‘What are you doing here?’ Wilder asked.

  ‘We were sent back up the line to rejoin you this morning,’ Novobazky said. ‘By the time we heard about the general order, we were as good as here, so we kept going.’

  ‘You should have turned back,’ Wilder said.

  ‘I’d prefer to withdraw alongside my regiment,’ Rawne said. Wilder studied Rawne’s face, and realised the man was completely serious. He nodded.

  ‘Are you going to tell me what happened?’ he asked. ‘I see Kortenhus, Criid, Varl, Beltayn and Bonin. Where are the others?’

  ‘Abe Villyard didn’t make it,’ said Kolosim. ‘Maggs and Mkoll were shipped out, injured.’

  ‘What the hell did you get into?’ Wilder asked.

  ‘Gaunt was right,’ said Rawne simply.

  ‘He was right?’ Wilder said. ‘You mean this place isn’t… isn’t what it seems?’

  ‘No, it’s not,’ said Ferdy Kolosim.

  Wilder felt a sudden rush of understanding, so swooping and immense, it made him feel giddy. ‘Is this why… Throne! Is this why Van Voytz has ordered a general withdrawal?’ he asked.

  ‘I honestly don’t know,’ said Rawne. ‘We weren’t told. We were questioned by the Commissariat, and then sent back to the line.’

  ‘Gaunt,’ said Wilder. ‘Frigging Gaunt! Ever since he came back from the dead, he’s made my life a crap storm of problems and disappointments!’

  There was a smack, flesh on flesh. Wilder realised Rawne had swung a fist at him. The scout, Bonin, had stopped Rawne’s blow, blocking it tightly in his own hand.

  ‘Don’t, Eli,’ Bonin hissed, squeezing.

  Rawne let his hand drop.

  ‘Oh, please. Go ahead,’ Wilder said. ‘Give it your best shot. I know you’ve been itching to, from the moment we met.’

  Rawne shook his head. ‘That’s not true, Wilder. I have great respect for you, believe it or not. But no one bad-mouths Bram Gaunt in my hearing.’

  Wilder thought for a moment. Close by, a series of shells exploded in a rippling line, and the air shivered with overpressure. Renewed gunfire began to crackle below them.

  ‘Enough of this,’ Wilder said. ‘If you’re back, you’re back. Start doing some good. Ferdy, take Kortenhus and get back to your company. We’ll need the left flank trim and tight in the next two hours, so that the FooFoo Frigwig and his beloved Kolstec can fall back.’

  ‘Sir!’

  ‘Nadey? Head along to I Company and perform your miracles. We lost Raydrel.’

  ‘No!’

  ‘Just do what you can.’

  Novobazky nodded and hurried away.

  ‘The rest of you come with me. E Company’s in a fix. That’s Meryn’s company, Major Rawne, just so you remember, all right?’

  ‘I understand,’ said Rawne.

  They hurried down the slope into the rocks. Ahead, the stalk-tanks had begun to spatter las-fire into the Eighty-First First’s position.

  Caffran risked a run between boulders that brought him up behind a particularly large lump of granite. Tank fire crackled past, and Caffran could smell burning stone. The clattering strides of advancing stalk-tanks echoed around the shallow incline.

  Nearby, troopers were huddled low, clipping off shots at the enemy ground troops advancing behind the tanks. Caffran could see Larkin, Osket, Kalen and Mkillian close by, obscured by their camo-capes. Several Belladons too. He wished he could remember their names.

  Tank fire sizzled in again in great, slamming blasts, and Caffran ducked. He glanced up again in time to see that three of the Belladons had been cut down. Their mutilated bodies lay smouldering on the burned soil. Now he really wished he could remember their names.

  He took a look out. One of the tanks was very close, waddling along on its slender, insectoid legs, pistons hissing and wheezing. Caffran hefted up his rocket tube, checked the load, and armed the rocket by removing the priming pin. He muttered a little blessing as he did so. Just to make it fly right.

  It was his last load. He looked back the way he had come and yelled, ‘Guheen! Where the feth are you?’ Guheen had his back. And the heavy canvas holder with the last three rockets in it.

  ‘Little hairy!’ Guheen shouted back, ducking as small-arms fire licked past.

  ‘Move your Tanith arse!’ Caffran shouted. The tank was firing again. It sounded like masses of shingle slithering across a wet beach. It reminded Caffran of the storm landing at Oskray Island. Feth, how many years ago was that now?

  ‘Any time soon, Caff?’ Kalen shouted. Caffran shouldered the launcher tube, snuggled it close, and placed his fingers around the trigger spoon.

  He swung out of cover and raised the snout of the tube. The tank was right there. Right on them, gun-pods traversing as it hunted for live targets. He clenched his fingers and depressed the metal spoon. The tube jumped violently against his shoulder as the rocket left it. There was a sucking rush, a fart of flame.

  The rocket rushed out, trailing white smoke across the air behind it, and smacked into the stalk-tank head on. The blast tore off the stalk’s head and thorax, burst the operator’s cocoon, and smashed the whole machine over onto its back. It lay there, burning, its long metal legs twitching at the sky.

  A cheer went up. Premature, Caffran thought. There were still four more stalk-tanks plodding towards E Company’s line, and plenty of Blood Pact with them.

  He knew he needed a better angle on the next tank. He tensed, then ran out across the open stretch towards the rocks where Larkin was huddled. A squall of gunfire chased him. He threw himself flat and crawled in beside the sniper.

  ‘Very dainty,’ Larkin said.

  ‘They were shooting at me.’

  ‘I don’t blame them. Look at the mess you made of their nice tank.’ Larkin smacked in a fresh hot-shot clip and settled his long-las. ‘Speaking of tanks,’ he began.

  They were getting close. Caffran didn’t need the old marksman to tell him that. What he needed was a rocket load. His launcher was smoking and empty.

  ‘Guheen! Any time soon!’

  Guheen shouted back something incomprehensible. Lugging the rocket bag, he started to run, and made it to the boulder that had previously given Caffran shelter.

  ‘You know,’ Larkin began, conversationally, as if they weren’t actually in the middle of a horrendous firefight. ‘Those kids. Nice kids. Kolea really ought to wake up and do something. They deserve to know.’

  Caffran blinked at him. ‘Feth, does everybody know?’

  Larkin shrugged. ‘Tona told me. On Gereon, there wasn’t any place for secrets.’

  ‘Gereon, Gereon, Gereon… I’d give real money if you lot would shut up about that place. It was just a place. Just a fething place.’

  ‘You weren’t there,’ said Larkin. ‘You don’t know.’

  ‘I know I’m sick of hearing about it,’ Caffran turned. ‘Guheen! I need those rockets!’

  ‘One moment you’re alive, the next you’re dead. In this game, I mean,’ Larkin rambled on.

  ‘Shut up, you old bastard!’

  ‘And what are secrets worth then? Even secrets made with the best intentions. Your son and your daughter deserve to know about their other father, Caff. And Gol deserves to–’

  ‘Shut up, Larkin! Shut the feth up! We’re in trouble here!’

  Heavy-duty las-fire screeched over their heads from the lead tank.

  ‘Guheen! Load me!’

  Guheen looked left and right, halted as shots whipped past, and then started his run to Caffran’s side, the heavy rocket bag over his shoulder.

  He got three metres, and a hard round from the Blood Pact infantry went into the side of his head. Everything inside his skull came out in a shower on the other side. Before he’d even started to fall, two more shots had ripped into him, screwing his flailing body around, forcing it to lose all structure and semblance of humanity.

  He hit the dry ground and rolled, one hand clawing impulsively at the sky.

  ‘Oh feth!’ Caffran whispered. He started to move forward, but Larkin grabbed him and yanked him back. Gunfire raked the open space, jerking and twitching Guheen’s pathetic corpse. The rocket sack was well out of reach.

  The Blood Pact troopers were running in close. E Company met them with a flurry of las. Larkin dropped an officer with a perfect kill shot. But still the small-arms fire rattled in relentlessly.

  ‘I can’t load,’ Caffran said. ‘I can’t stop those tanks.’

  ‘That’s not good,’ Larkin agreed casually, thumping home another hot-shot.

  ‘Larks!’ Caffran said, keeping his head down. ‘Aim for the operator. There, man! In the bubble! Kill him!’

  Larkin cosied his new rifle up to his cheek, and drew aim on the nearest stalk-tank. Through his scope, he could see the mutated, augmented operator in his liquid cocoon under the arched, mantis tail.

  ‘Larkin!’

  ‘You don’t rush these things,’ Larkin said. He exhaled and pulled the trigger. The cocoon burst. The stalk-tank took another few, stuttering steps, and rocked to a halt, dead on its caliper feet.

  The Blood Pact wave was almost on them. Caffran dropped his tube launcher and drew his laspistol. He started to fire at the enemy troopers running in. Nearby, Mkillian cried out as a las-round killed him and knocked him back off the rocks.

  A torrent of las-fire cut a swathe across the advancing Archenemy. They buckled and fell.

  ‘Get up! Up and into them!’ someone shouted.

  It was Tona Criid, running forward, her weapon on full auto. Beside her came Varl and Bonin. They seemed oblivious to the danger, just running into the zipping fire.

  Varl reached the rockline beside Caffran, put one boot up on it to brace himself, and let rip from the hip.

  ‘Having a little trouble?’ he asked.

  Criid ran forward, shot a Blood Pact trooper in the neck, and scooped up the fallen rocket bag from beside Guheen’s body.

  ‘Catch!’ she cried, throwing it to Caffran.

  ‘First-and-Only!’ Varl shouted as he unloaded. ‘First-and-fething-Only!’

  Caffran grabbed the bag and began packing a rocket into his tube. ‘Tona!’ he yelled. ‘We need to–’

  ‘Shut up, I’m working here!’ she shouted, ripping rounds through a trio of Blood Pact troops.

  One moment you’re alive, the next you’re dead. And what are secrets worth then? Caffran briefly looked at Guheen’s body. All the way from Tanith, then just gone. Just gone, like that.

  He latched a fresh rocket into the launcher, primed it with a quick blessing, and raised the weapon onto his shoulder.

  Seventy metres behind him, Wilder was confronting Baskevyl, Feygor and Meryn.

  ‘This isn’t the time,’ he was saying.

  ‘I think it is,’ Baskevyl said. ‘Luc, I came down here and I happened to repeat my flippant comment about how I wished I could plug that gate. And Feygor said we could.’

  ‘It’s possible,’ Feygor said.

  ‘This is crazy talk,’ Wilder said.

  ‘No, sir,’ said Baskevyl. ‘Hear the man out.’

  ‘We could blow it,’ Feygor said. ‘If we got sufficient charge in there.’

  ‘And how do you hope to–’

  ‘Mark IX land mines,’ Feygor smiled. ‘There were plenty of them on the munition train last time I looked. Packed with compressive diotride D-6. Explosive putty, very nasty. Give me half an hour and a decent trigger mechanism, and I could rig up a device that would bring that whole fething gate down.’

  ‘No,’ said Wilder. ‘This is not an option.’

  ‘It really is,’ said Rawne, from behind Wilder.

  Wilder looked round. ‘Your adjutant is a demolitions expert now, is he? You don’t mess around with land mines, and you certainly don’t mess around with D-6. If I had an authorised bombardier here, or a tech priest, maybe I’d–’

  ‘Feygor knows this stuff. Always has. And since Gereon–’

  Wilder groaned. ‘Oh, Rawne! Don’t since Gereon me. Not now.’

  ‘I think I will. How do you suppose we conducted our sabotage operations there, Wilder? Did we give up the idea because we didn’t have an authorised bombardier with us? Feygor knows this stuff.’

  ‘I do. I can handle it,’ Feygor said.

  Wilder hesitated. Up ahead, rockets were slamming into the advancing stalk-tanks.

  ‘So, Feygor builds us a device. Then what?’

  ‘We get it into the gateway,’ Meryn said. ‘Sneak it in.’

  ‘What else?’ Wilder asked.

  ‘Someone has to carry the device,’ Feygor said. ‘It’ll be heavy. Really heavy. I’d need someone strong.’

  There was a clatter of metal tanks hitting the ground. ‘I’m up for that,’ Brostin said, coming forward. He had let his flamer set slide off his broad shoulders.

  ‘Bask?’

  ‘I think this could work, Luc,’ Baskevyl said.

  ‘Get to it, Feygor,’ Wilder said.

  ‘I’ll assemble a strike team to–’ Rawne said.

  Meryn cut Rawne off. ‘I’ll assemble a strike team to get the device in place. This is an E Company initiative. Last I heard, I was still in charge of that.’

  Rawne nodded.

  ‘Then it’ll be me leading that team,’ Meryn said.

  ‘No question, captain,’ Wilder replied. Meryn hurried away.

  Wilder realised that Rawne was looking at him. ‘What?’

  ‘You have to understand about the gateways, Wilder. The enemy isn’t coming through from the next compartment. It’s simply coming out of the gate. It’s warping out of that archway.’

  Wilder shrugged. ‘Whatever, Rawne. But if we plug that gate, the result’s the same, right?’

  Rawne nodded. ‘I think so.’

  As Meryn strode off, Banda caught his sleeve.

  ‘What are you doing?’ she asked.

  ‘Getting it done, Jessi,’ he said.

  ‘I heard you overrule Rawne just then. Are you trying to prove something?’

  He looked at her. ‘What if I am?’

  ‘If you are, try not to make me miss you when you’re gone,’ Banda said.

  Half an hour turned into an hour and a half. The enemy continued to emerge from the gate. Each time it did, sighing winds from another world gusted out across the compartment.

  ‘Feygor?’ Wilder called over the micro-beads.

  ‘It’s ready. A real job. Coming in now.’

  ‘Bask!’ Wilder yelled. ‘Full spread across the gate mouth! Obel? Domor? Varaine? Company fire for support!’

  Near the mid-point of the Eighty-First First line, Novobazky had managed to rally I Company. They had taken up position in and around a long island of thorny scrub, which gave them a good angle on the gate. ‘Fire for support!’ Novobazky shouted. He could see an alarming number of crimson figures in amongst the broken granite seventy metres ahead. Stray tracer shells sailed by, high overhead, like lost birds.

  ‘Commissar!’

  Novobazky turned to see Hark running up.

  ‘We’re going to need to rise and push,’ Hark told him. ‘Sitting here and firing isn’t going to cut it. You can’t see it from this angle, but there’s a mass of hostiles around behind that outcrop. This company needs to come forward to that line and lay down a field of fire, or the bastards are going to cut right down our centreline.’

  Novobazky nodded, and relayed instructions to the section leaders. Then he remembered the plasma pistol, and offered it to Hark.

  ‘Yours.’

  ‘Keep it,’ said Hark.

  ‘Thank you. It served us well,’ Novobazky said.

  ‘It’s about to again,’ Hark said sourly. ‘I understand you met Gaunt.’

  Novobazky nodded. ‘Briefly. He seemed to me to be an admirable man.’

  ‘I’m glad you think so,’ Hark nodded. ‘I always believed that was the case.’

  The combined companies of the Eighty-First First were now hosing the gate mouth with fire.

  ‘Company up to address!’ Novobazky yelled. ‘Advance and fire at will!’

  Meryn’s strike team, twenty-strong, ran forward, cutting through the Blood Pact resistance on the east side of the gate. Meryn had chosen the east side because it was particularly cluttered with loose rock and fat slabs of stone that had fallen from the walls over the centuries. There was plenty of cover, and for the most part they would be shielded from the main Blood Pact retinues.

  It was still murderous. Wildfire sizzled between the rocks, and every few metres, hostile troops would suddenly appear from behind boulders. In the first fifteen minutes, two of the Tanith fell, then three of the Belladon Meryn had selected from E Company.

  ‘Come on! Come on!’ Meryn yelled out. They had a brief window of opportunity, all the while the heavy fire from the Eighty-First First line was driving the Archenemy backwards towards the end wall of the compartment.

  Meryn ran ahead, firing short bursts around the rocks. Behind him came Brostin, struggling under the weight of Feygor’s jury-rigged device.

  ‘Keep up!’ Feygor shouted, lugging the detonator pack.

  ‘Feth it, Murt, you try carrying this!’ Brostin growled back.

  Shells slammed in around them. The air stank of scorching las-fire.

  Meryn reached the crest of rock in front of the gate. A las-round smacked into his head, and he fell.

  Vision blurred and in pain, he reached up and found a wet gash across his scalp. Almost a kill shot.

  ‘Advance!’ he yelled.

  The Archenemy had spread wide, out of the gate. Growling armour was now advancing towards Callide’s position, and sweeping east towards the Hauberkan line. The gate itself was empty, vacant like the cavity of a skull.

  Brostin staggered into the vast, black mouth of the gate.