[Gaunt's Ghosts 06] - Straight Silver

  A WARHAMMER 40,000 NOVEL

  STRAIGHT SILVER

  Gaunt’s Ghosts - 06

  (The Saint - 02)

  Dan Abnett

  (An Undead Scan v1.1)

  It is the 41st millennium. 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 will of the gods, and master of a million worlds by the might of his inexhaustible armies. He is a rotting carcass writhing invisibly with power from the Dark Age of Technology. He is the Carrion Lord of the Imperium for whom a thousand souls are sacrificed every day, so that he may never truly die.

  Yet even in his deathless state, the Emperor continues his eternal vigilance. Mighty battlefleets cross the daemon-infested miasma of the warp, the only route between distant stars, their way lit by the Astronomican, the psychic manifestation of the Emperor’s will. Vast armies give battle in his name on uncounted worlds. Greatest amongst His soldiers are the Adeptus Astartes, the Space Marines, bio-engineered super-warriors. Their comrades in arms are legion: the Imperial Guard and countless planetary defence forces, the ever-vigilant Inquisition and the tech-priests of the Adeptus Mechanicus to name only a few. But for all their multitudes, they are barely enough to hold off the ever-present threat from aliens, heretics, mutants — and worse.

  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. These are the tales of those times. Forget the power of technology and science, for so much has been forgotten, never to be re-learned. Forget the promise of progress and understanding, for in the grim dark future there is only war. There is no peace amongst the stars, only an eternity of carnage and slaughter, and the laughter of thirsting gods.

  “Throughout the first six months of 772.M41, the seventeenth year of the Sabbat Worlds Campaign, the Imperial Crusade force under Warmaster Macaroth struggled to consolidate the wins it had achieved during the previous winter and turn them to its best advantage. Supremacy in the vital Cabal system now seemed possible, thanks to the lines of resource and supply — the so-called ‘victory veins’ — opened up by the successful actions at Gigar, Aondrift Nova, Tanzina IV, Phantine and the mighty forge world Urdesh. But the infamous fortress world of Morlond still held out, and reports suggested that Urlock Gaur — who had, it seemed, become overlord of the archenemy forces since the death of Archon Nadzybar at Balhaut — was massing a renewed counter-attack in the Carcaradon Cluster. Furthermore, the Imperial Crusade was contesting hard along its coreward flank with Chaos hosts commanded by Anakwanar Sek, Shebol Red-hand and Enok Innokenti, three of Gaur’s most capable warlords.

  “With typically instinctive flair, and against all the advice of his staff chiefs, Macaroth divided the Crusade force between his most trusted generals. Crusade Ninth Army, under Lord Militant Humel, was sent to Enothis to break the grip of Sek’s vile host. The Eighth and Sixth Armies, commanded by General Kelso and Chapter Master Veegum of the Silver Guard, was directed to the Khan Group to prosecute Innokenti, while the Seventh, under Marshal Blackwood, struck out deep to coreward, towards Belshiir Binary and Alpha Madrigo. Lord General Bulledin, in command of the Second, was charged with holding and protecting the spinward supply lines through to Urdesh. Macaroth himself pressed on with the First, Third and Fourth to lead the renewed push for Morlond and, as the Warmaster put it, ‘grapple with Gaur in his own backyard’.

  “Many voices were raised in objection. The Navy commanders in particular believed that Macaroth had only survived his gamble at Cabal by the thinnest of luck, and now saw him repeating the risk on an even greater scale. Other generals expressed unhappiness at being passed over for army command. Van Voytz had hoped to get charge of the Fifth Army, but that was given to Luscheim and tasked with rearguarding Macaroth’s push. Instead, Van Voytz was given a brigade-strength taskforce, nominally attached to the Fifth, and sent to Aexe Cardinal, an Imperial world that had held out throughout the Chaos domination of the Sabbat Worlds. There, he faced the unenviable labour of breaking a deadlocked land war that had been raging for forty years…”

  —from A History of the Later Imperial Crusades

  PROLOGUE

  “There are three things an Aexegarian may be trusted to do well: make love, make war, and worship the Emperor. Of these, warmaking is our finest skill. We have been doing it for years. I think you’ll find we have the hang of it.”

  —Leonid Fep Krefuel, High Sezar of Aexegary

  Brunsgatte towered around him like a badly-ordered dream. He was weary from the long train journey and, as he had moved westward, the weather had become increasingly poor and wet, so now the pin in his femur ached rheumatically. He had tried to distract himself by reviewing the despatches once again, but it was too dark in the back of the limousine. Instead, he sat back, hands clasped across his belly, and watched the city as it passed.

  Dusk was closing, and the lamps along the strasseways were beginning to glow amber under their frosted-glass hoods. In twenty minutes, they would be little stars of pearl-white light. The rain was coming down. To the south, it made dark, blurry sheets under the clouds that frothed above the commercial district and the Brunsgatte docks.

  The limousine, shiny black like a dress uniform shoe, was an old Ampara Furioso Vitesse, as solidly built as a Leman Russ. On either side of the silver leaping-behj ornament above the car’s snarling chrome grille, a pennant fluttered. The blue and gold state flag to the left; the gold, white and magenta colours of the Aexe Alliance to the right. He could barely hear the eight litre engine, such was the thickness of the bodywork and the upholstery, but the stroking windshield wipers squealed every ten seconds like fingernails down a blackboard.

  The car crossed Congressplatz, passed under the shadow of Sezar’s Gate, where slopes of red wreaths were piled up, and ran the length of the Colonnade of Fishers to Trimercy.

  Squeak, squeak, squeak, stroked the wipers.

  They stopped at the lights at Trimercy, and the southerly flow of traffic passed before them. The outriders each put a boot down to steady their bikes. The limousine’s climate control seemed to be circulating nothing but warm exhaust fumes. He leaned forward and fiddled with the dial, to no appreciable effect.

  “What’s wrong with the heater?” he snapped.

  The driver lowered the lacquered communicating screen.

  “What did you say, sire?”

  “The heater.”

  “It’s on, sire.”

  “Could it be off?”

  “Of course, sire.” The driver made an adjustment to the dashboard controls. “Better?”

  It wasn’t. He thumbed down the rear door window and let in the cool rain-scents of the city. He could smell damp tarmac and wet rockcrete. He could hear motor engines and distant horns. At the roadside, by the junction, he could see a flower stand closing up for the night. The seller, swathed in a transparent slicker, was hand-folding the fractal blooms into their metal cups. The glittering mathematical petals crackled as deft, expert hands collapsed them.

  Some were a particular red. He felt his pulse rate rise. Not now… not now…

  He closed his eyes and swallowed hard, trying to retard his breathing the way his physician had taught him. But the Seiberq Pocket was only a heartbeat away. The lightning. The spraying mud. The dreadnoughts. The pools filling the shell craters. Red, red…

  The lights changed and they pulled north, the outriders describing wide arcs as they roared away ahead, lamps flashing.

  “Are you all right, sire?” the driver asked. “Yes, I’m fine. Fine.” He closed the rear door window to a thin slit.

  Mons Sezari rose before them, dominating the skyli
ne, dwarfing even the tallest of Brunsgatte’s steeples and towers. They climbed the curling road and then pulled in under a glass awning behind the postern gate.

  “Ready, sire?” asked the driver.

  “Yes,” he said, and got out. A junior military aide held the limousine door for him.

  In the days of the great sezars, generals had entered Brunsgatte from the Fortress Gate, carried in pomp on jewelled warcarts pulled by striding struthids.

  Those times were long gone, but protocol demanded that he transferred from the car to a warcart for the final, formal approach.

  A squadron of hussars had the warcart waiting. The struthids, some of the last of that dwindling species, were huge, proud beasts with massive, polished beaks and thick plumage, standing twenty hands high. He thought of the scabby, thin mounts the front-line cavalry were forced to make do with.

  He stepped up onto the warcart’s backplate, his attaché case tucked under his arm, and the hussar chief lashed the struthids forward. Their trimmed black claws drew sparks from the wet cobbles as they began to canter.

  The fighting birds drew the warcart in under the entry arch of Mons Sezari and drew up at the west porch of the palace, a long aisle of electric lamps under a stained glass roof. Officers of the Bande Sezari were waiting in full dress uniform, struthid plumes in their shakos. They wore voluminous pantaloons of green silk, with gold chains linking the wide hips to their wrists, so that when they saluted, they seemed to spread wide green wings in his honour.

  He dismounted, paid the driver his ritual scuto, and walked up the long blue carpet into the porch. The attaché case swung in his hand.

  Sire Kido Fep Soten, the high sezar’s chamberlain, was waiting for him under the glass portico. Soten parted the black velvet of his ermine-trimmed robes and made the aquila salute across his chest.

  “My sire count, welcome. The sezar awaits you.”

  He followed Soten down a long hallway decorated with heraldic motif wallpaper, through a chamber strung with stupendous chandeliers, and into the audience room. Halberdiers of the Bande Sezari opened the doors for them.

  Soten bowed. “My lord high sezar,” he proclaimed, “Count Iaco Bousar Fep Golke, commander-in-chief of the Aexe Alliance forces, awaits your pleasure.”

  The high sezar, Leonid Fep Krefuel, rose from his couch. He had been sitting near the fireplace, shielded from its direct heat by a fretwork screen. Through open doors on the far side of the room, the count could see a gathering of figures and hear the clink of glasses.

  The sezar was dad in ceremonial gold battledress brocaded with silver wire and diamonds under a behj-skin mantle. He was a short, heavy-set man with a ruddy, colicky face, a wet, ample mouth and a thin, grey moustache.

  “Count Golke, a pleasure as always,” he said.

  “My high sezar, you do me an honour.”

  “Welcome, welcome… take refreshment.”

  A black metal-enhanced servitor whined up alongside them, carrying a tray of drinks. Golke took a small amasec and sipped it. He owned several estates, including a schloss in the eastern provinces, but still the sheer scale of the Mons Sezari architecture scared him. The ceilings were so high, the windows so sheer. Blue and gold silk banners, thirty metres long, hung down the walls, each one sporting the leaping-behj arms of Aexegary. Every month for four years he had come to the palace to deliver his war report, and still it humbled him.

  “I could wait, lord, if you are with guests,” Golke said, gesturing to the figures in the adjacent room.

  “No, no. We will join them directly. There are men I want you to meet.”

  Golke wanted to ask who the men were, but he could tell the High Sezar of Aexegary was in one of his businesslike moods. He’d been the same when they’d met the week before the push on Jepel and Seiberq. He’s preparing to give me instructions he knows I won’t like, Golke thought. God help us, not another Seiberq.

  Golke set down his drink. “My report, lord?”

  The sezar nodded. “Let’s have it,” he said, settling back onto his place on the couch.

  Golke’s fingers were shaking as he unbuckled the attaché case and slid the duplicate copies of the report out. Both were sleeved in blue covers and closed with gold ribbons. He passed one to his master, who took it and slit the ribbon with the behj-claw he wore on a signet ring.

  Golke opened his own copy, stood before the high sezar and started to read.

  “An account of the warfare between the forces of his glorious majesty the High Sezar of Aexegary and his allies, and the denounced oppressors of Shadik, in the period 181.772 and 212.772. Foremost it must be seen that the concentration of artillery attacks along the Peinforq Line, and also in the Naeme Valley, has much harassed the progress of the enemy’s infantry dispositions in that region. Observer estimates place a mortality figure of nine thousand on said enemy dispositions, with particular losses taken around Bassin-on-Naeme on the nights of 187-189. Munition expenditure in that period is given as forty-eight thousand nine hundred and eleven 0.12 medium explosive shells, nine thousand and forty-six 0.90 incendiary shells, two thousand three hundred and seventy-nine 0.50 heavy shells and—”

  “Has the expenditure been costed?” asked the sezar.

  “My lord, yes,” said Golke, skipping through the pages of his report. “It is annotated in the fiscal appendix. Ahm… rounding up, two point two million scutos.”

  “You say ‘harassed’ the progress, count. Does that mean impeded? Halted? Denied?”

  Golke cleared his throat. “They suffered losses, as I said, and their advance was stalemated, though they retook the towns of Vilaq and Contae-Sanlur.”

  “Move on.”

  “My lord. Along the edge of the Meiseq Sector, I am pleased to report our line has held fast despite sequential attacks. On the afternoon of the 197th, a breakthrough was achieved by the Forty-First Brigade at Sarvo, and they managed to advance to hold the water mills at Selph.”

  “How far is that?”

  “Three… ah… three hundred and ten metres, lord.”

  “Move on.”

  “The north-western sector. At Gibsgatte, the Third Regiment of the Sezari Light held off a counter-push on the 199th. The regimental commander personally notes his gratitude to the high sezar for his foresight in disposing them to Gibsgatte so that they might achieve such glory.”

  “Losses?”

  “Twelve hundred and eighty-one, lord.”

  The high sezar closed his copy of the report and put it down on the seat beside him.

  “Should I continue, sire?” Golke asked.

  “Will I hear anything new?” the high sezar asked. “Will I hear anything apart from what is effectively a stalemate no matter how you dress it up? Will I hear anything apart from deadlock at the cost of thousands of men and millions of scutos?”

  Golke lowered his report to his side. A loose page fell out and fluttered down onto the carpet.

  “No, my lord.”

  The sezar rose again. “Forty years, count. Forty years of this. Forty years of waste and cost and stagnation. There are boy soldiers on the front these days whose grandfathers died in the first phases, when we stood against Shadik alone. Our allies are with us now, thank the Golden Throne, but…”

  He looked into the fire for a moment. Golke thought how heavy the behj-skin mantle looked on his shoulders.

  “Do you know what Soten told me the other morning?” the sezar asked quietly.

  “No, sire.”

  “He told me that since the Principality of Fichua added its strength to the Alliance back in… what was it? 764?”

  “763, sire, with the Stromberg Pact.”

  “Just so. Since 763, our Alliance armies have lost the equivalent of the entire population of Fichua nine times over.”

  It was a stunning statistic. Golke blinked. He knew Fichua well, from vacations there in long-past days. The smallest country in Continental Aexe, to be sure, but still…

  He felt his pulse rising again
. Anger rose up in him like quicksilver in a thermometer that has been stuck in a furnace. He wanted to scream at the lord sezar.

  It’s because of you! You! You! You, and the staff chiefs who have gone before me, with your rules of war and your codes of battle! Damn you and your archaic strategies—

  Instead, he bit his tongue and breathed deeply, the way his physician had taught him.

  “The impasse is maddening, my lord,” he said. His voice sounded tiny and strained. “But perhaps by the year’s end, we might—”

  The sezar turned to face him. “Count Golke, please. I’m not blaming you for those forty years. I praise your efforts, the sterling work you have undertaken since you took over as commander-in-chief. I am not a stupid man, no matter what the popular press says—”

  “Of course not, my lord!”

  The sezar raised a hand. Firelight winked off the behj-claw ring. “Let them blow off steam, I say. Let them rail in their editorials and goad me with their cartoons. I am beloved of the Aexegarian people.”

  “You are high sezar, my lord.”

  “And I will achieve my triumph, I have no doubt. I will break Shadik and drive its hosts out into the wilds.”

  “I have no doubt, lord.”

  “Neither have I. I never have doubted that, count. But as from tonight, I am assured of it.”

  Golke glanced over at the room beyond where the visitors were talking and sipping drinks under the chandeliers.

  “Why… tonight, my lord?”

  “This day, Count Golke. It will be remembered in our history books. Our great-great-grandchildren will celebrate it.”

  The sezar moved over to Golke and took him gently by the arm. “It has not yet been publicly announced, count, nor will it be for some time. But you must be told. Five nights ago, Imperial starships arrived in orbit. The first of a liberation fleet.”

  Golke swallowed and considered the words one by one. He felt a hide giddy. The pin in his hip suddenly ached like a bastard.