[Gaunt's Ghosts 09] - His Last Command Read online

  A piece of art that. Honed over the years. The skilful acknowledgement of fear, the patriotic strand, the unexpected sucker-punch of ‘Did they break and run? Yes!’. A piece of art. The thundering cadence and gathering rhythm. Simple words that carried over the tumult. Too many commissars told men they were invulnerable when they patently weren’t. Too many commissars harangued and scolded, stripping away pride and confidence.

  Or turned their backs on fleeing cowards, Wilder thought.

  “Commissar!” Wilder called.

  “Colonel, sir,” Novobazky answered, hurrying over.

  “Good work. We’re in a patch of hell here.”

  “I noticed.”

  A shell struck twenty metres away and they both winced.

  “I want you down the left flank. I need you to pull the sections down there in tight. If the enemy start a ground push, we’ll be exposed at the base of the hill.”

  Novobazky nodded. “I’ll get to it.”

  “Fury of Belladon, Nadey.”

  “Fury of Belladon, Lucien.”

  Novobazky hurried off down the slope.

  Wilder turned and took stock. He hoped to see Baskevyl or Callide, but neither Belladon was in view. Little was in view, in fact, apart from flames, roiling smoke-fog and scattering figures. Wilder comforted himself that at least a half-dozen Hauberkan machines were now firing, including an Exterminator, which shattered the thickened air with the hammer of its heavy autocannons. Wilder doubted any order had been given. He was fairly confident that once he’d got the Chimera firing, others had joined in because they supposed that was what was meant to be happening.

  Whatever works, Wilder thought.

  He came up on a troop section dug in around the cover provided by a shattered and smoking Chimera. They’d got their field support weapons set up: two thirty calibre cannons and a trio of light mortars.

  None of them was firing.

  It was G Company. Wilder read that from their shoulder flashes.

  He ran across, ignoring the raining dirt and biting wind.

  “Where’s Daur?” he yelled.

  Captain Ban Daur, tall, solemn and good-looking, clambered up from a slit trench to face him.

  “Colonel?” he saluted, his head hunched down in that “shrapnel’s flying and I’d rather I wasn’t so tall” attitude.

  “Nice position, Tanith,” Wilder said.

  “Thank you, sir. It’s Verghastite, actually.”

  Wilder smiled humourlessly. He should have known that. The influx from the First-and-Only had been allowed to retain their patriotic badges, which they wore next to the 81/1(r) silver emblem of the mongrel unit, just as the Belladon retained their brass camodon head. A skull and single dagger for the Tanith-born, an axe-rake motif of the Verghast miners. Ban Daur wore the latter.

  “My apologies.”

  “No need, sir.”

  “Much as I’d love to spend the rest of the day in genteel conversation with you, Daur, might I ask, since we’re being shelled, why the hell your troop isn’t firing?”

  “Because we’re being shelled, sir,” Daur replied.

  “Make this good.”

  Daur turned and gestured out at the fog-bank lapping the far edge of the slope. “We’re being shelled, colonel. Whatever’s lobbing these munitions is well beyond our small-arms or even light support range. Four or five times that, maybe more. If there are hot-body targets out there too, well, they’re likely to be two or three times beyond our range too. Any closer, and they’d stand the risk of taking the back-creep of their own artillery. I’ve got a limited amount of ammo and mortar loads. I’d rather not waste any of that until I can be sure of a target.”

  Wilder frowned, turned away, and then looked back at Daur. He was grinning. It was that grin that had made Daur like him on the first day of the mix.

  “You’re smart, Ban,” Wilder said. “You after my job at all?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Sure?”

  “I’ll admit to nothing, sir.”

  “That’s fine. Good job here. I like sense. Sense is good. Hold this just as you are… but you’d better start wailing on them the moment they show.”

  “It’s my purpose in life, sir,” Daur said. “Correction, it’s G Company’s purpose in life.”

  There was an enthusiastic roar from the men.

  “Keep doing what you’re doing, then,” Wilder said, moving away. “You need a piper or anything to get you going?”

  “No, sir. Unless you can produce Brin Milo out of nowhere.”

  “Who?”

  “Never mind. We’re fine.”

  “Yes, I think you are, captain. Carry on, G Company.”

  Commissar Novobazky scrambled down the lank, wet grasses to the base of the slope at the left end of the Hauberkans’ disastrous line. Fyceline smoke billowed down from the hammering shell-strikes, and the skyline looked as if it were on fire.

  The Eighty-First First troops on the left flank had accumulated in the long ditch watercourse at the foot of the hill. They seemed unformed, un-unified, cowering in the lapping water.

  “My friends!” Novobazky cried as he moved in amongst them. They looked at him. “On the Shores of Marik, my friends,” he continued. The text had worked earlier, and it was fresh enough for another go-get. The fathers of our fathers made a stand under the flag of Belladon. Shells fell like rain. Were they afraid?”

  “Who?” asked a man nearby.

  “The sons of Belladon!” Novobazky smiled.

  The man looked the commissar up and down. “My name is Caober. I’m a scout, born and raised on Tanith. I honestly don’t know what you’re talking about, but I’m sure it matters somehow. Why don’t you talk to the captain?”

  A big man approached them, drawn by the voices. He studied the commissar for a moment. Novobazky shook his head at his own mistake. This was C Company.

  “Commissar?”

  “Major Kolea. Wasting my time with the whole Shores of Marik riff, right?”

  Gol Kolea half-smiled. “Not the best crowd to try that material on. Pretty much Ghosts here, through and through.”

  “Can I retain any sense of cool at all?”

  “I doubt it. You entered like a pantomime chorus. I’d love to hear the story, mind you. Where’s Marik?”

  “Damned if I know. I wasn’t there.”

  Gol Kolea chuckled. “Gaunt never told stories, you know that?”

  “I’m sure he did,” Novobazky said.

  “Well, maybe. I don’t remember any to tell. Derin? You recall any of Gaunt’s stories?”

  “Only the ones we lived through, major,” a trooper nearby called out. “I’ve still got the scars from Hagia.”

  “Yes, yes, all right,” Kolea said. He looked back at the commissar. You got a reason for being here, sir? Apart from pantomime, that is?”

  Novobazky nodded. “Instructions from the colonel. Get tight.”

  “Any tighter and we’d be spitting pips.”

  “Good. You don’t seem tight.”

  “We’re tight. We’re tight, aren’t we?” Kolea called to the crouching figures along the watercourse.

  “Tight as tight can be, Gol!” someone called back.

  “That’s good,” said Novobazky. “Wilder’s anticipating a ground push.”

  “Nice to hear he’s on the same page,” Kolea said. “So are we. The moment the shells stop.”

  “Well…” Novobazky began. He paused. An ominous, lingering silence, broken only by the crackle of flames and the cries of the wounded, had fallen across the slope. The shelling had stopped.

  “I…” he continued, but Major Kolea waved him to silence.

  “Saddle up,” Kolea hissed.

  With a clatter of weapons and munitions belts, C Company rose and steadied.

  The first las-shots began to pink out of the smoke. Small-arms fire pattered across the position. On the slopes, the dug in sections of the Eighty-First First began firing, supported by the heavy guns
of the few Hauberkan machines that had not fled or died.

  Enemy infantry was slogging up out of the mist, assaulting the slope. They emerged one by one, but soon became hundreds strong, thousands. They came yelling and baying, bayonets fixed.

  “All right, C Company,” Kolea said. “Like Gaunt himself would have wished, up and at them.”

  The enemy troopers came forward out of the mist. Dawn light was now filtering down across the floor of the compartment, enough to glint off black and red armour, steel blades, and iron grotesques.

  At brigade strength, the echelons of the Blood Pact assaulted the hill.

  NINE

  08.17 hrs, 193.776.M41

  Frag Flats HQ

  Sparshad Combat Zone, Ancreon Sextus

  Dressed in a clean field uniform and a black leather jacket, a heavy kit-bag across one shoulder, Nahum Ludd stopped in front of the cabin door, paused for a moment, then knocked smartly.

  He waited. Officers walked past along the quarters deck hallway. There was a faint smell of breakfast coming up from the mess-deck, mixed with the caustic odour of rat poison that always seemed to build up in the Leviathan’s air systems over night.

  Ludd was about to knock again when the door opened. He found himself staring up at Eszrah ap Niht. The sheer size of the partisan was intimidating enough, but now Ludd took a step back in surprise. Complying with orders, Eszrah had bathed and shaved. Or had been bathed and shaved. The tangled hair and the long, wode-matted moustache had gone, as had the iridescent mosaics around his eyes. His bald skull, regally and firmly domed at the back, his wide shoulders and his long neck gave him a noble aspect. His skin was entirely dark grey, as if that was its natural pigment, or as if the Nihtgane paste was simply too chronically ingrained to come off. The feathered cloak and tribal trappings had gone too. Eszrah was wearing laced boots, fatigue trousers and a woollen sweater, all Guard issue, all black. They served only to emphasise his height and slender build.

  “I’m here to see the commissar,” Ludd said.

  Eszrah’s dark face was impassive. His grey, creaseless skin had a polished sheen to it, like gun-metal. His eyes were invisible behind an old, scuffed pair of sunshades.

  “The commissar?” Ludd repeated, a little louder.

  Eszrah stepped aside to let Ludd past, then closed the door behind him. Gaunt had been given high-status quarters in the officers’ wing. The room Ludd stood in was part of a suite. Through an open door across the room, Ludd could hear a whipping sound, as if a flogging were underway.

  Ludd put his kit bag down beside the door, and dropped his cap on top of it. The Nihtgane had returned to a chair in the corner of the room, and was busy cleaning some kind of ancient weapon that looked for all the stars like a crossbow. Around the room, equipment had been laid out, most of it still in the plastek wrap it had come bagged in, fresh from the quartermaster’s stores. Ludd saw a fleece bedroll, a field-dressing pouch, a leather stormcoat, a ten-to-sixty field scope, and a brand new commissar’s cap, the brim gleaming, still half-wrapped in cushion paper. On a side table, in an open steel carrier, a matched pair of chrome, short-pattern bolt pistols lay in moulded packing. Ten spare clips were fastened into the carrier’s lid with elastic webbing.

  On the main table lay a pile of dataslates and open dossiers. Walking past, Ludd noticed one slate was a set of current data codes and protocols. Another was loaded with the tactical charts of Sparshad Mons. With particular interest, Ludd noticed a brand new paper copy of the Instrument Of Order, the Commissariat’s “rulebook”.

  Ludd stepped through the doorway. The room beyond, larger, was the bedchamber, but the cot and all other furniture had been pushed back against the walls, and the twin-ply matting on the floor had been rolled up.

  Gaunt was in the cleared centre of the room. He was wearing highly buffed black boots and a pair of dark grey jodhpurs with green piping down the legs. High-waisted, the jodhpurs were held up by a tight pair of black, service-issue braces. Apart from the straps of the braces, Gaunt was unclothed from the waist up. His lean, muscular body was flushed with perspiration. He held a beautiful, polished power sword in a two-handed grip, and was executing masterful turns, sweeps, blocks and reprises, circling and crossing, never putting a foot wrong, each motion exact and severe. As it moved, the blade made a hard, whistling sound like a whip.

  Ludd watched for a moment. He had no wish to interrupt. Gaunt was evidently a brilliant swordsman who took practice very seriously. As he swung round, Ludd noticed with a slight intake of breath the huge and old pucker of scar-tissue across Gaunt’s washboard stomach. It looked like he’d taken a hit from a chainsword or—

  “Ludd.” Gaunt stopped mid-stroke and lowered the sword. “Can I help you?”

  “Good morning, commissar,” Ludd said. “I came to tell you we’ve been routed. Transport will be made available at noon.”

  “So soon?” Gaunt said. He picked up a hand towel and scrubbed it across his face and neck.

  “They want you in the field as soon as possible.”

  “I’m sure she does,” Gaunt said. “Noon. All right. Do we have a deployment?”

  Ludd reached into his jacket and handed Gaunt a message wafer. Gaunt took it, deactivated his sword and passed it to Ludd.

  “Hold that, would you?”

  Ludd took hold of the weapon. It was old, superb, deliciously heavy. The grip was worn from use, and the hilt patinaed with age, but the perfectly-balanced blade shone like a mirror. Switched off, it was still warm, and gave off a scent of heated oil and ozone.

  Flopping the towel over his left shoulder, Gaunt tore open the wafer and read the tissue-thin form inside. “Third Compartment Logistical Base. Uhm hum. Good as anywhere, I suppose. We’re to report to the staff office of Marshal Sautoy. Know him?”

  Ludd shook his head.

  “I do,” Gaunt said, and left it at that. He balled up the wafer and dropped it into the little incineratum on his nightstand.

  Gaunt turned back to Ludd and held out his hand for the sword. “Like it?”

  “It’s a very fine weapon, sir,” Ludd replied, handing it over carefully.

  “The ceremonial blade of Heironymo Sondar,” Gaunt said, flicking the blade back and forth one last time before returning it to its leather scabbard. “A trophy, Ludd. It was awarded to me by the ruling families of Vervunhive as a mark of respect.” Gaunt looked at Ludd. “It’s just about the only thing I took to Gereon with me that came back intact. It’s been in holding since I arrived here. They just sent it along to me. I’m glad to have it. I missed it.”

  “I requested that all of the effects taken from you during processing at Camp Xeno be forwarded,” Ludd said.

  “Processing,” Gaunt smiled. “How nice you make it sound.”

  Ludd blushed.

  “Forget it, Ludd,” Gaunt said, pulling down the straps of his braces and towelling his armpits and shoulders. “If we’re going to work side by side, I can’t have you going a shade of puce every time I make a dig about the circumstances of our meeting.”

  Ludd nodded and tried to look happy. “I want to say, sir… I want to say that I consider it a real honour to be assigned to you.”

  Gaunt stared at Ludd as he finished rubbing down. “I didn’t request you, you know.”

  “I know, sir.”

  “Vou were appointed to me.” Gaunt tossed the towel away and reached for the clean vest and tunic shirt hung over a nearby chair back.

  “You could have requested an alternative, sir,” Ludd said.

  Gaunt pulled the vest over his head and tucked the hem into his jodhpurs. “I suppose so. But after that bang-up job you did at the tribunal…”

  Ludd sighed. “Do I take it, sir, that I should expect this kind of ribbing to be an everyday aspect of serving as your second?”

  “Yes, why not?” Gaunt said, buttoning his shirt. “It’ll keep you on your toes.”

  Ludd nodded.

  “I appreciate the sentiment, though,” Gaunt ad
ded, tucking the shirt in and pulling up his braces. The fact you think it’s some kind of honour. I was under the impression it was more like a duty. Aren’t you supposed to be my watcher?”

  “Sir?”

  “Come on, Ludd. I can deal with the idea you’re watching my every move, reporting back, making sure I’m on the level. But I can’t abide dissembling. You’re Balshin’s appointed spy. I know that. You know that. Let’s be open about it, at least. I can’t stand deceit, Ludd. Be a man and be frank about it, and I won’t have to kill you.”

  Ludd cleared his throat. “Another example of your trademark humour, I take it?”

  “Oh, let’s hope so,” said Gaunt. He’d carefully pinned two small badges to the breast of his shirt, and now was searching for something on the dresser.

  “Lost something, sir?” Ludd asked.

  “More than you could possibly imagine, Ludd,” Gaunt replied. He squatted down, peering under the cabinet. “Feth it, where the hell…”

  Looking around, Ludd noticed something small and shiny down beside the night stand. He went over and picked it up. It was a regimental crest, a skull surrounded by a wreath, with a blade transfixing it top to bottom. There was a motto on it, but age had worn it indecipherable. The badge had rough edges, as if parts of it had been broken off.

  “Is this what you’re looking for, sir?” he asked.

  “Yes,” said Gaunt. He took the badge and pinned it beside the other two on his shirt.

  “May I ask…?” Ludd began.

  Gaunt pointed to the emblems in turn. “The pin of the Hyrkan 8th. The axe-rake of Vervunhive. The badge of the Tanith First-and-Only. All lost to me now, Ludd, but I’ll not wade into war without them about my person.”

  “Lucky charms?” Ludd said.

  “I suppose. Ludd, have you ever lost anything that really mattered to you?”