Anarch

Seven: Arrivals

They ran under the shadow of the rock and entered the Fastness. The deep water of the channel lapped against the huge rock overhang, stirred by the current and chopped by the wake of the watercraft. It was brisk and cold under the shadow, and the growl of the hard-running engines echoed off the rock.

Mkoll didn’t know the Urdeshi name for the island, and there were no maps to hand. As they cleared the shadow, the nature of the Fastness became evident. It was a vast volcanic peak, long extinct. At some point in its long history, the sea had invaded the dead cone through fissures like the one they had entered by. The immense internal flue had become a sea-lake ten kilometres in diameter. Around it, the inner walls of the cone rose like cliffs, a kilometre and a half high. Above, the cone was open to the heavens, a ragged circle of grey sky fringed with vapour.

Urdesh’s clave dynasts and agri-fleets had used the Fastness as a natural harbour. The wide internal water, deep enough to handle the draft of any vessel, was protected from all sides by the rock bastion of the cone, defending it from foul weather and oceanic gales. From the waterline up, the internal cliffs were clad in buildings: docks and wharfs, landing platforms, boat pens and salting houses. Above these rose habitats, administrative halls, workshops, warehouses and machine rooms, all built out over the water on rusted metal pilings, and stacked up like blocks, clinging to the cliff walls and linked by open staircases and suspended walkways. A small city, accumulated over the years around the inner circumference of the dead flue. In some places, the piled structures reached almost a quarter of the way up the cliffs. Everything was caked in a thick coating of algae.

The cold air stank of seawater, promethium slicks and venting exhaust fumes. Mkoll saw fleets of watercraft – landing barges and battered agriboats – packing in at the landing stages, unloading war machines, cargo and hundreds of Sekkite troopers. This was the Archenemy’s safe haven, the point of flight for the vast forces retreating from the mainland brawl. Cranes and industrial hoists swung the heavier items onto the docks from the agriboats, ponderously manoeuvring tracked armour and troop carriers to the ramps of the foreshore yards. Horns blew, their bass notes echoing across the hidden lake, and standards flapped along the walls of the waterline, company standards, battle flags and banners of the infernal powers proudly displayed for incoming vessels to see. There was a screech and chatter of machine tools from the work-barns on the waterside.

The most arresting sight, dominating all others, was the ship. It was an Archenemy cruiser, gnarled and scarred, a medium-displacement shiftship over a mile long. Like the tiny agriboats beneath it, it had taken shelter in the cone of the Fastness. It hung in place on its grav-anchors and suspensor arrays thirty metres above the water, and the bulk of it seemed to fill the open hollow of the cone’s interior. Supply pipes looped from its flanks and belly to the dockside plants and manufactories. Bracing cables of woven wire as thick as a man’s thigh strained tight between anchor points on the hull and the surrounding cliffs, as taut as the strings on a lyre. Vapour and steam vented in thick, slow, dirty clouds from the ship’s aft drives. Bilge water and liquid grease poured in steady cascades from its underside. It had clearly not been at the Fastness long. The surface of the lake beneath the ship, black in the ship’s immense shadow, rippled with moire patterns triggered by the invisible action of the suspensor fields.

The cruiser’s down-lights were lit, illuminating the immediate wharfs with searchlight beams of an ugly radiance. Banks of lights had been set up on the docks too, angled to light the ship’s paint-scabbed and warp-scorched plates. Mkoll could see the minuscule figures of men moving like lice on the ship’s upper hull, work-crews engaged on field repairs and plate refits. There was the occasional blue-white twinkle of welding torches and fusion cutters.

Structures resembling siege towers had extended out from the docks, bridging the gap and linking ship to shore. As the agriboat passed beneath one, Mkoll could see the internal hoists lifting freight up to the access levels, and crews of stevedores and servitors hauling the loads across the bridge-spans overhead into the ship’s open airgates. Small lift ships and lighters droned like flies, shuttling between the cruiser’s gaping belly holds and the shoreline landing platforms. One flew overhead, running lights flashing, wings angled for low-flight mode, and the agriboat rocked in the wake of its thrusters.

The agriboat’s engines started to mutter a new note, and the vessel began to slide sideways towards the waiting docks. Other boats in the small fleet slowed and moved in with it. There were dock crews, servitors and soldiers waiting on the quay.

Mkoll heard chattering. It was in his head, a constant hissing, like a thousand soft whispers.

Olort looked at him, noticing his reaction.

‘He speaks to us all,’ he said, ‘to all and to every.’

Mkoll grimaced slightly. The psionic background drone would take some getting used to. It felt like fingernails scratching at his eardrums and the lining of his sinuses.

He was here. Close by.

They were moving in to dock. At the prow of the boat, men were standing ready to catch and throw the mooring lines.

‘I don’t know how you expect to–’ Olort began.

‘You have urgent business to attend to, damogaur,’ Mkoll replied.

‘Business?’ asked Olort.

‘Reports. Statements of deployment. You’ll be inventive. We’ll move directly through the crowd and get in.’

Olort sighed. He looked at Mkoll with an almost kindly smile.

‘This is the end. You realise that? Whatever plans you were nursing, they end here. You have delivered yourself. Your own choice. You are here and this is it. There is no escape, and no opportunity for any course of action except surrender.’

Mkoll didn’t reply.

‘Come,’ said Olort. ‘Submit now. I’ll take you in directly, and deliver you. It’ll be a feather in my cap, but it will make things easier for you. I’ll see to that. We have an understanding, don’t we? You’ve spared me. I’ll spare you.’

‘Spare me?’

‘Spare you the worst. You’re a trophy. You have value, and for that reason, you will be treated with care.’

‘And accept induction?’

‘If you choose so. I appreciate you may not be able to bring yourself to that. But you are enkil vahakan, Ghost. Special status will be afforded you.’

Mkoll looked at him.

‘Give me the blade,’ said Olort.

‘No.’

‘You’re a prisoner already,’ said Olort. He shrugged. ‘Look around. You have entered the heart of us. You have placed yourself in our bastion and in our midst. Your identity will not remain hidden for long. There is no escape. Give me the knife, and I will make things go as well for you as they can.’

The agriboat rocked against the quayside, grinding against the sacking bumpers. Men shouted instructions, hauled on cables, and jumped the gap to tie up. The boat’s engines coughed into reverse.

‘You have urgent business to attend to,’ Mkoll said.

Olort’s face fell. ‘A knife at my back? You think that will get you in here? That will keep you alive?’

‘It’s worked so far.’

‘I am but one life–’

‘But you don’t want to lose it. I’m sure you would die in the name of your lord. Cry out, and bring them all down on my throat. But you want to live, damogaur. You’d rather live. I see that in you. You see purpose and personal glory in this, and all the while that chance exists, you’ll keep your mouth shut. So… you and your sirdar have urgent business to attend to.’

The agriboat had scraped to a halt, and sat rocking. The troops aboard began to clamber out, passing up packs and folded support weapons, and reaching out for proffered hands. Packsons barked orders and got the shackled prisoners on their feet.

Mkoll let Olort feel the solidity of the blade at the base of his spine.

‘Let’s go,’ he whispered.

Olort moved forwards.

‘Make way here!’ he called. ‘I have urgent business to attend to!’

They made their way along the pier, and Mkoll stayed close to the damogaur. The whole structure had a cake of algae on it, hard-set from years of growth. It was pink, purple and ochre. The crowds were tight. At every side, packsons stood in loose groups, some resting, some swapping stories. A few had knelt down in what little space was available to offer prayers and observations. Sekkite officers and grotesque excubitors moved through the masses, marshalling the arrivals, and despatching them in ragged columns up the wharf to holding areas. Gangs of prisoners were being led away. Mkoll counted more than sixty captured men unloaded from the boats. How many more had already been brought to their doom?

The great horns roared above them. A cargo-lifter skimmed by, its shadow flickering in the searchlight beams.

‘Keep moving,’ Mkoll whispered.

A sirdar with a data-slate approached them. He threw a cursory salute to Olort with a quick hand to his mouth, a reflex gesture that to Mkoll had begun to read as blowing a kiss. The Tanith found the cultural mis-connect of the gesture unsettling. The sirdar and Olort exchanged a few words. The enemy tongue was fast and hard to follow, but Mkoll heard the phrase ‘urgent business’ more than once. The sirdar nodded, and pointed in the direction of the stilted buildings overhanging the wharf.

The scratching whispers in Mkoll’s skull continued.

From the rail of the dock, he saw a rockcrete foreshore where Sons of Sek with flamer packs were torching piles of what looked like undergrowth. Thick clouds of black smoke billowed from the burning heaps. The smell was pungent and sweet.

‘What are they doing?’ Mkoll asked.

Olort answered, using a word Mkoll didn’t know. There was no time to question further. They crossed a busy yard and entered the nearest building.

The place was old. Lumen-globe lamps hung from chains anchored to the ceiling. It was part modular build and partly carved from the rock wall. Industrial meltas had been used to fuse the rock and modular plate together. The hallway space was big, and echoed with voices and the tramp of feet.

The walls of the hallway were lined with engravings, tall and narrow. The place, Mkoll guessed, had been a centre of clave administration. The engravings displayed the Urdeshi loyalty to Terra in the form of images of the God-Emperor, but they reflected the interests of Urdesh. Here was the Emperor in the aspect of a sea god, coiling with scaled tentacles, and here he rose from the Urdeshi deeps in a vast bloom of algae. On another panel, he was festooned with weapon-pods, triumphing the product of the forge’s war-foundries. On another, he was so augmeticised with cyber implants he resembled a Titan war engine with a single, human eye. Slogans had been daubed in yellow paint under each image, utterances of the Archenemy. But the images themselves had not been defaced.

‘Why have these not been torn down?’ Mkoll asked Olort.

Olort seemed surprised. ‘They show him as he is,’ he replied. ‘Why would we break those?’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘The Urdeshi know the deeper truths,’ said Olort. ‘They are kin to us. They understand the fluidity. You cannot stand upon a border line for generations and not see both sides.’

Olort glanced up at one of the images. ‘See him there, not as a false emperor surrounded by saints. He is shown as the machine, as the mutation, a force of war. He has always been a creature of the deep warp, warped like us. You know him only as you want to see him.’

Olort made a gesture of respect to the engravings.

‘You worship him?’ Mkoll asked.

‘Nen, we respect,’ replied Olort. ‘He is no god, nor is he an emperor. But a prophet? Kha. Yes. He has seen the enlightenments of the Eight Powers and witnessed the truth of the warp. Ghost, your kind… they follow blindly. They see what they want to see. The Holy Lord, blessed of all, defying the darkness. But he stands in the darkness, beyond the curtain of death, fed by the warp and changed by it. He is a brother to us, a brother we must sadly fight to subdue until he renounces his insurrection.’

Olort looked at him.

‘You know nothing of this?’ he asked.

‘It makes no sense.’

‘This is because of your breeding. The indoctrination of your heretical culture. Do you… not know why we fight?’

‘You fight to annihilate.’

Olort shook his head sadly.

‘You are a man of war, Ghost,’ he said. ‘You have spent your whole life, I’d wager, serving your Throne in the field of battle. And you have never stopped to wonder what those you fight believe in? What our cause is?’

Mkoll didn’t reply.

‘We fight to bring you back,’ said Olort. ‘We fight to break your mindset and your blind beliefs. To make you see the truth and embrace it. Your prophet-lord has seen it, but he can no longer speak it, so your kind, they fight on according to ancient decrees and fossilised laws, things you believe are what he would have wanted. He is of us, and will be welcomed back to our bosom on such day as his followers finally lay down their swords and accept the warp-truth. Your faith in a man that was never a god has blinded you for ten millennia.’

‘No,’ said Mkoll simply.

‘This is the way of it,’ replied Olort. ‘You think we are the darkness. But you are the darkness. Your ignorance is a shadow on your eyes and a fog in your mind. We fight to deliver you from that. We fight, Ghost, to save you.’

They moved on past administrative chambers where rubricators worked at cogitation systems, then out across a suspended walkway towards another stacked complex of cliff-side buildings.

‘You know this place?’ Mkoll asked.

Olort nodded.

‘You’ve been here before?’

‘Twice, not for long.’

‘I want to find… information,’ said Mkoll. ‘Data on layout. Personnel locations. Those chambers back there–’

Olort shook his head.

‘Just the old processing centres of the Urdesh dynasts,’ he replied.

‘There were people at work. Using the cogitators–’

‘They have finished stripping out the memory cores of the dynastic claves. A gathering of intelligence. Now those machines are simply being used to compose and circulate our litanies.’

‘Then, assuming your life depended on it–’ said Mkoll.

‘Which I know it does,’ Olort replied with some sarcasm.

‘Where would you go?’

Olort pointed to the structures that lay ahead of them. ‘The record rooms,’ he said. ‘There we collate deployment details and pack data by hand. Machines cannot be trusted on this world.’

‘Lead me.’

‘What do you seek, Ghost? Do you cherish some plan, some great scheme, whereby a lone man with a knife can bring down this host? How long will you persist in such fantasies?’

‘Lead me. I know what I’m looking for. And to answer your question, until my life is over. The Emperor protects.’

‘Not here he doesn’t,’ said Olort. He shrugged. ‘Come, then.’

They began to cross the walkway. Below, the water of a dock inlet gleamed like a rainbow where the floodlights caught the scum of spilled promethium lapping the surface.

Packsons were coming the other way, hefting metal barrows laden with dead vegetation. More fodder for the bonfires on the rockcrete strand. As they passed, Mkoll saw what the vegetation was.

Islumbine. It had been torn up in great quantities, leaf, flower, stem and root.

‘They’re taking it to burn it?’ Mkoll asked as the soldiers with the barrows moved past.

‘I told you this.’

‘Why?’

‘It is vergoht,’ Olort replied, using the unknown word again. ‘The flower of your Saint. It never grew here, not on Urdesh. It was not…’

He hesitated, trying to find the correct word.

‘Native?’ asked Mkoll.

Olort nodded. ‘Yet now it grows everywhere,’ he said. ‘Like weed. We cut it and it grows again. So we cut it and burn it.’

‘Why bother?’

‘Because it is her flower,’ Olort said. ‘It is a holy aspect of her heresy. We must purge it, for while it grows and flourishes, it means she is here.’

‘Sir?’ Oysten called. She held out the headphones of her vox-set.

Rawne sniffed and trudged back to her, tugging his collar up against the incessant rain. He was soaked to the balls and his mood was foul. From down the wet, rubble-strewn street came sounds of sporadic gunfire. He hoped there’d be some killing left to do when he got there. He needed to take his mood out on something.

He took the headset and pulled it on.

‘Rawne,’ he said. He looked at Oysten, who nodded. ‘Link is secure,’ he continued. ‘Speak.’

The signal chattered and whined. A burst of static. Then a voice broke through.

‘–do you copy? Repeat, Colonel Rawne–’

‘Daur? That you?’

‘Affirmative, sir. This link is bad.’

‘Agreed. The weather. Tell me you’ve raised me to give a withdraw notice.’

‘Negative, sir. Sorry. I have new orders for you.’

‘I’ve just had new orders, Daur, from some arsewipe in Grizmund’s brigade. I don’t know what the feth is going on, but we’re locked in grunt work, street cleaning, and–’

‘These orders are direct from the Lord Executor, and they supersede all others.’

Rawne wiped his mouth.

‘Why isn’t he talking to me himself?’ he asked.

‘Don’t be an arse. Because he’s the Lord Executor and he’s got shit on his plate. This is vital work, Rawne. I’m going to brief you, so get ready.’

‘Stand by,’ replied Rawne, waving a hand distractedly at Oysten. She jumped up and passed him a data-slate and stylus.

‘All right,’ said Rawne. ‘Go.’

‘First point. The Tanith First is now cleared at vermilion level. Copy that?’

‘I heard.’

‘Gaunt orders you to withdraw from the Old Town district, effective immediately. Pull everybody. Commandeer transports if you have to. Leave any wounded at field stations, or have them shipped to the palace.’

‘Understood.’

‘You have two targets, both inside Eltath limits. Orders are to secure both locations. Both are classified. Location one…’

Rawne wrote the details down on the slate in company code, then read them back to make sure there were no mistakes.

‘Secure both sites,’ Daur said over the link. ‘The stones are at site one. Send the main force there. The pheguth is at site two. Smaller, mobile force there. Gaunt thought you’d want to handle that one yourself.’

‘Indeed.’

‘You’ve got that clear?’

‘I have. What’s this shit about?’

‘I don’t know the half of it myself,’ Daur replied. ‘But this is direct from the top, coded special task deployment. I’m advising you to keep this to yourselves. You have waiver authority to pass where you need to pass, but don’t discuss the details with any other units.’

‘Are we compromised, Daur?’

‘We don’t know anything, Rawne. Situation is fluid. But this is special task deployment. Gaunt needs men he can trust to perform this, and you’re the only ones in reach.’

There was a long pause. The rain pattered down.

‘The only ones period,’ Daur added. ‘This is on us. The Ghosts are now a discretionary unit operating at the Lord Executor’s personal instruction.’

‘So… outside the Guard command structure?’

‘For the duration. Those two locations carry the highest confidence ratings. Update on this channel as you can. And don’t feth it up.’

Rawne cleared his throat.

‘How deep are we in this, Ban?’ he asked.

‘Assume it’s the end of the world and your arse is on fire, then act accordingly,’ said Daur. ‘The Emperor protects–’

‘Feth he does. Rawne out.’

Rawne stood for a moment reading back over the notes he’d made. Then he took off the headset and tossed it back to Oysten, who caught it neatly.

‘You weren’t planning on living forever were you?’ Rawne asked her.

‘Sir?’ his adjutant replied, puzzled.

‘Skip it. Call the Ghosts in. All of them. Disengage and fall back to my marker. Now.’

Daur handed his headset back to Beltayn. Rain was lashing against the tall windows of the palace and the overhead lamps were flickering slightly, as if damp had got into the wiring.

‘They’re despatched,’ he said.

‘I’ll inform the Lord Executor,’ Beltayn replied.

‘That’ll have to wait,’ said Hark.

They turned to look at him.

‘He’s got a greeting to make,’ said Hark.

Gaunt led his small honour guard into the reception chamber. It was one of the finest rooms of the palace, its floor tiled, its pillars and cornices gilded. Mythical beasts of the ancient Cyberzoic Era ran rampant across the immense ceiling fresco, surrounding a luminous image of the God-Emperor, who they seemed to regard with a mix of appetite and dread. The God-Emperor looked down, sword raised, one mailed foot resting on the head of a vanquished and pliant cockatrice.

Rows of company and brigade banners had been brought into the hall and set up along its length specifically for this moment. Many were still damp and dripping. At the far end, a large hydraulic hatch had been opened, allowing for a view out onto the exterior landing platform. Gaunt could feel the wind blowing down the length of the hall, and see the veil of heavy rain outside.

He advanced. In step behind him were Kolea, Grae, Inquisitor Laksheema and the Tempestus squad.

At the far end, just inside the hatch, Lord General Barthol Van Voytz was waiting. There was a wet semi-circle on the floor at the hatch sill where the wind was blowing the rain in. Van Voytz had put on his finest uniform, the breast ribboned with medals. Accompanying him were a dozen other senior officers and adepts and a phalanx of heavy Urdeshi storm troops. Gaunt recognised their leader, Kazader of the 17th.

The storm troops were set either side of the hatch, rigidly at attention with weapons presented. They were as immobile as granite. Kazader matched their pose, but Gaunt could tell Kazader was watching him approach out of the corners of his eyes. Kazader was one of Van Voytz’s inner circle. There was bad feeling there.

Van Voytz turned as Gaunt came up, and the party of officers turned with him. All snapped a salute in unison. Van Voytz’s salute was a nanosecond slower than the rest. It wasn’t because Barthol was an older man, Gaunt thought. He wasn’t slow. That tiny delay was micro-aggression. A way of showing his resentment without being directly insubordinate.

Gaunt returned the salute.

‘At ease,’ he said. ‘The Emperor protects.’

Van Voytz stepped closer, making a respectful head-bow with a smile on his face. All for show.

‘My lord,’ he said, like an old friend.

He held out his hand, and Gaunt shook it. Like we’re all pals together, he thought. No grudge, no bitterness. He wants to stay relevant inside high command, and if that means making a show of friendship to a man who blocked his plans, a man whom he once regularly sent to do death’s work…

Gaunt smiled. The informality of the handshake wasn’t for his benefit. It wasn’t a gesture of reconciliation. It was for the officers looking on. Look at me. I am Van Voytz, the old wardog. I am so tight with the Lord Executor, I get to bypass protocol and shake his hand.

‘Has the transport arrived?’ Gaunt asked.

‘It touched down some minutes ago,’ said Van Voytz, ‘but no one has yet emerged.’ Gaunt noted how Van Voytz avoided the honorific of ‘sir’ or ‘my lord’, yet could not bring himself to risk an ‘Ibram’.

‘Awaiting security clearance from the war room,’ said Gaunt.

Van Voytz nodded. ‘I’m sure,’ he said.

‘Then we have a moment, Barthol,’ said Gaunt, drawing him to one side. Van Voytz went with him eagerly, but his expression was tight.

‘There’s bad blood between us, Barthol,’ Gaunt said quietly.

‘Not at all, not at all…’

‘We need to work together, Barthol,’ said Gaunt firmly. ‘This is a precarious time. High command needs to be of one mind and one purpose. So don’t deny it. There’s bad blood here.’

‘Well…’

‘And there always has been.’

Van Voytz looked both shocked and pained. ‘Now, sir–’

‘Since Jago, and there’s a lesson there. I learned it the hard way. Duty and service over friendship. My duty was to your command then, and it was what it was. I see a bigger picture that you always urged me to appreciate. Now your duty is to me. Our roles are reversed. It’s uncomfortable for you, but at least I’m not sending you into a killing ground.’

Van Voytz cleared his throat, and sagged slightly.

‘I appreciate that,’ he replied.

‘You were on the path to disgrace, Barthol. Macaroth wanted your head on a stick.’

‘I was merely putting the safety of the crusade first–’

‘I know. I know that. Which is why I talked the Old Man down, and found you a staff position that allowed you to retain your rank and privileges. No direct command, I know, but that may come in time.’

‘If I behave myself,’ rumbled Van Voytz.

‘Feth’s sake, it could have been an outworld command for you. The arse-end of everywhere. Or a penal regiment. I covered your back because I know you’re a fine officer. Don’t piss on that respect. What took place in the command chamber–’

‘You don’t have to explain yourself, Ibram,’ Van Voytz said with a long sigh.

‘I don’t. And I won’t,’ said Gaunt. ‘I drew you aside to tell you that I don’t have to explain myself. Do we have an understanding?’

Van Voytz nodded. He saw the look in Gaunt’s eyes, steel-cold eyes that Van Voytz’s orders had cursed Gaunt with a long time before.

He straightened up and saluted.

‘We do, my lord,’ he said.

Gaunt looked back at the hatch. The rain was still falling.

‘Someone check on the transport,’ he said. Sancto made to move, but Kazader sternly broke line, held up a hand to halt the Scion, and strode out into the rain.

‘And keep him in check too, Barthol,’ Gaunt murmured sidelong to Van Voytz. ‘He’s got a bigger streak of resentment in him than you have.’

‘Kazader’s good Guard,’ Van Voytz replied. ‘He’s got the makings of a high career. A generalship in a few years. In fact, I dare say, he reminds me of you.’

‘Exactly my point,’ said Gaunt.

Gaunt returned to his escort.

‘This is peculiar,’ said Laksheema.

‘You’ll find that a lot as far as she’s concerned,’ Gaunt replied. He glanced at Kolea. Gol looked tense and fidgety.

‘Gol?’

Kolea shrugged. ‘She’s not out there, sir,’ he said. He nodded towards an anteroom adjoining the hall.

‘Really?’ asked Gaunt.

Kolea shrugged again.

‘Come with me,’ Gaunt said. ‘Stay here,’ he added firmly to the others.

The pair crossed to the side door. Gaunt saw a single raindrop glinting on the gold handle.

He opened the door. The shifting air shivered the hundred candle flames burning in the anteroom. It was dark, like twilight, but Gaunt’s eyes automatically reset.

She was standing in the centre of the room. She turned to face him, and lowered the hood of her simple woollen cloak. Her combat boots and fatigues were equally worn and filthy, and the silver breastplate she wore – part of an articulated, Urdeshi-made combat carapace that also covered her arms and upper thighs – was chipped and tarnished. The only things that shone were the pommel of the sword sheathed on her left hip, the gold grip of the autopistol holstered on her right, and – somehow – her face.

Gaunt dropped to one knee, and bowed his head.

She stepped forward, took his hand, and raised him back up.

‘Ibram,’ she said. ‘Lord Executor.’

‘Beati,’ he replied. ‘We were attending upon you without.’

‘I require no formality,’ she said.

‘The warmaster sends his apologies that he could not greet you in person–’

‘Again, no formality.’

‘There will be feasting and ceremonies in due course,’ said Gaunt. ‘Once the crisis is behind us–’

‘And I will endure them. For now, there’s work to be done.’

She was small. She looked up into his eyes. It seemed she had not changed. Perhaps a fleck of grey in her short black hair. She looked like the Esholi girl he had first met on Herodor. Sanian. The green eyes had not altered.

Her presence had. The room felt charged, as if some powerful electric or magnetic force had been loosed upon it. There was a faint scent of islumbine.

‘It has been a long while for us,’ she said. ‘Our paths have diverged, now they come together again.’

‘I hope there is a purpose to that reunion,’ said Gaunt.

‘Yes. To bear witness to victory. The Anarch is broken.’

‘He fights on.’

‘And so he is at his most dangerous. Together we will prevail, for the Throne. I faced him. He set a trap for me, but I confounded it and I hurt him.’

‘You did?’

‘After Ghereppan. We broke his malicious efforts there. Shattered them and shattered his control of the field. Immediately, I pushed on into Oureppan, believing it to be his stronghold. It was headstrong, I suppose. But there was such a chance. Not just to vanquish him on the field of war and drive his forces to rout, but to finish him.’

Gaunt realised she looked very tired. She had come to Eltath directly from the heat of combat. She had not taken time to rest or clear her mind. He wondered how inexhaustible her divine strength really was.

‘I led an assault on the Pinnacle Spire at Oureppan early yesterday. It was a trap laid for me. A warp snare. But it failed. He fled. His ship was as damaged as he was. He has hidden to heal his wounds.’

‘But he’s close?’

‘Too close. Our focus shifts here now. The last part of this business.’

‘Your forces?’

‘Are moving up country. I have left good people in charge. Ghereppan is secured. Oureppan will be by tomorrow. The brigades that stood with me there are now driving the Archenemy out of Lartane and the Northern Claves. They will be with us in, perhaps, ten days. I wanted to lead them in person, but the warmaster summoned me.’

‘And you came.’

‘Of course.’

Gaunt became aware that there were others in the room. Two Guard soldiers, standing outside the ring of candles. They had assault weapons braced and ready across their chests. One was a small woman with an angular face and glossy dark hair. She wore the black-and-mulberry long coat of the Jovani Vanguard, and Gaunt noticed the insignia of the Collegia Tactica on her collar. The other was a man, his simple battle dress dark and ragged.

For a moment, Gaunt thought–

The Beati turned, and gestured to them to stand down. ‘My seconds,’ she said to Gaunt. ‘Captain Auerben and Major Sariadzi. All the rest of my chosen people are with the main force moving north.’

The pair put up their weapons, and saluted, the simple salute of troops who were weary from the field and who had seen everything. They had marched with the Saint. A Lord Executor was nothing impressive.

‘My lord,’ they both said.

Gaunt took their salute.

‘You remember my officer, Major Kolea–’ he began.

The Beati had already turned to Kolea with a bright smile.

‘Gol,’ she said.

He tried to bow again, but she took his wrists and kept him on his feet.

‘It is good to see you,’ she said.

‘Is it?’ asked Gaunt.

She glanced at him sideways with a quizzical smile.

‘I crave your indulgence for a moment, Beati,’ Gaunt said. He pulled open the anteroom door and called out into the reception hall.

‘Inquisitor?’

Laksheema strode in, followed by Grae. Gaunt closed the door in the faces of Van Voytz and anyone else following.

Grae and Laksheema stared at the Beati for a moment, as if surprised at the sight of her. It took a second for them to register the magnitude of her presence and see she was much more than a scruffy girl dressed like a gutter-trench auxiliary.

Grae dropped to his knee. Laksheema bowed respectfully. Gaunt saw an involuntary tear welling in her eye.

‘Introductions can wait,’ Gaunt said. ‘Beati, I want you to vouch for this man, for Gol, in front of these people. Let them witness it.’

‘And if you can’t vouch for me,’ said Kolea, ‘then speak that truth too. Right here. Let it be over with.’

The Beati frowned. She looked at Kolea with deep intent, as if she was seeing through him. He averted his eyes, flinching like a man waiting in a foxhole for a shell to fall.

She stepped closer to him, uncoupling the cuff-lock of her carapace unit and removing the glove. With a bare hand, she reached up, and turned his face to look at her. She ran her fingers down his cheek, then traced lines up across his scalp, reading the map of his old scars beneath his hairline.

‘Know that I know this man,’ she said softly. ‘From Herodor. He has remarkable courage, but then so do many of the infamous Ghosts, not least their commander. But in Gol Kolea of Vervunhive, there is a singular strength. A fortitude I’ve seen in only one in every hundred thousand. In you, Sariadzi, that day on Caliber Beach.’

Behind her, the solemn major blushed slightly.

‘And perhaps you, Auerben,’ she added. ‘We have not known each other long, but I sense your potential.’

The woman laughed. The olive skin of her face was marked from collar to cheekbone by an old pyrochemical burn.

‘I’ll see what I can do, my lady,’ said Auerben in a dry rasp.

‘This strength is something I yearn for,’ said the Beati. ‘It is… I can’t describe it. But those I choose to be close to me, those I make my seconds and my instruments, they all have it. And Gol Kolea was, I think, the first instrument I made.’

The Beati looked at Laksheema.

‘You have doubts, lady,’ she said. ‘I see them in you. You are wary.’

‘Major Kolea’s reputation is formidable,’ said Laksheema, ‘but there are concerns that the Ruinous Powers have touched him. Made him a conduit…’

The Beati shook her head.

‘No,’ she said flatly. ‘Well, the darkness has touched him. Burned him. Tormented him. But he is not of its part. The fortitude remains intact. You have no reason to mistrust him.’

She withdrew her hand. Tears were streaming down Gol’s face.

‘I think that will be satisfactory,’ Gaunt said to Laksheema.

The inquisitor paused.

‘I cannot question that verdict, my lord,’ she replied. She wiped the corner of her eye with her knuckle.

‘No apology offered?’ asked Gaunt.

‘She should not apologise for doing her duty,’ said the Beati. She glanced at Laksheema. ‘But Major Kolea should now be taken into your circle of trust.’

Laksheema nodded.

‘Wait outside,’ Gaunt told Laksheema and Grae. As they withdrew, he turned to Kolea.

‘Your mind at rest now?’ he asked.

Kolea nodded.

‘Then go down. See to the company here. See your children.’

Kolea nodded again. ‘Thank you–’ he began to say.

Gaunt shook his head.

‘Get on with you,’ he said.

Kolea smiled, rubbed his reddened eyes vigorously, and walked out.

‘There are things going on here,’ said the Beati. ‘For such great suspicions to exist, for such–’

‘There are,’ said Gaunt. ‘We need to talk. At length.’

He hesitated.

‘I wondered,’ he said. ‘When you came here, I wondered who would be with you. I wondered if Brin–’

She placed a hand on his arm.

‘Brin Milo has gone,’ she said gently. ‘I’m sorry, Ibram. He stood with me during the assault on Oureppan. Brave to the last. He, and many others, including a warrior you know. Holofurnace of the Iron Snakes. It was a hellish fight. We won the day and hurt the Anarch Magister, but they were lost in that struggle. Caught in the warp snare and never recovered.’

The Beati gestured to Sariadzi, who stepped forward with a small bundle wrapped in a khaki ground sheet. She took it and handed it to Gaunt.

‘Just… yesterday?’ Gaunt asked. ‘Milo died yesterday? After all these years, and–’

The Beati nodded. ‘I have not had time to rationalise the loss,’ she said quietly. ‘Brin stood at my side longer than any other. I will grieve when this war permits me space to do so.’

She pressed Gaunt’s hands around the bundle.

‘I felt I should bring these for you,’ she said.

Gaunt looked down, and slowly unwrapped the bundle. It was a set of Tanith pipes, old and worn, the same set Brin Milo had been playing the day Gaunt first met him.