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  Namatjira turned back towards the stairs. ‘Commit the Hort and the Torrent in full order to follow the Titans in and crush the enemy. No quarter, major general.’ He paused. ‘By the way, where are the Alpha Legion?’

  ‘I… I don’t know, sir,’ said Dev.

  ‘Signal them, major general,’ said Namatjira. For a second, a tiny flash of his carefully suppressed rage showed itself. ‘Inquire as to their status and ask, respectfully, if they intend to join us.’

  THERE WAS A distinct possibility that Hurt was already dead.

  Soneka stood on the brow of a dune hill eight kilometres west of the battle, and felt the presentiment sink in. He felt it in his marrow. Hurt was dead. Tactical had informed him that the lokers had been caught right in the path of the enemy onslaught. He had twice requested permission to draw the Clowns in along the southern service track to support the front line, but had been denied both times. The Clowns were to hold their position. ‘At this time, we do not know if the enemy will attempt to penetrate our line in other locations.’

  Soneka knew that made sense. The Army had to maintain a defence formation right along the earthwork wall, or be guilty of the most basic military sin. Besides, at the rate the dust cloud was creeping in, the Clowns would be in it too, in no more than an hour.

  Yet he dearly wished he could go to his friend’s aid.

  He’d had less than eight hours to get to know his new command. The transport had delivered Soneka and his bashaws to the Clown billet long after dark the night before. The Clowns had already begun their fireside revels, and had welcomed their temporary commander with vocal enthusiasm. It had turned into a late night under the stars, fuelled by the Clowns’ bottomless supply of znaps.

  Soneka had spent two hours talking with Strabo, fugging Strabo, who turned out to be a far more competent and likeable man than Dimi Shiban had suggested. Strabo had done his best to keep the company functioning and viable in the absence of a senior gene het. By the end of their chat, Soneka had felt a grudging admiration for the bashaw, who had evidently been holding the Clowns together with a glue composed of charisma and coercion. They spoke of Shiban, and Soneka related some of the things that had passed between him and Dimi at Tel Khat. He chose not to tell Strabo the truth of Shiban’s demise. How could a man explain that a fine officer like Dimiter Shiban had been executed by the Alpha Legion, and not have it sound like treason?

  Soneka stared out across the dawn landscape. Where the sun should have risen, the ominous pall of vapour hung across the skyline. The sky had congealed into a slick of brown and amber clouds, all wandering slowly against the wind and common sense. The vapour was brighter than the sky, a creamy mass like a deep desert dune caught in noon sunlight. Soneka could smell something on the wind, a resiny smell like myrrh or wormwood.

  He had been thinking about Shiban a lot in the last few days. Should he have noticed some change in him, some tell-tale sign that Shiban was not himself? How did one detect the trace of Chaos? The Alpha Legion, if they were to be believed, had some infallible method.

  If they were to be believed. Soneka tutted to himself. After all this, and I’m still not inclined to trust them.

  Drinking with Strabo the night before, Soneka had remembered an idle conversation he’d had with Shiban at Visages. It had meant nothing at the time, but in hindsight, Soneka wondered if it was some kind of sign or symptom.

  ‘I have been dreaming lately,’ Dimi had said. ‘In my dreams, I hear a verse.’

  ‘A verse, huh?’ Soneka had replied.

  ‘I’ll tell you how it goes, shall I?’

  ‘You remember it, then?’

  ‘Don’t you remember your dreams word for word?’ Shiban had asked.

  ‘Never,’ Soneka had said.

  Shiban had shrugged. ‘Fancy that.’

  ‘This verse?’ Soneka had prompted.

  That? Oh, that goes—

  From the hagg and hungrie goblin

  That into raggs would rend ye,

  And the spirit that stands by the naked man,

  In the Book of Moones defend ye!’

  ‘I know that,’ Soneka had said.

  ‘You do?’ Shiban had replied. ‘Really?’

  ‘My mother used to sing it to me when I was a boy. She called it the Bedlame Song. There were other verses that I now forget.’

  ‘Really? What does it mean?’

  Soneka had shrugged. ‘I have no idea.’

  He still had no idea, except for the awful feeling that it had been the shards of Nurthene bone lodged in Dimi Shiban’s throat shaping the words, and not Dimi Shiban at all.

  Those shards of bone had been polluting his friend, corrupting him. The Alpha legionnaires had seen it instantly, and turned their weapons on him. Chaos had laced its poison claws into Dimi Shiban’s soul.

  If that was true, why did Soneka know the verse? Why had his mother known it to sing it to him?

  ‘Sir?’

  Soneka snapped out of his thoughts and looked to his left. Lon was approaching, carbine swinging from its long strap.

  ‘Any news?’ Soneka asked.

  Lon shook his head. ‘Command repeats its instruction to hold here. Two units of Outremars are moving in from the east to cement this as a rearguard defence position.’

  Soneka nodded. ‘Thank you. Let’s make ready to slot them in.’

  ‘Oh, and Strabo wants you, sir,’ Lon added.

  Soneka looked back along the ridge of the dune. The Clowns were assembled in file order, facing the gauzy-wound in the dust cloud where the sun should have been climbing. Their shouldered pikes glinted in the toxic light, and the company banners hung like moribund kite sails. Strabo was picking his way up the cinnamon dust of the dune towards them, followed by two riflemen, and a tall man wearing the uniform of a geno het.

  Soneka did not recognise the het.

  ‘Sir,’ said Strabo, arriving and saluting. ‘This het has just reached our position and requests a moment of your time.’

  ‘His name?’

  ‘Uhm—’ Strabo began.

  ‘Shon Fikal,’ the het said, sticking out his hand. Soneka took it and shook it. The name meant nothing.

  ‘Could we have a word in private?’ Fikal requested.

  Soneka nodded. He looked back at Lon. ‘Have the Clowns present,’ he ordered, ‘Akkad formation, with Lycad reserve lines. When they get here, draw the Outremar forces around to the south, and have them draw in along our left flank. Then we’ll meet with their officers. Relay that to all, especially—’

  ‘Fugging Strabo?’ Strabo asked.

  Soneka grinned. ‘Yes, especially him.’

  Lon and Strabo laughed, and turned back down the hill to the waiting company.

  ‘Shon Fikal?’ asked Soneka, drawing the het aside, ‘and what company does Shon Fikal serve?’

  The het shrugged. ‘You may know me better by another name, sir,’ he said. ‘Konig Heniker.’

  Soneka stared at him. His hand began to move towards his holstered sidearm.

  ‘No need for that,’ said Heniker. He looked Soneka in the face. ‘My real name is John Grammaticus, and I need to get a message to the Alpha Legion. It’s my understanding that you can arrange that.’

  ‘Your understanding?’

  ‘Don’t be coy. Is it true or not?’

  ‘Possibly,’ Soneka replied carefully.

  ‘Let’s hope so. And quickly. This is the Black Dawn, and we have very little time left.’

  BRONZI REACHED A tel two kilometres south of the fighting line with about half of his company. They were all exhausted and caked in dust. It had taken thirty minutes of brutal skirmishing to break through the edges of the host pouring across them. Their heads were ringing from the demented melee, and Bronzi knew he wasn’t the only one who couldn’t clear his mind or stop his hands from shaking.

  Two Outremar units had made it to the tel, fragments of demolished strengths, along with a score of Torrent gunners who had been forced to abandon their a
rtillery and flee. Bronzi took charge of the lot of them, reporting numbers and position to Command. He had his bashaws check that the bewildered gunners were armed, even if it was simply with a knife or a broken wheel spoke.

  Through his scope, Bronzi could see a long fan of Imperial armour drawing up across the desert from the west, trailing individual wakes of dust from their churning tracks. They were Zanzibari Hort, in full force, pushing up from the marshalling fields at Wadi Suhn. He wondered why they seemed to be hanging back. It was Major General Dev’s habit to plunge his fast armour into enemy infantry cohorts like heavy cavalry, and they were certainly gathering in significant enough numbers to make a difference, but they seemed to be dawdling a kilometre or so west of the enemy rush.

  The explanation appeared.

  Dull giants loomed out of the west through the ochre dust, trudging slowly up out of the great Ahn Aket wadi. They rose into view out of the desert sink, burnished monsters that walked like gods. Jeveth’s Titans had reached the fighting line.

  There were three of them. The driving dust was such that their distant shapes were obscured from view several times, despite their scale. Bronzi could hear the occasional metal creak or squeal of their vast, lumbering chassis. They strode through the waiting formations of Hort armour at a relentless pace dwarfing the heavy tanks and gun platforms and, line abreast, advanced on the Nurthene host.

  The first of them began to fire.

  Bronzi winced and lowered his scope. The pulsing flashes of the Titan’s limb mounts were dazzling bright, and left a neon after-image on his retinas.

  ‘Great Terra,’ he murmured.

  Fat beams of luminous energy began to rake out of their cannons, and were quickly supported by huge, pumping bolts of light like shooting stars, and sooty blurs of hard ordnance. The Titans seemed to smoke from head to foot, but it was just dust coming off them. The sustained recoil vibration of their weapon arrays was so great that the dust and sand accumulated during their trek to the front was shaking off their vast, plated forms in powdery swathes.

  Bronzi could hear the shriek and wail of their las weapons, and the brisk thunder of their machine cannons. The sounds rolled to him, out of synch with the flashes and light bursts. He’d seen Titans at war before, and the sight never failed to fill him with awe. He was always unprepared for the astonishing rapidity of their rate of fire, the zipping, torrential pulse and spit of green, amber and white light that unloaded from their forearms and shoulders.

  The ground ahead of their slow advance began to ripple and distort as it sprouted sudden forests of blooming dust, thrown-up earth and writhing fireballs. A juddering, flickering carpet of destruction spread out before them, billowing dark smoke and vaporised sand back into the edges of the pale fog that the Nurthene had brought with them. Bronzi could feel the relentless plosive concussion of the onslaught quaking his viscera. The ground was shaking.

  The men around him started to cheer and bellow, but Bronzi could feel their dismay. It was not a scent that a man could witness without an involuntary shiver of fear.

  He wondered how many of the screaming enemy had perished in the first second, how many in the second, or the third. It was impossible to see, even with his scope. He could resolve nothing except the churning smoke, the serried flicker of furious impacts, the sudden chains of fireballs, igniting and expanding and overlapping. For a split second, he glimpsed a dark shape that had to be a giant caiman rise up out of the flurry of detonations, and then crash back like the hull of a sinking ship.

  The smell of wormwood had gone. In its place was the reek of superheated gases, of fycelene, of molten, vitrified sand and of burning flesh.

  The Titans ploughed on, stepping through the seething, burning devastation they had wrought, like men walking through low mist. Their bombardment did not relent. Behind them, the Hort armour began to spur forwards, and Bronzi heard the distant slap and howl of tank guns beginning to hammer.

  The Titans reached the edge of the Nurthene storm cloud, and waded into its pale fog. For the first time since dawn, that ominous pall began to recoil and fold back on itself, as if the three huge war machines were a fresh breeze out of the desert, slowly blowing the stain away.

  SONEKA LED HENIKER, or whatever his name was, down the wadi to where the company’s support vehicles sat. He felt a deep unease, as if he was embarking on some unconscionable betrayal. He also knew it was far too late to consider such niceties. He’d made a choice, and he had to live with it.

  ‘They’re looking for you,’ he said.

  ‘Who is?’ asked Heniker.

  ‘Everyone,’ Soneka replied.

  ‘I know. I also know who I want to be found by.’

  ‘The Astartes?’

  Heniker nodded.

  ‘Why?’ asked Soneka.

  ‘It’s complicated. The simple answer is that I believe they will listen to me. Your masters in the Imperial Army would simply execute me as the Nurthene agent they believe I am.’

  Heniker looked at Soneka with a strange smile. ‘Except, they’re not your masters, are they?’ he asked. ‘Not any more. I mean, you don’t answer to them first, do you?’

  Soneka did not reply.

  ‘How did that happen?’ Heniker asked. ‘Have you been an operative for a long time, or was it a recent thing? Did they co-opt you or coerce you?’

  ‘That’s enough.’

  ‘I’m simply interested, interested in how they work, how their mechanism functions.’

  ‘You’re not asking the right man,’ Soneka told him. ‘Just wait here.’

  Heniker nodded and remained where he was. Soneka walked over to an open-topped staff-track, and told the driver to go for a walk.

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘I need to use the vox,’ said Soneka. ‘Clearance only.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ the man said, and jumped out of the cab. He wandered away in the direction of a group of drivers sitting in the shade of a transport.

  Soneka switched on the track’s vox unit and let it warm up. He kept glancing over at Heniker, but the man showed no sign of disappearing. When the vox was up to power, Soneka reached into his pocket and took out his biometric. He looked at it for a moment. It would be an easy thing to slot it in, contact Mu, and make a report. An easy thing, Company first, Imperium second, geno before gene. Was it really too late for that now?

  He sighed, put the biometric down on the top of the set, and typed a seven digit channel code into it instead. The vox whispered for a moment, and then a voice answered.

  ‘Speak and identify.’

  ‘Lernaean 841,’ said Soneka.

  The vox murmured. As Soneka watched, the encryption lights on its display lit up, one by one. ‘Speak.’

  ‘Is this link secure?’ Soneka asked.

  ‘You can see that for yourself.’

  ‘Is this link secure?’

  ‘Yes, Peto. Be assured of it. Do you have information for us?’

  Soneka swallowed. ‘I have Konig Heniker.’ There was a pause. ‘Repeat, Peto.’

  ‘I have Konig Heniker,’ Soneka said.

  ‘In your custody?’ asked the vox.

  ‘In my company. He surrendered himself to me ten minutes ago. He says he has a message for you, vital, apparently.’

  There was another pause.

  ‘What is your location, Peto?’

  Soneka read out his chart referent.

  ‘Bring him to us.’

  ‘I can’t just—’

  ‘Bring him to us.’

  ‘Listen to me, I am on active station. My company is in the field. Have you seen what’s going on out there?’

  ‘We have.’

  ‘I can’t just leave my post, I have a duty—’

  ‘Yes, you have,’ the vox said. There is no alternative. Trust us. Bring Heniker to CR583 immediately. We will cover you.’

  ‘I—’ Soneka began.

  ‘Is that understood?’

  ‘Look, it’s not as if I can—’

  �
�Is that understood?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Soneka quietly.

  ‘Please confirm that this is understood.’

  ‘Yes, it is,’ said Soneka.

  ‘Please confirm the chart referent.’

  ‘CR583.’

  The link went dead. The encryption lights faded out, one by one.

  Soneka sat back and exhaled hard. He keyed off the set, retrieved his biometric, and got out of the track. ‘Well?’ asked Heniker. ‘You look unhappy.’

  ‘Don’t talk to me. Just shut up and follow me.’

  They slogged back up the soft drift sand of the wadi, and Soneka made Heniker wait while he called to Lon. ‘What’s up?’ Lon asked, jogging over. ‘I’ve got to go.’

  ‘What?’ Lon laughed. ‘Go? Go where?’

  ‘I can’t explain. It’s… it’s classified.’

  Lon stared at him. ‘Classified? What are you talking about, het? Are you Army Intelligence all of a sudden?’

  ‘Something like that.’ Soneka jerked his head in Heniker’s direction. ‘Listen, Lon, I think this guy’s got information,’ he whispered. ‘I think he might even be one of the spies everyone’s gossiping about.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Just listen. I need to deliver him to the genewhips or someone.’

  ‘How long are you going to be?’ asked Lon.

  ‘Half an hour. I don’t know. You’re in charge. Tell Strabo you’re in charge, my authority.’

  ‘You’ve only been with the Clowns a few hours,’ Lon began.

  ‘Then they’re not going to miss me much, are they?’ Soneka replied. ‘This is important. I’ll be back as quickly as I can.’

  The bashaw looked unhappy. Finally, he shrugged his heavy, heterosis-magnified shoulders. ‘Whatever you think best, sir,’ he said.

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Does Uxor Mu know about this?’ Lon asked.

  Soneka shook his head. ‘I can’t trust the vox, not even encrypted.’

  ‘And if she asks for you? If Command asks for you?’

  ‘Tell them to stand by. Tell them I have left my station to deal with a critical matter, and that I will report to her as soon as I can.’

  Lon nodded.

  ‘March in fortune,’ Soneka said. ‘You too, het.’