Traitor General, page 24
‘Feth you!’ she shouted.
One steel hand grabbed her around the lower leg and began to pull. She kicked back, pointlessly.
Varl appeared from somewhere. He grabbed the Space Marine’s fallen bolter and raised it, grunting under the weight of the thing. Varl jammed the fat muzzle up under the lip of the Space Marine’s helmet.
And fired.
Varl kept his finger depressed. The huge, antique weapon shook as it emptied its clip, threatening to knock him down with its gigantic recoil. He braced against it, his augmetic shoulder locking in place.
On the fifth shot, the Space Marine’s helmet began to deform and buckle from within.
On the seventh, the helmet burst. Varl, Criid and the now headless Space Marine were saturated in the glistening material that sprayed out. Small shards of helmet metal tinkled down around them.
The Space Marine’s mighty form swayed for a second, and then fell backwards.
Uexkull hesitated, looking around. The platform area was dark and hot and his enhanced vision was useless. He listened instead, hearing moisture drops rolling down leaves, the thrum and tick of insects, the creak of the support ropes, the nearby hum of his cannon’s autocoolers as they steamed and hissed.
Close, close.
A good fight, better than he had expected. A true challenge. But over now. The power sword, that had been a dangerous surprise, but the man who had carried it…
Just a man. A lump of flesh and bones. An eminently destroyable thing.
Uexkull took another step. He deliberately started glanding an adrenaline-based stimm, feeling the killing lust rise in his biosystem. This would be a precious kill, one to celebrate. One to compose songs about. The murder-mist began to cloud his vision, the hunger for blood engorging his soul.
His senses became acute. He smelled sweat dripping from a man’s raw knuckles, smelled the tang of an ignited blade, heard the drumming of a frantic heartbeat and racing breath that could not stifle or disguise itself.
‘Who are you?’ he called. Insects chirruped. Flames crackled. Water rippled.
‘Who are you, warrior?’ he called again, prowling forward. ‘I am Uexkull. You have fought well. Beyond the measure I had expected of you. For that, I make you a promise.’
Bird calls. Insects. Slapping water. A heartskip, somewhere close now.
‘Did you hear me? A promise. A mark of respect. Surrender now, and tell me who you are, and I will kill you quickly, without lingering pain. That is my promise, one warrior to another.’
Insects shrilled. Branches creaked. Leaves fluttered down. Each leaf impact sounded like a gunshot to Uexkull. The smell of human sweat was strong now. So close. He could hear the fizzling power of the accursed sword now. He could actually taste meat, wet boot-leather, silver.
Lure the enemy out, make him show himself…
Leering, still moving forward, Uexkull clapped his steel palms together slowly. ‘Bravo, warrior. Bravo, I say. Guardsman, are you? Bravo! Quite a dance you have led me. It ends now, of course, and I swear to make that end brief.’
Right there. Behind that tree to his right. The rank salt-wet of a man, the quick-tempo thump of his heart. Right there…
‘But I tell you, I have not met so fine a warrior in all the ranks of the enemy Guard that I have killed.’
‘You should get out more,’ Gaunt snarled, and came out around the other side of the tree. His sword raked in and sliced the cannon off its shoulder mount in a crackling discharge of severed cables.
Uexkull roared as he came about. His furious cry shook the platform and shuddered water and leaves, like heavy rain, from the canopy above. His fist swung at Gaunt.
Gaunt ducked, rolled, and came up again to plant a killing stroke through the Space Marine’s armoured torso.
But Uexkull was much, much faster.
His fist hit Gaunt and sent him flying across the platform, blood spattering from a torn cheek. Gaunt landed awkwardly, and the power sword of Heironymo Sondar skittered out of his hand and slipped away across the wet boards.
Gaunt tried to rise, his head swimming. His knees refused to lock and his legs shot out from under him, dropping him onto his belly. He clawed with his hands, feeling the platform jump as Uexkull stormed towards him.
Covering his head, he rolled away instinctively. Uexkull’s armoured fist mashed a hole in the boarding. The giant warrior cursed, turned and rose to his full height to smash both hands, fingers interlaced, down onto his prone foe.
With an ugly thwack, an iron quarrel suddenly impaled his nose. Uexkull staggered backwards, mewling with pain. A moment later, and the undergrowth began to hiss. Three more quarrels clattered off his shoulder plating. Another speared his cheek like a darning needle. Another smacked through his chin.
Then yet another lanced itself in his left eyebrow.
His face streaming with blood, Uexkull cried out and tried to move forward. The iron quarrels were smacking into him like rain now, bouncing off his plates or burying themselves between the segments. An arrow popped his left eye and remained there, rigid and embedded.
Uexkull began to scream. The sound was deafening, abhuman. It tore through the clearing. It made the Untill marshes shake to their waterlogged depths.
Another quarrel embedded itself in his cheekbone. Uexkull stumbled forward, his continuing scream unbroken. His mouth was wide open in a raw, carnassial rictus.
Gaunt was on his feet. He had retrieved the power sword, but there was no need for it any more.
The partisans were emerging from the shadows all around, swathed in their grey cloaks, firing and reloading their mag-bows, then firing again. They were aiming for the bare, exposed head.
Uexkull stopped screaming because he couldn’t any more. His head was a head no longer. It was a distorted mass of meat and broken bone so thickly stuck with iron barbs that many of the bow-shots ricocheted back off the close-packed metal stalks.
Blood ran down his chest plate and shoulder guards. Lord Uexkull, his skull just a malformed pincushion, sank down onto the decking and died.
TWENTY-ONE
‘What the feth did you do to my las?’ Larkin muttered.
‘Saved your life, so shut the feth up,’ Rawne replied.
‘Only asking…’ Larkin said, nursing and tweaking the long-las, and shushing at it like it was a girlfriend of his who’d been goosed while his back was turned.
‘Well, don’t,’ said Rawne. ‘Feth, I don’t even know if this is over.’
‘It’s over,’ Mkoll said, emerging from the thick smoke that billowed from the burning tents upwind. That much was evident from the quiet that had settled over the shattered camp. The gunfire had stopped.
The Ghosts regrouped, numbed by the ferocity of the savage fight, and quietly dazed at the simple magnitude of what they had accomplished. Between them, they had taken out five enemy Chaos Space Marines, and with no losses of their own. Criid and Larkin were both bruised, but the closest they had come to losing a man was Brostin, who had nearly drowned. In the midst of the mayhem, Landerson had dived in after him and dragged his unconscious form to safety.
‘Five,’ breathed Rawne. ‘Five of the bastards. How the feth did we manage that?’
‘Luck?’ Bonin suggested.
Luck didn’t seem to have favoured the partisans. The Archenemy warriors had slaughtered over forty of them, including women and children. Their platformed encampment was devastated. Gaunt ordered his team to help them in any way they could, and the Ghosts spread out, running triage under Curth’s direction. She collected up the remaining supplies in her kit and all the field dressing sets in their own packs to treat any manageable wounds. But some injuries were too extreme even for her abilities.
‘There’ll be another five or six dead in a few hours,’ she told Gaunt.
He nodded. His own cheek was a bloody mess where Uexkull’s armoured fist had torn it, but he refused a dressing. ‘I’m all right. Others need it more.’
The partisans seemed not to understand the Ghosts’ intentions at first, but Mkvenner did his best to explain, and they reluctantly permitted their wounded to be taken to Curth. Brostin, still belching up swamp water occasionally, supervised the extinguishing of those parts of the camp set ablaze in the attack. His knack with fire was as impressive when it came to quelling flames as it was when making them thrive.
Landerson assisted the Ghosts as best he could. Only Cirk refused to involve herself with the partisans. She sat on one of the lower stages, keeping watch over Feygor’s supine form.
The surviving partisans, silent and sombre in their segmented cloaks, seemed to be gathering up the salvageable items from their campsite. The cleverly constructed dome tents – those that had not been shredded or burned – were collapsed into portable spindles of tight-wrapped fabric. Sewn-leather packs were filled with possessions, and gourd flasks brimming with crude prom sealed so they could be carried on shoulder yokes.
‘They’re leaving,’ Gaunt observed.
Mkoll nodded. ‘As far as Ven can make out, they’re nomadic anyway. There are many platform camps like this dotted all through the Untill. All of them built an age ago. They move from one to the next, stay a few weeks, move on again. Apparently, they’re not likely to return to this one again. It’s been… polluted, I suppose is the word. Polluted by what just happened here.’
‘We brought this doom on them,’ Gaunt said.
‘No, sir, we didn’t. They brought it on themselves. Rawne doesn’t even think we should be helping them now.’
‘Funny thing, Mkoll,’ said Rawne, appearing from the shadows behind them. ‘I have a rank.’
‘My apologies, major,’ sniffed Mkoll.
‘That true, Rawne?’ asked Gaunt.
‘Yes, sir. You made me major yourself.’
‘I meant the other thing. And you know it. Don’t feth around right now, Rawne. I’m not in the mood.’
‘Sir.’
‘You honestly can’t understand why we’re helping them?’ Gaunt asked.
Rawne shrugged. ‘They refused to help us. They tried to sell us out. I don’t understand why we fought to defend them. I don’t understand why we’re wasting the last of our field dressings treating their wounded.’
‘Because the Emperor protects, Rawne,’ Gaunt said.
‘Even those who don’t recognise his majesty?’
‘Especially those, I should think,’ Gaunt said.
Rawne huffed and walked away. ‘This place is getting to you,’ he muttered.
Is it, Gaunt wondered? That was perfectly likely now. They’d won the battle – somehow – but it had been a mistake to fight it in the first place. Was his leadership now suspect? Was he making irresponsible decisions? Was the taint of Gereon now so deep in him that he was thinking wrong?
He tried to put the nagging fear aside. His mind felt clear and true. He felt fine. But wasn’t that how it always started? Men weren’t drawn to the madness of Chaos because it seemed like a viable lifestyle change. The clammy influence of the Ruinous Powers wormed inside a man, changed him slowly and subtly without him ever realising it, making the insanity of the warp-darkness seem like the most natural thing in the cosmos.
All his life, as a commissar, Gaunt had understood that. That was why a commissar had to be so vigilant. And so harsh. Right to the end, on Herodor, Agun Soric had seemed like the most reasonable, loyal man. Gaunt had trusted him, loved his spirit, adored his simple courage.
But the man had gone over. The mark of the psyker had been in him. There had been no choice but to send him to the black ships.
Gaunt had dutifully read all the scholarly texts as a young man, and still reread many. Some of them, like the poetic philosophy of his favourite, Ravenor, writing nearly half a century earlier, had implanted this understanding in his mind. Especially where Ravenor wrote so eloquently, so heartbreakingly, about the fall of his master, Eisenhorn. Gregor Eisenhorn’s ultimate, terrible fate was an object lesson in the seductive power of the warp.
But Gaunt tried to focus on one memory, a lesson taught to him what seemed a lifetime ago by his own mentor, Delane Oktar. It had been Oktar’s deepest belief that a man should simply strive to do what seemed right. Gaunt remembered the thawing snowfields of Darendara, just after the liberation, the best part of thirty years before. They had been fighting secessionists, not Chaos, and there was great debate as to the appropriate punishment of the prisoners taken. Several commissars urged a thorough purge and a programme of execution. Commissar-General Oktar had argued for a different way. More lenient.
‘Let us be firm, but let us re-educate. Blood is not always the answer.’
Three of the senior commissars opposing Oktar’s view had leaned on Cadet Gaunt, hoping to get the young man to use his pull to influence Oktar’s decision. Gaunt had taken supper with his master in one of the lamp-lit rooms of the Winter Palace, and during dinner, he had brought the matter up.
Oktar had smiled patiently. ‘My boy,’ he said at length – he had always referred to Gaunt as ‘Boy’. ‘My boy, if we execute everyone who disagrees with us, the galaxy will quickly become an empty place.’
‘Yes, but–’ the Boy had started to say.
‘The Emperor protects, Ibram. He watches us all, no matter what dark corner we lurk in. It should be our sworn duty to convey that message to others, to the lost and the disenfranchised, to the ignorant and the troubled. We should be finding ways to help them learn, to help them come to terms, and benefit from the God-Emperor’s goodness, just as we do. There are plenty of things in this thrice-accursed galaxy that we have no choice but to fight and kill, without turning on ourselves too. Think of this… if we do no more than what we feel is the right thing, then the Emperor is watching, and he will see it. And if he approves, he will protect us and let us know he is pleased with our service.’
‘You know, sir, some would say–’
‘Say what, boy?’
‘Some would say that’s heresy, sir,’
Throne, had he really said that? Gaunt winced as he remembered uttering those idiot words to his mentor. A few short years after the Darendara Liberation, the new governing council – many of them politicos spared thanks to Oktar’s mercy – had formed a new allegiance and renewed their vows to the Imperium. Darendara was now one of the most staunchly loyal worlds in its subsector. Oktar’s views had been vindicated.
Gaunt wandered alone along the smouldering platforms, and lingered for a while on the highest stage still intact. He gazed out over the marshes of the Untill.
‘The Emperor protects,’ he murmured to himself. ‘The Emperor protects…’
Judge thyself first, then judge others. That was the first law of the Commissariat. Gaunt took out one of his bolt pistols. He had very few rounds left for either. As long as he still had one shot, he could yet make the most important judgement of all.
The following dawn, he was vindicated.
They had all slept badly on the hard platforms. The night had been humid, and the swamp air especially close. Curth had stayed awake until after midnight, tending two partisans who died despite her efforts. Brostin, his cannon destroyed, had been busy all night fiddling with the flamer that one of the Chaos Space Marines had been carrying. It was a crude thing and, in truth, rather too large and bulky to be carried by anyone without the support of power armour. But he persevered, stripping it of all but the basics, and chiselling away the more offensive Chaos symbols and badges. Finally, he fashioned a shoulder harness from some of the severed lengths of platform cable to distribute its weight. He practised lugging it around, and quickly decided he could only manage one of the three fuel canisters the Space Marine had carried. More adjustments. Just before first light, he had waded out from the platforms and filled the canister from the natural well.
‘Will it work?’ Varl asked him.
‘You fething betcha!’ Brostin snorted, and test-clacked the trigger spoon. A coughing, faltering gust – part flame and mostly steam – exhaled weakly.
‘Right,’ Brostin said, scratching his head. ‘Right. A few adjustments, and you’ll see.’
When the Ghosts woke, unsteady and weary, they found the partisans about to leave. All their camp belongings were packed and shouldered. The wounded had been lifted up on makeshift stretchers. The dead were laid out on the broken stages, with swamp flowers on their faces.
Cynhed ap Niht, the chieftain, came to speak with Mkvenner, and brought several of his warriors with him. They talked for a long time. Finally, Mkvenner wandered back to the waiting Ghosts, with one of the warriors at his side.
‘What’s going on?’ Gaunt asked.
‘They’re leaving now. But the chieftain has had a change of mind. He’s decided to help us, after all. After what happened here. It seems we impressed them with our efforts to defend them.’
‘Great. What does that mean, Ven?’
‘He’s given us one of his sons.’
‘What?’
Mkvenner gestured to the tall partisan at his side. The grey man seemed like a statue, so silent and still.
‘This is his son. Eszrah ap Niht. He’s going to act as our guide and lead us through the marshes to the heartlands.’
Gaunt looked up at the towering, thin man. ‘Really?’
‘Yes, sir.’
And if he approves, he will protect us and let us know he is pleased with our service.
‘Then let’s get moving,’ Gaunt said.
He looked round, and saw that the partisans had already started to leave. They were vanishing slowly into the mist. Eszrah ap Niht didn’t even look round to see them go.
Some few, last figures, like phantoms in their segmented cloaks, waited to perform the last rite of leave-taking. Brostin saw them, dumped his heavy pack with the not-yet-working flamer, and jumped off the stage into the water, splashing across to join them.
