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  He tries to ram the bayonet into Gaunt’s gut. The blade is rusty, but the thrust is strong and practised. Gaunt leaps backwards.

  “For the Emperor!” Gaunt yells.

  The man replies with a jabbering stream of obscenity. The words are broken, and have been purloined from an alien language, and he is only able to pronounce the parts of them that fit a human mouth and voice-box. Blood leaks out of his gums and dribbles over his cracked lips.

  He lunges again. The tip of the sword bayonet goes through Gaunt’s storm coat and snags the hip pocket of his field jacket underneath.

  Gaunt shoots the man in the face with his bolt pistol.

  The corpse goes over backwards, hard. Bloody back-spatter over-paints the dirt filming Gaunt’s face and clothes.

  “Fire, fire! Fire at will!” Gaunt yells. He’s seen enough. “Men of Tanith, pick your targets and fire at will!”

  Another PDFer charges in at him through an archway, backlit for a second by a pulse of lightning. He fires a shot from his rifle that hits the wall behind Gaunt and adds to the wet haze fuming the air. Gaunt fires back and knocks the man out of the archway, tumbling into two of his brethren.

  The Tanith advance has been rotated out of line by the sudden attack, and Gaunt has been pushed to the eastern end of the formation. He has lost sight of Corbec. It is hard to issue any useful commands, because he has little proper overview on which to base command choices.

  Gaunt tries to reposition himself. He hugs the shadows, keeping the crumbling pillars to his back. The firefight has lit up the entire concourse. He listens to the echoes, to the significant sound values coming off the Tanith positions. Gaunt can hear the hard clatter of full auto and, in places along the rubble line, see the jumping petals of muzzle flashes. The Tanith are eager, but inexperienced. The lasrifles they have been issued with at the Founding are good, new weapons, fresh-stamped and shipped in from forge worlds. Many of the Tanith recruits will never have had an automatic setting on a weapon before; most will have been used to single shot or even hard-round weapons. Finding themselves in a troop-fight ambush, they are unleashing maximum firepower, which is great for shock and noise but not necessarily the most effective tactic, under any circumstances.

  “Corbec!” Gaunt yells. “Colonel Corbec! Tell the men to select single f—”

  He ducks back as his voice draws enemy fire. Plumes of mire and slime spurt up from the slabs he is using as cover. Impacts spit out stinging particles of stone. He tries shouting again, but the concentration of fire gets worse. The vapour billowing off the shot marks gets in his mouth and makes him retch and spit. Two or three of the PDFers have advanced on his position, and are keeping a heavy fire rate sustained. He can half see them through the veiling mist, calmly standing and taking shots at him. He can’t see them well enough to get a decent shot back.

  Gaunt scrambles backwards, dropping down about a metre between one rucked level of paving slabs and another, an ugly seismic fracture in the street. Loose shots are whining over his head, smacking into the plaster facade of a reclining guild house and covering it with black pockmarks. He clambers in through a staring window.

  A Tanith trooper inside switches aim at him and nearly shoots him.

  “Sacred feth. Sorry, sir!” the trooper exclaims.

  Gaunt shakes his head.

  “I snuck up on you,” he replies.

  There are four Tanith men in the ground floor of the guild house. They are using the buckled window apertures to lay fire across the concourse from the east. They’d been on the eastern end of the advance force when it turned unexpectedly, and thus have been effectively cut off. Gaunt can’t chastise them. Oddities of terrain and the dynamic flow of a combat situation do that sometimes. Sometimes you just get stuck in a tight corner.

  For similar reasons, he’s got stuck there with them.

  “What’s your name?” he asks the man who’d almost shot him, even though he knows it perfectly well.

  “Domor,” the man replies.

  “I don’t think we want to spend too much more time in here, do we, Domor?” Gaunt says. Enemy fire is pattering off the outside walls with increasing fury. It is causing the building to vibrate, and spills of earth, like sand in a time-glass, are sifting down from the bulging roof. There’s a stink of sewage, of broken drains. If enemy fire doesn’t finish them, it will finish the building, which will die on their heads.

  “I’d certainly like to get out of here if I can, sir,” Domor replies. He has a sharp, intelligent face, with quick eyes that suggest wit and honesty.

  “Well, we’ll see what we can do,” Gaunt says.

  One of the other men groans suddenly.

  “What’s up, Piet?” Domor calls. “You hit?”

  The trooper is down at one of the windows, pinking rounds off into the concourse outside. “I’m fine,” he answers, “but do you hear that?”

  Gaunt and Domor clamber up to the sill alongside him. For a moment, Gaunt can’t hear anything except the snap and whine of las-fire, and the brittle rattle of masonry debris falling from the roof above.

  Then he hears it, a deeper noise, a throaty rasp.

  “Someone’s got a burner,” says the trooper in a depressed tone. “Someone out there’s got a burner.” Domor looks at Gaunt.

  “Gutes is right, isn’t he?” he asks. “That’s a flamer, isn’t it? That’s the noise a flamer makes?” Gaunt nods. “Yes,” he says.

  None of the Munitorum skivvies has the nerve to argue when Feygor helps himself to one of the full pots of caffeine on the mess tent stove.

  Feygor carries the pot over to where Rawne is sitting at a mess table with the usual repeat offenders. Meryn, young and eager to impress, has brought a tray of tin cups. Brostin is smoking a lho-stick and flicking his brass igniter open and shut. Raess is cleaning his scope. Caober is putting an edge on his blade. Costin has produced his flask, and is pouring a jigger of sacra into each mug “to keep the rain out”.

  Feygor dishes out the brew from the pot.

  “Come on, then,” says Rawne.

  Varl grins, and slides the letter out of his inside pocket. He holds it gently by the bottom corners and sniffs it, as though it is a perfumed billet-doux. Then he licks the tip of his right index finger to lift the envelope’s flap.

  He starts to read to himself.

  “Oh my!” he says.

  “What?” asks Meryn.

  “Listen to this… My darling Ibram, how I long for your strong, manly touch…” Varl begins, as if reading aloud.

  “Don’t be a feth-head, Varl,” warns Rawne. “What does it actually say?”

  “It’s from somebody called Blenner,” says Varl, scanning the sheet. “It goes on a bit. Umm, I think they knew each other years back. And from the date on this, he’s been carrying it around for a while. This Blenner says he’s writing because he can’t believe that Gaunt got passed over after ‘all he did at Balhaut’. He’s asking Gaunt if he chose to go with ‘that bunch of no-hope backwoodsmen’, which I think would be us.”

  “It would,” says Rawne.

  Varl sniffs. “Anyway, this charming fellow Blenner says he can’t believe Gaunt would have taken the field promotion willingly. Listen to this, he says, ‘what was Slaydo thinking? Surely the Old Man had made provision for you to be part of the command structure that succeeded him. Throne’s sake, Ibram! You know he was grooming! How did you let this slight happen to you? Slaydo’s legacy would have protected you for years if you’d let it’.”

  Varl looks up at the Tanith men around the table. “Wasn’t Slaydo the name of the Warmaster?” he asks. “The big honking bastard commander?”

  “Yup,” says Feygor.

  “Well, this can’t mean the same Slaydo, can it?” asks Costin.

  “Of course it can’t,” says Caober. “It must be another Slaydo.”

  “Well, of course,” says Varl, “because otherwise it would mean that the feth-wipe commanding us is a more important feth-wipe than we ever i
magined.”

  “It doesn’t mean that,” says Rawne. “Costin’s right. It’s a different Slaydo, or this Blenner doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Go on. What else is there?”

  Varl works down the sheet.

  “Blenner finishes by saying that he’s stationed on Hisk with a regiment called the Greygorians. He says he’s got pull with a Lord General called Cybon, and that Cybon’s promised him, that is Gaunt, a staff position. Blenner begs Gaunt to reconsider his ‘ill-advised’ move and get reassigned.”

  “That’s it?” asks Rawne.

  Varl nods.

  “So he’s thinking about ditching us,” murmurs Rawne.

  “This letter’s old, mind you,” says Varl.

  “But he kept it,” says Feygor. “It matters to him.”

  “Murt’s right,” says Rawne. “This means his heart’s not in it. We can exert a little pressure, and get rid of this fether without any of us having to face a firing squad.”

  “Having fun?”

  They all turn. Dorden is standing nearby, watching them. The boy Milo is behind him, looking pale and nervous. “We’re fine, Doc,” says Feygor. “How are you?”

  “Looks for all the world like a meeting of plotters,” says Dorden. He takes a step forwards and comes in amongst them. He’s twice as old as any of them, like their grandfather. He’s no fighter either. Every one of them is a young man, strong enough to break him and kill him with ease. He pours himself a mug of caffeine from their tray.

  Costin makes a hasty but abortive attempt to stop him.

  “There’s a little—” Costin begins, in alarm.

  “Sacra in it?” asks Dorden, sipping. “I should hope so, cold day like this.”

  He looks across at Varl.

  “What’s that you’ve got, Varl?”

  “A letter, Doc.”

  “Does it belong to you?”

  “Uh, not completely.”

  “Did you borrow it?”

  “It fell out of someone’s pocket, Doc.”

  “Do you think it had better fall back in?” asks Dorden.

  “I think that would be a good idea,” says Varl.

  “We were just having a conversation, doctor,” says Rawne. “No plots, no conspiracies.”

  “I believe you,” Dorden replies. “Just like I believe that no lies would ever, ever come out of your mouth, major.”

  “With respect, doctor,” says Rawne, “I’m having a private conversation with some good comrades, and the substance of it is of no consequence to you.”

  Dorden nods.

  “Of course, major,” he replies. “Just as I’m here to find a plate of food for this boy and minding my own business.”

  He turns to talk to the cooks about finding something other than slab in the ration crates.

  Then he looks back at Rawne.

  “Consider this, though. They say it’s always best to know your enemy. If you succeed in ousting Colonel-Commissar Gaunt, who might you be making room for?”

  “Where’s the chief?” Corbec asks, ducking in.

  “Frankly, I’ve been too busy to keep tabs on that gigantic fether,” Larkin replies.

  “Oh, Larks,” murmurs Corbec over the drumming of infantry weapons, “that lip of yours is going to get you dead before too long unless you curb it. Disrespecting a superior, it’s called.”

  Larkin sneers at his old friend.

  “Right,” he says. “You’d write me up.”

  He is adjusting the replacement barrel of his long-las, hunkered down behind the cyclopean plinth of a heap of rubble that had once been a piece of civic statuary.

  “Of course I would,” says Corbec. “I’d have to.”

  Corbec has got down on one knee on the other side of a narrow gap between the plinth and a retaining wall that is leaning at a forty-five degree angle. Solid-round fire from the enemy is travelling up the gap between them, channelled by the actual physical shape, like steel pin-balls coursing along a chute. The shots scrape and squeal as they whistle past.

  Corbec clacks in a fresh clip and leans out gingerly to snap some discouraging las-rounds back up the gap. “Why?” Larkin asks. “Why would you have to?”

  Larkin laughs, mirthlessly. Corbec can almost smell the rank adrenaline sweat coming out of the wiry marksman’s pores. The stress of a combat situation has pushed Larkin towards his own, personal edge, and he is barely in control.

  “Because I’m the fething colonel, and I can’t have you bad-mouthing the company commander,” Corbec replies.

  “Yeah, but you’re not really, are you?” says Larkin. “I mean, you’re not really my superior, are you?”

  “What?”

  “Gaunt just picked you and Rawne. It was random. It doesn’t mean anything. There’s no point you carrying on like there’s suddenly any difference between us.”

  Corbec gazes across at Larkin, watching him screw the barrel in, nattering away, stray rounds tumbling past them like seed cases in a gale.

  “I mean, it’s not like your shit suddenly smells better than mine, is it?” says Larkin. He looks up at last and sees Corbec’s face.

  “What?” he asks. “What’s the matter with you?”

  Corbec glares at him.

  “I am the colonel, Larks,” he snarls. “That’s the point. I’m not your friend anymore. This is either real or there’s no point to it at all.” Larkin just looks at him.

  “Oh, for feth’s sake!” says Corbec. “Stop looking at me with those stupid hang-dog eyes! Hold this position. That’s an order, trooper! Mkoll!”

  The chief scout comes scurrying over from the other corner of the plinth, head down. He drops in behind Larkin and looks across the gap at Corbec.

  “Sergeant Blane’s got the top end of the line firm. I’m going back down that way,” Corbec says, jerking a thumb over his shoulder. “We seem to have lost Gaunt.”

  “It’s tragic,” says Larkin.

  “Keep this section in place,” Corbec continues.

  Mkoll nods. Corbec sets off.

  “What’s got into him?” Larkin mutters.

  “Probably something you said,” says Mkoll.

  “I don’t say anything we’re not all thinking,” Larkin replies.

  Outside, the flamer makes its sucking roar again.

  All four of the Tanith men with Gaunt express their unhappiness in strong terms. Gutes and Domor are cursing.

  “We’re done for,” says another of them, a man called Guheen.

  “They’ll just torch us out like larisel in a burrow,” says the fourth.

  “Maybe—” Gaunt begins.

  “No maybe about it!” Gutes spits.

  “No, I was trying to say, maybe this gives us a chance we didn’t have before,” Gaunt tells them.

  lie ducks down beside Gutes again, and peers out into the mist and rain, craning for a better view. There is still no sign of the flamer, but he can certainly hear it clearly now, retching like some volcanic hog clearing its throat. He can smell promethium smoke too, the soot-black stench of Imperial cleansing.

  He looks up at the ominously low ceiling bellying down at them.

  “What’s upstairs?” he asks.

  “Another floor,” says Guheen.

  “Presuming it’s not all crushed in on itself,” adds Domor.

  “Yes, presuming it’s not,” Gaunt agrees. “Which of you is the best shot?”

  “He is,” Domor says, pointing to the fourth man. Guheen and Gutes both nod assent.

  “Merrt, isn’t it?” Gaunt asks. The fourth man nods.

  “Merrt, you’re with me. You three, sustained fire pattern here, through these windows. Just keep it steady.”

  Gaunt clambers over the scree of rubble and broken furniture to the back of the chamber. A great deal of debris has poured down what had once been the staircase, blocking it. Wires and cabling hang from ruptured ceiling panels like intestinal loops. Water drips. Broken glass flickers when the lightning scores the sky outside.

&
nbsp; Merrt comes up behind Gaunt and touches his arm. He points to the remains of a heat exchanger vent that is crushed into the rear wall of the guild house like a metal plug. They put their shoulders against it and manage to push it out of its setting.

  Light shines in. The hole, now more of a slot thanks to the deformation of the building, looks directly out on to rubble at eye level. They hoist themselves up and out, on to the smashed residue of a neighbouring building that has been annihilated, and has flooded its remains down and around the guild house, packing in around its slumped form like a lava flow sweeping an object up.

  Gaunt and Merrt pick their way up the slope, and re-enter the guild house through a first-floor window. The floor is sagging and insecure. A few fibres of waterlogged carpet seem to be all that’s holding the joists in place.

  “You’re a decent shot, then?” Gaunt murmurs.

  “Not bad.”

  “Pull this off, I’ll recommend you for a marksman lanyard.” Merrt grins and flashes his eyebrows.

  “Should’ve got one anyway,” he says. “The last one went to Larkin. After his psyche evaluation, marksman status was the only special dispensation Corbec could pull to get his old mate a place in the company.”

  “Is that true?” Gaunt asks.

  “You ought to know. I thought you were in charge?” Gaunt stares at him.

  “I’m really looking forward to meeting a Tanith who isn’t insolent or cocksure,” says Gaunt. “Good luck with that,” says Merrt. Gaunt shakes his head.

  “I’ve got a smart mouth, I know,” says Merrt. “I said a few things about Larkin getting my lanyard, earned some dark looks from the Munitorum chiefs. My mouth’ll get me in trouble, one day, I reckon.”

  “I think you’re already in trouble,” says Gaunt. He gestures out of the window. “I think this qualifies.”

  “Feels like it.”

  “So you reckon you’re good?”

  “Better than Larkin,” says Merrt.

  They settle in by the window. The mist shrouding the concourse and the surrounding ruins has grown thicker, as though the discharge of weapons has caused some chemical reaction, and it’s disguising the enemy approach.