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Savage - Guy Haley

About the Author

An Extract from ‘Baneblade’

A Black Library Publication

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Savage

Guy Haley

Gollph lay still, resolutely trying to wring the maximum amount of sleep out of his limited rest period. There were two factors working against his efforts. The lesser was the deep, rasping snore of First Gunner Meggen, who occupied the camp cot on the other side of the tent. The greater was the blue, pervasive light of the Omdurman predawn already warming the planet to an uncomfortable broil. Gollph was from a hot land, but even he had his limits.

He grabbed his thin pillow and clamped it to his face. It shut out most of the light, but not Meggen's infernal snoring.

There was no way he was getting more sleep. He groaned and sat up carefully so as not to upset his flimsy bed. The tent canvas flapped listlessly in the damp wind. The days and nights were so short, nine hours apiece. No time to acclimatise to light or dark before it was over.

'Better get up,' he sighed. 'Make the most of the cool.' He tugged his boots over holed socks and went to lift the tent flap.

Heat dropped on him with the weight of a blanket soaked in boiling water. His physiology was more suited to the conditions than that of the other men who made up the majority of the force, and he coped better than most, but even so, sweat sprang up on his pink skin. There were a lot of listless men in camp, and a lot of officers too listless themselves to force them to work. The sun, yet to crest the horizon, reflected from the orange sky. Gollph stood with the flap open a moment, spitefully hoping the brightening morning and the heat would wake Meggen, but nothing stirred the big man.

'Snores like a Throne-damned grox,' he muttered. After several years of service, little trace of Gollph's feral world accent remained; he sounded more Paragonian than Bosovar now. He let the flap drop, and stepped out into the camp.

It was not long after dawn, the coolest part of the day, but already the temperature was up at thirty grades and climbing.

Omdurman's tropics were dominated by a roll of plains wrinkled by small hills and scarps, dotted with lakes fringed by lush miniature forests. There was a scarcity of flat ground in the area, and all there was available was occupied by the taskforce landing field, forcing the army to camp on whatever scraps of level ground it could find. The Seventh Paragonian Super-Heavy Tank Company were stationed on one such scrap, alone.

Gollph headed to the hill to the west overlooking the Seventh's camp. The planet had a reverse spin, and the sun would be climbing the far side. If he hurried, he could catch the sunrise.

In the shadow of the hill, Gollph walked between the company's four tanks. Ostrakhan's Rebirth, the command Hellhammer, sat out front. Behind the Hellhammer in a loose laager were the Shadowsword Lux Imperator and the Baneblades Artemen Ultrus and Cortein's Honour, the last two huddled together like herd animals.

Cortein's Honour was Gollph's posting, and he could think of it in no other way than his tank. He didn't command it - even the thought was a ridiculous presumption - but his position as senior loader made him feel proprietary towards it. Honoured Captain Bannick said he had a clear run at a gunnery position. Gollph wasn't sure he had the ability for the role, and suspected Bannick was making a point about the skill of the Bosovar. That would be like him.

Artemen Ultrus was four hundred years older than Cortein's Honour. Gollph's Baneblade was barely a decade old. But even so young a tank was drenched in history. It was named for an officer who died before Gollph had been drafted from his primitive home world. Its decks were bloodied by the lives lost serving aboard. Its metal interior hid terrible secrets, some of which he shared, and all the guilt that went with it.

On impulse, he reached up and stroked the metal, still warm from yesterday, soon to be heated to untouchable temperature again by the Omdurman sun. Camouflage of dull yellow, green and dark orange had been applied months ago, but the lack of action they'd seen on Omdurman and the regular washes the tanks received from the region's torrential downpours meant it looked factory fresh. From a few feet away, the armoured panels looked smooth, identical, but up close you could see that the armour was rough with old paint, corrosion and bad casting. At that distance, the tanks' individuality was obvious, each one as different to the next as one human being to another.

He let his hand drop. Currently, the Seventh didn't seem like much. The company crews had abandoned their house-sized vehicles to the heat. Their weapons were covered over with protective tarpaulins. Hatches were dogged closed. Engine panels had been removed to prevent heat damage and shielded with mesh to keep out Omdurman's multiplicity of insects. Access ladders and grab handles provided anchor points for awnings to shade the ground where men lolled. The tank park looked dishevelled, arranged as it was according to the uneven terrain. The super-heavies were drawn up as level as possible so as not to stress their suspension sets while resting. If he'd seen the tanks like this when he was a hunter on Bosovar, and still ignorant of the real world, he'd have thought them strange, but harmless. Back then he had no conception of the sheer destructive power of technology.

He smiled. He remembered that first moment when he'd seen the tanks fight, their engines roaring, guns booming, spear-straight rods of lightning belting from their lascannons. Gollph was far from a coward, but in that second he was terrified. He was also entranced, and elated.

Now the tanks were so quiet they wouldn't scare a bovid. He felt sorry for them.

Behind the tanks were stacks of Munitorum containers, and past those, maintenance vehicles. All that part of the camp was untidy - a fact that had been commented on by more than one officer in the taskforce. Each time it was brought up, Honoured Captain Bannick had to call out his tech-priest to explain the necessity of their arrangement. If they stayed there much longer, earth-moving equipment would be brought in to resculpt the ground. The Astra Militarum could tolerate untidiness only for so long.

'There we go,' Gollph said, patting Cortein's Honour. The Paragonians, Atraxians and the rest - all these strange men of the stars - said that their machines had their own souls.

Gollph couldn't quite believe it. He had once worshipped an oddly shaped rock, so felt he had something of a unique perspective. Having his own world view blown apart by reality, and roundly ridiculed to boot, made everyone else's cherished beliefs seem equally improbable.

Even so, he walked quietly away so as not to wake their sleeping spirits, just in case.

In the maintenance yard, men were working in the cool of the morning. Machine tools whined as they bit into metal plating. That was another thing that had frightened him when he'd been drafted. Any kind of machine had filled him with fear. The spacecraft that came to collect him, the troop transport, the ablutorials in the ship - the doors, even.

Some of the other Bosovar never got over their culture shock. Several of those incapacitated by terror had been shot as examples, but the executions could not shake the rest of the afflicted out of their catatonia. Never knowingly wasteful, the Departmento Munitorum found other uses for those Bosovar that could not adjust. Gollph still saw their cyborgised remains mindlessly trudging around, from time to time.

A shower of sparks curved off an angle grinder. More spat from an arc welder at the opposite corner of the yard. The tech-adepts attached to the Seventh had requisitioned the largest flat stretch of the terrain there for themselves. An area of beaten earth stained by oil made up the centre. This space, where they serviced the tanks, was empty, and had been for a long time.

Gollph sauntered across the yard towards the slope. In the shadow of the hill it was pleasantly cool, and dew dampened his boots.

'Hey! Hey, Gollph!' The quiet hiss of the arc torch cut out.

Gollph stopped and turned to face the welder, a Paragonian man.

'Morning, Fulken,' Gollph said.

'Morning, yourself, little savage.' Fulken meant that affectionately; many men didn't. He stood with one hand on his visor, ready to flip it back down. 'Shoam's looking for you.'

'At this hour?'

Fulken grinned. 'You know that Savlar, never sleeps. Where you headed?'

'For a walk,' said Gollph. 'If Shoam needs me, he'll find me.'

'Fair enough. See you around.'

Gollph waved and headed on.

A few minutes later, he slipped past the picket patrols. He still had his hunter's skill. Nobody saw him.

As he mounted the slope, the cares of the world slipped from him. He allowed himself to be, just for a while, and put the soldier the Imperium had made him out of his mind. Halfway up the hill, he looked back at the camp. There was such a small amount of activity there. A few shouts and reveille calls sounded, thinned by distance; as insubstantial as the blue wood smoke that threaded the sky over the galley tents. Nobody else was about on the hill.

Quickly, he leant down, unlaced his boots and took off his socks. A slow smile of contentment spread across his face as his feet sank into the damp grass.

'This is the way man should walk and run,' he murmured to himself in his own language. He rarely got to speak Bosovar these days. The regiments he had been recruited alongside had been sent elsewhere, so there were only a few of his countrymen left in the taskforce. Those that were on Omdurman were either oddities like himself, fulfilling roles no one expected feral worlders could, or more usually they worked as servants to the higher officers.

With his boots off, Gollph moved fast. He resisted the desire to remove his shirt. There was only so much savagery the commissariat would tolerate.

In no time at all, he broke the line of shadow on the hill's ridge, and was into the first of the true daylight. The sun was heading rapidly up from the horizon, and its heat hit him hard. He slowed, panting lightly, and laughed.

Even after years and years away from home, they called him a savage still. He worked their machines, he knew their languages, he understood their customs; it didn't stop them looking down on him. When they saw him, they saw a spear-waving child-man in woven grass clothes. Let them underestimate me, he thought, glorying in the view. They miss so much, these civilised, off-world men.

Trilling his tongue in the old day-greeting of his people, he went to a boulder he favoured, and sat upon it to watch the swift sunrise.

'Basdack oil, wrong Throne-cursed formulation!' Meggen tilted the massive battle cannon shell around on its base, rolling it about to inspect it from all angles. 'For the love of the Emperor!' he swore, throwing the shell down.

Gollph winced. He had another one of the shells between his legs, a synthetic fibre brush in his hand, and a bucket of soapy, oily water to his left. A pallet of more shells stood outside the edge of the awning shading Meggen and Gollph. The shell's brass casings hid large charges of fyceline and a compact rocket motor, and the copper-jacketed projectiles nosed arrogantly skyward, each as tall as Gollph's waist. Yellow plastek snap-tags threaded the bright red fuses of their tips. They were potent munitions, capable of blasting apart a battle tank, or slaying a unit of men in a single shot. Meggen was treating his as if it were as inert as a stone.

'Careful, Meggen!' he said. 'We don't want the bloody thing to go off.'

Meggen made a frustrated noise around his cheroot, ran his hands over his face and through his hair, pulling his forage cap off in the process. His torso was stripped to his vest, the arms of his tanker's jumpsuit tied about his waist

He manoeuvred his cigar to the side of his mouth and chewed it. 'This oil is the wrong kind for this environment. Goes all sticky in the heat. It doesn't matter how many times I tell them, they don't listen.' He toed the brass casing, which was now stuck all over with grains of soil. 'It's not those basdack pen-pushers who have to clean the things, is it?

'No,' said Gollph, scrubbing pointedly at his shell. 'But if we don't get it done...'

'It won't get done,' said Meggen, joining Gollph in mimicking Humigen, Lux Imperator's commander. 'I've had it I'm going to speak to Brasslock.'

'You know what he'll say.'

'Yes, I know what he'll say,' grumbled Meggen. 'I'm still going to speak to him.' Meggen pulled his forage cap on. He untied the sleeves of his jumpsuit, shoved his arms into them, and did up the zip on the front with a scowl. 'Why is it so hot on this planet all the damn time?' He set off grumbling and continued until he was out of earshot.

'Hot, hot, hot,' Gollph said. 'Better hot than being shot at. Nobody ever says that.'

'I do,' a voice hissed at his side.

'For the love of the Emperor of Terra and the sainted nine primarchs!' Gollph shouted, jumping sideways. His upset bucket hadn't even hit the floor before he had his knife out and at the throat of the speaker, Karlock Shoam, the driver of Cortein's Honour.

'Look what you've done!' Gollph shook his head, sheathed his knife and bent down to pick up his bucket before all the water was gone. He was too late, the last of it was being sucked away by the thirsty soil. 'They'll take that out of my rations.'

'Did I scare you, little warrior?' chuckled Karlock Shoam. 'You are a quick one. Never want to fight you.' Despite the heat of noon, Shoam kept his filthy greatcoat on, though even he'd removed the shirt beneath. 'Only old Shoam can spook you, eh?'

'You must have been to the cleansing block, or I'd have smelled you coming.'

'Downwind, my friend.'

Gollph wrinkled his nose as Shoam came around his front. 'Throne, you're right. You stink. Get a wash.'

Shoam upended the bucket and sat upon it. His respirator mask swung from its straps at one side of his neck. He was never without the mask or the small tank on his back that fed it, although from the clear look in his eyes and the relatively good condition of his skin, he'd not been partaking of the nitrochem it delivered for a while.

'Can't offend me.'

'Yeah, well you're offending my nose.'

Shoam chuckled. It was hard to upset the Savlar, which was good, as he had a habit of shanking people that managed to.

'Too hot, eh? Sweaty pinky, sticky oil, grumpy Meggen.' Shoam shook his head. 'You think this is hot? You not been on Savlar in summertime. That'd fry your bones.'

'I'm sure it would.'

'Been looking for you.'

'Yeah?' Gollph went back to scrubbing the oil-streaked shell.

'Yeah,' said Shoam, leaning in. 'Old Shoam hears some whispers, so he follows the whispers and hears some rumours. Rumours become little hints. Little hints lead to big orders.' He sat back. 'We're leaving,' he said, with great gravity.

Gollph looked up at him. 'Seriously?'

Shoam nodded.

'Six months in the heat, no action, we're really moving on?'

'Yes. Am I not clear?'

'You're clear.' Gollph stopped scrubbing. 'I don't know how I feel about this. I'm bored as hell, but being bored beats being dead.'

'What you feel don't matter,' said Shoam. 'You're a Guardsman. Do as you're told. Go where you're told. But not right now. Right now, you got something else to do.'

Gollph looked at him quizzically a moment. Realisation lit up his face with dismay.

'Oh, no, no, no, no. You're going to hold me to that, are you?'

'Foolproof plan, little man, it's got to be now, before they break the camp, before the logisters come in and count up all the nuts and the bolts and the ammopacks. Easy to lose things, breaking camp. Things go missing all the time. We want to do it, we do it now.'

'Right, right,' said Gollph. 'But do we have to do it that way?'

Shoam grinned a rotten-toothed smile and nodded slowly. 'Only way there is.'

Meggen came strolling back. He was looking over the instructive text printed on a can of oil, and did not see their visitor at first. 'Hey, Gollph, Brasslock finally coughed up some of the better lubricant, the stuff they burn in the votive bowls, I told him the machine—' He stopped. 'Hello, hello. Karlock? Why are you lurking back there?'

'It's time,' said Shoam.

'It is?' said Meggen. He dropped the can of lubricant and sighed in relief. 'You mean we're finally getting off this steam-bath planet?'

Shoam nodded. 'You know what else that means?'

'Oh, yeah!' A gleam came into Meggen's eyes that matched Shoam's in wickedness. He looked at Gollph.

'Not you as well! I'm not doing it!' said Gollph. He set to scrubbing his shell furiously.

'Yes, you are,' said Meggen. 'You agreed months ago. You said you would. You promised. As soon as we were moving out - that's what he said, isn't it, Karlock?'

'That's what he said,' said the Savlar.

'I was drunk!' moaned Gollph.

'It still counts,' said Meggen. 'Think of all the things he's done for us. There are worse commanding officers. A lot worse. He deserves it.'

Gollph hunched over and scrubbed at the shell harder. 'You're so going to owe me for this.'

At his elbow, Karlock Shoam sniggered. It wasn't a pretty sound.

Omdurman continued its rapid spin. The day turned to night as if someone had doused a light. A horde of insects burst from hiding the moment the sun was gone, with a keen interest in human blood. Gollph swatted at them in irritation as he, Meggen and Shoam hid in a thicket and watched the galley store.

'Look at this.' Gollph lifted up the breastplate of hollow reedstalks hanging over his chest.

'Where did you find it?'

'I made it,' said Meggen.

'I can tell. No Bosovar wears anything like this!' The rest of his costume matched the breastplate in ridiculousness.

'They don't know that,' said Meggen, watching the guards on the store. 'Big tent,' he said, lowering his magnoculars from his face.

'This will be easy,' said Shoam.

'You sound disappointed,' said Meggen.

Shoam shrugged.

'This is stupid,' said Gollph. 'I've had enough of pinky this and pinky that. Why are you making me do this? This will make things worse!'

Meggen looked over his shoulder. 'People say Shoam's a criminal, and they don't trust him, just because he's from Savlar. You try being him, that'd stop your whining about people treating you badly,' he said sagely.

'But he is a criminal!' Gollph whispered back.

'I believe that's discriminatory, Gollph,' said Meggen with mock severity.

'He's from Savlar, they're known for it!'

'Is that so?' said Meggen, lifting his magnoculars back up to his face. 'Aren't Bosovar known for being a bit slow on the uptake?'

'That's different! They think we're fools only because we don't know any better.'

'There you go. It's a misunderstanding. You can't write a whole planet off because of your prejudices, Gollph. Karlock here is an honest operator.'

Shoam chuckled throatily behind them.

'I'm hardly doing my bit to dispel misconceptions about my people with this act!' said Gollph.

'Never mind that, we need what's in there. Here's the requisition chit.' Meggen pushed a crumpled sheet of paper at Gollph.

Gollph read it. 'This is nonsense,' said Gollph.

'It's supposed to look bad. The more they think some idiot pinkskin has it all wrong, the further they'll be off our trail. I had to get Apranian soused to sign that. Cost me a good bottle of gleece,' said Meggen.

'I'm not happy about this,' said Gollph darkly. 'Apranian's got five Bosovar on his personal staff. They could hang one of them.'

'No hanging, brave warrior,' whispered Shoam, which wasn't at all unusual - he barely ever spoke above a sinister hiss. 'Too many of them. These Atraxians and others, they can't tell your kind apart. They won't kill for this.'

'Could we stop it with the "all Bosovar are stupid and look the same",' said Gollph. He sniffed and pulled a face, and looked down. 'Throne! I think someone's been using this bush as an ablutorial.' He swore in his native, clicking tongue 'It's all over my Throne-damned feet!'

'Shut up, or we'll be heard,' said Meggen. 'Shh!' Two guards had come to the tent to relieve the others. Meggen leaned forwards and peered at them. 'Yeah, yeah!' he said eagerly. 'There we are, that's Kollopian. He's the one we're waiting for. He's dim as they come. Right then, off you go.'

'I really don't want to do this,' said Gollph.

'Needs must,' said Meggen. He shoved Gollph forwards. 'Get to it, little savage, you know what to do. Keep them occupied. If you think about it, we're doing the hard work.'

'All right! I know.' Gollph walked a few steps, then stopped and shot them a dirty look.

'And don't kill anyone!' whispered Meggen.

'I'll try not to,' said Gollph.

'Go on now, shoo shoo!' said Shoam flapping his hands.

'This is so undignified,' muttered Gollph as he headed down to the storage tent.

Gollph didn't try to stay hidden, but it took a moment for the guards to notice him once he'd stepped into the wide, yellow pool of light around the galley store entrance. 'Halt, who goes there!' shouted the guard who wasn't Kollopian, levelling his lasrifle bayonet as stiffly as a conscript on the first day of drill.

Kollopian slapped the weapon aside. He was a tall, mean, ugly-looking man. Rangy, but only dangerous to those smaller than himself, no real threat to a proper fighter. Gollph had his measure in half a second. Kollopian was a bully.

'Put up your spear, stupid. It's just a pinkhide, creeping about. What do you want, pinky?' Kollopian's challenge was heavy with glee. He sensed sport ahead. 'Lone little man like you out in the night - not safe! Savvy?'

Gollph affected an expression of cringing subservience and approached. Outside the circle of light, Shoam and Meggen ran silently past, heading for the rear of the store. It was vital the guards paid total attention to Gollph.

'Please! Help! Have here me order from Captain Apranian, Paragon four-seven foot. Need now, very quick. Please!' He waved the form under Kollopian's nose upside down. Kollopian snatched it. His face darkened.

'What? What by Terra is this?'

Gollph blinked at him in a sham of incomprehension. Inside, he seethed.

'Good form, yes?'

'No, bad form,' said Kollopian slowly and loudly. 'Wrong form, savvy? No read-y read? Get it?'

'What?' said the other man.

'Idiot's got his officer to sign the wrong form, hasn't he?' said Kollopian over his shoulder. 'This one's for resupply, not special requisition.' He shook his head at the childlike writing on the list of required supplies. 'None of these little basdacks can read or write. What's the point of them? They're cowards, child-minded fools. Waste of rations.' Kollopian handed his gun back to his fellow and crumpled the requisition form slowly in front of Gollph's face.

'Go away.'

'Need flour ration, now?' Gollph said quietly.

'Throne they can't even speak properly,' said Kollopian. He dropped the screwed up form onto the ground. 'Get out of here.'

Gollph looked at the form, then looked at Kollopian. 'No get?' He acted fearful. 'No get, pinky get the whip!'

Kollopian smiled nastily. 'Yeah, wouldn't that be a shame.' He bent low, so his black-toothed mouth leered right in Gollph's face. 'If it were up to me, you'd all be whipped, every day, make you work harder and stop you running away, good-for-nothing little savages.' He prodded Gollph hard in the chest Gollph whimpered, while simultaneously calculating how to break every bone in Kollopian's fist.

'Get out of here, now.'

Gollph forced himself not to look over the guard's shoulder at the tent. How long did the others need to get the stuff? Another minute? Two?

'Please! Please, good sir,' wailed Gollph at the top of his voice. 'Must need have flour and foods for lieutenant! Is an order. Need now, please!'

'For the Emperor's sake, keep it down!' Kollopian said. 'Need now!'

Gollph saw Kollopian's blow coming a mile away. His jaw set before his muscles in his arms tensed. He set his feet badly. Gollph could have had him on the ground with a dislocated shoulder before Kollopian could blink. He forced himself to take the blow.

'Why good sir do that?' said Gollph. His jaw stung. Kollopian was a lousy boxer, but that hurt.

'Get out of here!' Kollopian hollered. He punched Gollph again. He was smiling, enjoying himself. Gollph took a few more hits, blinking with studied incomprehension.

'You pinkies really are stupid.' He shoved Gollph hard, knocking him to the ground.

Gollph curled up. Kollopian laughed as he kicked him.

'Hey! Hey! What's going on here?'

Kollopian ceased kicking him and stood sloppily to attention. 'A pinky sir, wrong orders, trying to get into the tent!'

Meggen sauntered over to the prone Bosovar and helped him to his feet. Gollph stood woozily. He didn't need to act that. Kollopian's comrade stood staring open-mouthed at Meggen, scared by which way the scenario might go.

'Look at the state of you,' said Meggen to Kollopian. 'Bloody infantry, stuffed full of lackwits. Tidy yourself up!' he said, slapping at Kollopian's dishevelled uniform. 'Where's your weapon?'

Meggen's rank of First Gunner was equal to that of an infantry sergeant, and Kollopian had no choice but to take the criticism. Gollph was right in his assessment; Kollopian didn't have the guts to stand up to Meggen.

'Sorry, sir. I'll sort it out, sir!'

'Get back on guard. Can't a man go out for a quiet smoke? You're a disgrace.' Meggen warmed to his role, berating the infantryman with great gusto, to the point that Gollph thought he was overdoing it.

Over behind Kollopian and his comrade, Gollph saw a shadow carrying a heavy knapsack vanish into the dark. He tapped Meggen's foot with his own gently. Meggen took the hint.

'See this kind of thing doesn't happen again, and you, you little pink savage, make sure you get the right damn form next time!'

'Yes, good sir,' said Gollph, bowing and cringing.

'Come with me,' Meggen said, and took Gollph by the arm. Once they were away from the tent, he grinned.

'That went excellently,' he said.

Gollph threw off Meggen's arm. 'You're a Throne-damned basdack, you know that?'

'Indeed I do,' said Meggen happily. 'Indeed I do.'

'Every time, redeployment is sprung on us at the last moment. You would think that the Departmento could give us, of all people, a little more warning,' said Colaron Bannick to his cousin, Jonas, as they walked through the files of tents back to Bannick's quarters. 'You can't pack up and move a superheavy company overnight. It's ridiculous. They must have known about this for days, if not weeks. We're out of an active warzone, there's no risk of espionage. We don't even know where we're going. It's needless!'

Jonas, who was a calmer character than his cousin, shrugged. 'That's the Guard for you, Col.'

'This whole posting's been a disaster, Jonas. No enemy, no rebellion, barely any population to fend for and them all happy as can be with the Imperium. Half a year wasted on bad intelligence.'

'I disagree there,' said Jonas. 'I wouldn't say wasted, not at all. You have to make the best of cock-ups like this. Personally, I've enjoyed our little holiday.'

Activity was picking up in the camp as the first stages of packing commenced. The larger installations were the first to be dismantled, and the roads between the tents were busy with light haulers towing steel crates towards the landing fields.

'Have you, now?' Colaron said.

'I have. As should you, Honoured Captain,' said Jonas. 'We're both still alive. We aren't all as wedded to duty as you, cousin,' said Jonas.

Colaron scowled.

They reached the Seventh's mess tent. Despite the heat, it was laced up tight.

'Why are all the sides let down? Who did this?' said Colaron, tugging loose the fastening of the flap. He strode within, his irritation building to outright anger, then stopped in his tracks.

In the muggy dark of the tent, his company were assembled around a single table laid with a white cloth, and illuminated by candles. Upon it was a meagre feast that nevertheless bettered anything Bannick had seen for some time: Patagonian cakes, fresh fruit and even a modest joint of meat.

'What?' he said.

'Happy name day, sir,' said Meggen.

'What?' said Colaron Bannick again. One of the crewmen took his coat. Another, posing as waiter, led him to the head of the table. A good, thick gleece awaited him. A rather bruised-looking Gollph showed him the bottle, rested it on a white cloth draped over his forearm and poured.

'It was my name day weeks ago,' Bannick said. 'And I've not celebrated it for years.'

'We thought it was about time,' said Meggen, 'on account of the fact that of all the commanding officers we've known around here, you're probably the least bad.'

'Where'd you get all this?'

'Need-to-know basis only,' whispered Shoam, who'd gone so far as to take a bath for the occasion. 'Sorry for the delay, chief man, breaking camp is the best time to organise such affairs.'

'Jonas? Humigen? Marteken?' Bannick looked to the other officers in the tent who were grinning like drunkards. 'You know anything about this?'

'I didn't,' said Jonas. 'But I'll not knock a holiday or a party either. Do you mind?' He picked up a glass, which was quickly filled. He raised it cheerfully. 'Your health, cousin.'

The timbre of the camp's noise changed as the army prepared to move on. Machines squealed about on their treads. Ships grumbled up and down from orbit on gushing plumes of exhaust. Klaxons blared out every hour, and orders issued from a dozen voxmitters, amplifying the voices of harassed officers to harsh barks. And yet, for all the noise the army made as it broke camp, all those tens of thousands of men moving and sweating and shouting, they barely made an impact on the vast silences of the savannah. If Gollph turned away from the camp, it was still possible to pretend it wasn't there, and ignore it as a momentary blot on this peaceful, unspoilt world.

That morning, he looked back at the camp.

In one corner of the tent city, three punishment posts had been set up in a marshalling yard. Three figures were manacled to them. They were far too far away for Gollph to make out their individual features, but their lightly pink skin was clear enough. Three Bosovar, the servants of Apranian. He watched them being whipped, a humiliation he had suffered once himself. He supposed they were lucky; if the Militarum Arbitrators had decided that one was guilty of the theft from the tent, he would have been hanged.

All so the Seventh could honour their leader. Gollph watched the silent scene impassively. His was a world of bovid raids and honour killings, where the weak were murdered by the strong. He had killed his own kind for far less than a bottle of good liquor and a spread of food. However, his actions in this case felt dishonest. Though he thought little of the theft from the galley, it was achieved through humiliating deception, and the injustice of the punishment falling on other men bothered him.

The tiny figures jerked as they took their lashes.

Dying at the hand of a man who came against you openly was honourable. There was no honour in whipping, less in being judged by men who would never fight you.

They called him a savage. He knew who the real savages were.

Gollph looked away to distant horizons, imagining he was a free hunter again for this final dawn, before they took him up to the prisons of the voidships in orbit, and on to yet another war.

About the Author

Guy Haley is the author of the Horus Heresy novels Titandeath, Wolfsbane and Pharos, the Primarchs novels Corax: Lord of Shadows, Perturabo: The Hammer of Olympia, and the Warhammer 40,000 novels Dark Imperium, Dark Imperium: Plague War, The Devastation of Baal, Dante, Baneblade, Shadowsword, Valedor and Death of Integrity. He has also written Throneworld and The Beheading for The Beast Arises series. His enthusiasm for all things greenskin has also led him to pen the eponymous Warhammer novel Skarsnik, as well as the End Times novel The Rise of the Horned Rat. He has also written stories set in the Age of Sigmar, included in War Storm, Ghal Maraz and Call of Archaon. He lives in Yorkshire with his wife and son.

An extract from Baneblade.

KALIDAR IV, KOSTOVAL FLATS,
3265397.M41

Mars Triumphant sat upon a darkened plain, engines quiet, drawn up in readiness for the coming battle. For nearly two years it had lain in its cradle within the depths of a transport barge; tomorrow it would assail the orks of Kalidar.

The tank rocked in time with the barrage; shells flung by artillery batteries ten kilometres behind the tank’s position, falling onto the ork army still kilometres ahead. Honoured Lieutenant Cortein felt rather than heard the distant thunder through the Baneblade’s armour as a steady metronome of destruction. Fine veils of Kalidar’s ever-present dust sifted down from the tank’s ceiling with every explosion.

Three days on Kalidar, and already Mars Triumphant was being asked to fight.

Cortein was unconcerned by the speed of their deployment, he understood this as his duty. If the tank had been asked, and could have replied, Cortein was sure it would hold similar sentiments. But the new regiments, raised on Cortein’s home world of Paragon, trained as they made their slow, dangerous way through the warp to Kalidar… He was not so sure he could say the same of them. Instinct told him that they needed more time, that this rush to smash the ork force besieging the mine complex of Urta was unwise.

There was little he could do about that. Tomorrow, the 7th Paragonian Super-heavy Tank Company would form the lynchpin of one of two large arrow-headed tank formations, the remainder of them made up of Leman Russ squadrons and mechanised infantry, the two formations part of a large action involving men from three worlds. A hundred tanks, four regiments of infantry, a surprise for the orks besieging Urta at the heart of the lorelei-rich Kostoval Flats.

That was the idea. Cortein was suspicious of ideas like this. Perhaps the thick armour of Mars Triumphant had made him cautious, inclined to sit things out, he thought, behind the fortress-like walls of the Baneblade. Maybe, but as they said at home, one does not weather a storm by casting oneself into the sea.

Cortein stood before Mars Triumphant’s dimly lit wall of honour, near the reactor, the plant at the heart of the Baneblade. Names on brass plaques filled the wall almost entirely, a proud list ending with his own. The green and red glows emitted by Mars Triumphant’s dim lights struck strange reflections from the metal, alternately revealing and obscuring the heroisms of the tank’s long past.

The first plaque was worn smooth by time to leave but traces of archaic battle honours and the curve of what might have been an S or a G. Perhaps, thought Cortein, other commanders of Mars Triumphant had stood here like he did before every engagement, their fingers tracing out the names of those who had come before them. How many times had he stood there? He did not know, the battles and campaigns of thirty years blurring into one endless war, a lifetime of conflict. Such was the sacrifice the Emperor had demanded of him. It was a sacrifice Cortein bore gladly. He’d give his life over again, and again a score of times, having seen what he had seen. Humanity was besieged as surely as the orks out there in the desert besieged the lorelei mine complex. If it were not for the sacrifice of men like him…

But there were men like him, many men, the passing of some remembered on this wall, and so the Imperium would stand. He had faith in the Emperor and His servants.

Still he felt fear at his own end, its edge dull and worn by experience and hard-won courage; present nevertheless.

He heard a faint scuff behind him and glanced back. Crimson robes moved in the shadows, deeper shadows within the hood.

‘Enginseer Adept Brasslock,’ Cortein said. He returned his attention to the wall.

‘Honoured Lieutenant Cortein,’ said the other. He whispered as a priest does in a cathedral, his low voice hard to make out over the hiss of artificial lungs.

‘I saw your bodyguard outside and assumed you were within. But I did not hear you approach. In this machine you are as quiet as a monk in a cloister.’

The enginseer gave forth the mechanical cough that passed for his laugh. ‘And that I am, in here, within Mars Triumphant. Any of the adepts of Mars are but supplicants before such a machine. You hold your vigil?’

Cortein nodded distractedly. ‘As always. It calms me.’

‘After all these years, you need calming?’ Brasslock’s voice held the smile his face could no longer show. ‘You and I are old men, Cortein. Surely the battle fear has left you now?’

‘Never,’ said Cortein. ‘If it ever does, then I shall be dead. No man can ever conquer the fear of battle, and it is not wise to try. Standing here helps hold it at bay, turn it outwards, use it.’

‘To know the Machine-God and the Emperor watch over you, that is what calms you, and it should,’ said the other, certain in his pronouncement. ‘Many of your predecessors, the ones that I have known, have felt the same.’

‘No, it is not that.’ Cortein shook his head, checked himself, not wishing this one night to offend the seer, whose faith was somewhat stronger and deeper than his own. ‘Not entirely.’ He turned to the enginseer.

Brasslock stood easily within the narrow confines of the main gangway leading from the gunnery deck. Cortein had no idea how old he was. Despite his stealth he suspected Brasslock was ancient, as the followers of the Omnissiah often were. His flesh hand, the left, was wizened as centuried leather, blotched with spots and scars. It was impossible to tell what colour the man’s skin had originally been. Brasslock rested this hand on the open bulkhead door, idly stroking plasteel as a mother might soothe her child. Metal glinted in the hood where his mouth should be. A thin, articulated tendril snuck out from under his robes from time to time, tasted the air and wicked back within. His right arm ended in a heavy metal stump, a broad socket ready to accept tools, for the moment empty. To a normal man’s eyes he was a grotesque, but Cortein had long ceased to find Enginseer Brasslock disturbing.

‘What then do you find here in the heart of Mars Triumphant?’ said the enginseer.

‘Watching the march of the names through time makes me… confident. Near a thousand years of battle, and this machine still fights. So many battles, tomorrow is merely one more. That is why it calms me.’

‘The spirit of Mars Triumphant is strong,’ agreed the enginseer. They both fell silent, the close silence of the tank disturbed by the distant bombardment and the hiss-whirr of Brasslock’s mechanical lungs, the two sounding in time, a pair of impacts for every breath.

‘I wonder,’ said Cortein eventually. ‘I wonder who he was.’ He nodded at the first plaque, the brass shiny where it had been rubbed away, the edges deepened to a lustre richer than gold. Verdigris scaled the base of the rivets. ‘Who was this first man to stand here? Did he come to look at his own name affixed to this wall as I do now and wonder at those who would follow?’

‘I do not know,’ said Brasslock. ‘Men have forgotten as this metal has forgotten.’ He pointed with a skeletal finger. ‘But the Machine-God does not forget. The flesh is weak, the Omnissiah is not. He knows all.’

Cortein smiled tiredly. ‘Perhaps you can ask him for me some time, I would like to know.’

Brasslock took Cortein’s blasphemy with good grace. ‘Alas it is not my place to do so, Honoured Lieutenant Cortein, but the data is kept by crystal, pen and chisel in Mars’s archives. You can be assured that the Omnissiah remembers all the men who serve Him, as He will remember you.’

‘That is not as comforting as you might think it sounds.’

‘I did not mean it for comfort, honoured lieutenant.’

From deep within Mars Triumphant some subsystem or other grumbled, a pulsing thrum of interrupted energy flow, three beats in contretemps to the barrage outside.

‘Ah, see? She agrees.’

‘Mars Triumphant is inactive.’

‘They dream when they sleep, honoured lieutenant, as men do. Listen!’

The artificial thunder had ceased. The ground shuddered hard, once, as if in pain. The charms Brasslock and generations of enginseers before him had affixed to the Wall of Honour jangled in reply, a final shower of dust pattered onto the pitted floor of the tank, then the world became still.

‘The barrage, it is done.’ The enginseer’s shadowy face looked up within his hood, rheumy eyes glinting. ‘I must rouse the spirit of Mars Triumphant; the other machines of the company must also be propitiated,’ said the enginseer. ‘I have much work to do to ensure optimum functionality of all systems for the morrow.’

‘Of course.’

The enginseer inclined his head in a bow and departed, vanishing into the gloom to the aft of the tank.

Cortein reached out to the plaques on the wall and reverently touched the oldest as was his habit, wearing it away atoms at a time, an erosion born of respect. He put on his cap, lifted the mask of his rebreather from the case hanging on his front, a necessary evil. He didn’t want to end his career coughing up his own lungs thanks to the dust. He buckled the foul thing about his face and went up onto the command deck, up again into the turret, and then out into the freezing desert dawn.

Click here to buy Baneblade.

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First published in the Black Library Events Anthology 2018/19 Great Britain in 2018.
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