The Warmaster

Fifteen: Staff

Gaunt followed Biota through the halls of the Urdeshic Palace. The tactician seemed little inclined to speak further.

There were guards posted at every corner and doorway: Urdeshi in full colours, Narmenians with chrome breastplates and power staves, Keyzon siege-men in heavy armour. The fortress was pale stone and draughty. Footsteps echoed, and the wind murmured in the empty halls. Walls had been stripped of paintings, and floors of carpets. Rush matting and thermal-path runners had been laid down to line thorough­fares. The old galvanic lighting had been removed and replaced with lumen globes.

Biota swept down a long, curved flight of stone steps, and threw open the doors of a long undercroft with a ribbed stone roof. The undercroft was full of men, standing in informal huddles, talking. They all looked around and glared as the doors opened.

Biota didn’t break stride, walking the length of the chamber towards the double doors at the far end without giving the men a second glance.

Gaunt followed him. He was aware of the eyes on him. The men, in a wide variety of Astra Militarum uniforms that generally featured long dark storm coats or cloaks, watched him as he walked past. There were a hundred or more, and not a single one of them below the rank of general or field commander. By a considerable margin, Gaunt was the lowest ranking person in the room.

Biota reached the end doors. Made of weighty metal, of ornate design, they were decorated with etched steel and elaborate gilt fixtures. Gaunt reflected that they were probably one of the fortress’ original features, ancient doors that had felt the knock of kings, and seen the passing of dynast chieftains and sector lords. It was better, he felt, to reflect on that notion than on the thought of the combined authority of the eyes watching him fiercely.

Biota knocked once, then opened the left-hand door. Gaunt smelt the smoke of lho-sticks and cigars. He entered as Biota beckoned him, and then realised that Biota had shut the door behind him without following.

The chamber was large, and draped in wall-hangings and battle standards, some fraying with age and wear. A draught was coming from somewhere, fluttering the naked flames of torches set in black metal tripods around the circumference of the room. In the dancing glow, Gaunt could see the inscriptions on the wall, proclaiming this chamber to be the war room of the Collegia Bellum Urdeshi.

The floors were a gloss black stone that contrasted with the paler stone of the rest of the old fortress. They were covered in lists, lists etched in close-packed lines and then infilled with hammered gold wire. Legends of battle, military campaigns, rolls of honour.

There was a vast semicircular table in the centre of the room, its straight edge facing him and the door. The table was wooden, and looked as if it was a half-section of a single tree trunk, lacquered and varnished to a deep gleaming brown. A cluster of lumen globes hovered over it. Above them, in a ring around the table space, twenty small cyberskulls floated in position, their eyes glowing green, their sculpted silver faces mumbling and chattering quietly.

Thirty people sat at the table around the curved side. They were all ­staring at him. A thirty-first seat stood, vacant, at the centre of them.

Gaunt recognised them all. Their ranks and power, at least. Some he knew by pict and file reports, some from commissioned paintings. Some he knew personally. To the left, Grizmund, his old ally from Verghast, now a full lord general by the braid on his collar and sleeves. Grizmund nodded a curt greeting to Gaunt.

‘Step forward, Bram,’ said Van Voytz, with a casual gesture. He had a cigar clenched in the fist that beckoned, and the smoke rose in a lazy yellow haze through the lumen glow, reminding Gaunt of the creep of toxin gas on battlefields. Van Voytz was sitting to the left of the vacant chair.

Gaunt stepped forwards, facing the straight edge of the table. He took off his cap, tucked it under his arm, and made the sign of the aquila.

‘Colonel-Commissar Ibram Gaunt of the Tanith First, returned to us,’ said Van Voytz.

A murmur ran around the table.

‘The Emperor protects,’ said Lord Militant Cybon. ‘I am heartened to see your safe delivery, Gaunt.’

Gaunt glanced at the massive, augmeticised warlord. Cybon’s ­haggard face, braced with bionic artifice, was deadpan. Torch light glinted off the jet carrion-bird emblems at his throat.

‘Thank you, sir,’ Gaunt said.

‘It’s been a while,’ said Lord General Bulledin, broad and grey-bearded. ‘A while indeed. Monthax, was it?’

‘Just prior to Hagia, I believe, lord.’

‘Ah, Hagia,’ said Bulledin with a dark chuckle. The chuckle was echoed by others at the table.

‘Things work out for the best, in the end,’ said another lord general ­further around the semicircle. Bulledin glanced his way.

‘You’re living testament to that, my friend,’ he said archly.

The man he was speaking to simpered some retort as if it were all barrack room banter. Gaunt glanced his way. He saw that the man was Lugo. He stiffened. Lugo looked older, much older, than he had the last time Gaunt had seen him, as if age had sandblasted him. He wore the rich brocade of a lord militant general, perhaps the most showy of the various uniforms in the room. A lord general again, Gaunt thought. Times have moved on.

‘You have a report for us, Bram,’ said Van Voytz.

‘I have, sir,’ said Gaunt. He took his encrypted data-slate from his pocket. ‘If you’re all ready to receive.’

‘We are,’ said Cybon. He lifted a wand to alter the setting of the cyberskulls. They began to whirr and murmur, erecting a crypto-field that insulated the chamber from all prying eyes, ears and sensors. Gaunt activated the slate, and forwarded his confidential report to the data machines in the room. The lord generals took out or picked up their various devices. Some began to read.

‘A personal summary, I think, Bram,’ said Van Voytz, ignoring his own data-slate, which lay beside his ashtray on the table.

‘By order of high command,’ said Gaunt, ‘specifically the authority of Lord Militant General Cybon and Lord Commissar Mercure of the Officio Prefectus, my regiment departed Balhaut in 781 relative. Target destination was an Archenemy manufacturing base in the Rimworld Marginals.’

‘Salvation’s Reach,’ said Bulledin.

‘Indeed, sir,’ said Gaunt. ‘The objective was threefold. To neutralise the enemy’s manufacturing capacity, to retrieve, where possible, data and materials for examination, and to create prejudicial disinformation that would destabilise the enemy host.’

‘Of which,’ said Cybon, ‘the third was the most particular. The Reach mission was part of a greater programme of false flag operations.’

‘This devised,’ said Bulledin, ‘by you, Cybon, and by Mercure?’

‘And sanctioned by the warmaster,’ replied Cybon. ‘But the germ of the notion came from Gaunt.’

‘By way of an enemy combatant,’ said Lugo. He glanced at Gaunt, his eyes glittering. ‘That’s right, isn’t it? There was a high-value enemy asset involved?’

Gaunt cleared his throat. He had a feeling he knew which way this could turn.

‘A high-value asset is only high value if that value is used, sir,’ he replied. ‘The enemy officer had surrendered to our forces. A change of heart. He had been one of us, originally. He offered information.’

‘To you?’ asked Lugo.

‘He trusted me.’

Several of the lords militant muttered.

‘I can make no sense of that remark that is comforting,’ said Lugo. ‘Or that reflects well on either side of this war.’

‘The truth can often be uncomfortable, sir,’ said Gaunt.

‘Why did he trust you, Colonel-Commissar Gaunt?’

The question came from a cruel-faced woman that Gaunt recognised as Militant Marshal Tzara, het-chieftain of the Keyzon Host, and Mistress of the Seventh Army. Her hair was a fading red, cropped very close, and her crimson cloak was fringed with a ruff of thick animal fur. Metal-wire ­patterns decorated the armoured front of her high-throated leather jacket.

‘Do I need to repeat the question?’ she asked.

‘He trusted me because he understands warfare, and respects an able commander, marshal,’ he said. ‘I bested him, on Gereon. I was tasked to eliminate the traitor General Noches Sturm. The asset failed to protect Sturm from my justice. I won his respect.’

‘So he brought this plan to you?’ asked Bulledin. ‘The Archenemy brought this plan to you?’

‘I was wary at first, sir,’ said Gaunt. ‘I still am. I supported the plan only when I had brought it to Lord Cybon and Lord Mercure for consideration.’

‘It was mercilessly analysed before we committed,’ Cybon rasped. ‘Mercilessly.’

‘But the theory was to create a division between Gaur and Sek?’

Gaunt looked towards the speaker, a younger man seated towards the right-hand end of the line. This was Lord General Urienz, one of the shining stars of the Sabbat Crusade, a brilliant commander who had risen to glory on the tide of Macaroth’s ascendancy. They had never met, and Gaunt was surprised to see him present. He imagined Urienz would be off commanding a warfront of his own, gilding his considerable reputation even further. For twenty years, Vitus Urienz had been marked as the warmaster in waiting.

He was Gaunt’s age. His hair and goatee were black, and his broad face pugnacious, as if he had boxed as a junior officer – boxed without the speed to fend off the blows that had flattened his nose, brows and cheekbones, but with a constitution that had let him soak up punishment without a care. There was menace to him, weight. His uniform was dark blue, tailored and plain. No medals, no cloak, no brocade, no show. Nothing but the simple gold pins of his rank.

‘Just so,’ said Gaunt. ‘Gaur was unassailably powerful among the magisters of the Sanguinary Tribes. He won his rank as Archon through his military ferocity, but also by appeasing his key rivals. Sek, Innokenti, Asphodel, Shebol Red-Hand. He made them trusted lieutenants. It is reasonable to say that Sek was a far more capable military leader. By the time the asset approached me, Sek was ascending, and building his own power base. We knew that rankled with Gaur, and that friction was growing. The proposal was to fully ignite that rivalry, and trigger an internecine war.’

‘To make our enemies fight each other, and thus weaken them overall?’ asked Lord General Kelso.

‘Exactly that, sir,’ said Gaunt.

Kelso, venerably old and distinguished in his grey formal uniform, nodded thoughtfully.

‘A wild scheme,’ said Van Voytz.

‘An understatement, old friend,’ chuckled Lugo.

‘It was inspired madness,’ said Cybon quietly, ‘even desperation.’

He turned, and looked down the table at Lugo.

‘But it damn well worked.’

‘In… a manner of speaking,’ Lugo admitted.

‘In no “manner of speaking”, my friend,’ said Van Voytz. ‘Though we face fury ten years on, it is a different fury. Sek’s forces would have broken us eight years ago if they had not been riven. What we face now, to use my friend Cybon’s word, is desperation. The frenzy of a corpse that refuses to acknowledge it is dead.’

‘A weakness we do not capitalise on,’ said Marshal Blackwood. It was the first thing Gaunt had heard the celebrated commander say. Blackwood, in his storm coat, was the only man present who had not removed his cap. He was slim and saturnine, and his tone was a blend of sadness and malice.

‘Let’s not get back to that,’ said Kelso.

‘Let’s not indeed,’ said Bulledin. Blackwood shrugged diffidently.

‘It can wait, Artor,’ he said.

‘It can, Eremiah, and it will,’ said Bulledin. ‘A more fundamental duty requires our attention before we descend into another round of tactical arguments and bickering. Gaunt’s mission, however desperate some of us might consider it, was a success. A success of staggering consequences. It was deemed so back in ’84. That was the official report, stamped and sealed by our warmaster. The Salvation’s Reach venture was added to the honour roll of critical actions in this war.’

‘It’s there on the floor somewhere,’ said Cybon with a casual gesture. ‘You can read it for yourself, Gaunt.’

‘You were presumed lost, colonel-commissar,’ said Tzara.

‘A warp accident befell us, marshal,’ said Gaunt.

‘And though you now appear again, as by some miracle, we are conscious of the immense risks–’

‘Suicidal,’ growled Cybon.

‘–immense risks,’ Tzara finished, ‘that you embraced to achieve it.’

‘And the considerable losses you incurred,’ added Bulledin.

‘You missed it all, Bram,’ said Van Voytz. ‘In the years you were missing, you were celebrated as an Imperial hero, lost in glory, your name and the name of your regiment to be venerated for all time. There were posthumous citations, feasts in your name, dedications. Glory was heaped upon you, Bram.’

‘Only in death, sir,’ said Gaunt.

‘As is so often the case with our breed,’ said Bulledin.

‘It is rare for a man to return to see the laurels that were placed upon his tomb,’ said Cybon.

‘I… thank you, lord,’ said Gaunt. He bowed curtly and made the sign of the aquila again. ‘I am humbled by your words.’

The marshals and generals glanced at each other. A few chuckled.

‘Come now, Bram,’ said Van Voytz. ‘Take your seat.’

‘There is only one, sir,’ said Gaunt. ‘We are waiting for the war­master and–’

‘The warmaster is indisposed, Bram,’ said Van Voytz. ‘He’s busy with his strategising. This seat is not waiting for him.’

Van Voytz rose to his feet.

‘In death, Ibram Gaunt,’ he said, ‘you were commended at the highest level, and awarded with a posthumous rank to honour your deeds and selfless contribution. Now that you have come back to us, alive and whole, it would be the height of disdain to strip you of that rank and pretend it was not earned. Take your seat amongst us, Lord Militant Commander Gaunt.’

They all rose, every one of them shoving back their seats. They began to clap, thirty lords general, marshals, lords militant.

Gaunt blinked.