[Gaunt's Ghosts 04] - Honour Guard Page 9

  Vulle voxed in from Avenging Heart. Every holy item, every icon, every text, every worship statuette, had been removed from the famous chapel. Other fire-teams voxing in from around the temple precinct reported the same. Altars were empty, votive alcoves were bare, relic houses were empty.

  Szabo didn’t like it. His men were edgy. They’d expected some fighting, at least. This was meant to be Pater Sin’s bolt hole, the place where he’d make his last stand.

  The Brevians spread out through the vast colonnades and temple walks. Nothing stirred except the wind across this high plateau.

  With a lag-team of eight men, Szabo entered the main shrine, the Tempelum Infarfarid Sabbat, a towering confection of pink ashlar and cyclopean pillars, rising three hundred metres above the heart of the Citadel precinct. Here too the altar was bare. The size of a troop carrier, the colossal, gilt-swathed altar bore no branches of candelabras, no censers, no triptych screen, no aquila.

  There was an odd scent in the air, a tangy smell like thick oil being fried, or pickled fish.

  Szabo’s lips were suddenly moist. He licked them and tasted copper.

  “Sir, your nose…” his scout said, pointing.

  Szabo wiped his nose and realised blood was weeping out of it. He looked around and saw that every man in his squad was leaking blood from their nose or their eyes. Someone started whimpering. Trooper Emith suddenly pitched over onto his face, stone dead.

  “Great God-Emperor!” Szabo cried. Another of his men fell in a faint as blood poured out his tear ducts.

  “Vox-officer!” shouted Szabo. He reached out. The smell was getting stronger, a thousand times more intense. Time seemed to be slowing down. He watched his own hand as he reached it out in front of him. How slow! Time and the very air around them seemed to have become treacle-thick and heavy. He saw his men, slowed down in time like insects in sap. Some half-fallen, limbs outstretched, some convulsing, some on their knees. Perfect, glinting droplets of blood hung in the air.

  Someone had done this. Someone had been ready. They’d stripped the shrines of their holy, warding charms. And left something else in their place.

  Something lethal.

  “A trap! A trap!” Szabo yelled into the vox. His mouth was full of blood. “We’ve set something off by coming in here! We—”

  The choking overwhelmed him. Szabo let go of the vox handset and retched blood onto the polished floor of the Tempelum Infarfarid Sabbat.

  “Oh Holy Emperor…” Szabo mumbled. There were maggots in the blood.

  Time stopped dead. Over the Doctrinopolis, night fell prematurely.

  In a flare of blue light, like the petals of a translucent orchid a kilometre across, the Citadel exploded.

  FIVE

  THE BECKONING

  “From this high rock, from this peak, let the light of worship shine so that the Emperor himself might see it from his Golden Throne.”

  —dedication on the high altar of

  the Tempelum Infarfarid Sabbat

  The Citadel burned for many days. It burned without flames, or at least without any flames known to mankind. Mist-blue and frost-green tongues of incandescent energy leapt kilometres into the air like some flailing part of an aurora display anchored to the plateau. They fluttered helplessly in the wind. Their glare cast long shadows in daylight, and illuminated the night. At their base, the blues and greens became white hot a blistering inferno that utterly consumed the temples and buildings of the Citadel, and the heat could be felt half a kilometre away down the hillslopes.

  No one could approach closer than that. The few scout squads that ventured nearer were driven back by nausea, spontaneous bleeding or paroxysms of insane fear. Observations made from a safe distance by scopes or magnoculars revealed that the stone cliffs of the plateau were melting and twisting. Rock bubbled and deformed. One observer went mad, raving that he’d seen screaming faces form and loom out of the oozing stone.

  At the end of the first day, a delegation of local ayatani and ecclesiarchs from the Imperial Guard retinues set up temporary shrines around the slopes of the Citadel and began a vigil of supplication, appeasement and banishment.

  A dismal mood of defeat settled on the Doctrinopolis. This was an unparalleled disaster, worse even than the Infardi’s annexation of the holy city. This was desecration. This was the darkest possible omen.

  Gaunt was withdrawn. His mood was black and few dared to disturb him, even his most trusted Ghosts. He lurked in private chambers in the Universitariat, brooding and reviewing reports. He slept wretchedly.

  Even the news that Corbec had been recovered, injured but alive, failed to lift his spirits much. Many believed that Gaunt’s mood was so dark he would now mete severe punishment on Kolea’s unit for disobeying the withdrawal orders, despite the fact they had saved the colonel.

  The ayatani conducted a service of thanksgiving for the holy icons and relics Kolea’s unit had brought back in the captured truck. It was a small, redemptive consolation in the face of the Citadel’s destruction. The items were solemnly rededicated and placed in the Basilica of Macharius Hagio at the edge of the Old Town.

  The surviving Brevians, two brigades who had not deployed into the Citadel with Szabo, entered into a ritual of remorseful fasting and mourning. A mass funeral oration was made on the second day, during which the roll of the fallen was read out name by name. Gaunt attended, in full dress uniform, but spoke to no one. The guns of the Pardus Armour thundered the salute.

  On the morning of the fourth day, Brin Milo crossed the Square of Sublime Tranquillity and hurried up the steps of the Universitariat’s south gate with a feeling of dread inside him. Tanith sentries at the gatehouse let him past and he walked through echoing halls and drafty chambers where teams of esholi worked in silence to salvage what they could of the books, papers and manuscripts the Infardi had left torn and scattered in the ransacked rooms.

  He saw Sanian, industriously picking paper scraps from a litter of glass chips under a shattered window, but she didn’t acknowledge him. Afterwards, he wondered if it had actually been her. With their white robes and shaved heads, the female esholi affected an alarming uniformity.

  He turned at a cloister corner, trotted up a set of stone stairs under the watchful, oil-painted stares of several ex-Universitariat principals, and crossed a landing to a pair of wooden doors.

  Milo took a deep breath, tossed the folds of his camo-cape over his shoulder and knocked.

  The door opened. Trooper Caffran let him through.

  “Hey, Caff.”

  “Brin.”

  “How is he?”

  “Fethed if I know.”

  Milo looked around. Caffran had let him into a small anteroom. A pair of shabby couches had been pulled up under the window to serve as makeshift daybeds for the door guards. On a side table were a few dirty mess trays, some ration packs, and some bottles of water and local wine. Sergeant Soric, Caffran’s partner on watch duty, sat nearby, playing Devils and Dames Solo with a pack of buckled cards. He was using an upturned ammo box as a table.

  He looked up and grinned his one eyed, lop-sided grin at Milo.

  “He hasn’t stirred,” he said simply.

  Milo didn’t have the measure of Soric yet. A squat slabby barrel of a man, Agun Soric had been an ore smeltery boss on Verghast then a guerrilla leader. Though overweight, he had massive physical power, the legacy, like his hunched posture, of hard years at the ore face as a youth. And he was old, older than Corbec, older even than Doc Dorden, who was the oldest of the Tanith. He had the same avuncular manner as Corbec, but was wilder somehow, more unpredictable, more given to anger. He’d lost an eye at Vervunhive, and had refused both augmetic implant or patch. He wore the puckered wink of scar tissue proudly. Milo knew the Verghastite Ghosts adored him, maybe even more than they did the noble, taciturn Gol Kolea, but he sensed Soric was still a Verghast man in his heart. He’d do anything for his own men, but was less forthcoming with the Tanith. To Milo, he typified the fe
w amongst both Tanith and Verghastite who perpetuated the divide rather than seeking to close it.

  “I have to see him,” Milo said. He wanted to say that Major fething Rawne had told him to come and see Gaunt because Major fething Rawne didn’t fancy doing it himself, but there was no point getting into it.

  “Be my guest,” Soric grinned disparagingly, gesturing to the inner doors.

  Milo looked at Caffran, who shrugged. “He won’t let us in except to bring him meals, and he doesn’t eat half of those. Gets through a feth of a lot of these, though.” Caffran pointed to the empty wine bottles.

  Milo’s unease grew. He’d been worried about disturbing Gaunt when his mood was bad. No one wanted to confront an ill-disposed Imperial commissar. But now he was worried about Gaunt himself. He’d never been a drinker. He’d always had such great composure and confidence. Like all commissars, he had been created to inspire and uplift.

  Milo knew things here on Hagia had turned bad, but now he was afraid they might have taken Gaunt with them.

  “Do you knock, or should I just—” Milo began, pointing at the inner doors. Caffran backed off with a shrug and Soric pointedly refused to look up from his dog-eared cards.

  “Thanks a lot,” Milo said, and walked to the doors with a sigh.

  The inner chambers were dark and quiet. The drapes were drawn and there was an unpleasantly musty smell. Milo edged inside. “Colonel-commissar?”

  There was no answer. He walked further in, blind in the gloom as his night vision tried to adjust.

  Groping his way, he slammed into a book stand and sent it crashing over.

  “Who’s there? Who the feth is there?”

  The anger in the voice made Milo start. Gaunt loomed in front of him, unshaven and half-dressed, his eyes fierce and bloodshot.

  He was pointing his bolt pistol at Milo.

  “Feth! It’s me, sir! Milo!”

  Gaunt stared at Milo for a moment, as if he didn’t recognise him, and then turned away, tossing his gun onto a couch. He was wearing only his jackboots and uniform breeches, and his braces dangled slackly around his hips. Milo glimpsed the massive scar across Gaunt’s trim belly, the old wound he had taken at Dercius’ hands on Khed 1173.

  “You woke me,” Gaunt growled.

  “I’m sorry.”

  Gaunt lit an oil lamp with clumsy fingers and sat down on a tub chair. He began leafing urgently through an old, hidebound tome. Gazing at the book, he reached out without looking to snatch up a glass tumbler from a side table. He took a deep swig of wine and set it down again.

  Milo moved closer. He saw the stacks of unread military communiqués piled by the chair. The top few had been torn into long shreds, and many of these paper tassels now marked places in the book Gaunt was studying.

  “Sir—”

  “What?”

  “Major Rawne sent me, sir. The lord general is on his way. You should make ready.”

  “I am ready.” Gaunt took another swig, his eyes never leaving the book.

  “No you’re not. You need a wash. You really need a wash. And you look like shit.”

  There was a very long silence. Gaunt’s hands stopped flipping the pages. Milo tensed, regretting his boldness, waiting for the other shoe to drop.

  “This doesn’t answer anything, you know.”

  “What sir?” Milo asked, and realised Gaunt was referring to the old book.

  “This. The Gospel of Saint Sabbat. I felt sure there would be an answer in here. I’ve been through it line by line. But nothing.”

  “An answer to what sir?”

  “To this,” Gaunt said, gesturing about himself. “To this… monstrous disaster.” He reached for his glass again without looking and succeeded in knocking it onto the floor.

  “Feth. Get me another.”

  “Another?”

  “Over there, over there!” Gaunt snapped impatiently, pointing to a sideboard where numerous bottles and old glasses stood.

  “I don’t think you need another drink. The lord general’s coming.”

  “That’s precisely why I need another drink. I don’t intend to spend a moment of my time in the company of that turd-brained insert if I’m sober.”

  “I still don’t—”

  “Feth you, you Tanith peasant!” Gaunt snapped venomously and got up, tossing the book to Milo as he strode over to the sideboard.

  Milo caught the book neatly.

  “See if you can do better,” Gaunt hissed as he went through the bottles one by one until he found one that wasn’t empty.

  Milo looked at the book, thumbing through, seeing the passages Gaunt had feverishly underlined and scribbled over.

  “‘Defeat is but a step towards victory. Take the step with confidence or you will not ascend.’”

  Gaunt swung round sharply, sloshing the overfilled glass he had just poured.

  “Where does it say that?”

  “It doesn’t. I’m paraphrasing one of your speeches to the men.”

  Gaunt hurled the glass at Milo. The boy ducked.

  “Feth you! You always were a clever little bastard!”

  Milo dropped the book onto the seat of the tub chair. “The lord general’s coming. He’ll be here at noon. Major Rawne wanted you to know. If that’s all, I request permission to leave.”

  “Permission granted. Get the feth out.”

  “What did he say? How was he?” Caffran asked as Milo stepped out of the inner rooms and closed the doors behind him.

  Milo just shook his head and walked on, out through the ruined hallways of the Universitariat, into the windy sunlight.

  Ten minutes before noon, the sound of distant rotors thumped across the Doctrinopolis. Five dots appeared in the sky to the south-west, but in the glare of the Citadel fire it was hard to resolve them. “He’s here,” Feygor called.

  Major Rawne nodded and smoothed the front of his clean battledress, made sure the campaign medals were spotless, and carefully put on his cap. He took one last look at himself in the full-length mirror. Despite the crazed cracks in it, he could tell he still looked every fething centimetre the acting first officer of the Tanith First Regiment.

  He turned, and strode out of the derelict dressmaker’s shop that had served as his ready room.

  Feygor, Rawne’s adjutant, whistled and fell in step beside him. “Look out ladies, here comes the major.”

  “Shut up.”

  Feygor smiled. “You’re looking very sharp, I must say”

  “Shut up.”

  They marched down a debris-strewn side street and out onto the massive concourse of the high king’s royal summer palace on the holy river. The area had been cleared to allow the lord general’s aircraft to land. Round the edges of the concourse, four platoons of Ghosts, two platoons of Brevians and three platoons of Pardus stood as an honour guard, along with delegations of local officials and citizens. There was a military band too, their brass instruments winking as they caught the sunlight.

  The uniforms of the honour guard were clean and spotless. Colonel Furst, Major Kleopas and Captain Herodas had all put on dress kit. Medals were on show.

  Rawne and Feygor approached them across the concourse.

  “When you put on your cap, it was just the way Gaunt does it. Brim first.”

  “Shut up.”

  Feygor smiled and shrugged.

  “And fall in,” added Rawne. Feygor, his own matt-black Ghost battle dress immaculate, double-timed and took his place at the end of the Ghost file. Rawne joined the officers. Furst nodded to him and Herodas stepped back to make room.

  The band started to play. The old hymn “Splendid Men of the Imperium, Stand Up and Fight”. Rawne winced every time they missed the repeated harmonic minor in the refrain.

  “I didn’t know you were a music lover. Major Rawne,” Captain Herodas said quietly.

  “I know what I like,” Rawne said through gritted teeth, “and what I’d like right now is for someone to jam that bass horn up the arse of the bas
tard who’s molesting it.”

  All four officers coughed as they stifled their laughter.

  The lord general’s transport approached.

  The four ornithopter gunships flying escort thundered overhead, tearing the air with the beating chop of their massive rotors. They were painted ash-grey with a leopard pattern of khaki blotches. Rawne admired their power, and the bulbous gun turrets on their chins and the ends of their elongated tails.

  Lord General Lugo’s aircraft was a massive delta wing with a spherical glass cockpit at the prow. It was matt silver with beige jag-stripes and yellow chevrons on the wingtips alongside the Imperial aquila.

  Its shadow fell across the honour guard as it paused in mid-air and the giant jet turbines slowly cranked around in their gimbal mounts from a horizontal position. With jets now flaring downwards, the huge transport descended, whirling up dust and extending delicate landing struts from cavities in the underwing.

  It bounced slightly once, settled, and the screaming jets slowly powered down. A ramp set flush into the sky-blue painted belly gently unfolded and seven figures emerged.

  Lord General Lugo strolled down the ramp, a tall, bony man in a white dress uniform, his chest burdened by the weight of medals on it. At his heels, two battle-armoured troopers in red and black from the Imperial Crusade staff marched in escort, hellguns raised. Behind them came a towering, stick-thin woman of advancing years dressed in the black leather and red braid of the Imperial tacticians, two colonels from the Ardelean Colonials with glittering breastplates and bright sashes of orange satin, and a thickset man in the uniform of an Imperial commissar.

  The group advanced across the concourse and saluted the visitors.

  Lugo eyed them all suspiciously, particularly Rawne. “Where’s Gaunt?”

  “He… Sir… He…”

  “I’m here.”

  Dressed in full ceremonial uniform, Ibram Gaunt strode out across the concourse flagstones. From the attentive ranks of the honour guard, Milo sighed. He was relieved to see that Gaunt was clean and shaved. Gaunt’s silver-trimmed black leather uniform was immaculate. Perhaps the unpleasant incident in the Universitariat had been just an aberration…