[Gaunt's Ghosts 04] - Honour Guard Read online

  Elthan went a little red around the edges and then blustered on. “I expect your support on this, commissar! Are you not here for the express purpose of disciplining and supervising this… this broken man?”

  “I am here to discharge the duties of an Imperial commissar,” said Hark simply.

  “You heard the recon reports!”

  “I did,” said Hark. “We were warned of enemy activity. We moved judiciously and took precautions. Despite that, they surprised us. It’s called an ambush. It happens in war. It’s part of the risk you take in a military action.”

  “Are you siding with him?” asked Elthan.

  “I’m remaining neutral and objective. I’m pointing out that even the best commander must expect attacks and losses. I’m suggesting you return to your vehicle and supervise the resumption of this convoy.”

  “I don’t—”

  “No, you don’t understand. Because you are not a soldier, intendant. We have a saying on my home world: sometimes you get the carniv and sometimes the carniv gets you.”

  Elthan turned disdainfully and stalked away. Down the road, a trio of Pardus tanks had lowered their dozer blades and were ploughing the chelon carcasses off the thoroughfare. Headlamps gleamed like little full moons in the dusk.

  “What’s the matter?” Hark asked Gaunt. “You look… I don’t know… startled, I suppose.”

  Gaunt shook his head and didn’t reply. In truth, he was startled at the way Hark had come to his defence. Elthan had been talking a lot of crap, but he’d been spot on about Hark’s purpose here. It was common knowledge. Hark himself had been brutally matter-of-fact about it from the outset. He was Lugo’s punisher, here to oversee the end of Gaunt’s command. Gaunt knew little of Hark’s background or past career, but the same was clearly not true in reverse. Hark had casually reeled off the most notable actions of the Ghosts under Gaunt from memory. And he’d spoken with what seemed genuine admiration.

  “Have you made a particular study of my career, Hark?”

  “Of course. I have been appointed to serve the Tanith First as commissar. I’d be failing in that duty if I did not thoroughly acquaint myself with its history and operations. Wouldn’t I?”

  “And what did you learn from that study?”

  “That, despite a history of clashes with the upper echelons of command, you have a notable service record. Hagia is your first true failure, but it is a failure of such magnitude that it threatens to eclipse all you have done before.”

  “Really? Do you really believe I deserve sole blame for the disaster in the Doctrinopolis?”

  “Lord General Lugo is a lord general, Gaunt. That is the most complete answer I can give you.”

  Gaunt nodded with an unfriendly smile. “There is justice beyond rank, Hark. Slaydo believed that.”

  “Rest his good soul, the Emperor protects. But Macaroth is Warmaster now.”

  The candid honesty of the response struck Gaunt. For the first time, he felt something other than venom towards Commissar Viktor Hark. To be part of the Imperial Guard was to be part of a complex system of obedience, loyalty and service. More often than not, that system forced men into obligations and decisions they’d otherwise not choose to make. Gaunt had butted up against the system all his career. Was he now seeing that mirrored in another? Or was Hark just dangerously persuasive?

  The latter notion seemed likely. Charisma was one of the chief tools of a good commissar, and Hark seemed to have it in spades. To say the right thing at the right time for the right effect. Was he just playing with Gaunt?

  “I’ve detailed some platoons to bury the dead here,” Hark said. “We can’t afford to carry them with us. A small service should do it, consecrated by the Pardus chaplain. The wounded are a bigger problem. We have nine serious, including Captain Herodas. Medic Curth tells me at least two of them won’t live if they don’t reach a hospital by tomorrow. The others will perish if we keep them with us.”

  “Your suggestion?”

  “We’re less than a day out from the Doctrinopolis. I suggest we sacrifice a truck, and send them back to the city with a driver and maybe a few guards.”

  “That would be my choice too. Arrange it, please, Hark. Select a Munitorium driver and one Ghost trooper, one single good man, as armed escort.”

  Hark nodded. There was a long pause and Gaunt thought Hark was about to speak again.

  Instead he walked away into the gathering gloom.

  It was approaching midnight when the last elements of the honour guard convoy rolled in to the deserted village of Mukret. Both moons were up, one small and full, the other a large, perfect geometric semicircle, and dazzling ribbons of stars decorated the dark blue sky.

  Gaunt looked up at them as he jumped down from his command vehicle. The Sabbat Worlds. The battleground he had come to with Slaydo all those years before. The starscape of the crusade. For a moment he felt as if it all depended on this little world, on this little night, on this little continent. On him.

  They were the Sabbat Worlds because this was Sabbat’s world. The saint’s place. If ever a soldier had to face his final mission, none could be more worthy. Slaydo would have approved, Gaunt considered. Slaydo would have wanted to be here. They weren’t storming some fortress-world or decimating the legions of the arch-enemy. Such worthy glories and battle honours seemed slight and meaningless compared to this.

  They were here for the saint.

  Alpha-AR had secured the empty town. The tanks and carriers rolled in, choking the cold night air with their thunderous exhausts and dazzling lamps.

  The main town road was full of vehicles and disembarking troops. Braziers were lit, and pickets arranged.

  Mkoll saluted Gaunt as he approached. “You had some trouble, sir.”

  “Sometimes the carniv gets you, sergeant,” Gaunt replied. “Sir?”

  “From tomorrow, we run a spearhead under your command. Hard armour, fast moving.”

  “Not my way, sir, but if you insist.”

  “I do. We were caught napping. And paid for it. My mistake.”

  “No one’s mistake, sir.”

  “Perhaps. But it can only get worse from here. Spearhead, from Mukret, at dawn. Can you manage that?” Mkoll nodded.

  “Do you want to choose the formation or do you trust me to do it?”

  The scout sergeant smiled. “You call the shots, sir. I’ve always preferred it that way.”

  “I’ll consult Kleopas and let you know.”

  They walked through the bustle of dismounting personnel.

  “I’ve met a man here,” Mkoll said. “A sort of vagrant priest. You should talk to him.”

  “To confess my sins?”

  “No sir. He’s… Well, I don’t know what he is, but I think you’ll like him.”

  “Right,” said Gaunt. He and Mkoll sidestepped as Tanith troopers backed across their path carrying ammo boxes and folded mortars for the perimeter defence.

  “Sorry, sir,” said Larkin, struggling with a heavy shell crate.

  “As you were, Larks,” Gaunt smiled.

  “Tough luck about Milo,” said Larkin.

  Gaunt felt his blood chill. For one dreadful moment, he wondered if he’d missed Brin’s name on the casualty roll.

  “Tough luck?”

  “Him going back to the city like that. He’ll miss the show.”

  Gaunt nodded warily, and called over Sergeant Baffels, Milo’s platoon commander. “Where’s Trooper Milo?”

  “Heading back to the Doctrinopolis with the wounded. I thought you knew, sir.” Baffels, chunky and bearded, looked awkwardly up at the colonel-commissar.

  “Hark selected him?”

  Baffels nodded. “He said you wanted a good man to ride shotgun for the wounded.”

  “Carry on, sergeant.”

  Gaunt walked through the busy activity of the convoy, away, down to the river’s edge, where the rippling water reflected back the moons and the chirrup of night insects filled every angle of the darkne
ss.

  Milo. Gaunt had always joked about the way the men saw Brin Milo as his lucky charm. He’d teased them for their superstitious foolishness. But in his heart, silently, he’d always felt that it was actually true. Milo had a charmed life. He had the pure flavour of lost Tanith about him. He was their last and only link to the Ghosts’ past.

  Gaunt had always kept him close for that reason, though he’d never, ever admitted it.

  Hark had chosen Milo to be the one to return to the holy city. Accident? Coincidence? Design?

  Hark had already stated he had studied the Tanith records. He had to know how psychologically important Brin was to the Ghosts. To Gaunt.

  Gaunt had a nasty feeling he’d been deliberately undermined.

  Worse still, he had a feeling of doom. For the first time, they were going out without Milo. He already knew this mission was going to be his last.

  Now, with a sense of terrifying premonition, he felt it was going to rum bad. Very bad indeed.

  Far away now, chasing back down the Tembarong Road towards the Doctrinopolis, the lone troop track thundered through the night.

  Milo had ridden in the cab for the first part of the overnight journey, but the obese Munitorium driver had proved to be surly and taciturn, and then had begun to exhibit a chronic flatulence problem that would have been offensive even in an open-topped car.

  Milo had climbed back to spend the rest of the trip with the wounded men.

  Commissar Hark had singled him out for this duty. Milo wondered why. There were any number of troopers who could have done the job.

  Milo wondered if Hark had chosen him because he hadn’t been a proper trooper long. Despite his uniform, some of the Ghosts still regarded him as the token civilian. He resented that. He was a fething Imperial Guardsman and he’d take physical issue with anyone who doubted that Even more, he resented missing out on what he knew would be the last action of the Tanith Ghosts under Ibram Gaunt He doubted there would be much glory in the mission, but still he yearned to be there.

  He felt cheated.

  Then, as he watched the moons’ light flickering on the river dashing by, he wondered if Gaunt had told Hark to select him. His encounter with Gaunt in the Universitariat still stung. Had Gaunt really wished him away?

  Most of the wounded were unconscious or asleep. Milo sat beside Captain Herodas in the back of the rocking track. The captain was pale from blood loss and trauma and his face was pinched. Milo was afraid Herodas wasn’t going to make it back to the Doctrinopolis, despite Medic Curth’s ministrations. He’d lost so much blood.

  “Don’t you go dying on me, sir,” he growled at the supine officer.

  “I won’t, I swear it,” Herodas murmured. “Just a bad wound. They’ll fix you up. Feth, you’ll get an augmetic knee, soon as look at you!”

  Herodas laughed but no sound came out of him.

  “Sergeant Varl in my mob, he’s got an augmetic shoulder. The latest fething bionics!”

  “Yeah?” whispered Herodas. Milo wanted to keep him talking. About anything, any old nonsense. He was worried what might happen if Herodas fell asleep.

  “Oh yes, sir. The latest thing! Claims he can crack nalnuts in his armpit now, he does.”

  Herodas chuckled. “You’re gonna miss all the fun coming back with us,” he said.

  Milo grimaced. “Not so much fun. The colonel-commissar’s swansong. No great glory in being there for that.”

  “He’s a good man,” mumbled Herodas, moving his body as much as the pain allowed to resettle more comfortably. “A fine commander. I didn’t know him well, but from what I saw, I’d have been proud to be numbered as one of his.”

  “He does his job,” said Milo.

  “And more. Vervunhive! I read the dispatches about that. What an action! What a command! Were you there for that?”

  “Hab by fething hab, sir.”

  Herodas coughed and smiled. “Something of note. Something to be proud of.”

  “It was just the usual,” Milo lied, his eyes now hot with angry tears.

  “Glory like that you take it with you to the end of your days, trooper.” Herodas fell silent and seemed to be sleeping.

  “Captain? Captain?”

  “What?” asked Herodas, blinking up.

  “I — nothing. I see the lights. I see the Doctrinopolis. We’re almost there.”

  “That’s good, trooper.”

  “Milo. It’s Milo, sir.”

  “That’s good, Milo. Tell me what you see.”

  Milo rose up in the flatbed of the bouncing truck and looked out through the windy dark at the lambent flames burning distantly on the Citadel. They made a beacon in the night.

  “I see the holy city, sir.”

  “Do you?”

  “Yes, I see it. I see the lights.”

  “How I want to be there,” Herodas whispered.

  “Sir? What did you say? Sir?” Milo looked down out of the wind, holding on tight to the truck’s stanchions.

  “My name is Lucan Herodas. I don’t feel like being a ‘sir’ anymore. Call me by my name.”

  “I will, Lucan.”

  Herodas nodded slowly. “Tell me what you see now, Milo.”

  “I see the city gates. I see the roofs and towers. I see the temples glowing like starflies in the dark.”

  Lucan Herodas didn’t reply. The truck rolled in under the Pilgrim Gate. Dawn was just a suggestion at the horizon.

  Ten minutes later, the truck drew up in the yard of the western city infirmary.

  By then, Herodas was dead.

  EIGHT

  THE WOUNDED

  “As I have been called to the holy work, so I will call others to me.”

  —Saint Sabbat, epistles

  “A fine, fair, bright morning, Colm, you old dog,” Dorden announced as he walked into the little side room that had been reserved for the Tanith second-in-command. Early daylight poured in like milk through the west facing casement. The air was cool with the promise of a hot day ahead. A smell of antiseptic wafted in from the hospital halls.

  There came no immediate reply, but then Corbec was a notoriously heavy sleeper.

  “Did you sleep well?” Dorden asked conversationally, moving towards the cabinet beside the gauze-veiled bed.

  He hoped the sound of his voice would slowly, gently rouse the colonel so he could check him over. More than one orderly had received a slap in the mouth for waking Corbec too abruptly.

  Dorden picked up a small pottery flask of painkillers. “Colm? How did you sleep? With all the noise, I mean?”

  The sounds of the relentless evacuation had gone on all night, and even now, he could hear the thump of equipment and bustle of bodies in the street outside. Every half hour, the ascending wail of transporter jets roared over the Doctrinopolis as bulk transports lifted away into the sky.

  The considerable, gothic manse of the Scholam Medicae Hagias lay on the west bank of the holy river facing the Universitariat, and thus occupied the heart of one of the most populated and active city quarters. A municipal infirmary and teaching hospital attached to the Universitariat, the Scholam Medicae was one of the many city institutions sequestered by the Imperial liberation force to treat wounded men.

  “Funny I don’t seem to be sleeping at all well myself,” Dorden said absently, weighing the pill-bottle in his hand. “Too many dreams. I’m dreaming about my son a lot these days. Mikal, you know. He comes to me in my dreams all the time. I haven’t worked out what he’s trying to tell me, but he’s trying to tell me something.”

  Below the little room’s window, an argument broke out. Heated voices rose in the still, clear air.

  He went to the window, unlatched the casement and leaned out. “Keep it down!” he yelled into the street below. “This is meant to be a hospital! Have you no compassion?”

  The voices dropped away and he turned back to face the veiled bed.

  “This feels light to me,” he said softly, gesturing with the flask. “Have you been
taking too many? It’s no joke, Corbec. These are powerful drags. If you’re abusing the dose…”

  His voice trailed off. He stepped towards the bed and pulled back the gauzy drapes.

  The bed was empty. Rucked, slept in, but empty.

  “What the feth—?” Dorden murmured.

  The basilica of Macharius Hagia was a towering edifice on the east side of the Holyditch chelon markets. It had four steeples clad in grey-green ashlar, a stone imported from off-world and which contrasted starkly with the pinks and russets and creams of the local masonry. A massive statue of the Lord Solar in full armour, raising his lightning claws to the sky in a gesture of defiance or vengeance, stood upon a great brick plinth in the entrance arch.

  Inside, out of the day’s rising heat, it was cold and expansive. Doves and rat-birds fluttered in the open roof spaces and flickered across the staggeringly broad beams of sunlight that stabbed down into the nave.

  The place was busy, even at this early hour. Blue-robed ayatani bustled about, preparing for one of the morning rites. Esholi fetched and carried for them, or attended the needs of the many hundreds of worshippers gathering in the grand nave. From the east side, the breeze carried the smells of cooking fish and bread, the smells of the public kitchens adjoining the temple, whose charitable work was to produce alms and free sustenance twice a day for the visiting pilgrims.

  The smells made Ban Daur hungry. As he limped in down the main colonnade amidst the other faithful, his stomach gurgled painfully. He stopped for a moment and leaned hard on his walking stick until the dizzying discomfort passed. He hadn’t eaten much since taking his wound, hadn’t done much of anything, in fact. The medics had banned him from even getting out of bed, but he knew best how he felt. Strong, surprisingly strong. And lucky. The ritual blade had missed his heart by the most remarkably slim margin. The doctors worried the wound might have left a glancing score across the heart muscle, a weakness that might rupture if he exerted himself too soon.

  But he could not just lie in bed. This world, Hagia… It was coming to an end. The streets were full of military personnel and civilians trying to pack up and ship out the contents of their lives. There was fear in the air, and a strange sense of unreality.