Blood Pact

TWENTY-SIX A Place That Isn’t There

The Inquisition’s Valkyries had been grounded by the bright fog, which capped the summit of Balopolis and the Oligarchy like an arctic ice-shelf half a kilometre thick.

With the Tanith scouts along its leading edge, the main Imperial sweep had switched its attentions from the central routes of the city, along the main east-west avenues, to the maze of streets and narrow lanes of Northern Old Side. In slow, meticulous fashion, they threaded the lines of the tenements and hab stacks, and searched the under-barns, the lower sinks, and the long, semi-derelict municipal allotments on their suspended irrigation platforms above the highways. The ground was dead-white with almost undisturbed snow, and the air was bright white with pearl fog. Visibility was down to twenty metres in places.

Kolea and Baskevyl moved with the main force behind the scout line, keeping close to the vox truck that was rolling with the search formation at walking pace, and snorting regular blurts of yellow exhaust from its upright stacks into the smoke-white air.

The cold made their eyes water and their cheeks flush. Kolea’s nose had turned red, a fact that Baskevyl had seen fit to mention several times. For his part, Kolea kept going on about a particularly good caffeine that was served in a dining hall that he had taken to frequenting on the Aarlem side of the river. They both knew they were talking about nothing, that this idle chat between two men, who had become good friends and comrades in the five years since their regiments had been amalgamated, was all that stood between them and screaming frustration.

The tension had become unbearable. The progress had become so slow. Every hour or so, they took it in turns to go up to the scouting line and walk with Mkoll or Bonin or Jajjo for a while, just to see how things were going. The frustration there was palpable too. Neither Kolea nor Baskevyl had ever known the famous Tanith scouts to be so adrift. They had both read what amounted to a helpless fury in Mkoll’s eyes.

‘The snow’s lying to us,’ he had told them both, separately, and the words had made both of them shiver. The Tanith scout master’s ability to track was legendary. It was almost regarded as preternatural. If something was outfoxing him, if something was deluding his wits and his honed senses, then it had to be seriously unnatural.

The toxic curse of warpcraft lay heavily across this ancient street.

Due to their proximity to the search areas, squads of troopers from the Kapaj First had been drafted in from Oligarchy Fortress to assist with canvassing. The men, all young lads with the typical stocky frames and olive skin-tone of the Kapaj, were dutifully and seriously moving from house to house along the search perimeter, knocking on doors and asking the residents if they recognised holo-picts of Gaunt’s face or had seen anything untoward.

Baskevyl and Kolea chatted about the way the area’s residents seemed to be behaving so oddly. It often took the Kapaj canvassers two or three knocks to get a reply, and the residents were wary and unforthcoming. Scared, pale faces could regularly be spotted looking down on the passing Imperial search party from upper windows. Families had holed up in cellars and vaults as they had done in wartime. Merchants and shop owners had pulled down their shutters, and hidden in their back rooms. Nobody, it seemed, had seen or heard anything since the snows began.

‘Snow’s not rare here, is it?’ Baskevyl asked.

Kolea shook his head. ‘It’s normal. Seasonal. I think it’s snowed at least once already since we shipped planetside.’

‘So why is everybody treating it like the end of the world?’ asked Baskevyl. ‘Why’s everybody hiding? Why are the streets empty?’

Kolea didn’t have an answer.

One thing that Baskevyl and Kolea didn’t chat about was the Kapaj regiment itself. The Kapaj First was a new founding, nothing exceptional, reasonably promising. Gaunt had been appointed to the regiment as visiting instructor as part of his retirement duties on Balhaut. He’d taken quite a shine to them, and took his mentoring responsibilities seriously, visiting them upwards of two or three times a week. Sometimes, he’d even taken his senior officers with him to brief the young men, none of whom had seen any combat, about the actual niceties of war. Baskevyl had been up to Oligarchy Fortress with Gaunt twice, Kolea three times.

There had been rumours that Gaunt was going to get the Kapaj command permanently. The Kapaj First, all told, was nearly fifteen thousand strong. Someone had started the gossip that the Kapaj was going to be Gaunt’s ticket to the rank of general or general marshal, a significant step on the ladder to a full high-staff position, such as an appointment militant or a marshallcy of guard. The Kapaj First would be his new First and Only. The gossip also suggested that if Gaunt were to be elevated in this way, the Tanith First would be broken up, and rendered into discrete specialist teams to supervise training or operate as special advisors. This, the gossip declared, was why the Ghosts had been retired to Balhaut in the first place: a slow and thorough dismantling, the assets of the regiment stripped.

Gaunt had heard the gossip. At a senior staff dinner, just a week earlier, he’d torpedoed the rumours with such phlegmatic humour and outrageous disrespect for the system that all the officers around the long tables, Baskevyl and Kolea included, had been quite crippled by mirth.

Baskevyl and Kolea didn’t chat about the Kapaj simply because the Kapaj reminded them of Gaunt. The Kapaj weren’t an idle-enough subject for chat. They were too heavily freighted with notions of their missing commander and future possibilities. In the friendless, foggy streets of Old Side, where they could taste the ice crystals in the air, and the cold bladed around them, there were no possible futures anymore, except for a grim resolution in some mouldering tenement.

Kolea tapped Baskevyl on the arm, and Baskevyl turned. A black, unmarked cargo-8 with armoured bodywork had driven up out of the surrounding fog to join the tail-end of the search formation. It had flashed its headlights as it rumbled in behind the vox truck.

‘Look,’ said Baskevyl.

Up ahead, one of the apparently numerous men called Sirkle had alerted his master to the vehicle’s approach. Inquisitor Handro Rime turned and began striding back towards the black truck.

Kolea and Baskevyl changed course to intercept him. Commissar Edur got there first.

‘News?’ he asked Rime, walking backwards to match Rime’s stride and remain face to face.

‘Maybe,’ Rime replied.

‘Who’s in the truck, inquisitor?’ asked Edur.

‘Persons of interest to this investigation,’ Rime replied curtly.

‘Going to reveal any identities?’ Edur asked.

‘We’ll see,’ said Rime.

‘Please get out of the inquisitor’s way,’ said one of the Sirkles.

‘Oh, now,’ said Edur, ‘the inquisitor and I have an understanding, don’t we, sir?’

Rime stopped in his tracks and glared at Edur.

‘When this is done, Edur–’ he began.

‘What?’ asked Edur, with a wink. ‘Are you talking dinner? I don’t know, I’m not that sort.’

Rime let out a quiet curse of rage. One of the Sirkles stepped towards Edur.

Edur put his hand quickly on the butt of his pistol.

‘Uh uh,’ he warned. ‘An understanding, remember?’

‘What’s in the big black truck, inquisitor?’ Kolea asked as he and Baskevyl arrived.

‘Yes, inquisitor,’ said Edur, ‘what’s in the big, black truck?’

‘I’ll tell you as soon as I’ve completed the questioning process,’ said Rime, and pushed past them.

‘He’s a friendly soul,’ said Kolea.

‘Lovely manners,’ said Baskevyl.

Edur watched Rime stride away. A Sirkle unlocked the rear of the cargo-8, and Rime hoisted himself into the back.

‘It’s quite possible this is all going to get very ugly indeed,’ Edur remarked.

‘That’s fine,’ said Kolea.

‘Just say when,’ said Baskevyl.

‘Ugly is what we do best,’ said Kolea.

‘My name is Rime,’ said Rime as he climbed into the back of the armoured truck and sat down on one of the grille seats.

‘A rhyme for what?’ asked Blenner.

‘What?’

‘A rhyme for what?’ Blenner repeated.

‘You mis-heard me, sir,’ said Rime. ‘My name is Rime. Handro Rime, of the Inquisition.’

He opened his heavy leather wallet and displayed his rosette.

‘Oh, my mistake,’ said Blenner.

It was airless in the back of the truck. The portly commissar, who thought himself so amusing, was sweating, and the veiled widow beside him was resolutely saying nothing.

The datasheaf link had already told Rime more about Vaynom Blenner than Blenner would ever care to divulge. A Sirkle in the Balopolis Administratum had pulled Blenner’s dossier and sent it to the Sirkle surveying the Mithredates.

‘You know why you’re here?’ Rime asked.

‘I don’t even know where here is, frankly, so “why” is a whole separate enigma,’ Blenner replied.

Rime tried to assess if Blenner was just an idiot, or if he was playing some kind of clever game. On the grille bench beside Blenner, Criid was wondering precisely the same thing.

‘You’re a person of interest to us,’ Rime said, ‘a long-time associate of Ibram Gaunt. You met at school, I believe?’

‘I try to forget that part of my life, to be honest,’ said Blenner. ‘I was hopeless at games, and the other boys used to bully me. Wait though… I think one of them might have been named Gaunt. Basher Gaunt we used to call him, and he–’

‘Shut up,’ said Rime. ‘We know you know Gaunt. Our records are fairly detailed. Schola progenium, Ignatius Cardinal, and then several periods of contact, the last and longest since school being here on Balhaut during the last eighteen months or so. You meet regularly. You are both members of the Mithredates Club. He paid off your club dues last month because you were financially embarrassed.’

‘Wait… Is he a short, fat man with a beard?’ Blenner asked.

‘You last ate together three days ago,’ Rime said. ‘Gaunt signed the tab. He’s fond of you, evidently. You’re a childhood friend. Very few people in the service or the Guard have childhood friends anymore. He looks after you when your gambling problems get out of hand.’

‘I don’t have any gambling problems,’ said Blenner.

‘Do you want me to send for an audit of your fiscal affairs?’ Rime asked. ‘There’s one available, fresh off the sheaf. I hear it’s a shameful mess.’

Blenner fell silent.

‘You know Gaunt,’ said Rime. ‘The fact is well-documented. That’s why we put a watch on you, as a person of interest. Less than twelve hours before Ibram Gaunt went missing with a high-value asset, and Section was attacked, you had lunch with him. What did you talk about, Vaynom?’

‘Oh, you know,’ said Blenner, ‘the usual chit-chat. How to recruit reliable Archenemy troopers this far into Imperial territory, the best way to storm the gatehouse, etcetera. All that blather–’

Rime’s fist caught him across the face, and smashed him off the grille seat into the side wall of the truck. Blenner’s head and shoulder met the metal wall, and he fell down hard.

Criid rose to her feet.

‘Leave him alone,’ she said.

‘You bastard,’ Blenner was moaning from the deck.

Rime rose to face Criid. ‘What did you say?’

‘Leave him alone,’ Criid repeated slowly.

‘Protective, are you?’ asked Rime. ‘Protective? Sergeant Criid? Oh, yes, we know who you are too. Palm-scans don’t lie. Conveying a message to Gaunt’s good friend, were you?’

Criid pulled off her veil, and glared at Rime.

‘Interesting,’ Rime said, not breaking eye contact. ‘You’re not what I imagined from the first female officer of the Tanith Ghosts.’

‘What did you imagine?’ she asked.

‘Something rather more masculine,’ he said.

Criid kicked him in the face. Despite the heavy trains of her slighted mourning, she rotated enough to smash her foot into his mouth. He crashed backwards into the truck’s wall. Criid raked up her hopelessly stupid skirts to get at her straight silver.

Rime came back at her. He was laughing. It was a nasty laugh, the sort of laugh a man would utter if he were playing games and liked a little rough stuff. He punched Criid in the shoulder, hard enough to make her cry out, then slammed a rising forearm into her mouth so hard that it tumbled her into the cab wall of the truck’s back space.

Rime was on her in a second, before she could rise, before she could stop her head spinning. Somehow, the bastard had got her knife.

He put it against her throat.

‘No more fighting from you,’ he said. He looked over at Blenner.

Blenner had crawled into a corner of the cabin space on his arse, dabbing the blood that was weeping from his nose.

‘Last chance, Vaynom,’ Rime called. He had Criid’s own straight silver pressed against her exposed throat. The blade was already welling blood.

‘Last chance. What did he tell you? What message did he have this bitch bring to you?’

‘I think the message ran, “Screw you, inquisitor”,’ said Blenner, ‘although I can’t be sure.’

Criid laughed out loud. Rime drew the knife deeper.

A long rivulet of blood streamed down Criid’s neck, and began to soak into the collar of her dress. She made no sound.

‘Really, Vaynom, the very last chance. What did he say?’

‘He wants to meet me,’ Blenner cried.

‘When?’

‘Today at four! Please stop cutting her!’

‘Where?’ asked Inquisitor Rime.

‘That’s the thing, I don’t know!’ cried Blenner. ‘He said I’d know the place, but I can’t make head nor tail of it. Please, stop it!’

‘What did he say?’ asked Rime, very slowly and precisely.

‘He said I’d know the place that… that he’d made sure isn’t there.’

Rime jumped down out of the truck, and the nearest Sirkle secured the door.

The other two Sirkles closed with their master.

‘Blenner’s an idiot,’ Rime told them quietly. ‘He really hasn’t the wit for subterfuge, so Gaunt must be desperate to try to use him. Gaunt’s tried to arrange a meet, but Blenner is confused by the coded nature of the location.’

‘Perhaps he’s acting dumb?’ a Sirkle suggested.

Rime shook his head.

‘If that’s the case, he deserves an award from the Theatrum Imperialis.’

‘What about the female?’ asked the other Sirkle.

‘I believe Gaunt didn’t tell her the meaning so she couldn’t betray it. But she’s smart. She may have figured it out.’

‘Should we submit her for deep purpose interrogation?’

‘We’ve only got until four o’clock,’ Rime replied. ‘The female is extremely resilient. You can tell that just by looking at her. She would most likely hold out until the time frame had passed. We have to cut through the marrow of this, and we can’t afford to be fussy.’

Rime took out a data-slate and quickly copied down the key phrase. He handed the slate to one of the Sirkles.

‘Run this against Gaunt’s file. See what comes up.’

The Sirkle nodded.

‘We were using the Tanith to find their commander,’ said Rime. ‘I suggest we continue with that policy. Contact our agents at the Tanith HQ and see if the phrase means anything to them. Have them quiz the Tanith especially. The Tanith core of the regiment has been with him longest, and knows him best.’

‘Oh, and get rid of this,’ Rime added, and passed Criid’s straight silver to his agent. The Sirkle hurried away.

The other agents waited for their master’s next decision. Rime looked over his shoulder, and spotted the Tanith officers standing with Edur, watching him from a distance.

‘What is your will?’ one of the Sirkles asked.

Rime began to walk towards them.

‘Let’s ask them the question too,’ he said.

‘Here he comes again,’ muttered Kolea to Baskevyl.

‘You saw what he had?’ Baskevyl whispered back.

‘Oh, yes.’

‘What?’ asked Edur quietly. ‘What did he have?’

‘He brought a Tanith warknife out of the truck,’ said Kolea, ‘and there was blood on it. I want to know who’s in there and what he’s done to them.’

Mabbon, the prisoner, the pheguth, was awake.

Gaunt found him standing in front of one of the studio’s windows. He’d opened the shutter a little to peer at the luminous white nothingness of the foggy daylight outside.

‘Your woman, she’s gone?’ Mabbon asked.

‘She’s not my woman,’ Gaunt replied, sipping a cup of caffeine he’d made for himself.

‘I wasn’t suggesting you were sexually involved,’ said Mabbon. ‘She’s your woman. She serves you. She’s one of your Ghosts, isn’t she?’

‘Yes.’

‘She was on Gereon, wasn’t she?’

Gaunt nodded.

‘It’s funny,’ Mabbon murmured.

‘What is?’

‘On Gereon, if I’d won, if I’d been successful in my mission, you’d be dead, and so would she. Yet here you are, risking your lives to protect me.’

Gaunt scowled.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Ironic, isn’t it?’

‘Is there any more of that?’ Mabbon asked, pointing at Gaunt’s cup.

Gaunt nodded, and Mabbon followed him into Jaume’s rancid cubicle of a kitchen. Gaunt poured another cup.

‘Can I trust Maggs?’ Gaunt asked. ‘I could really do with an extra pair of hands.’

‘You’re asking me?’

‘Yes.’

Mabbon shrugged, and sipped from his cup. ‘I’d trust him.’

‘I’m not you,’ Gaunt said.

‘Well, if I was you, I’d never trust him again,’ said Mabbon. ‘I’d probably kill him, to be sure.’

‘Throne,’ Gaunt breathed.

Mabbon suddenly put down his cup, and scratched at the back of his head.

‘They’re closing in,’ he said.

‘The Blood Pact?’

Mabbon nodded.

‘You can feel them?’

Mabbon looked at Gaunt.

‘You ever serve on a tropic world so wet-hot the dust flies tap at your eyeballs faster than you can blink?’

‘Yes, I’ve been there.’

Mabbon took up his cup and breathed deeply before sipping again.

‘That’s what it feels like. Micro-contact in my arms, at the base of my spine, deep down. Something touching my eyes.’

‘And this tells you they’re close?’

‘Close and closing,’ said Mabbon Etogaur.

Gaunt blinked. Once again, he could see it, as clear as day: the Blood Pact, dripping in wet gore, stepping over the threshold into Jaume’s premises.

His new eyes had been showing him an awful lot in the last couple of days.

Every step of the way, he’d dismissed the images as system errors, as glitches, as imaging artifacts, as optical reconciliations, as patterns of accustomisation.

But he’d seen such things through his new eyes. He’d seen his driver’s bad attitude. He’d seen the attack on Section before it had come. If truth be told, he’d seen Maggs trying to kill the etogaur. It hadn’t been the wild shots of the gun that had been left behind that had alerted him.

He’d already been running before the gun had started firing.

‘How close are they?’ he asked.

‘Very close,’ Mabbon replied.

Gaunt looked at his pocket chron. It had stopped.

‘We have to move anyway,’ he said. ‘We’ve got an appointment.’

‘The phrase doesn’t mean anything in particular to me,’ Hark told Sirkle. ‘But I’ll give it some careful consideration. It may be more obvious than it sounds.’

Sirkle nodded.

‘Of course,’ Hark went on, ‘if the message was intended for Commissar Blenner as you suggest, it might be very specific to his relationship with Gaunt. They’ve known each other for a long time. It might reference something that none of us have any knowledge of.’

With a sour look that suggested he thought Hark was being less than entirely helpful, Sirkle walked away to continue his questioning. Ordo agents were already moving through the main barrack-rooms, quizzing the rank and file.

‘You know what it is, don’t you, sir?’ Ludd asked Hark quietly.

‘Remind me never to play cards with you, Ludd,’ Hark murmured. With Dalin and Merrt in tow, they turned and began to walk briskly in the direction of the temple house.

‘You do know what it is,’ said Ludd.

‘Of course I do, Ludd. It’s hardly vermillion-level cryptography. A place that Gaunt has made sure isn’t there? Anyone?’

‘The Tower of the Plutocrat,’ said Dalin.

Hark stopped in his tracks and looked at the young adjutant.

‘Give the boy a medal! Well done, Criid.’

Dalin coloured up. ‘My mother– I mean, Sergeant Criid, she has studied the colonel-commissar’s career in some detail. I grew up on the stories.’

Hark clapped Dalin on the shoulder, and then resumed his stride towards the temple.

They entered the temple. Rerval, his arms folded, was standing beside the vox-caster while Beltayn worked at it.

‘Anything?’ Hark asked.

Rerval shook his head.

‘It’s still dead. It’s like Major Rawne has just dropped out of existence.’

‘Shame,’ Hark replied, ‘because we’ve now got something to tell him. Keep trying. Where did Doctor Curth go?’

‘She took a break, sir,’ said Beltayn. ‘I don’t think she could stand the tension. She said she’d be back. She said she had something important to do.’

‘You look funny,’ said Zweil.

‘Charming,’ Curth replied. She sat down opposite him. The closed folder lay on the desk in front of her.

‘I mean, there’s a funny look on your face,’ Zweil said. ‘Get on with it, will you? I don’t like doctors’ offices. They don’t agree with me. Besides, I’ve got things to do. Urgent things. I’ve got hymnals to re-cover. In hessian, which is the best I could come up with. And there’s half a bottle of altar wine that won’t just drink itself.’

‘The results of your medical examination have come back,’ she said.

‘Really?’ he mocked. ‘I didn’t think you’d called me in here to tell me I’d been promoted to general.’

She opened the folder.

‘This is very difficult, father. Difficult for me to say and difficult for you to hear.’

Zweil didn’t reply. He stared at her.

‘The pharmacon report has revealed a concern.’

‘I said it would,’ Zweil snapped. ‘No good ever came of tests. No good at all. Ignorance, you see? It’s better not to know. People generally underestimate the power of ignorance.’

‘I’m sure they do, father,’ she said gently. ‘However, in the circumstances, we need to discuss this.’

‘Has it got a long name?’

‘Yes, father.’

‘Don’t tell me what it is!’ Zweil cried, holding up a hand. ‘I don’t want to know. I don’t want to make friends with it. We will refer to it only as The Concern.’

‘If that’s what you want.’

He nodded. ‘I’m assuming the length of The Concern’s real name is inversely proportional to the length of time it’s going to leave me with?’

‘Sort of,’ she replied. She swallowed. It was very hard to stay professional.

‘So where’s it lurking? In my head? My liver? My lungs?’

‘It’s in your blood, actually. It’s a haematological c–’

‘Bup-bup-bub!’ Zweil interrupted, making an urgent shushing gesture. ‘I don’t want long words. I don’t want to have a conversation with it!’ He dropped his voice to a hiss. ‘In fact, we should whisper. I don’t want it to hear us. I don’t want it to know I know about it.’

He looked her in the eyes.

‘I don’t want the fething thing to know I’m scared,’ he whispered.

Curth opened her desk drawer to find a tissue.

‘And crying is a complete giveaway,’ he scolded her.

Curth nodded and blew her nose.

‘So,’ Zweil whispered, ‘how long?’

‘We can administer palliative treatment to retard the progress of–’

‘I don’t want drugs. I don’t want nurses and tests and monitors. I’ll just keep going on the way I am, if you don’t mind, for as long as I can, for as long as it will let me. How long?’

‘Without treatment,’ she said, ‘no more than three months.’

Zweil blew a raspberry.

‘That’s absolutely shitty,’ he said. ‘I assume there’s no possibility that the test results are wrong?’

She shook her head. ‘I’m so sorry.’

The old priest sat back, deflated. Then a new expression crossed his face. Since the start of their conversation, he’d shown little more than anger. Now he wore an expression of shock.

‘Oh, crap,’ he murmured.

‘What?’

‘I’ve just thought of something,’ he said. ‘I’ve just thought of one tiny detail that makes this business a thousand times worse.’

The philia slipped through the mist. The city was still veiled in luminous swathes of white, like high-altitude cloud, but the sun was beginning to burn it off. A hard, bright, clear day threatened to become a reality.

Karhunan Sirdar was confident their holy business would be done and finished by the time the fog departed. They had faced a canny foe, who had thrown them off the trail more than once. But they were Blood Pact, and they were sworn and driven. They had the resolution of the Consanguinity behind them, and they had sworn to perform this duty upon their souls.

They were tired, and they were hungry, and the approaching prospect of their collective, violent doom, though a glorious destiny, touched many of them with fear. However, none of them, not a single one, harboured even the slightest thought of giving up. They all loved the damogaur and, as the warp was their witness, they would not fail him, not in this life.

The witch had done her work. The damogaur had told the men that the pheguth had concealed himself. The witch was unable to read him. However, after a lengthy process of arcane elimination and prayer, the damogaur’s infernal sister had identified the one part of the Imperial city that she could not see into. One small location had been made blank to her. The logic was simple. The target was hiding in the place she couldn’t see into.

The witch swore to this fact, and Karhunan Sirdar had no reason to doubt her. She could not lie. Only truth ever passed her lips.

Up ahead, Imrie came to a halt at a street corner. He pointed up at the black metal sign on the wet brick wall.

Carnation Street.

This was the place.

‘Take me with you,’ Maggs insisted.

Gaunt shook his head.

‘No.’

‘Look, I don’t know what happened,’ Maggs protested. ‘Untie me and let me help.’

‘I don’t really know what happened either, Maggs,’ said Gaunt, ‘and that’s why I can’t untie you or bring you along. You’re staying here with Mr Jaume. When this is all done, I’ll come back for you.’

Maggs stared at him. There was a great deal unspoken in the stare.

Gaunt looked at Jaume, who was standing nearby.

‘Thanks for your hospitality, Mr Jaume. We’ll try not to inconvenience you much longer.’

Jaume shrugged.

‘Can I come with you? Help you in anyway?’

‘Thank you, no. I’d like to keep you out of danger.’

Over in the corner, Kolding was finishing re-packing his medical bag. He was ready to go. Gaunt was already risking the life of one civilian, and that was one too many.

‘Hey,’ Mabbon called out. He was at the front window, looking out at the street through a gap in the shutters. ‘I think our plans just altered.’

Gaunt went over to join him.

Outside, the fog was thick. Slowly and silently, dark figures were emerging from its brilliant depths. Gaunt counted three, four…

They approached slowly, spaced out a distance from each other. They were coming straight for the house.

Gaunt could see that they were armed. Their weapons were held low but ready.

They stopped on the snowy pavement and looked up at the house’s shuttered windows.

Now, he could see their masks too.