‘Anyway, bloody good work!’ Ironmeadow said, as Eszrah walked past him.

  The cargo-4 made a nasty grinding sound, then roared into life. The engine sounded decidedly unhealthy, but it was running. As the engine turned, the headlamps came on, bathing Banx in bright yellow light. He slammed down the hood, and turned to them in the spotlights of the twin beams, arms spread, like a showman taking an encore.

  ‘Slow but sure,’ he called out to them, ‘the Munitorum gets the job done. You can all thank me later!’

  For Banx, later lasted about a second. A gigantic shadow rose up behind his lamp-lit form, leaned over into the glare, and bit his head off.

  Arms still wide, what remained of the driver took two shuffling steps forward, shaking and jerking, and fell over onto the track. Violently pressurised jets of blood sprayed into the air from the ghastly wound, and now blood fell like rain.

  Ironmeadow lost control of his bladder and dropped onto his knees.

  ‘Holy Throne…’ gasped Ludd.

  The wrought one came forward into the light, hunched low, its throat tubes baggy and loose. Its huge arms, locked at the elbow, supported the titanic bulk of its head and upper body. Its flesh was florid and pink, and a mane of tangled brown hair draped forward over the segmented metal armour of its massive skull. Tiny, fierce eyes glowed in the deep recesses of the visor slits. They could smell it, smell the rancid sweat-stink of its mass, smell the sour blood and meat rotting in its vast maw.

  The stalker’s vast lower jaw thrust forward, underbiting the plated snout, and long steel teeth, as spatulate and sharp as chisels, rose up out of the gum slots and locked back into position.

  ‘Hwerat? Hweran thys?’ Eszrah murmured, evidently surprised. ‘Ayet dartes yt took haff, withen venom soor, so down dyed yt!’

  ‘Well, somehow,’ said Gaunt, ‘it got better.’

  The creature gazed at them for a moment. Then its slack, heavy throat tubes began to swell and distend. It opened its mouth and let out a deafening, trumpeting roar, exhaling bad air and blood vapour in a mighty gust.

  ‘Kill it. Right now,’ Gaunt said. He had both of his bolt pistols out. They began to boom, lighting the gloom with vivid muzzle flashes. At his side, Ludd started firing too, his laspistol slamming off at maximum rate. Eszrah raised his reynbow and thumped another iron dart deep into the meat of the thing’s shoulder.

  The combined firepower would have felled most of mankind’s known humanoid enemies. Even a dread Traitor Space Marine might have reeled from the force of two bolt pistols at such tight range. Certainly, the monster’s flesh tore, burst, exploded. Grave wounds ripped across its upper torso and arms, and two deep dents appeared in its armoured snout.

  But it didn’t seem to care. It charged them.

  ‘Move! Move!’ Gaunt yelled.

  Ludd threw himself to the left. Eszrah disappeared to the right. Gaunt went after Eszrah, and then remembered Ironmeadow.

  The captain was still on his knees in the thing’s path, weeping and helpless.

  ‘Oh feth,’ Gaunt snarled.

  He turned back, skidded on the muddy track, almost fell, and then righted himself. Wrapping his arms around Ironmeadow, his pistols still in his fists, he yelled ‘Move it! Now!’

  Just about all of Captain Ironmeadow’s higher functions had by then become devoted to emptying his body as quickly as possible. The frantic weeping was the most wholesome aspect of this evacuation. Gaunt felt the ground shake as the monster thundered in at them. He put all his strength into a desperate body throw.

  Gaunt went over backwards, and Ironmeadow flew over him, landing on his back in the trackway mud. He slid on his shoulders for quite some distance and ended up beside the cargo-4. The massive beast thundered past, its quarry suddenly missing.

  The wrought one turned heavily, grunting and snuffling. Its throat sacs puffed out and went limp, puffed out and went limp. Its vicious teeth retracted and then snapped back, bright and murderous.

  It saw Gaunt, spread-eagled on his back.

  Gaunt tried to rise. He saw the iron quarrels, eight of them, stuck in the beast’s pink flesh. Eszrah hadn’t lied. He’d put eight reynbow darts into the thing, loaded with Untill toxin, and still it was moving.

  With another roar, the stalker came at Gaunt.

  Gaunt had lost his grip on one of his bolt pistols, but, still on his back, he fired the other one at the hideous thing as it bore down.

  Gaunt rolled hard, to his left. One of the stalker’s huge paws, claws extruded, dug up a bucketful of mud as it struck at the place where Gaunt had been lying.

  Gaunt leapt onto his feet. Just three rounds left in the clip. He put them all into the side of the beast’s skull as he backed away.

  Shaking its long, armoured head, the stalker turned to look at him with its glinting, piggy eyes.

  Clip out. Another in his coat pocket. Two seconds to load, maybe? Three? Nothing like enough time for that.

  Holy Throne, Gaunt thought. I’m afraid. Great God-Emperor, I’m actually afraid!

  ‘Well done, you son of a bitch!’ he cried into the monster’s face.

  It lunged forward at him, raising an arm so thick, so corded with reinforced muscle, Gaunt knew his bones would be pulped.

  Before the blow could land, the stalker winced away, blinking. Las-rounds were striking it in the ribs. Heavy, hard, a sustained and serious assault.

  ‘That’s right, you bastard!’ Ludd shouted. ‘This way! This way!’ He fired again.

  With a raging, phlegmy rattle, the wrought one turned aside and went for the new target instead.

  ‘Oh! Bugger…’ Ludd said.

  The empty bolt pistol flew up into the air, discarded. Gaunt ran forward, drawing the power sword of Heironymo Sondar. He lit it up and felt the crackle of ignition.

  He sliced at the wrought one.

  The amplified blade cut clean through the monster’s body. If he’d hit the backbone, Gaunt was sure he’d have severed it and crippled or killed the beast. But he didn’t quite manage that.

  The wrought one let out a huge howl of pain that shook its flapping throat tubes. It turned back to find out what had hurt it so. A copious amount of black, stinking blood gushed out of the deep slice Gaunt’s sword had put through its torso.

  It swung at him. Gaunt guarded and sliced back, his blow deflecting off the monster’s reaching claws. Several talons flew off into the air, sizzling from their cut ends.

  The beast opened its mouth. The stink of it hit Gaunt like a body slam. It was going to lunge forward, a biting strike. Gaunt braced his blade in both hands. He was certain he could impale it, kill it, maybe. Of course, he would be dead in the same exchange, as the huge killing jaws snapped forward and closed.

  There would be a symmetry to that, at least. To die, killing your killer. That might be enough. After all this time, all these battles, after the unremitting horrors of Gereon, it might be enough. Enough to die with. He almost welcomed it.

  ‘Finally…’ he sighed.

  The wrought one fell on its face at his feet.

  It gurgled once, then the breathing stopped. It was dead. Really dead, this time.

  ‘Holy…’ Gaunt said. He sank to his knees, leaning on his sword.

  The potent toxins of Eszrah’s bolts, quite enough to kill a regular human with the slightest scratch, had finally worked through the stalker’s system.

  ‘Sir? Are you all right? Sir?’ Ludd called, coming closer.

  ‘I’m fine. I’m alive,’ Gaunt replied. He rose upright again. ‘I’m alive. Still, I’m alive!’ he shouted the words at the dark woods around them. Ludd took a step back. ‘You hear me? I’m alive, you bastards! You can’t kill me! You just can’t kill me, can you?’

  Gaunt held his arms up, holding the sword aloft, and slowly turned in a circle. ‘I’m alive, even now! You bastards! What have you got left?’

  He began to laugh, violently, full throatedly, his head back, almost manic.

  Nahum Ludd had seen plenty during that day that had scared him, and the stalker had almost topped the list. But Gaunt’s defiant laughter was the scariest thing of all.

  Eszrah Night loomed out of the dark and placed a hand on Gaunt’s shoulder.

  ‘Restye, soule,’ he whispered.

  Gaunt nodded. ‘It’s all right, my friend. I’m all right. Ludd?’

  ‘Yes, sir?’

  ‘Good work there. I won’t forget it. Get Ironmeadow cleaned up.’

  ‘How exactly, sir?’

  ‘Find a stream or a pool. Make him stand in it.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  Gaunt looked back at the partisan. ‘Howe camyt be, soule? Sow suddan, sow vyle?’

  Eszrah shrugged. ‘Stynk offyt I hadd. Thissen steppe.’

  The Nihtgane led Gaunt into the undergrowth. Away from the track, and the lights of the truck, huge slabs of granite loomed in the dark between the trees. They were slumped and fallen askew, like a monolith that had been sunk and toppled by the measures of eternity.

  ‘Histye,’ Eszrah said, touching parts of the stone and the foliage as he led the way. ‘Herein, herein y twane. Thissen spoor, here alswer, yt maketh spoor, alswer, alswer over.’

  He came to a stop before a massive slab of quartz, as big as a superheavy tank. The lump of rock reclined among the draping, sickly trees. Gaunt had to feel for its shape in the dark.

  ‘And here’s where the track stopped?’ he asked.

  ‘Namore stynk, namore spoor yt leaf. Comen fram Urth yt dyd.’

  ‘Are you sure?’ Gaunt asked, feeling the rock. Eszrah did not reply. Gaunt could feel the Nihtgane’s reproach. Of course Eszrah was sure. He was partisan, a Nihtgane of the Untill. What he couldn’t track was beyond the limit of measure.

  Gaunt looked up at the night sky. In the cold, hard frieze of the air, stars twinkled beyond the trees. Somewhere out there, across the dim, distances of space, the proper face of this war was being fought, by experienced, determined men.

  But it would be lost here. If he was right, and Gaunt was pretty sure he was, the Sabbat Worlds Crusade would be lost right here, in the step-cities of Ancreon Sextus. The Warmaster was going to get stabbed in the back.

  He would get stabbed in the back and die.

  And there was nothing Gaunt could do about it. After all, he was a loose cannon, a suspect officer, regarded as so dubious in his loyalties, he’d been issued with an observer to keep an eye on him. Regarded as so untrustworthy, he hadn’t even been given back a command of men.

  Just because they thought he was tainted. Well, it was that very poison essence in his blood that made him know this now. Know it for sure.

  Somehow, despite all the odds against him, he had to find a way of getting the senior staff to take him seriously.

  And there was one way he could think of…

  ‘Let’s get back to the transport,’ Gaunt said to Eszrah. On the trackway below them, the cargo-4’s engine was still running, and its lights were burning. The distant cries of hunting stalkers flooded the night.

  ‘Ludd? Ironmeadow?’ Gaunt yelled as he scrambled back down to the transport, Eszrah behind him. ‘We’re leaving. Now.’

  FIFTEEN

  04.02 hrs, 197.776.M41

  Fifth Compartment

  Sparshad Mons, Ancreon Sextus

  Rawne’s team had been back amongst them for nearly two days, and Wilder was now convinced they should never have returned. It wasn’t that he didn’t know them – and by the Throne, he didn’t – but he had been counting on the Tanith men to absorb them back into the company, to smooth over the transition, to welcome the squad’s return. And that just wasn’t happening.

  There’d been an attempt at greeting on the first afternoon. Once they’d cheered and applauded their arrival, the Ghosts had mobbed forward around their long-lost comrades, shaking their hands, embracing them, asking the first of a thousand questions. Rawne’s team had, for the most part, simply suffered this attention. They’d smiled back thinly, accepted the handshakes and embraces stiffly, quietly said hello to old faces.

  Gol Kolea had marched straight up to his old friend Varl and squeezed the smaller man in a big hug. Varl had grinned an empty grin and patted Kolea on the back until he stopped.

  ‘All that, and they still didn’t get you?’ Kolea said.

  ‘So it seems,’ said Varl. ‘I suggested they tried harder, but their heart wasn’t in it.’

  ‘Holy Throne, it’s good to see you,’ Kolea admitted.

  ‘Yeah,’ Varl seemed to agree. He was simply looking around at the camp, anywhere but at Kolea’s face.

  ‘So… when do we hear all about it?’ Kolea asked.

  ‘Not much to tell,’ Varl replied.

  The Tanith scouts had surrounded Mkoll and Bonin. From what Wilder could overhear, those greetings were oddly muted too.

  ‘What did you see, sir?’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘Gaunt’s alive, right?’

  ‘What happened to Ven?’

  ‘Good to see you all still breathing,’ Mkoll had replied. This Mkoll, the famous Mkoll the scouts had boasted proudly about, didn’t look like much to Wilder. Small, unprepossessing, tightly wound.

  ‘But what did you see out there?’ Leyr asked.

  ‘Not much worth speaking of,’ Bonin replied.

  ‘Somebody give me a sit rep,’ Mkoll had said, as if he’d just wandered in from a routine, half-hour sortie.

  Trooper Caffran had pushed his way through the huddle towards Tona Criid, and stopped short in front of her. He started to move to embrace her, but there was something in her manner that seemed to persuade him not to.

  ‘Tona,’ he said.

  ‘Caff.’

  ‘I knew… I knew you’d make it back.’

  ‘Glad someone did.’ Then she’d moved on past him, heading towards the billets, leaving him alone, a puzzled expression on his face, the muscle in the corner of his jawline working tightly.

  Only Brostin, Rawne’s flame-trooper, had seemed in a remotely expansive mood. Greeted by company flame-troopers like Lubba, Dremmond, Neskon and Lyse, Brostin had accepted a lho-stick from a proffered pack.

  ‘What was it like, Bros?’ Dremmond asked.

  ‘Well,’ Brostin had replied, looking down at his smoke, ‘there weren’t enough of these for a start.’

  A despondency had settled in. The returning ‘heroes’ appeared to want nothing more than to be left on their own. The day’s celebratory mood ended up fizzling away as pathetically as a badly connected det-tape.

  The following morning, Wilder had called them all to a briefing at his field tent. He summoned other officers too, including Baskevyl, Kolosim, Meryn and Kolea. The down country squabble with the Blood Pact was still grumbling away inconclusively, the spat holding over from the previous day. Daylight in the compartment was a patchy grey that seemed as shiftless as the mood. According to the post advisors, DeBray was likely to order an infantry advance in the next thirty-six hours. This made sense to Wilder. The enemy armour wouldn’t have been gripping on so tightly if they weren’t trying to hold a door open for a ground troop push.

  ‘Chances are we’ll be moving into the compartment again tomorrow,’ Wilder had said. ‘Maybe even as soon as later today. Details to follow, but I’ll be looking at a firm foot advance from the main companies, with scout units combing ahead. A secondary issue is getting you fixed into place neatly.’ By ‘you’ he had meant Rawne’s team. The major nodded.

  ‘I’ve got various ideas about where to slot you,’ Wilder said, ‘but I think a little familiarisation is needed first. This is odd fighting country–’

  ‘We’re used to odd,’ Rawne said.

  Wilder paused. He wasn’t accustomed to being interrupted, certainly not by a man he didn’t know.

  ‘Noted, Rawne. Thank you. I’m going to divide you up and post you with three forces. Sergeant Mkoll and Trooper Bonin, given your speciality, I want you moving in with the recon force, to get a good feel of the way we like to run scouting operations. Captain Kolosim is one of our recon leaders, so you’ll be with him.’

  Kolosim nodded a greeting to Mkoll and Bonin that was only just acknowledged.

  ‘Varl, Criid, Brostin and Larkin. I’m sorry I don’t yet know any of you better. I’m going to put you with C Company, that’s Kolea’s bunch, so you’ll be in with the main infantry advance. Try and find your feet. I don’t think you’ll have much trouble doing that.’

  ‘I’ll keep them in line if they don’t,’ Kolea remarked, shooting for a good-natured quip. It fell flat.

  ‘Major Rawne, I’d like to attach you to E Company, along with Feygor and Beltayn. E Company is Captain’s Meryn’s unit. If I can be frank for a moment, I know that might be a little strange, as Meryn was very much your junior when you left. Rub along, please. This is simply about acclimatisation. Meryn, you know Major Rawne is a seasoned and experienced officer. I think we all know we’re lucky to have him back with us. I won’t lie – there’s every chance I’ll be moving E Company to him before long. I know that’ll feel like a demotion to you, but suck it up. If it happens, it’ll be no reflection on you, Meryn. There will be other opportunities.’

  ‘I understand perfectly, sir,’ Meryn said. There was not even a hint that he was put out by the suggestion. He must have seen that coming, Wilder thought. Wilder saw how Kolea looked briefly unhappy that Wilder didn’t seem to be following his recommendation about Meryn and Rawne.

  ‘All right, that’s it,’ Wilder said, rising to his feet. ‘Major Rawne, I’m sure you’ll remind your team that this is all about getting to know your old comrades again, and getting to know your new ones as fast as possible.’