First and Only Read online

  As they lumbered through the stinking mass of enemy corpses choking the cistern, Gaunt thought to search them for other weapons, mechanical weapons that were unaffected by the energy-drain. But the scent of meat had brought the insect swarms down the passage, and the twisted bodies were now a writhing, revolting mass of carrion.

  There was no time. They pressed on. Gaunt tried not to think what wretchedness Mkoll and Caffran had suffered to scavenge the material for the torches.

  The torches themselves burned quickly, and illuminated little but the immediate environs of the bearer. Gaunt felt fatigue growing in his limbs, realising now more than ever that the energy-leaching affected more than lamp packs and las-gun charges. If he was weary, he dreaded to think what Domor was like. Twice the commissar had to call a halt and regroup as Mkoll and Rawne got too far ahead of the struggling party.

  How long had it been? His timepiece was dead. Gaunt began to wonder if the charges would even fire. Would their detonator circuits fizzle and die before they clicked over?

  They reached a jagged turn in the ancient, sagging tunnels. They must have been moving now for close on three hours, he guessed. There was no sign of Mkoll and Rawne ahead. He lit another torch and looked back as Larkin and Bragg moved up together past him, sharing a torch.

  'Go on,' he urged them, hoping this way was the right way. Without Mkoll's sharp senses, he felt lost. Which turn was it? Larkin and Bragg, gifted with that uncanny Tanith sixth sense of direction themselves, seemed in no doubt. 'Just move on and out. If you find Sergeant Mkoll or Major Rawne, tell them to keep moving too.'

  The huge shadow of Bragg and his wiry companion nodded silently to him and soon their guttering light was lost in the tunnel ahead.

  Gaunt waited. Where the feth were the others?

  Minutes passed, lingering, creeping.

  A light appeared. Caffran moved into sight, squinting out into the dark with Larkin's carbine held ready.

  'Sir?'

  'Where's Domor and the doctor?' Gaunt asked.

  Caffran looked puzzled. 'I haven't passed—'

  'You were the rearguard, trooper!'

  'I haven't passed them, sir!' Caffran barked.

  Gaunt bunched a fist and rapped his own forehead with it. 'Keep going. I'll go back.'

  'I'll go back with you, sir—' Caffran began.

  'Go on!' Gaunt snapped. 'That's an order, trooper! I'll go back and look.'

  Caffran hesitated. In the dim fire-flicker, Gaunt saw distress in the young man's eyes.

  'You've done all I could have asked of you, Caffran. Ycm and the others. First and Only, best of warriors. If I die in this pit, I'll die happy knowing I got as many of you out as possible.'

  He made to shake the man's hand. But Caffran seemed overwhelmed by the gesture and moved away.

  'I'll see you on the surface, commissar,' Caffran said firmly.

  Gaunt headed back down the funnel of rock. Caffran's light remained stationary behind him, watching him until he was out of sight.

  The rocky tunnel was damp and stifling. There was no sign of Dorden or the wounded Domor. Gaunt opened his mouth to call out and then silenced himself. The blackness around him was too deep and dark for a voice. And by now, the awakened Iron Men could be lumbering down the tunnels, alert to any sound.

  The passage veered to the left. Gaunt fought a feeling of panic. He didn't seem to be retracing his steps at all. He must have lost a turn somewhere. Lost, a voice hissed in his mind. Fereyd's voice? Dercius's? Macaroth's? You're lost, you witless, compassionate fool!

  His last torch sputtered and died. Darkness engulfed him. His eyes adjusted and he saw a pale glow far ahead. Gaunt moved towards it.

  The tunnel, now crumbling underfoot even as it sloped away, led into a deep cavern, natural and rocky, lit by a greenish bio-luminescent growth throbbing from fungus and lichens caking the ceiling and walls. It was a vast cavern full of shattered rock and dark pools. His foot slipped on loose pebbles and he struggled to catch himself. Almost invisible in the darkness, a bottomless abyss yawned to his right. A few steps on and he fumbled his way around the lip of another chasm. Black, oily fluid bubbled and popped in crater holes. Grotesque blind insects with dangling legs and huge fibrous wings whirred around in the semi-dark.

  Domor lay on his side on a shelf of cool rock, still and silent. Gaunt crawled over to him. The trooper had been hit on the back of the head with a blunt instrument. He was alive, just, the blow adding immeasurably to the damage he had already suffered. A burned out torch lay nearby, and there was a spilled medical kit, lying half-open, with rolls of bandages and flasks of disinfectant scattered around it.

  'Doctor?' Gaunt called.

  Dark shapes leapt down on him from either side. Fierce hands grappled him. He caught a glimpse of Jantine uniform as he fought back. The ambush was so sudden, it almost overwhelmed him, but he was tensed and ready for anything thanks to the warning signs of Domor and the medi-kit. He kicked out hard, breaking something within his assailant's body, and then rolled free, slashing with his silver Tanith blade. A man yelped – and then screamed deeper and more fully as his staggering form mis-footed and tumbled into a chasm. But the others had him, striking and pummelling him hard. Three sets of hands, three men.

  'Enough! Ebzan, enough! He's mine!'

  Dazed, Gaunt was dragged upright by the three Patricians. Through fogged eyes, across the cavern, he saw Flense advancing, pushing Dorden before him, a lasgun to the pale old medic's temple.

  'Gaunt.'

  'Flense! You fething madman! This isn't the time!'

  'On the contrary, colonel-commissar, this is the time. At last the time… for you, for me. A reckoning.'

  The three Jantine soldiers muscled Gaunt up to face Flense and his captive.

  'If it's the prize you want, Flense, you're too late. It'll be gone by the time you get there,' Gaunt hissed.

  'Prize? Prize?' Flense smiled, his scar-tissue twitching. 'I don't care for that. Let Dravere care, or that monster Heldane. I spit upon their prize! You are all I have come for!'

  'I'm touched,' Gaunt said and one of the men smacked him hard around the back of the head.

  'That's enough, Avranche!' Flense snapped. 'Release him!'

  Reluctantly, the three Jantine Patricians set him free and stood back. Head spinning, Gaunt straightened up to face Flense and Dorden.

  'Now we settle this matter of honour,' Flense said.

  Gaunt grinned disarmingly at Flense, without humour. 'Matter of honour? Are we still on this? The Tanith-Jantine feud? You're a perfect idiot, Flense, you know that?'

  Flense grimaced, pushing the pistol tighter into the wincing forehead of Dorden. 'Do you so mock the old debt? Do you want me to shoot this man before your very eyes?'

  'Mock on,' Dorden murmured. 'Better he shoot me than I listen to any more of his garbage.'

  'Don't pretend you don't know the depth of the old wound, the old treachery,' Flense said spitefully.

  Gaunt sighed. 'Dercius. You mean Dercius! Sacred Feth, but isn't that done with? I know the Jantine have never liked admitting they had a coward on their spotless honour role, but this is taking things too far! Dercius, General Dercius, Emperor rot his filthy soul, left my father and his unit to die on Kentaur. He ran away and left them. When I executed Dercius on Khedd all those years ago, it was a battlefield punishment, as is my right to administer as an Imperial Commissar!

  'He deserted his men, Flense! Throne of Earth, there's not a regiment in the Guard that doesn't have a black sheep, a wayward son! Dercius was the Jantine's disgrace! That's no reason to prolong a rivalry with me and my Ghosts! This mindless feuding has cost the lives of good men, on both sides! So what if we beat you to the punch on Fortis? So what of Pyrites and aboard the Absalom? You jackass Jantine don't know when to stop, do you? You don't know where honour ends and discipline begins!'

  Flense shot Dorden in the side of the head and the medic's body crumpled. Gaunt made to leap forward, inc
andescent with rage, but Flense raised the pistol to block him.

  'It's an honour thing, all right,' Flense spat, 'but forget the Jantine and the Tanith. It's an honour thing between you and me.'

  'What are you saying, Flense?' growled Gaunt through his fury.

  Your father, my father. I was the son of a dynasty on Jant Normanidus. The heir to a province and a wide estate. You sent my father to hell in disgrace and all my lands and titles were stripped from me. Even my family name. That went too. I was forced to battle my way up and into the service as a footslogger. Prove my worth, make my own name. My life has been one long, hellish struggle against infamy thanks to you.'

  'Your father?' Gaunt echoed.

  'My father. Aldo Dercius.'

  The truth of it resonated in Ibram Gaunt's mind. He saw, truly understood now, how this could end no other way. He launched himself at Flense.

  The pistol fired. Gaunt felt a stinging heat across his chest as he barrelled into the Patrician colonel. They rolled over on the rocks, sharp angles cutting into their flesh. Flense smashed the pistol butt into the side of Gaunt's head.

  Gaunt mashed his elbow sideways and felt ribs break. Flense yowled and clawed at the commissar, wrenching him over his head in a cartwheel flip. Gaunt landed on his back hard, struggled to rise and met Flense's kick in the face. He slammed back over the rocks and loose pebbles, skittering stone fragments out from under him.

  Flense leapt again, encountering Gaunt's up-swinging boot as he dived forward, smashing the wind out of his chest. Flense fell on Gaunt; the Patrician's hands clawed into his throat. Gaunt was aware of the chanting voices of the three Jantine soldiers watching, echoing Flense's name.

  As Flense tightened his grip and Gaunt choked, the chant changed from 'Flense!' to that family name that had been stripped from the colonel at the disgrace.

  'Dercius! Dercius! Dercius!'

  Dercius. Uncle Dercius. Uncle fething Dercius…

  Gaunt's punch lifted Flense off him in a reeling spray of mouth blood. He rolled and ploughed into the Patrician colonel, throwing three, four, five well-met punches.

  Flense recovered, kicked Gaunt headlong, and the commissar lay sprawled and helpless for a moment. Flense towered over him, a chunk of rock raised high in both hands to crush Gaunt's head.

  'For my father!' screamed Flense.

  'For mine!' hissed Gaunt. His Tanith war-knife bit through the air and pinned the Patrician's skull to the blackness for a second. With a mouthful of blood bubbling his scream, Flense teetered away backwards and fell with a slapping splash into a pool of black fluid.

  His body shattered and aching, Gaunt lay back on the rock shelf. His men, he thought, they'll…

  There was the serial crack of an exotic carbine, a las-rifle and a barb-lance. Gaunt struggled up. Caffran, Rawne, Mkoll, Larkin and Bragg stalked into the cavern. The three Jantine lay dead in the gloom.

  'The surface… we've got to…' Gaunt coughed.

  'We're going,' Rawne said, as Bragg lifted the helpless form of Domor.

  Gaunt stumbled across to Dorden. The medic was still alive. Drained of power by the cavern, Flense's pistol had only grazed him, as it had only grazed Gaunt's chest when he had thrown himself at Flense. Gaunt lifted Dorden in his arms. Caffran and Mkoll moved to help him, but Gaunt shrugged them off.

  'We haven't got much time now. Let's get out of here.'

  TWENTY-NINE

  The subsurface explosion ruptured most of the Target Primaris on Menazoid Epsilon and set it burning incandescently. Imperial forces pulled away from the vanquished moon and returned to their support ships in high orbit.

  Gaunt received a communique from Warmaster Macaroth, thanking him for his efforts and applauding his success.

  Gaunt screwed the foil up and threw it away. Bandaged and aching, he moved through the medical wing of the frigate Navarre, checking on his wounded… Domor, Dorden, Corbec, Larkin, Bragg, a hundred more…

  As he passed Corbec's cot, the grizzled colonel called him over in a hoarse, weak whisper.

  'Rawne told me you found the thing. Blew it up. How did you know?'

  'Corbec?'

  'How did you know what to do? Back on Pyrites, you told me the path would be hard. Even when we found out what we were looking for, you never said what you'd do when you found it. How did you decide?'

  Gaunt smiled.

  'Because it was wrong. You don't know what I saw down there, Colm. Men do insane things. Feth, if I'd been insane enough to try and harness what I found… if I'd succeeded… I could have made myself warmaster. Who knows, even emperor…'

  'Emperor Gaunt. Heh. Got a ring to it. Bit fething sacrilegious, though.'

  Gaunt smiled. The feeling was unfamiliar. The Vermilion secret of Epsilon was heretical and tainted by Chaos. Bad, which ever way you care to gloss it. But that's not what really made me destroy it.'

  Corbec hunkered up oton his elbows. 'Kidding me? Why then?'

  Ibram Gaunt put his head in his hands and sighed the sigh of someone released from a great burden. 'Someone told me what to do, colonel. It was a long time ago…'

  A MEMORY

  DARENDARA, TWENTY YEARS EARLIER

  Four Hyrkan troopers were splitting fruit in the snowy courtyard, lit by a ring of braziers. They had found some barrels in an undercroft and opened them to discover the great round globe-fruit from a summer crop stored in spiced oil. They were joking and laughing as they set them on a mounting block and hacked them into segments with their bayonets. One had stolen a big gilt serving platter from the kitchens, and they were piling it with slices, ready to carry it through to the main hall where the body of men were carousing and drinking to their victory.

  Night was stealing in across the shattered roofs of the Winter Palace, and stars were coming out, frosty points in the cold darkness. The Boy, the cadet commissar, wandered out across the courtyard, taking in the stillness. Distant voices, laughing and singing, filtered across the stone space. Gaunt smiled. He could make out a barrack-room victory song, harmonised badly by forty or more Hyrkan voices. Someone had substituted his name in the lyric in place of the hero. It didn't scan, but they sang it anyway, rousingly when it came to the bawdy parts.

  Gaunt's shoulder blades still throbbed from the countless congratulatory slaps he had taken in the last few hours. Maybe they would stop calling him The Boy' now.

  He looked up, catching sight of the landing lights of a dozen troopships ferrying fresh occupation forces down from orbit, their bulks invisible against the darkness of the night. The landing lights reminded him of constellations. He had never been able to make sense of the stars. People drew figures in them: warriors, bulls, serpents, crowns; arbitrary shapes, it seemed to him, imperfect sense made of stellar positions. Back on Manzipor, back home years ago, the cook Oric would sit him on his knee at nightfall and teach him the names of the star groups. Years ago. He really had been a boy then. Oric knew the names, drew the shapes, linked stars until they made a ram or a lion. Gaunt had never been able to see the shapes without the lines linking the stars.

  Here, now, he knew the lines of lights represented drop-ships, but he couldn't imagine their shapes. Just lights. Stars and lights, lights and stars, signifying meanings and purposes he couldn't yet see.

  Like the stars, the sweeping ship-lights occasionally went dim as they passed beyond the wreathes of smoke that were streaming, black against the black sky, from the parts of the Winter Palace that still smouldered.

  Buttoning his storm-coat, Gaunt crossed the wide expanse of flagstones, his boots slipping in the slush. He passed a great stack of Secessionist helmets, piled in a trophy mound. There was a stink of stale sweat and defeat about them. Someone had painted a crude version of the Hyrkan regimental griffon on each and every one.

  The men at the braziers looked up as his figure loomed out of the darkness.

  'It's the Boy!' one cried. Gaunt winced and smirked at the same time.

  'The Vi
ctor of Darendara!' another said with a drunken glee that entirely lacked irony.

  'Come and join the feast, sir!' the first said, wiping his juice-stained hands on the front of his tunic. 'The men would like to raise a glass or two with you.'

  'Or three!'

  'Or five or ten or a hundred!'

  Gaunt nodded his appreciation. 'I'll be in shortly. Open a cask for me.'

  They jibed and cackled back, returning to their work. As Gaunt moved past, one of them turned and held out a dripping half-moon of fruit.

  'Take this at least! Freshest thing we've had in weeks!'

  Gaunt took the segment, scooping the cluster of seeds and pith out of its core with a finger. In its smile of husky, oil-wet rind, the fruit was salmon-pink, ripe and heavy with water and juice. He bit into it as he strode away, waving his thanks to the men.

  It was sweet. Cool. The fruit flesh disintegrated in his hungry mouth and flooded his throat with rich, sugary fluid. Juice dribbled down his chin. He laughed, like a boy again. It was the sweetest thing he'd tasted on Darendara.

  No, not the sweetest.

  The sweetest thing he had tasted here was his first triumph. His first victorious command. His first chance to serve the Emperor and the Imperium and the service he had been raised to obey and love.

  In a lit doorway ahead, a figure appeared. Gaunt recognised the bulky silhouette immediately. He fumbled with the fruit segment, about to salute.

  'At ease, Ibram,' Oktar said. 'Cany on munching. That stuff looks good. Might just have to get myself a piece too.

  'Walk with me.'

  Gnawing the sweet flesh back to the rind, Gaunt fell in beside Oktar. They passed the men at the brazier again, and Oktar caught a whole fruit as it was tossed to him, splitting it open with his huge thumbs. The pair walked on wordlessly towards the Palace chapel grounds, through a herb-scented garden cast in blue darkness. Both ate, slobbering and spitting pips. Oktar handed a portion of his fruit to Gaunt and they finished it off.