a young mil-serve girl might act in the presence of an officer.

‘Is everything all right?’ said Culcis and edged his hand slowly and surreptitiously back towards the still-hidden laspistol.

‘I thought you would be asleep…’

‘Then why did you come to my quarters if you thought I was sleeping?’

‘To bring you something. I had planned to leave it for you.’

That rang false, not the words necessarily but the way they were spoken. Culcis scowled, his hand closing around the grip of the laspistol. ‘Who are you?’

She didn’t get a chance to answer as two burly cossacks barged into the room, weapons drawn.

‘You can throw that away, Volpone,’ said the first, gesturing to the sidearm Culcis had pulled a fraction too late. Staring down a pair of heavy-gauge stub guns, he had little choice but to comply. As the laspistol skittered off into the shadows, the cossacks holstered their own pistols and instead each drew a long and jagged knife.

‘It will be slow,’ said one.

‘And painful,’ said the other.

The first one made a face. ‘Did not expect you to be awake.’

‘And with company,’ added the other without judgement.

‘She’s not my company,’ spat Culcis.

‘Not any more,’ said one, turning his hard eyes upon Lenna. ‘You should leave, little bird. Nothing for you here. Nothing you would want to–’

The blade appeared out of thin air, as if conjured from smoke. It opened the first cossack up like a grain sack, sliding effortlessly through leather, cloth and flesh. The other gaped as his friend spilled out onto the floor, organs piled up and steaming.

Lenna went for him next but he mustered enough composure to defend himself. Her cut merely brushed his shoulder, but drew a thick red line in his jerkin that blossomed all the way down to his elbow like dispersing ink. The cossack let out a rasp of pain then slashed wildly, but Lenna was under the attack then inside it, moving faster than his eyes could follow. She came up under his guard, rising with the grace of a hunting bird then stabbing rapidly and in multitudinous succession. The cossack roared, draining like a punctured wineskin, but by the time he thought to wrap his arms around the girl and crush her she had already slipped away.

Dancing back into his reach, she cut him apart in a whirlwind of blows, flecks of blood spotting her drab uniform, investing it with colour.

As the cossack fell, slowly and ponderously like a cliff lurching into the sea, Culcis fired. During the ruckus, he had retrieved his pistol from the floor and bright las-bolts burned the air. She weaved aside each one, pirouetting like a dervish, balletic and untouchable. Culcis kept firing, edging away until he found the back of the room, but he missed with every shot. As a pistol marksman, Culcis could outshoot any of the soldiers in camp but as he tried to draw a bead on the girl it was like hitting a ray of light.

‘Who sent you?’ he asked, the pistol falling to his side, its power pack spent, as the servant girl with her deadly silver blade closed in. She didn’t answer, her eye on the kill.

A las-blast glanced her shoulder and she recoiled, momentarily stunned. It had come from behind her and a flurry of shots followed the first, spitting through the shadowy room and turning it monochrome blue with the reflected light.

Lenna-that-was-not-Lenna sprang and rolled and twisted, evading the fusillade with uncanny grace. Culcis slammed a fresh charge into his own weapon as Aramis burst into the room. Her shots chased the girl up the walls, across furniture, devastation crawling in the mil-serve’s wake. The silver blade whipped out and Aramis cried in pain, her arm seared and the air filling with the stench of burning meat. She dropped her pistol, blood streaming from a gash down her forearm. Aramis swung a fist but Lenna vaulted over it, kicking backwards as she passed the apex of her jump and landing a hard blow in the small of the major’s back. Aramis was pushed forwards, hitting a cabinet hard, smashing in the wooden door with her mass and momentum.

Lenna turned on her heel, dropping low under the flashing report of Culcis’ reload, then rose up, silver blade pulled back for a killing thrust, Aramis still staggering amidst the wreckage of the cabinet.

‘Ione!’ The warning was as anguished as it was impotent, Culcis like a child trying to hit cans in a field. Too slow, too late. Time dragged like a pict-feed run at half-speed, the blade inching ever closer to Aramis and Culcis trapped in freeze-frame.

A boom, loud and heavy like thunder, shook the room, the walls. It hurt the ears. Lenna was torn from her killing path, plucked out of the air with lethal force and smashed sideways into the foot of the bed, where she lay unmoving, a gaping cavity in place of her torso.

Fenk stepped into the soft light, the muzzle of his bolt pistol exuding smoke.

He took one look at the girl, then at the pair of dead and eviscerated cossacks lying next to her on the floor.

‘Well…’ he said, meeting Culcis’ furious gaze, ‘at least that sorts out one problem.’

FORTY-EIGHT

Hauptmann never remembered much of what happened when they strapped him to the frame.

For what might be hours or even days, he stared into the fathomless other, whilst Pact chirurgeons observed and scratched notations on their clipboards. After a while, they would always release him and bring him back to his cell. It had been this way for days. Impressions lingered, feelings more than images. It terrified him, the thought of it, even in the amorphous abstract. A sense of wrongness stole over him, a glimpse into an oblivion that no man should witness.

And he itched. A spot in the middle of his forehead, skin aflame with irritation. A puddle of brackish water had formed in his cell and as Hauptmann crawled over to it he found his reflection. Dark rings lapped his eyes; it made them sunken but as nothing compared to the hollows in his cheeks. A revenant stared back, as foreign to him as another man’s face in a mirror. Without warning a coughing fit sent him into spasm, the puddle rippling with dark red cloudbursts. He wiped his mouth, using the scraps of parchment in his pocket. He did it without thinking, his blood smear further blighting the already stained pages. Names stood out, men he had served with, comrades, friends.

Garrison, Roper, Lennox…

Chari. Velas.

God-Emperor, what he wouldn’t give to see them again.

‘I will die here…’ Even his voice sounded like it belonged to someone else, no more than a death rattle.

And in that terrible moment of revelation, he knew he had to escape.

A guard was coming. Hauptmann heard the heavy booted footsteps down the stone hall, his ears keener than they had been before, a side effect of what they had done to him or his closeness to death. It didn’t matter. It cut through the fog, a measure of his old sharpness returning.

‘If I am to die,’ he whispered, reaching for the thin pipe spewing dirty water into the room, ‘then I’ll die fighting.’ He crushed the pipe, finding the reserves of strength to tear a piece of it from the wall. The end was jagged, no larger than a pocket knife, and fitted snugly in his clenched fist. Hauptmann sank down, hunched over, arms folded into his body, head tucked against his chest.

The footsteps reached the door and the bolt slid loose. The door opened, the guards’ voices abruptly louder. A low chuckle from one, two men sharing a joke at their prisoner’s expense. A weak and beaten prisoner.

A savage kick sent white-hot knives through his ribs but Hauptmann didn’t move.

Spittle-laced invective spattered the back of his neck, the first guard losing patience. The Pacter leaned down, scarred hands grabbing for Hauptmann’s neck.

The sergeant-cavalier uncoiled, so suddenly and quickly that the first guard fell back. It took the Pacter a few seconds to realise his throat had been cut, hands reaching, fingers clawing at the blood spewing eagerly around the shaft of pipe still lodged in his neck. Carotid artery. His comrade balked then reached for the blade he should have drawn before they had opened the cell door.

Forgetting the first guard, gurgling and drowning in his own blood, Hauptmann sprang at the second. A savage punch dented the grotesk and the guard staggered, emitting a shriek as his nose broke under the impact. Hauptmann got his hand under the mask, pulled, tore it loose. A face attenuated to pain glared back, scarified and furious. The guard made to shout, to roar, but found a rolled-up dagger of parchment rammed down his throat, stuffed so hard he choked on it. Hauptmann smacked the heavy paper with the flat of his hand like it was a hammer punching nails. He did it three more times, holding the guard down as the man collapsed, eyes bulging, shuddering in panicked death throes.

After a few seconds, the struggles ceased. The man in his arms stared glassily at the ceiling, the one on the floor on his back surrounded by a growing blood pool. Hauptmann took the second guard’s blade, his only weapon, and made for the cell door.

Listening to the corridor outside he heard nothing, save for the wind whistling eerily through clefts in old stone. The red wash hadn’t changed, the lumens overhead encased behind coloured plastek.

Padding on bare feet, he edged into the corridor. It stretched away in two directions; left, he vaguely recalled, headed towards the chamber and the vaulted ceiling of fathomless glass shards. He went ahead, passing other cells, pausing to look through the view-slits but finding most of them empty. A man in a Militarum uniform, it was hard to tell the provenance but Hauptmann thought maybe Slokan, stared back at him.

‘What’s your name, soldier?’ he whispered hoarsely and paused halfway through retracting the bolt when the man replied.

‘Behold the eightfold dark… Behold the shadows of its coming… It is the end and the beginning… It is the hells of the unnamed…’

Drool oozed from the Slokan’s mouth, a tarry line of it, stretching down and out of sight. Slowly, Hauptmann slid the bolt back and the Slokan stepped away, fading into the shadows until only his eyes were visible.

‘The unnamed…’ he hissed, ‘the unburdened.’

Hauptmann made the sign of the aquila and moved on.

A second cell held only a body, the poor bastard face down in a pool of their own vomit. In a third he found a hunched figure rocking back and forth, mumbling incoherently. A stray shaft of light from a flickering lumen caught the figure just so and Hauptmann saw they had taken their own eyes. Gaping red-ringed hollows remained.

He moved on but found no allies.

At the end of the corridor, steps led down to a deeper part of the fortress. It was dark, the lumens less frequent in this lower region. Blinking back the sweat that had crept into his eyes and trying to calm his pounding heart, he descended the steps.

Not far from the bottom, he heard voices. The language was unfamiliar, a string of harsh consonants: Pact dialect. Hauptmann gripped the blade a little tighter. It was a crude thing, more cleaver than sword, heavy and serrated. Pressing his back against the warm stone, he crept around the wall, trying to catch a glimpse of whoever was below.

Two Pacters in rugged military garb stood arguing over a crate. It was a hefty metal box, machine-stamped and bolted shut. It looked heavy and had a little void scarring, the telltale frostbite of transit through deep space. He wondered what it contained. The two Pacters had been moving it. A servitor lay inert on the floor nearby, a bullet hole in its skull and no longer functional. Now the troopers had to struggle with the crate themselves and argued over how best to get it onto a tracked hauler with its rear ramp extended. A spiked helm had been discarded, so too a weapons belt and bandolier, their trappings left on a couple of metal drums. Hauptmann recognised the Departmento Munitorum stencilling on the rounded exteriors indicating ‘flammable’ and guessed the fuel was purloined from some Imperial depot.

In any event, the Pacters had become engrossed in their spat so didn’t see the Pardus sergeant-cavalier creeping up on them until it was too late.

Hauptmann shot one through the back of their piebald head, the pistol’s echoing report making him wince at its loudness. As the first trooper fell, Hauptmann gunned down the second, putting a hole in the man’s chest, but it didn’t stop him. Hauptmann knew from the briefings and his own experiences on the battlefield that Pact infantry had incredible tolerance for pain and a near-preternatural ability to shrug off wounds that would kill lesser soldiers.

The second trooper rounded the crate, drawing a knife from his belt. Shorter than Hauptmann’s stolen blade, it was nonetheless wielded with skill and looked wickedly sharp. The Pacter lunged, and he dodged back, heart thundering in his ears, blood pulsing. Hauptmann swung but failed to connect and the trooper tackled him, the pain sharp as his back collided with the ground, the Pacter grappling and stabbing. A cut opened up Hauptmann’s forearm as he raised it to defend himself. Hot, rancid breath washed over him through the grotesk as the Pacter struggled to get the upper hand.

Hauptmann twisted, managed to get the pistol between him and his opponent. Then he squeezed. One, twice. He emptied the clip until it went click and then kept going. He was still struggling several seconds after it was all over and his chest had been painted in Pact blood. Rolling the corpse off him proved hard but he managed it, the effort leaving him exhausted, breath hitching. He tossed the pistol but picked up the cleaver-sword from where he had dropped it, hooked the grenade bandolier across his shoulder.

Then for a few moments he just crouched in the half-dark, listening. No one came. Whatever the Pact were doing, he was beneath their notice.

Unsteady, Hauptmann staggered over to the crate and used it for support whilst he got his breath back. It had a cargo designation. The loc-ref meant nothing but he read the name stamped on the side in his head: Spica Maximal, Mergent Worlds.

He hadn’t heard of the place nor did he know where it was relative to Gnostes. Something about the crate though, a subtle vibration in the metal, possibly imagined but disturbing nonetheless, made him shrink back.

Hauptmann fled deeper into the shadows, rudderless and afraid but determined to find a way out. Even though he was dying, he wouldn’t die here. Not a prisoner. He would at least be free, like the wild equines of his homeland. He considered the grenades and the barrels of promethium he had passed along the way. Only two, but a storeroom might be nearby.

He scurried on, the desire to escape supplanted by a need for revenge.

The fortress was old and large but its roots were here in this undercroft. It reeked of decay, the stone old, the wood rotten. A sewer or priests’ tunnel might lead him out. He supposed he shouldn’t have been surprised when he found the temple.

A stout door stood between Hauptmann and the ritual place beyond. Through an old slit in the dark wood he saw the edge of a stone circle daubed with tarry sigils that he assumed must be blood. A coven of robed cultists knelt around it, several dead, their throats opened up to whatever gods they called master. In the middle of the circle knelt a man: a huge and muscular man with his back to Hauptmann, his skin inked in artful cuneiform. He was naked, though a suit of baroque and hulking armour arrayed neatly outside the circle could only be his.

The soft refrain of ritual chanting drifted through the slit, the words foreign to Hauptmann but also eerily familiar. It was this familiarity, the small voice in his head gently goading but growing steadily louder and more aggressive, that made him turn and run.

It was only then, stumbling through the dark, his fingers still tingling from touching the crate, that his head began to itch again.

FORTY-NINE

She lay on the med-slab, still moving. The officers surrounded her like a ring of conspirators, the low lumens casting their faces in shadow.

‘Is it supposed to do that?’ asked Aramis, her face a mess of cuts from wood splinters. ‘It is actually dead, right?’

After the fight was over, Culcis had roused the major and the Prefectus, who had immediately descended on the scene. He had discovered that the las-beams had alerted Aramis and Fenk to what was happening, several passing through the heavy canvas awning of the lieutenant’s quarters and flashing in the night darkness.

‘Quite dead,’ Rensaint confirmed as he eyed the body.

The corpse had been brought over covertly to a private room of the infirmary. Several hours had passed since a Slokan medic named Morgan had examined the corpse but it still moved, muscles twitching, limbs jerking spasmodically as if in their death throes.

Though that wasn’t entirely accurate. The body didn’t just move, it changed. Subtly. A limb grew by a few inches, muscles thickened fractionally and the face, once youthful and adolescent, aged and became grizzled. The corpse on the slab remained female but it no longer looked entirely like Lenna. It retained something of the dead mil-serve, a biological shadow almost. Like a muscle unable to relax, it held to her image.

‘She was a clandestine operative,’ Rensaint went on, ‘trained in the use of transformative serums. I have seen them before, though deployed by Imperial servants more adept than this one. Nonetheless, it appears she was highly effective.’ He turned her face to one side, gently lifting the left earlobe to reveal a small hidden mark. ‘Progenium, Scion cadre,’ he interpreted.

‘First Sons?’ ventured Culcis, assuming this was what Grussman had been referring to in the phonogram recording, the operation for which he had needed Barbastian and Enghart’s sanction.

‘I thought they were all male?’ said Aramis, the distaste for that obvious in her voice.

‘No, and not necessarily,’ answered Rensaint. ‘She is unaffiliated with any regiment, at least as far as I can ascertain. An investigation will have to be made, of course.’

Try as he might as he looked upon the body, Culcis couldn’t rid the image of a dead girl from his mind. Fenk had discovered the real Lenna buried in a shallow grave at the edge of camp. She had been dead several days, her body already succumbing to decomposition. He had found a casket too, stashed in an unused ammo silo. The tech-priests had bypassed the locks, and a cache of weaponry and other equipment was revealed within. A bolt pistol modified for so-called ‘shieldbreaker’ ammunition, a targeter, several vials of the transformative serum Rensaint had mentioned, apparel, and a blade – the twin of which she had used to try to kill Aramis.

‘It’s almost certain now that this was the operative that infiltrated our ranks and assassinated Darian Deviers,’ said Rensaint.

‘How?’ asked Culcis. ‘When?’

‘The East Army Group reinforcements,’ said Aramis. ‘With Enghart’s help, Grussman could have smuggled in a trooper easily enough. Especially one able to alter her appearance.’

Rensaint nodded, his expression pensive. He exchanged a glance with Eythor, who he had brought into the circle as an impartial witness, but the other commissar gave nothing away. Grey and still, he looked more of a corpse than the one on the slab.

‘How many?’

As he regarded the dead assassin, Regara’s face was a mask of barely contained anger. When Rensaint didn’t answer straight away, he looked up at the lord commissar from across the table, the shadows from the low lumens deep and severe as they gathered in the recesses of his features.

‘The dead,’ he said, ‘how many are there?’

‘Not including Darian Deviers, at least five that we know of. Barbastian, Shiller, the two Agrians and the mil-serve girl she was impersonating.’

They had found Shiller not long after the assassin had been taken to the infirmary. He was in his quarters, lying back in a chair, shaving cream smeared across his face, a towel over his chest and his throat opened up like a kitbag. The razor used to kill him had been left in his hand, Shiller’s dead eyes staring.

‘A mil-serve girl does not simply infiltrate the ranks,’ said Regara. ‘She must have had a secondary persona at least.’

‘That’s likely,’ Rensaint agreed. ‘And probably how she reached Darian Deviers. The chaos of the battle, the smoke and las-fire… once she was amongst us, she would only need to wait for her opportunity.’

‘Agrians? Are we making anything of that?’ asked Aramis.

‘An internal matter now handled,’ said Regara, ‘or so Culcis assures me. The golova has said the same, so as far as I’m concerned it’s settled.’

Culcis said nothing, and was happy to leave it at that.

Rensaint nodded, apparently satisfied too.

‘This has to remain with us and us alone,’ said the lord commissar. ‘To risk scandal now would be disastrous. We find ourselves once more on the knife-edge and a gentle tilt either way could prove decisive, for good or ill. Are we in agreement?’

Fenk, a silent partner until that moment, sketched a loose salute. ‘I have never much been interested in politics – no offence, commissar.’

‘None taken, lieutenant. And the rest of you?’

Nods and verbal assurances passed through the group.

Only Regara abstained, still deep in thought as he returned his attention to the corpse that had at least now ceased moving.

‘I cannot shake the feeling that there is something we are missing,’ he said. ‘Grussman was ruthless but I never thought he had the artistry for a plan this subtle.’

‘Perhaps he was not who you thought he was,’ offered Rensaint. ‘He fooled me. As did she.’ He gestured to the corpse. ‘A threat under my very nose and I missed it.’

Regara shook his head. ‘Grussman was many things, actually a decent soldier, but a poor general. He was no tactician. He would have needed help.’

‘Enghart?’ Aramis suggested.

‘A young bootlicking major, eager to earn his next promotion? Possibly… I just don’t see it, though.’

‘It may never come to light,’ said Rensaint, ‘but the immediate threat is ended.’

‘Is it?’ asked Regara.

‘Regardless, nothing further can be done here. Grussman is dead, his lies exposed.’ Rensaint straightened, his hands behind his back as if this were an end to the discussion. ‘Our unfinished business is with the Blood Pact now, and the wall.’

After a short pause, Regara nodded, but Culcis knew the major. This wasn’t over.

FIFTY

Night was a violet shadow slowly creeping across the sky. The last of the day’s light fell upon a sea of grey stretched out across the muster yard. Volpone soldiers stood in their thousands, regimental banners fluttering in a low breeze. Islands of forest green and grubby tan patched this throng, archipelagos of Fourth Ohrek and 19th Talpa, the remnants of their military strength in Agria. So few of the Slokans remained that the crimson of their battle garb was all but swallowed by the rest, and to the rear was the rugged drab of the Diggers arrayed for war. Tanks of the Tenth Pardus flanked the infantry, lining up in columns, their gun barrels raised in grim salute.

A war host, battered and weary, but resolute.

Only in death… or so went the saying.

Rensaint stood before them, one man facing a tide. His coat caught on the breeze revealing the inner lining, a slash of vibrant red against the black. The hawkish commissar was as potent a symbol of Imperial pre-eminence as the eagle carved into the front of the raised dais upon which he stood, proselytising to the masses.

A vox-caster amplified his voice, the sound of it resonating around the entire muster yard. He spoke of duty, of a hero slain, of the enemy they must overcome. Of victories… and defeats. Rensaint spoke with vigour, determination and the utmost certainty they would prevail, and as his words took hold, a change came over the troops. Hearts hardened, grief sharpened. Despair became vengeance. Fingers tightened around the stocks of rifles, jaws stiffened, backs straightened. Pride was weaponised, edged, forged into something that could be wielded. That could kill.

And the muster yard resounded as the priests gave voice to their sermons.

Praise the Emperor!

Volpone glory!

And as he looked upon the army, the fire he had stoked into being, Rensaint smiled and knew he had been right.

Through a cacophony of noise and fury, a mixed squad of Volpone and Agrians hurried across the rugged earth.

Greiss huffed at the front of the pack, setting the pace for the rest.

‘Move! Move!’

He turned to look over his shoulder, bellowing to the others. His white eyes flashed in a face daubed in night-black camo. The others wore it too, Rake and Dresk hefting one side of the bomb with Greiss; three Agrians built like tree trunks had the other.

Culcis followed behind them. He heard Hanmar’s heavy breathing in his ear, the corpsman lugging the charges they would need to prime the bomb. A voxman and tech-specialist, Kalder, ran at his side. He had a belt of tools strapped across his chest, their metal parts dulled with engine oil and soot. Everything dulled, everything a shadow. Survival depended on not being seen. Once they reached the wall, they would need to be fast.

The last member of the squad was Agrian. Makali grinned at Culcis as they slogged over the pockmarked earth, a crescent of white teeth. Old craters nipped like bear traps underfoot, some of the larger ones like gaping chasms and filled to the brim with dark water.

Rain slashed down in diagonal blades, pattering Makali’s skin and making it glisten. She’d said nothing about the blood-debt for Uzra and Culcis had left it at that. Chances are, he’d die trying to accomplish this idiocy anyway. As they ran headlong towards hell, he considered that grin may have been fatalistic.

An unceasing bombardment hammered the Karcas wall, a barrage of such blistering ferocity that it had the Archonate forces scurrying for their defensive guns. The shields collapsed in several places, overwhelmed and beyond resurrection. Entire swathes of the enemy were swept away, leaving their sections undefended. Explosions rippled where the shield remained, fire and smoke smearing the energy field like paint and blinding those beneath it.

Just like the small band of sappers needed it to.

The Pardus were throwing everything they had at the Pact, every shell and scrap of ordnance. The tanks would be drained in short order, left only with support weapons, their ammo caches denuded. It didn’t matter. They weren’t trying to breach the wall; they were trying to smother it.

A host of infantry moved under the cover of the bombardment, heads down as streaking parabolas of missiles arced overhead, leaving bright contrails in the dark then tearing the night open in ragged fire-red. Culcis saw them in snatches as his head turned one way then another, caught in flashes of hot light. They advanced beneath the mantlets, refractor fields rippling with energy distortion after every stray hit. Two hundred feet from the wall, they braced man-portable mortars and heavy cannons, their barrels cranked to maximum elevation. A staccato flurry of muzzle flash and light flare stuttered across the line then grew sustained. Thudding solid shot merged with shrieking las-discharge, a chorus to the heavier verse of destruction being played out across the Karcas border.

‘Fifty feet!’

Culcis turned back towards the objective at Greiss’ shout. They had to thread a narrow cordon through the destruction and the sergeant sped up, eager to reach their goal. Rake or Dresk – they looked so alike in the dark and camouflage it was hard to tell which from which – slipped. He lost his grip and the bomb fell. It had been painted black, and weighed almost as much as the anvil it resembled.

Rake cursed – it was definitely Rake, he could swear like no man Culcis had ever known – clutching his wrist where he had sprained it.

‘Can’t linger here, Volpone.’

Culcis gave Makali a look but she wasn’t grinning now.

‘Throne, I’m sorry… Rake, your hand.’ Greiss was all concerned officer but when he tried to come over Culcis ordered him back to his post.

‘Stay on the bomb, sergeant. Be ready to move… Hanmar?’

The corpsman had Rake’s wrist in his hand. There was no time to bind it but he had to check the bone wasn’t broken.

‘I can carry on,’ Rake protested. Nearby the Agrians were getting restless. Makali silenced them with a glance.

Hanmar shook his head.

Culcis shrugged off his pack and gave it to Rake. ‘Take it. Don’t lose it.’ Then he took up the trooper’s position at the side of the bomb.

‘Lieutenant, is that wise?’

‘Hanmar, it most assuredly isn’t but we need to move now.’ Culcis looked to Greiss as the six men lifted the bomb. ‘Get us underway, sergeant.’

They got another twenty feet before a sentry saw them. An unlucky explosion, a premature detonation ahead of the wall, lit them up like a Founding Day parade. The Pacter was too far away to hear but he gestured down at them vigorously, alerting his comrades. Makali shot him through the throat with her rifle.

‘More will come now, Volpone. Best be off with that bomb, eh?’

It weighed like three dead men or an anchor dredging the ocean floor but they pushed on. Another five feet gained before gunfire snapped down at them. One of the Agrians took a hit, grunting in pain, but kept going, his shoulder a bloody mess. A second shot caromed off the bomb, scraping the housing, revealing a long silvery scar across the metal.

‘Shit…’ hissed Culcis, sweating, muscles already aching, the wound to his leg like a splinter of fire in his groin.

The flare of the explosion had faded but the Pact could see them now, that streak of silver like a target lock.

Five more feet gained. Kalder got hit. One in the chest, a hot beam coring him through and through. He staggered, instantly falling behind, then his legs folded under him.

Hanmar glanced back. ‘Was that our bloody technician?’

Rake swore again, even more colourfully than the last time.

Culcis snarled through clenched teeth. ‘Keep going!’

The unencumbered runners took potshots at the wall, trying to keep the interested sentries behind its parapet. Only Makali was effective, her rifle like the Hand of Death itself striking down her enemies with eerie precision. She would run ahead, stop, take a braced kneeling position, fire and then move off again. Culcis saw her kill five Pacters that way.

She reached the wall first, shots pinging all around her but lessening as the angle favoured the Imperials.

Greiss looked about ready to collapse when he laid down the bomb. The wounded Agrian did collapse and failed to rise. He’d been shot in the chest too and, pale as milk, breathed his last.

Makali muttered something in her native tongue, it could have been a prayer or a curse for all Culcis knew. His leg burned like a red-hot ember but he crushed the pain down and took the bag of charges from Hanmar. Sheltered in the lee of the wall, they would have a few minutes at least before word got down the line and the Pacters with an enfilading angle started up.

‘We may have a problem, sir.’ Dresk, ashen-faced and panting, regarded the bomb.

Culcis saw it too. A stray shot, maybe something as stupid as a ricochet. The wiring that hooked up the incendiary part of the bomb to the seismic charges was damaged.

He looked back to the way they had come and poor Kalder lying face down in the dirt less than twenty-five feet away.

Makali stepped up, taking the charges from a dumbfounded Culcis.

‘We need to reconnect it.’ Her face darkened. ‘Chrono is skeffed too.’ She set to work, her only tool a knife. ‘It’ll need to be triggered manually now.’

‘Then I’ll do it.’ Culcis reached for the bag but Makali pulled it away. He gave her a hard look. ‘I’m the commanding officer.’

She stopped briefly to glare back at him. ‘Do you know how to wire and prime a seismic charge and then set it off, Volpone?’

Rake’s latest invective spoke for everyone.

The Pardus barrage was fading, Culcis heard it in the marginally longer breaks between salvos. They needed the wall down now. He clutched Makali by the shoulder.

‘Don’t you weep for me, Volpone…’ She flashed him that sickle smile.

‘The Emperor protects, golova.’

‘I fegging well hope He’s watching is all I’m saying. Now get gone.’

A second passed and in it Culcis saw true heroism, unadulterated by pride or glory or honour. None save the small knot of soldiers gathered below the wall would see her sacrifice, no one else would really know.

He nodded, and her eyes conveyed a reply she didn’t need to utter.

Then Culcis led them away, his command squad and the last of the Agrians. They fell back through the dark, striving to get clear, and mercifully the night swallowed them.

After almost a minute, Culcis found a shallow crater and hurled himself into it. Greiss, Hanmar and the others followed. They all needed to see this.

Makali was running with her head down, a hundred feet or so away. She had abandoned her rifle and flung herself forwards as the bomb went off.

A few seconds felt far longer, the moment stretching like grease down a pane of glass. A spit of flame climbed the wall, contained and focused by the simultaneous seismic detonation, expanding into a blazing column as it reached its apex. Then the fissure split, widened, dislodging huge spills of rockcrete and chunks of metal. The column collapsed, as if surrendering to its own weight, and as it touched the earth a blast wave rolled outwards like a tsunami.

Culcis dug his body into the crater. ‘Down!’

Heat and smoke blew out and over. Ash and dust muddied the air, made it thick and murky. Coughing back the clouds of debris, Culcis ducked his head above the lip of the crater.

A crevice wider than six Pardus tanks gaped in the wall.

Culcis hunted the dark and the thinning smoke.

There…

She was moving. Slowly, painfully. Makali limped to her feet. Burns ravaged her arms, her back. Then the ground trembled, stone split. A crack sounded, loud, deep as the earth’s roots, as a damaged piece of the wall slid from its moorings, slow and inevitable like a calving iceberg. A shadow fell across Makali as Culcis cried out for her to run, but she had stopped limping by then and merely stood, chin upraised. Defiant. That sickle smile gleaming right unto the end.

War-horns drowned out a bellow of inchoate grief, the tide of broken rubble unmoved by his anger.

For a moment, though it could have been several, Culcis felt numb, and then the Volpone were running past them, surging towards the breach.

Aramis shot a Pacter lurking in the squall of dust around the shattered wall. Her bright sword gleamed as she raised it.

‘Volpone glory!’

Then she was amongst them and so were her troops, the spearhead to take the breach and hold it. Gannika fought at her side, the commissar a blur of savagery, her chainsword roaring. They cut the heart out of the defenders, tore right through into the courtyard and mounted the wall. Fifty men took one half of the sundered section, another fifty the other, the steps still intact for the most part. Hundreds more followed.

Flamers came up behind the major and she ordered an immediate purge.

‘Cleanse and burn!’

With the breach secure, the Pardus moved up on churning tracks. They had spent their main guns during the bombardment but put secondary weapons to use. Flame tanks followed, the Hellhounds unleashed and eager. Smoke from promethium fire billowed up into the night and the air was ringed with fog and heat.

Elsewhere, the battlements were scaled and taken as section after section capitulated and fell, the breach like a slow but fatal wound haemorrhaging the Pact’s gradually waning resistance.

It could not hold. It would not be retaken.

Retreat was inevitable. The diehards remained, mostly Jaegans, but were quickly overcome.

Skirmishes broke out as order collapsed and the Pact splintered, each tribal warband fighting for its own survival. Aramis watched them play out from her vantage point atop the battlements, the Archonate ranks slowly withdrawing like a recoiling sea. She breathed hard, every exhale an unburdening. Sporadic weapons fire popped and cracked below. Shouts threaded the air, a distant and half-heard refrain, but she sheathed her sword, relieved to be free of its weight in her hand.

‘These are its death throes…’ she said to Fenk. His platoon had helped her take the wall. He said nothing, merely appreciating the view. He didn’t need to.

Agria was theirs, and the war was over.

It would take a little time to round up and destroy all the Pacters but the Volpone and their allies went about the task with methodical brutality. Several of the Agrians were already celebrating, a liberation long promised now delivered, though the cost of it almost beyond count.

The sun had started rising as Aramis strode onto the command section of the wall. A corporal handed her the regimental banner. The gilded gryfon rampant kicked and stamped as it rippled on the breeze.

And beyond the battlefield, in the middle distance, she saw Rakespur already burning.

FIFTY-ONE

The old sea fort gaped open like a rotten wound. Fire had ravaged it and scorched timbers jutted from the piles of rubble like shafts of bone. A heavy fog lay across Karcas, shrouding parts of the battlefield, lingering, grey and funereal.

First Sons and a few squads of Volpone veterans hunted through the ruins for the last of the Archonate forces. They found a few scattered cultists and chirurgeons, the wretched leavings of whatever plan had been in the making here in Rakespur. Of Scylla, they found few signs. Much of the fortress had been gutted, the fire apparently hot enough to melt iron and crack stone. Pieces endured, strange machineries entangled with bits of skeletal remains that fell to powder the moment they were touched. A burn mark scarred the half-collapsed ceiling in one room, the shape of it reminiscent of a great eye, but soldiers knew that shadows played tricks and it was quickly dismissed. Whatever secrets Rakespur had once harboured, they were now ash.

Barring one place.

‘What do you think happened here?’ Rensaint paced the outside of the stone circle, his gaze lingering briefly on the sigils daubed on its outer edge.

‘Nothing good,’ remarked Regara, casting about for signs, for anything that might suggest what the Archonate had been doing.

Both men had accompanied the initial purges, a handful of Volpone staying behind as the others moved on to act as bodyguards that neither needed. Vellans, Bruchard and a young Blueblood Regara didn’t recognise. The troopers kept sentry out in the corridor, whilst the officers conducted their investigation.

Several bodies lay strewn about the chamber. From a cursory examination, Regara found their throats had been slit.

‘Ritual sacrifice…’

The middle of the stone circle had been scorched black but very specifically. He swore it resembled the silhouette of a large bulky figure, like a shadow absent of whatever should be casting it.

Rensaint toed a piece of iridescent glass broken on the floor. Small shards of it littered the extremities of the room outside the circle. ‘We should bring in flamers, and then have the priests sanctify it.’

Regara nodded. ‘Or bury it.’

Beyond the crumbling walls of the citadel, the dregs of battle wore on. Snaps of belligerent weapons fire quickly silenced. The dull plosive impact of a grenade detonation, muffled through stone.

Rensaint struck up his pipe, his back to Regara. ‘It’s over at last,’ he said, releasing a long plume of smoke. ‘Thank the Throne for that.’

‘Almost…’

Rensaint stiffened, just for a moment, but Regara saw it well enough as he trained a pistol on the lord commissar’s back.

‘You sound almost mournful, Vasquez.’ He didn’t turn around, which should have told Regara something.

‘Not for the end of the war.’

‘Ah, I think I see.’

‘I believed you to be a different kind of man, Owyn. I also thought you a friend.’

‘I am… I was.’

Regara fed charge to the laspistol’s powercell, priming it.

‘You know,’ said Rensaint, his tone collegiate, ‘I brought us here to kill you, Vasquez.’

‘I’m not planning on killing you.’

‘You said the same about Mattias Grussman and look how that turned out.’

‘That fine volkite serpenta you carry… throw it away.’

Without hesitation, Rensaint unclasped his weapons belt and tossed it and the holstered serpenta a few feet across the room. Then he raised his hands, his thin-necked pipe held in the left. ‘Might I at least face my accuser?’

‘Turn… slowly.’

Rensaint turned, his expression calm.

‘You don’t look surprised.’

‘You are everything I expected you to be, Vasquez. That’s why I have to kill you. Though I take no pleasure in it.’

Regara gave a slight nod to the pistol in his hand. ‘Not to state the obvious…’

Two shots echoed in the corridor, las-blasts. Regara whirled around too late to see the young-looking Blueblood with a hellpistol pointed at him. His eyes were cold, unfeeling. A killer’s eyes but not a soldier’s.

Regara let out a resigned breath. ‘Didn’t see that coming.’

‘I always have a contingency,’ said Rensaint as he retrieved his weapons belt and cinched it back around his waist. He glanced at his pet assassin, his expression darkening. ‘Bring him.’

Regara tossed his own gun, and it clattered like a death knell against the stone circle.

The sounds of the skirmishing fighters outside rose for a moment, lifting Regara’s hopes of a reprieve but the noise faded again, leaving them dashed.

Rensaint led them from the chamber, through the rubble and outside into the pale morning light. His hound followed after Regara, ensuring the major did as he was told. The air was thick with fyceline and spent promethium. Between that and the wretched fog, visibility was poor. So despite the last-gasp battles, no one would see them on the south-facing side of the fortress and intervene.

The land had been flattened here, churned by war and industry. A town had encircled Rakespur once. It was just dark earth now, threaded with the bones of a dead civilisation. In the distance, nearer the coast, muffled cruciform shapes seemed to hover against a tepid sky. Bodies still clung to them by their rag-clad skeletons.

Rensaint gestured to the hard earth. ‘On your knees…’

‘An execution is it?’ Regara sank down as ordered, wincing at the old pain in his phantom limb. ‘For what crime am I being accused and judged? Cowardice? Betrayal?’

‘Tell me, major, what gave me away? I mean, I knew you would be a problem back in the infirmary with Leto…’

Regara arched an eyebrow.

Rensaint caught his look. ‘As in Leto and Zeus. Both sobriquets, but I have always liked the ancient stories.’

‘Filip’s letter,’ answered Regara, aware of the presence of Zeus’ hellpistol as it aligned with the back of his head, ‘I didn’t understand it at first. I wasn’t thinking clearly then. I did later. Musk and cinnamon, it was the cologne he was wearing when your assassin murdered him in cold blood.’

The words resounded in his memory… And let it be a matter of record that I always did love your wonderful music.

A record, a literal record, of a man’s confession and testimony. Filip had committed it to a phonogram cylinder and left it for Regara to find, the air still redolent of his scent, trapped by the privacy field. A visitation, one Regara had missed whilst he failed to drown his sorrows.

He nodded, rueful. ‘I knew it, I knew. Grussman could not have conceived of this plan on his own. A fourth hand, an architect. I suppose Enghart was a means to an end, a willing conspirator.’

‘He had his use. I needed his sanction on the kill order. His death during Godsword’s destruction made removing him unnecessary.’

‘And you planned on removing them all, didn’t you? That’s why you let me kill Grussman. He knew you were betraying him but I didn’t see it then, not through the grief. Your second assassin as insurance in case events played out differently?’

‘You are an intelligent man, Vasquez. Believe it or not, I have a great deal of respect for you but whatever it is, whatever proof you think you hold of my involvement, I will find it. I will shape the narrative as I must.’

‘As you shaped Darian Deviers?’

‘Another means to an end. For all his many, many faults, Grussman had the right of it. A boy could not lead the army to victory at Karcas. Oh, I don’t care about your traditions, the Volpone’s antiquated notions of society, the grotesquery of your aristocratical privilege. Lowborn or noble-blooded, it made no difference. As a leader, a talisman, Darian was useful. He gave us hope when we teetered on the brink, but as a martyr… that kind of fire burns quickly but intensely. That brought us Agria.’

‘And for that you would sanction murder.’

‘I would sanction a hundred murders if that is what it took. Victory for the Imperium has always been my goal. As a commissar, I have to make hard choices. Some are unpleasant but every one of them is necessary.’

‘I’m sure you believe that.’

Rensaint sighed, a sign that this, whatever it was – an unburdening of the soul, an apology – was nearing its end.

‘It is a great shame,’ he said. ‘Were it you at the helm from the beginning and not Grussman… Alas, privilege and succession of command do not always provide the most fitting incumbent. In fact, it is usually the contrary. And I am sorry about Barbastian. If it’s any consolation, he regretted what he did the moment after he did it. I think he wanted to serve. A career of never questioning, always obeying… it was ingrained. Duty. A pity he changed his mind.’

‘You would have killed him anyway.’

‘Yes, I would.’

‘None of this matters,’ said Regara. ‘It doesn’t change anything. Though I have reconsidered my position.’

‘Is that so?’

‘Yes, I have decided to kill you after all.’

Rensaint gave a sad smile. ‘I think you should lower your head now, major.’

As Regara obeyed, he discerned a hazy figure in the distance, muddied through the fog. It staggered fitfully, as if wounded. Rensaint had his back to it as it approached. A man, barefoot and in ragged Militarum fatigues. As he closed, he scratched at his forehead, head bowed and in pain.

‘Someone’s coming…’ Zeus’ gravelly voice was utterly at odds with his youthful appearance.

Rensaint glanced over his shoulder, drawing the serpenta and aiming it at Regara. ‘See to it.’

The assassin nodded, holstering his pistol as he made for the figure.

Too late, Rensaint turned back. ‘Wait!’

Zeus walked ten feet before he stopped moving. His body shuddered, trembling apart even as he reached for his gun. He barely got it out of the holster when his legs collapsed and he fell, screaming. Then he lay still, the sockets of his eyes burnt out, exuding thin trails of smoke.

Averting his gaze, Rensaint blind-fired and the rasp-whine of the serpenta struck out into the dust squalls. Head down, Regara heard the man fall, the grunt of a last breath. Not knowing if the pistol was trained on him again, he lunged, his bionic leg like a sprung catch as he barrelled into the commissar.

A sudden flare of intense pain in his shoulder told him Rensaint had managed to get off a shot. He tackled him around the midriff, both men sent flying.

Regara landed hard, the wound in his shoulder like a hot iron but it made him sharp, got him to his feet first. The hellpistol lay nearby and sweeping it up, he fired. The shot hit Rensaint in the chest but his armour took the brunt of it. He’d dropped the serpenta, so drew his sword. It shimmered like white gold as he advanced on Regara, a second las-bolt deflected by its blade. A flash of light on metal and a ragged line burned Regara’s hand, forcing him to drop the pistol.

He scrambled back, preparing for the sword thrust that would end his life.

It didn’t come.

Rensaint stopped, injured beneath his armour and breathing hard. He gestured to the dead assassin.

‘An even contest, I believe you said,’ he gasped, still a little out of breath but recovering.

Regara pulled the trooper’s sword from its sheath, a rapier. Finely made, too fine for a common ranker. But the assassin had been anything but common.

Blood streamed down his shoulder and he moved it stiffly, the flensed layers of skin raw and hot.

‘Not your sword arm, I hope,’ said Rensaint.

‘I am proficient with both.’

‘Good, though I plan to humble you, Vasquez.’

Regara gave him a withering look. ‘And here I thought we were friends.’

‘I changed my mind. Lot of that going around.’

‘That can’t be it.’

‘Your privilege, you Volpone…’ His lip curled and for the first time, Regara believed he was seeing the real Owyn Rensaint. ‘I am an orphan of the Imperium, born out of privation and grief. My parents died with nothing, and I would have too were it not for the Prefectus. I have never met a more loathsome race as yours, though know I consider you an outlier.’

‘Very gracious of you,’ said Regara as he slid into stance.

‘It is, but enough talk.’

Rensaint raised his blade into a window guard, the pommel up to the level of his ear, sword pointed outwards. Regara adopted a short guard, the hilt of the rapier at his hip, the sword point angled up and towards the commissar.

‘Shall we begin?’

The pain in his shoulder had lessened to a dull throb but Regara nodded.

Rensaint advanced, a rapid two-step-and-thrust forcing Regara to slip back. He pressed, a slash that cut open the major’s uniform, then slashed again, this time cutting only air as Regara found his opponent’s measure. He had to fade, leaping back from a flurry of beautifully timed attacks – thrust, slash, thrust. Rensaint’s sword was like reflected light, slipping quickly from one angle to another, his form almost perfect, his stance impeccable.

A switch to a front guard saw Regara deflect the commissar’s next attack, allowing him to craft one of his own, a thrust that was swiftly parried. He shed the next blow, passing back to let Rensaint’s sword point impale air and then passed forward, his back foot moving to the front position as he cuffed his opponent’s shoulder with the hilt.

The two men came in close, each clutching the sword hand of the other, grappling intensely. For all his poise, Rensaint was fighting hard and Regara saw in the man’s eyes that he had expected this to be over by now. That gave Regara hope.

They broke apart, but not before a push cut opened Regara’s cheek. He retaliated, a draw cut across the commissar’s midriff, finding flesh.

Both men retreated, bleeding and tired.

‘Catching a breath?’ Regara ventured, gasping.

‘You’re much better than you let on against Grussman.’

‘I was fighting an overconfident savage. A man is forced to adapt. It is seldom pretty.’

‘I helped train that savage.’

‘Then you did a poor job.’

They engaged again, thrusts and parries landing and turning in a chorus of clashing steel. So fast, almost blinding, dirt churning as each sought advantage over the other, passing back and forwards, slipping back, pressing the attack, their rhythm and measure never less than exemplary.

Regara feigned a slip, Rensaint seizing on the opportunity before he realised the trap. His lunge deflected into the major’s side, the blade thrust fierce enough to pierce right through and out of his back. He gasped, coughing flecks of blood into the air, but his own blade had impaled Rensaint through the upper chest. It went deep, the armour split open. The commissar gave a ragged exhalation, his face pained.

‘Damn fine… swordsmanship,’ he rasped. ‘Not… an even contest… at all.’

He faltered backwards, unsteady, his weight pulling his sword from Regara’s body, the major giving a strangled cry as the blade slid free. The rapier left Rensaint’s flesh at the same time, both men freed of the metal briefly conjoining them.

A clatter announced that Rensaint had dropped his sword. He clutched a hand over the chest wound that was now pouring blood, spilling through his gloved fingers in a torrent.

Regara fell down onto his backside, legs splayed, and hunched over. Throne, his side hurt, and his shoulder. He almost passed out, the feeling slowly bleeding out of his limbs as he watched Rensaint lurch and stagger across the ground. He kept going, falling and picking himself up, slowly fading into the fog, as incorporeal as a ghost.

The hellpistol lay nearby and Regara reached for it, the agony so sharp he nearly passed out again. Fingers wrapping determinedly around the grip, he raised it up but Rensaint had already disappeared. He took a few hiking breaths, the warm patch at his injured side turning colder by the second. Just before he passed out, he saw a figure moving through the fog towards him. He tried to raise the pistol but his arms refused to rise. Blackness crowded his vision, until everything turned black.

And then he heard the voice of Armand Culcis.

Rensaint knew he was losing too much blood. It dripped through his fingers like wine as he blundered through the fog. He need only find a First Son or even one of the Volpone and fashion whatever narrative would serve. The air was thick and grey. It weighed heavy, and he doubted anyone would find Regara in time. It didn’t matter. The major was mad with grief. Raving. Something happened to him in the ruins of the fortress… a part of the Scylla experiments left behind. It afflicted him somehow. Warp corruption. He had killed three troopers, too. They had died from las-wounds, after all.

It would cast doubt, it would be enough. That’s if Regara even lived.

These thoughts tumbled through Rensaint’s mind, slowly finding shape and definition as a Guardsman appeared out of the fog ahead. He materialised so suddenly, so silently, at first Rensaint thought it was a revenant or some half-dreamt thing, brought on by an egregious loss of blood. But it was real enough. Salvation, after all.

‘I need a medic,’ he began, ‘and Colonel Staddish on the vox at once.’

‘I wish that I could, lord commissar,’ answered the Guardsman, a knife slipping into his hand, ‘but that’s not how this works.’

FIFTY-TWO

Regara moved stiffly as he climbed the ridge, a thick wad of bandages wrapped around his torso. Between that and his tightly buttoned uniform, he felt like a madman in a straitjacket. Perhaps he was. Delirious, they had said, when Culcis and the others found him. Half dead but clinging on. Survived again, with another scar to add to the rest. It itched, his side, as he watched the gunships descend from his high vantage point.

They were leaving Karcas and Agria as soon as they reached Lanchetek, the island back in the hands of the natives, though three regiments of Vitrians had been sent in as caretakers and to aid in the transition back to Imperial rule. Of Scylla, much remained unknown. An unmarked ship had arrived alongside the Valkyries, black and sleek like an ebon knife. It was Ordo, that much Regara could discern. The men and women it carried debarked without challenge or comment, headed immediately for Rakespur and the ritual site. Eythor had apparently met them with a handful of First Sons as his retinue.

Regara smiled at the thought, the taciturn commissar pitted against the clandestine inquisitors. He wondered who broke first – or perhaps they simply stared at each other, mutually agreeing by their silence that they should proceed.

Of the missing lord commissar, no sign could be found. Several searches had been conducted over the last eighteen days, most of the troops taking advantage of the long layover before Fleet Euphrates had made high anchor above Gnostes. Rensaint was therefore either dead or he had been picked up by some other Militarum detachment on the island. The latter seemed unlikely. Staddish had not reported any contact with the lord commissar and with the wound Regara had given him it was unlikely Rensaint could have got very far. Still, his disappearance posed questions without any comfortable answers. Beyond his near-death ravings, Regara had said nothing of the lord commissar’s duplicity. It would only tarnish everyone his mendacity had come into contact with.

Grussman’s reputation, albeit posthumous, was in tatters. It would land poorly for his house and bloodline. A letter of validation sent to Lord Militant Eirik’s staff from Horator Deviers had ensured a smooth transition and exculpated Regara, his earlier missive to the former general proving useful after all. The duel was part of Volpone culture, one seldom enacted. He had killed an officer who had been derelict in his responsibilities. The rest, his stillborn coup, had been swept under the carpet.

As for Rensaint, his dealings would remain a secret and Regara would have to content himself with hoping that the man had met a just fate one way or another.

The Ohrek did find one body in the fog. A cavalryman, one of the old Pardus hussars by the name of Hauptmann. Strange injuries had been reported by the scouts, of the poor man’s eyes burned down in their sockets and a third wound to the forehead that bore an ocular shape, amongst a slew of general injuries associated with capture and abuse.

Regara had no doubt that this man had saved his life. Judging by the scorched disrepair of his uniform and the blackened state of his fingers and extremities, it was also believed that he started the blaze that had gutted Rakespur and turned it into a ruin. His story might never be known but Regara was determined to seek out any of the man’s dependents and ensure a generous stipend came their way in recognition of Hauptmann’s bravery and service.

The wind suddenly picked up, sending knives of ice across the ridge, and Regara shivered, drawing his cloak tighter despite his many layers. Alone but for the wind, he murmured a prayer to the Emperor to vouchsafe the sundered souls of his friends and comrades. Filip he saved for last. Regara’s mourning for him went deep, a canyon of grief he might never truly climb out of, but he had brought his killer to account and that was something. As an ending, it felt unresolved but it was as much closure as Regara had any right to expect.

He took a knee, placing the instrument case he had brought with him on the ground, mindful of the flecks of snow lightly settling on the outer leather. Nestled in the velvet interior, a gadulka. It felt like a foreign object at first, the touch of it a sad reminder. But as his fingers traced its slender neck and he began to draw the bow gently across the taut strings, he played a soft lament for the dead, and in it found a little peace.

The Pardus were shipping out.

Culcis watched from a raised supply platform at the edge of the landing field as the veritable morass of vehicles in mustard and grey-black camo milled around amidst snow flurries, trying to get into formation. Bellowing from a Conqueror’s turret and marshalling what was left of his tankers, Bragga quickly put matters in order. The larger transports currently alighting on the makeshift landing apron would ferry the tanks to Lanchetek, where the drop landers would bear them up to the waiting fleet. An urn with Colonel Ganza’s ashes would accompany them in a sealed stasis casket.

Not all the dead were treated with such reverence. For the many, they would journey in a ship’s hold, trapped in cold storage until they could be interred in the earth of a sepulchre world or else be incinerated and their cremains cast to the void or the air, whichever was their custom. The Agrians kept their own, of course, buried them in native soil. Not all rejoiced at the victory – those who had shared Uzra’s belief of an uncaring Imperium, swift to move on once the day was won and heedless of the damage in its wake. These detractors were few, the alliance between Volpone and Agrian, evinced towards the end of the war, going some way to soothe relations.

As he brushed clumps of snow from his cloak, Culcis supposed it was the Vitrians’ problem to wrangle now. They would not be entirely without aid, however, for Captain Ombi had opted to stay behind. So few remained of the Ohrek that the Rangers would be better deployed as Militarum liaisons and experts in the terrain for the incoming Dragoons than being absorbed into a scratch regiment with its specialisms de-emphasised.

As for the Talpa, they would continue on to the fleet, those that were left. Clutches of grubby ochre moved through the masses below here and there, scavenging, hustling and otherwise making a nuisance of themselves.

Culcis smiled. For all their roughness he confessed a grudging respect for the fearless Tunnel-Rats, noisome as they were. Before the war, he had thought little of the auxiliaries. He recognised the role they had to play but he had never really seen them, and he had certainly never considered any of them friends. Velas Hauptmann of Pardua and Hunna Ghanu of Ohrek had been his friends. He thought of that and what it meant as he watched the war depart, not with fanfare but a slow disassembling of the camp.

You look sad, Volpone… Are you sad for me?

He thought of that sickle smile of hers too.

‘Ah, I see you’re here to torment me still,’ said Culcis still brushing, his eyes on the landing field as a Valkyrie touched down amidst squalls of churning snow.

If not me, then who else?

Culcis paused to look down at his hands, still scuffed and scarred from where he had dug through the earth and brick.

‘Indeed…’ he uttered sadly.

A skirling breeze whipped over the platform, worming through the crates and boxes, stealing away the echoes of her voice and letting in another.

‘I could have a mil-serve do that for you, lieutenant.’

Culcis paused in his labours, smiling. He carried on brushing the cloak, the garment stretched over a storage crate.

‘Labour is good for the soul, or so someone once told me.’

‘Ah,’ said Aramis, ‘but what of the heart…’

He turned to her, gladdened but weary. ‘Major…’

‘You can still call me Ione…’ She gave him a wry look. ‘At least for a little while longer.’ She glanced around at the desolate and near-empty storage depot. ‘What are you doing here all on your lonesome? I thought you liked company, lieutenant.’

Culcis glanced around, as if only just aware of the fact he was alone. ‘Armand…’ he said with a slight cocking of the head, ‘if we’re being informal, that is. Ione.’

She smiled warmly. ‘You look sad.’

‘Perhaps I am. Would that be so strange?’

‘No, I think I like that look on you.’

Culcis frowned but was playful. ‘You like me to be sad?’

‘Not that as such,’ she replied, walking up alongside him as they both turned to regard the slow departure of the army, ‘but I like the vulnerability and the truth that comes with it, I suppose. I find it appealing.’

‘I wish I knew where this was leading,’ he confessed.

‘Isn’t that what keeps it interesting? Not knowing.’

‘It certainly makes it hazardous.’

She laughed, deep and heartily.

‘I’ll see you on the muster yard,’ Aramis said, descending the steps from the platform and heading towards camp. ‘Lieutenant.’

‘Yes, sir.’

He watched her go, marching towards the troops, an order more than likely already on her lips. She had the commanding gait and temperament of an officer, but was certainly not averse to keeping secrets.

They all had to, those that Regara had taken into his confidence. Some had more than others, mused Culcis as his gaze found Bertram Fenk amongst the throng. He followed him for a while with his eyes, but soon lost him amongst the crowds.

Fenk found a deserted billet in which to finish packing. He had his kitbag slung over his shoulder and had arranged to meet one of his sergeants at the north end of the landing apron, together with the rest of the platoon.

For now though, this was just for him.

Taking a moment to listen, making sure he would not be interrupted, Fenk set down the bag and took from it a box made of Volpone red-oak. He caressed its edges tenderly, working his fingers to the clasp that he unlocked via a hidden switch. Then slowly, reverently, Fenk raised the lid.

Oxblood baize lined an interior segregated into several smaller compartments. A second and third layer, similarly decorous, sat beneath the first. Not every compartment had been filled, but the ones that had contained… Trinkets, was how he liked to think of them. Here, a button, there a quill nib, a pin in the shape of a leaf. To the casual eye, they were the kinds of keepsakes soldiers occasionally took from the warzones they fought in, the contraband but largely tolerated spoils that described a tour of duty.

Several items stood out, however, mementos of Agria. A metal ingot taken from a hetman-officer, a gold chain that had once conjoined with a captain’s antique timepiece. He had left a space for this last one though, a thin-necked ivory pipe that he set down carefully on the oxblood baize, and as he closed the lid Fenk felt a sense of vindication. And smiled his adder’s smile.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Nick Kyme is the author of the Horus Heresy novels Old Earth, Deathfire, Vulkan Lives and Sons of the Forge, the novellas Promethean Sun and Scorched Earth, and the audio dramas Red-Marked, Censure and Nightfane. His novella Feat of Iron was a New York Times bestseller in the Horus Heresy collection, The Primarchs. Nick is well known for his popular Salamanders novels, as well as the Cato Sicarius novels Damnos and Knights of Macragge. His work for Age of Sigmar includes the short story ‘Borne by the Storm’, included in the novel War Storm, and the audio drama The Imprecations of Daemons. He has also written the Warhammer Horror novel Sepulturum. He lives and works in Nottingham

An extract from ‘Whose Voice Is Heard No More’ by Graham McNeill,
from the Warhammer 40,000 anthology Sabbat War.

Hunting below the waterline of a voidship was the worst.

As an environment, it entirely favoured the hunted, possessing innumerable places to hide, and countless bottlenecks to funnel a hunter into an ambush. Add in multiple levels as well as the potential for traps laid by a cunning escapee, and you had an incredibly complicated, fluid environment that required a heightened form of spatial awareness.

Not that many of the broken souls who managed to break free were in any physical state to fight back, but it paid to be prepared.

Renn Duraki was Urdeshi born and raised, Militarum trained and equipped. He knew how to fight in steel mazes like this. He’d learned his craft as a Whiteshield in the bombed-out ruins of Orppus and Zarakppan; had honed those skills defending the multilayered structures of Eltath’s dynastic tech-claves, and storming oceanic promethium platforms.

A starship was never a place of quiet, but the Vociferator was louder than most. Its deck plates vibrated with the heartbeat of its engines, its bulkheads swelled and shrank under the awesome forces beyond the hull, and grunting, howling sermons wailed from the augmitters strung the length and breadth of the ship.

But below the waterline was something else entirely, where the heaving, mechanical guts of the vessel turned over with a thunder like the interior of a forge-fane turning out beaten metal for the war effort. Duraki’s ears would be ringing for days after this hunt.

Even over the grinding machine noise, he could still hear the sermons, as if they were conducted and amplified through the metal and grease of the lower decks. Not even the ship-borne vermin that lived in the bilges were spared its jagged cadences.

The noise made it impossible to track the prey by sound, but neither Duraki or Knox needed to hear their quarry. They’d hunted escapees in this part of the ship so many times they could navigate it blindfolded. They knew its every nook and cranny, the blind alleys, and each location where it might be possible to hide.

Duraki paused by an oil-slick stanchion, taking a moment to breathe.

He was exhausted, and had hoped to snatch a couple of hours of rest before Vraed sent him and Knox off to sort out his own damn fool mistake.

He clenched his fists and loosed a shuddering breath to let out his anger.

Not all of it. He lived on anger the way some soldiers lived on recaff or stimms.

It sustained Duraki, gave him a reason to keep fighting; a reason to hold on to himself.

His anger reminded him of who he was, or at least who he hoped he still was.

It was hot down here and the air stank of oil that had gone around the ship’s veins more times than any enginseer would certify as healthy. Yellow steam hung in sulphurous veils, and cloudy liquid trickled from the metal-grilled platforms above.

Knox drew level with Duraki and unclipped the leather mask from his helmet before bending his head back to let the moisture drip into his mouth. Droplets splashed his branded and tattooed skull, running down his cheeks like milky tears.

‘Don’t drink that shit, grox-brain,’ said Duraki. ‘Give you cancer.’

Knox spat. ‘I look like I care?’

‘I’ll remember that when your mouth’s lousy with lesions.’

Knox shrugged at Duraki’s prognosis and said, ‘So why the pause? You got something?’

Knox was a scowling veteran of Erinyes Secundus, and had fought in the final battles between Mater Heggerol and Lord Militant Caul. He’d lost an arm on the Last Day, and his augmetic replacement was a brutish clawed hand of hissing pipes and sinewy coils. Plated with carved bronze, it was hung with a skull he swore belonged to the man who’d tried to kill him that day.

Duraki didn’t believe that, but would never say so.

Knox had already killed two men who’d dared question the truth of his trophy.

‘Renn?’ said Knox when he didn’t answer. ‘Do. You. Have. Something?’

Duraki took another breath and shook his head. ‘No, but I know where he’ll be.’

‘Sub-deck Theta, behind the power relays?’

‘Yeah, they always run there. I suppose they figure it’ll foul an auspex.’

‘This one’s tough, Vraed says. Says he wants this one back alive.’

Duraki swore. ‘I swear he deliberately allows some of them to break free just to let them think that maybe, just maybe they’ve got a chance of escaping.’

‘Sounds like something Vraed would do,’ agreed Knox. ‘Says he maybe got a pistol too.’

‘Typical,’ sighed Duraki. ‘Letting a prisoner get hold of a weapon is just the sort of petty, cruel shit I’d expect from one of the Repudiators.’

‘Doesn’t matter,’ said Knox. ‘Better for him now if he puts it in his mouth and blows the back of his head off.’

Duraki nodded in agreement; it had been Vraed who had taken his repudiation, and the Tongueless Man never let him forget it.

Since he didn’t fancy drinking the toxic condensate, he took a moment to unclip his Urdeshi-stamped canteen from his belt and take a drink. Common to water drawn from shipboard reservoirs, it was brackish with a metallic tang. He tasted particulate matter, but it was best not to think what that might be.

‘Vraed’ll be expecting us back soon with this one,’ said Knox. ‘We got no time for rest.’

That Knox was edgy at the thought of Vraed’s displeasure was new.

‘Since when do you care what Vraed wants?’

‘Just don’t want to be on his bad side, you know?’

‘Scared he’s going to put you on report?’

They both grinned, remembering a time when infractions would only result in something minor, like latrine duty or picking up brass on the hard-rounds range.

‘He’s spiky, you know? On edge and looking to spill blood. They all are. Like something big’s coming. Can’t you feel it?’ said Knox.

He glanced over his shoulder as he spoke, like someone might be listening to them over the din of clanking machinery and the droning sermons.

Duraki allowed that wasn’t an unreasonable suspicion. Besides, he had felt it.

Discipline aboard the Vociferator had always been brutally harsh, but now even minor misconduct was punished with lethal penalties. The atmosphere was thick with potential violence. Duraki felt it in his every shallow breath and shortened temper. And though he could only understand one word in three droning from the ship-wide augmitters, he sensed the strident, imminent nature of them.

Everyone in their berth-pit felt it too. Kezra wouldn’t shut up about it, kneading her fists against her temples and rocking back and forward. She’d whisper the same meaningless phrases over and over again, like the pitiful wretches whose minds had snapped in the hell of combat. Shanno wouldn’t stop crying, and even the normally unflappable Vaslov talked darkly of the coming campaigns, like he was a damn Lord Militant and not the former aide to a dead lieutenant.

Taliam clung to her company’s old vox-caster, forever tinkering in its guts, like she was ever going to pick up another signal. Once an enginseer, always an enginseer…

So, yeah, Duraki had felt the same thing, but what good would admitting it do?

‘Don’t worry your pretty little head, Knox,’ said Duraki. ‘We’ll get this one and bring him back, and if Vraed has anything to say about how long we took, I’ll take that knife of his and cut out his lungs.’

‘Sure you will,’ said Knox, clipping his mask back in place. ‘Come on, let’s find this stupid shit and get him back.’

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A Black Library Publication

First published in Great Britain in 2021.
This eBook edition published in 2021 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd, Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK.

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Cover illustration by Anna Lakisova.

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ISBN: 978-1-80026-601-8

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To a wonderful brother. For Anthony.

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