Brostin lifted his flamer gun up and lit the stick off the blue pilot flame sizzling beside his weapon’s regulator. Bubbles of promethium were dripping from his torch’s hoses.

  ‘Ah, yes,’ Brostin said. ‘That draws nice. A fine brand, Mister Feygor.’

  ‘Only the best,’ Feygor smiled.

  Brostin exhaled. ‘Flamers? Let’s get this done.’

  As the last tail-enders of E Company ran back past them, the flame-troopers plodded down the slope, spreading wider. The tanks on their backs were gurgling and sputtering, and their pilot flames hissing. Larkin, his gun half-raised, tailed them, Kaydey behind him.

  Twenty metres from the edge of the undergrowth, Brostin brought his team to a halt. He took a flamboyant drag on his smoke and then flicked it away.

  ‘Wait for a heartbeat,’ he called out. ‘Let’s see their faces.’

  Blood Pact troopers began to emerge from the edges of the undergrowth cover. They raised a cry, a howl. Weapons cracked and barked. Behind them, machine noise betrayed the approach of more stalk-tanks.

  ‘All right,’ said Brostin. ‘That’s enough faces. Cook ’em. Fat-blue, wide-wash, keep it near the ground. Let’s do it.’

  The four flame-troopers triggered their weapons and sent searing plumes of fire down the slope. Caught in the sudden inferno, the front line of the Blood Pact shrieked and staggered, enveloped. A moment later, the edges of the dried undergrowth caught too. A mess of flames boiled up the basin, storming and furious.

  Brostin squeezed his flamer’s paddle gently, nursing out gouts of liquid flame. ‘Easy does it,’ he urged.

  The hem of the undergrowth was a blitz of fire now. Screams and shrieks rang out of the furnace. Several Blood Pact troopers emerged, stumbling, encased in fire.

  ‘Now, that’s real nice,’ Brostin said.

  Something big exploded in the undergrowth – a stalk-tank’s munitions cooking off – and the fire spread.

  Brostin shrugged off his flamer tanks and glanced at Larkin. ‘Larks?’ he said.

  ‘I’m ready,’ Larkin replied, raising his weapon. Brostin uncoupled his feeder tubes and dropped his gun.

  ‘Wind it up,’ Larkin said. He and Brostin had pulled the ‘airburst special’ more than once back on Gereon.

  Brostin was a big, hulking man with a heavy upper body. He began to turn slowly, picking up speed as he rotated, like a hammer thrower. His flamer tanks were in his right hand, spinning out as a counter weight.

  With a grunt of effort, he released them, and the heavy prom tanks flew up into the air over the basin undergrowth. Larkin tracked them, and, as they began to dip, he fired.

  The hot-shot round smacked into the pressurised tanks and ignited them. A torrential rain of liquid fire fell across the basin and brought it up in searing flames.

  ‘Holy crap,’ Kaydey said.

  Brostin turned away from the crackling heat of the firestorm in the basin. The screams and popping explosions drifted back with the smoke.

  ‘Say hello to Mister Yellow,’ he said.

  A thick belt of black smoke was climbing into the sky when Wilder reached the scene of the battle. Keshlan sat down to catch his breath. Novobazky wandered in beside Wilder, gazing at the litter of the fight.

  C and E Companies had taken up a heavy defensive position facing Ridge 19. A large portion of the lowland countryside was on fire.

  ‘The God-Emperor protect us…’ Wilder said, surveying the devastation. Kolea approached and threw a salute.

  ‘I want full details, including casualties, later, Kolea. Right now, the short version.’

  ‘Kolosim’s recon party picked up hostiles in the woods thataway. E Company moved in and pretty much crushed them before we got here.’

  ‘This would be the E Company that I ordered specifically not to engage without my permission?’

  ‘I’m guessing yes, sir.’

  ‘Go on, Kolea.’

  ‘But the hostiles were just part of a much larger force.’

  ‘How large?’

  ‘Eight, nine hundred troops, maybe more, with stalk-tank support. The enemy was definitely out to mount a major offensive through the difficult terrain in the east compartment while our attention was on the tank fight.’

  Wilder nodded. ‘And you’ve held them?’

  ‘Flamers did a lot of damage. Drove them back. We assume they’re either in retreat, or they’re waiting to come at us along the ridge there.’

  Wilder looked around. ‘Understand me, Kolea. You, Meryn, Rawne and I will be having a serious talk about this later. I know it’s going to be hard for me to tear you off a strip when the results are this good, but believe me, this will be settled.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘You stay in my command, you follow my orders, or I throw you to the commissars.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  Wilder walked over to Keshlan. ‘Get me post command,’ he said to the vox-man. ‘We’d better tell DeBray that the enemy’s just gone proactive on us.’

  ‘Not just here, sir,’ Keshlan said. ‘From the reports coming in, the whole Mons has gone crazy.’

  NINETEEN

  07.54 hrs, 197.776.M41

  Post 10, Third Compartment

  Sparshad Mons, Ancreon Sextus

  The sound of gunship engines woke Gaunt from a curious dream. Dawn had come, grey and damp, and a cold wind flapped the seams of the habi-tent. Ludd was still sound asleep, but Eszrah was crouching in the flapway of the tent, looking out into the camp. There was a lot of activity out there. Trucks and transporters were revving, and men were shouting. Another squadron of Vulture gunships droned low overhead, snouts down, heading into the north-east and the bleak morning.

  Gaunt stepped past Eszrah, who rose to follow him. Gaunt shook his head, and motioned that the Nihtgane should stay where he was.

  He went outside into the billet area. Most of the habi-tents around had already been vacated. There really was a hell of a lot of activity going on. Gaunt pulled his shirt and vest off over his head and walked to the standpipe of the nearest service bowser. He cranked the pump handle, and sluiced out cold water to wash his armpits, his neck, and his face.

  More attack ships went over, Valkyries this time. Gaunt stood upright and shook the water off his face like a dog as he watched the gunships slide past. Twenty of them, then another fan of at least thirty. Their combined engine noise was deafening.

  Something about them, or about the cold, grey sky behind them, reminded Gaunt of his dream. He’d been in a room, a small, oblong room, with a door in each of the shorter walls. The room had been open to the sky, lacking a roof. Every time he’d looked up, he’d been able to see a vast stretch of wild heavens, deep and florid with banks of cloud that were ominously edged with a fiery russet.

  In the dream, Gaunt had been aware of a deep compulsion to get out of the room. Some odd part of the dream’s internal logic told him that if he didn’t leave the roofless room, he wouldn’t be able to do any good. Any good at what, the dream wasn’t particularly bothered to identify.

  But every time he walked towards one of the doors, it was no longer there. The doors wouldn’t stay put. He’d move towards a door, and suddenly it would be in another wall.

  For a few weeks on Gereon, early on, he’d been plagued by a recurring dream where he’d been stuck in a stone chamber that had no doors or windows. It had bothered him deeply, scared him, back at a time when he still could be scared. The claustrophobia, the sense of imprisonment, had lingered on him each morning, long after he’d woken. Ana Curth had told him it was simply an anxiety dream, a nightmare about being trapped on Gereon. After a few weeks, it had passed.

  This new dream didn’t scare him, but it left him with an unsettled sensation that fed uncomfortably into his current troubles.

  Gaunt was pulling his vest and shirt back on when Ludd appeared, bleary-eyed.

  ‘What’s going on, sir?’ he asked.

  ‘I don’t know. Something big. I’ll go and see Sautoy. I have to report to him, after all.’

  They’d arrived back late the previous night after their bloody encounter on the road. Ironmeadow had wanted to file a full report at once, but Gaunt had told him to get some sleep. He’d assured the captain he’d make his damning report about post 15 in the morning.

  ‘I’ll come with you,’ Ludd said.

  ‘No. Stay here and get some caffeine brewed. We both need some. I’ll be back soon.’

  Gaunt put on his coat and cap, and headed down the truckway to post command. There was activity all around. Young troopers, their faces pale and anxious, were boarding transporters or loading munitions onto cargoes and armoured cars. A line of Chimeras grumbled past. The sky was overcast and grim, and there was a real wind picking up. It was hard to tell, but Gaunt was sure he could hear heavy, booming blasts echoing from far away.

  Post command was busy. The place was heaving with officers and tacticae advisors, message runners and technicians. Briefings were underway in some of the side chambers, and a constant flow of shouted updates rang from the bustling vox station.

  Gaunt pushed inside. There was a smell of fear. Stale sweat, morning breath, the ugly odour of men who had been living in the field and now had been roused early, unwillingly, to face a cold, unfriendly day. Faces were pinched, troubled, unwelcoming. The younger men in particular looked like a slow horror was dawning on them.

  Sautoy was in the station command room. He looked harried and bothered. The start of his day had evidently been so brusque that he hadn’t even had time to pin his handsome collection of medals to his purple coat. Officers had gathered around his chart table, and Sautoy was throwing orders and directives left and right as he sorted through an increasing pile of status forms and message papers that the runners were bringing in from the vox-station.

  ‘Gaunt!’ he called as he saw the commissar in the doorway. No false bonhomie this morning. ‘Come in. I just sent Ironmeadow to find you.’

  ‘I must have crossed him on the way,’ Gaunt said. ‘It’s busy out there.’

  Gaunt stepped inside and took off his cap. Half a dozen of the junior officers around the marshal’s chart table hurried out to get on with their orders. The others remained, bent over the table in a serious huddle, conferring and pointing out various details on the underlit map image.

  ‘I wanted to file a report, sir,’ Gaunt began. ‘My visit to post 15 yesterday. Serious code violations led me to–’

  Sautoy held up his hand. ‘I know all about it, Gaunt. Ironmeadow came to see me last night.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘He was shaken, Gaunt. Understandably. What you found there was vile.’

  ‘Symptomatic of an underlying–’

  ‘It’s academic now, anyway, Gaunt.’

  ‘Why, sir?’

  ‘Because a total crap-storm broke about two hours ago, Gaunt. Post 15’s gone. Twelve’s maybe about to fall too. The Archenemy has decided, this morning, to mount a full scale counter-offensive.’

  He led Gaunt over to the chart table. It took Gaunt very little time to make sense of the markers and deployments on display.

  ‘Significant enemy forces struck through compartments seven and nine just before first light,’ Sautoy said anyway. ‘They stormed out of the ninth compartment and overran post 15. Our forces there abandoned the site rather hastily. They’ve also pushed us entirely out of the seventh compartment. We’re currently throwing everything we’ve got into this compartment to try and establish some resistance in the lowland sector here, behind post 12. Trouble is, as it stands, post 12 is pretty much cut off and taking the brunt of both advances. We’ve had no contact with them for thirty-eight minutes.’

  Sautoy beckoned Gaunt away from the junior officers and lowered his voice. ‘We’ve not seen anything on this scale since we first chased the bastards into this step-city. It’s barely credible that they’ve got such resources built up in here. Our boys are rattled. Seriously rattled, and on the back foot. There’s a real danger we could get pushed right back out of the third compartment unless we rally soon.’

  A vox-officer came in, saluted Sautoy and gave him a message wafer. Sautoy’s face darkened as he read it. ‘Throne above,’ he whispered, and handed the slip to Gaunt. Post 36 in the fifth compartment was reporting a major enemy offensive too.

  Gaunt sighed. He’d had a plan that morning. He’d intended, one way or another, to find a way of persuading Sautoy to allow him to transfer to fifth compartment operations. It was a long shot, and Sautoy was certainly no ally. Gaunt had already debated with himself at least a dozen possible excuses or reasons for the transfer, none of them satisfactory. He’d even considered contacting Van Voytz and going over Sautoy’s head. But now this had happened, and everything, as Sautoy had remarked, was academic. There was no point even asking.

  Gaunt did, anyway.

  ‘I’d like to request permission to transfer to the fifth compartment, sir,’ he said.

  Sautoy blinked. ‘Out of the question, man. Why would you even ask that?’

  Gaunt paused. In the light of the current situation, he quickly decided which of his excuses sounded the most plausible. ‘My old outfit, the Tanith First, is up in the Fifth, sir. If this is as bad as it sounds, I’d like to be with them and try–’

  Sautoy shook his head. ‘Admirable, Gaunt. Very admirable. Loyal. I like that. It’s why I’ve always liked you. But the answer’s still no. I need you here, for Throne’s sake. I need you right here, you and every experienced cadre officer I’ve got. I want you forward in the line as soon as possible. Intelligence says the greener regiments, especially those falling back from 15, are in total disarray. We have to rally these young men, and that’ll take veterans like yourself.’

  ‘I understand, sir.’

  ‘Get into the field and start whipping those boys back into shape. Get them forming up a proper line of resistance. I’ll be sending all the officers I can forward to help get the situation under control.’

  ‘Will… you be joining us, sir?’ Gaunt asked.

  Sautoy stared at him. ‘Damn you, Gaunt. Of course I will. Now get about it.’

  Gaunt saluted. ‘My apologies, marshal. I intended no slight.’ He turned for the door, then looked back at Sautoy. ‘Why today, sir?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Why is this happening today, I wonder?’

  ‘I have no idea, Gaunt!’ Sautoy snapped.

  ‘Then you might want to relay that question back to Frag Flats Command and get the tacticae advisors thinking about it. Historically, ritually, there may be a reason the Archenemy is stirring in such force this morning.’

  Gaunt left the command room. Instead of heading outside, he pushed through the men hurrying to and fro along the internal corridor and entered the vox room. Twenty-five vox-officers worked at independent high-gain sets, all of them speaking at the same time as reports came in and went out.

  Gaunt wandered to the nearest one. The operator, a small man with a pencil moustache, looked up and took off his heavy earphones.

  ‘Commissar, can I help you?’

  ‘I need you to patch me a link, operator,’ Gaunt said.

  ‘On what authority?’ the officer asked.

  ‘On the authority I’m wearing, soldier,’ Gaunt said. The operator swallowed. ‘Yes, sir. Sorry, sir.’ Gaunt told him the comm-code he required. The operator tuned it in. He didn’t look entirely comfortable.

  ‘This is… non-standard, commissar,’ he said as he adjusted the dials. ‘It will have to be recorded in my day-book.’

  ‘You do what you have to do,’ Gaunt said. ‘By all means note it was a direct order from the Commissariat.’

  ‘I have contact, sir,’ the operator reported. He indicated a spare set of headphones on the desk, and keyed the channel through as Gaunt put them on.

  ‘Unit receiving,’ said a voice on the line, cut by static. ‘Identify sender, over.’

  ‘This is One. That you, Beltayn, over?’

  A pause. ‘Yes. Yes, it is, sir. Didn’t expect to hear your voice, over.’

  ‘Sorry I don’t have time to catch up, Bel,’ Gaunt said. ‘I need to talk to Rawne or Mkoll. That possible, over?’

  ‘Stand by, over.’ Gaunt waited, listening. Burbles and fluting wails of distortion echoed over the channel.

  ‘This is Rawne. That you, Ibram, over?’

  ‘Affirmative. What’s the situation, over?’

  ‘A fair mess, Bram. Hell in a handcart. Where are you, over?’

  ‘Not as close as I’d like to be, Eli. Listen up. I’ve got very little time to explain this to you, but I need you and Mkoll working on something, over.’

  ‘Copy that. We’re a little busy right now, but go ahead, over.’

  ‘All right. Listen to this, and tell me what you think…’

  Once he’d finished the brief conversation, Gaunt handed the phones back to the vox-man, thanked him, and left the command post. The operator, a little bemused, wrote up the track in his day-book, and was about to resume his work when another voice said, ‘May I see that, operator?’

  The operator looked up and saw a second commissar standing by his caster set. What was this?

  ‘Your day-book, please,’ the second commissar said. The operator handed it to him. ‘This was a confirmed patch?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Authority?’

  ‘The commissar’s own, sir. He said it was Commissariat business.’

  ‘And this is authenticated? The code?’

  ‘Yes, sir. A field vox-caster. Ident 11012K. That’s with the Eighty-First First.’

  ‘Patch me to Commissariat command, Frag Flats. Immediately, please. Use this code.’ The commissar wrote a numeric serial down on the vox-man’s message pad.