‘How deep?’ he yelled back, his voice echoing.

  ‘Into the throat of it!’ Meryn shouted. Shots were winging up from the Blood Pact in the lower basin. They had suddenly realised that a recon force had sneaked around behind them. Cager fell, dead. Mkeln toppled over, his chest torn apart.

  ‘Quickly now!’ Meryn yelled. His head hurt.

  A las-round hit Meryn in the arm, and exploded his bicep in a shower of bloody meat.

  Feygor grabbed him and kept him upright. ‘Run!’ Feygor said.

  ‘But–’

  ‘Just fething run, Meryn!’ Feygor screamed. ‘Brostin’s set the charge.’

  Brostin came running back out of the gateway. Las-fire hit him. He fell, and then got up again, blood streaming from multiple wounds

  ‘Set and down!’ he shouted. Two more members of Meryn’s strike team were hit and killed.

  ‘Go! Go on!’ Feygor yelled, setting down the makeshift detonator pack. Meryn began to sprint, las-rounds whistling after him.

  ‘Open wide,’ Feygor said, slamming down the plunger.

  For a second, nothing seemed to happen. The force of the blast was so severe, its noise and violence were off the scale of human senses. There was a solid, heavy slam, like an immense weight had hit the earth, then a gigantic, volcanic shower of mud and rock and smoke sprayed out of the gate mouth.

  Feygor began to laugh. He threw aside the detonator pack and rose to his feet.

  A las-round smacked into his chest. He fell down onto his knees, gurgling and coughing blood.

  ‘Murt! Murt!’ Brostin cried out as he reached him.

  Murt Feygor murmured something, and slumped onto the ground.

  Brostin scooped his limp body up and began to run.

  ‘See that?’ Baskevyl cried out. ‘They did it!’

  Wilder waited. He watched the huge, dense cone of smoke rise from the fireball engulfing the gate. He thought he might almost be ready to start smiling.

  He felt the cool breeze of a pressure change sweep across him, as if a door had opened somewhere, letting in the cold. The smoke billowed and the flames seethed away as chilly air fanned through them. A line of crimson battle tanks, rusted and heavy, began to roll out of the sixth compartment gate, spilling the debris and dying flames in front of them.

  They hadn’t done it. Not even slightly.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  18.11 hrs, 199.776.M41

  Fifth Compartment

  Sparshad Mons, Ancreon Sextus

  The traitor hosts of the damned and the insane vomited out of the gate mouth in a swollen tide. It seemed to the men on the ground as if the warp itself had torn open and scattered its contents forth. The charging formations of war machines and troops, of mobile guns and fluttering banners, made everything that they had faced so far seem trivial and slight. The forces they had struggled and fought with over the last few days had been just an advance guard.

  Night was falling, but the black filth coiling out of the sixth compartment gate around the arriving hostiles reached upwards and accelerated the descent of darkness. The arcane door had opened so wide this time, weather swept through with it from the climate systems of whatever fell world these creatures had embarked from. Not just cold winds, but fog and moisture. Lightning discharge crackled around the tops of the compartment walls, and covered the stone face of the Mons’s towering heart like luminous ivy. Ice rain began to fall, hissing into the fires.

  The Kolstec forces took immediate heavy losses and fell back in a desperate, scrabbling retreat. Then fire fell upon the Eighty-First First too. Callide and almost his entire company were cut down and destroyed. Hundreds of bodies in black battledress lay amongst the burning scrub.

  Wilder drew the Eighty-First First back, through the rain, through the belts of scraggy woodland and outcropping granite. The temptation was to flee, but that would hasten yet greater disaster. The Archenemy had to be slowed. They had to be harried and delayed. The Kolstec, half-breaking to the west, seemed unable to accomplish this, but the remnants of the Hauberkan treads were still operating in support of the Eighty-First First.

  The sound of gunfire was constant and deafening. Wilder caught up with Keshlan at a dry watercourse.

  ‘Signal DeBray!’ Wilder yelled above the noise. ‘Tell him the retiring line has got to move faster! As fast as it can. Tell him they’ve got to get out of the compartment! Tell him all hell is coming after them!’

  Half a kilometre back, in a stretch of burning woodland, Rawne, Kolea and Baskevyl had established decent bounding cover between the men they brought with them. Two sections would sustain fire while the third fell back. It worked against the foot troops and the ranks of grotesque mutants that poured into the treeline. But there were tanks coming, heavy Brigands by the sound of their engines, perhaps something even bigger, and the sections had no rockets left.

  Rawne saw men move past him in the smoke, stragglers trying to rejoin the retreat. Many were badly hurt. He saw Meryn, covered in blood, helped along by two Belladon troopers.

  He saw Brostin, trotting as fast as he could, a limp figure in his arms.

  ‘Brostin!’ Rawne ran to him. The flame-trooper was smeared in blood. He’d been hit himself several times. Feygor was just a loose bundle, blood soaking his tunic.

  ‘Put him down,’ Rawne said.

  ‘I can carry him. I’ve got to get him to a medic. I’ve got to get him to Dorden. He’ll patch him up.’

  Rawne put his hand against Feygor’s neck. It was impossible to tell if there was a pulse left, or any sign of respiration. Even if Feygor was still alive, he wouldn’t be by the time Brostin had carried him back down the compartment.

  ‘Put him down,’ Rawne repeated.

  ‘No!’ Brostin was agitated by the idea. ‘We didn’t come all the way through fething Gereon to wind up dying in a place like this! I can carry him!’ he moved on, blundering through the smoking trees. ‘I can carry him!’

  Wilder reached an area of rising, open ground, and tried to take his bearings. To the east, at least four companies of the Eighty-First First, along with some Hauberkan armour, was cutting along the scrublands, moving steadily south. Directly behind him, Daur’s company and parts of Obel’s, along with an assortment of men from Kolosim and Varaine’s commands, were caught in a brutal firefight with the leading edge of the Blood Pact units.

  Wilder realised the western flank of the breakaway was yawning dangerously. If the enemy overlapped, they’d catch Daur, Obel and the others quickly and simply. What had happened to his formation?

  He looked around again, calling A Company up around him into a firing line. His throat was sore from smoke. The rain was getting heavier, and the ground was turning to mire. To the south of him, the ground shelved away and rose into a significant hill. With a little surprise, Wilder realised it was Hill 56, the very site they’d been assigned to at the start of this punishing and pointless expedition. If he could retain cohesion long enough to get a force onto its back, he’d have a commanding field of fire right across the scrub. To the west of the hill, the main trackway ran wide. It was choked with a portion of the fleeing Kolstec units. He saw, to his dismay, that in the mayhem, both Domor’s and Sabrese’s companies had fallen back too far, right onto the track. That was where the gap had formed.

  ‘Keshlan!’ he yelled. ‘Get me Sabrese, quickly! We’ve got to get him to move up a little.’

  The vox-officer obeyed, but he looked dubious. The distance was significant. Persuading those men to turn back into the teeth of the enemy advance was going to be a tall order. Fierce shelling and heavy weapons fire was coming out of the ruined scrub to the left. Even the most loyal soldiers would falter from an effort like that.

  A curious thing began to happen. Keshlan had yet to secure a clear channel, but Sabrese and Domor’s men were beginning to move back anyway. They were advancing into the fight, covering the trackway. The gap was actually starting to close.

  ‘Link up with those men!’ Wilder shouted to A Company. ‘Across the slope! Give them covering fire as they close up!’

  Blood Pact and mutant troopers swarmed out of the scrub, but the supporting companies drove them back again with a blistering rate of shots. Wilder could hear shouts coming from Domor’s men, and Sabrese’s too. Battle cries. Passionate, almost eager.

  He saw two figures amongst them. Two commissars, directing the steady flow of the regroup. One had a sword raised aloft.

  ‘Ghosts of Tanith! Men of Belladon!’ Gaunt shouted. ‘Close the line! Deny the enemy!’

  ‘First-and-Only!’ the men were shouting.

  ‘Domor! Get some men onto those rocks,’ Gaunt yelled as he strode forward through the men. Eszrah came with him, reynbow raised. The men seemed as astonished at the sight of Gaunt as they were by the towering warrior at his heels.

  ‘Yes, sir!’ Domor barked. Despite the enclosing horror, there was a renewed vitality in the troops. ‘Gaunt’s with us!’ Domor shouted. ‘Gaunt’s with us! Chiria, Nehn! Get men into those rocks! Raglon, section to the left, rapid fire!’

  ‘We can do this,’ Gaunt said to Domor. ‘We can’t win, but we can hold them back.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ Domor said. He couldn’t quite accept the sight of the man in front of him. Even with his augmetic eyes, Gaunt didn’t seem real. ‘Sir, are you a ghost?’ he asked.

  Gaunt smiled. ‘Always have been.’

  Ludd ran up. ‘Sections are holding to the right, sir.’

  ‘Go to them, Ludd. Keep them together and keep them strong.’

  ‘How, commissar?’

  ‘Improvise. Sing them a song, tell them you’re my clone-son, whatever works.’ Ludd nodded, and rushed away. Wounded stragglers from the rear of the breakaway stumbled past. The Tanith and Verghastite amongst them blinked when they saw Gaunt. Some stopped, and despite their injuries, came to him.

  ‘Keep moving,’ Gaunt called out. ‘Get onto the track and get away from here. We’ll drink to this day together, later on.’

  Gaunt saw Brostin amongst them, Brostin and the sad bundle he carried. He went over to the bulky flame-trooper immediately. Brostin sank down to his knees, tired, hurt and barely able to go on. He clutched Feygor’s limp body tightly in his hefty arms.

  ‘Let him go,’ Gaunt said. ‘Let him lie on the ground.’

  ‘Sir…’

  Eszrah knelt down and examined Feygor. He looked at Gaunt and shook his head.

  ‘He’s gone, Brostin,’ said Gaunt. ‘I’m too late for him, but not the rest of you.’

  Brostin gently laid Feygor’s body on the wet grass. Rain streamed off his beard like tears.

  ‘Get moving, Brostin. I’ll catch you up.’

  Gaunt straightened up and turned back to face the fight. Eszrah touched his arm lightly and pointed. An officer was approaching.

  ‘Commissar Gaunt?’

  ‘Colonel Wilder?’

  They stood facing each other in the rain. Gaunt put his sword in his left hand and held out his right.

  ‘My compliments, colonel. The lord general has ordered me back to the line to assist with the rearguard.’

  Wilder shook his hand. ‘We don’t seem to need much help dying right now,’ Wilder said.

  ‘You’ve executed a fine breakaway action, Wilder,’ Gaunt said. ‘A great number of lives have been spared by–’

  ‘It’s not over,’ Wilder said bluntly. ‘You have no idea of the weight of hostiles at our heels.’

  ‘Nevertheless, I believe we should still call the day done. Move the men onto the trackway and get them out to–’

  ‘You’re not listening!’ Wilder snapped. ‘There is a nightmare coming and we must check it for as long as we can. I intend to get a force up onto that hill, at least a company strong. From there, they should be able to hold the scrubland long enough to allow the rest to get away.’

  Gaunt regarded the hill. ‘It would be possible, I suppose…’

  ‘Look, Gaunt. I know you just want to get your men out.’

  ‘My men? They’re not my men, Wilder. They’re yours. The Eighty-First First. And a fine regiment too. Give me command of a company, and I’ll hold that hill for you. I’ll buy you enough time to get the rest of your men clear.’

  Wilder smiled and shook his head. ‘I’ll not order a man to die while I run for home. Nor do I expect you to do a job I wouldn’t do myself. My regiment, you said. My men. My job.’

  ‘Wilder–’

  ‘I believe I outrank you, commissar. You don’t hold a command rank. I will hold the hill with A Company. My orders to you are to take field command of the remainder of the regiment, and conduct them to a place of safety while I cover your backs.’

  ‘Throne’s sake, Wilder, don’t be so awkward! This isn’t some contest to see which of us is the bigger man, this–’

  ‘Actually, it almost is. This way, we both win and we both lose.’

  ‘Colonel, I’m not–’

  ‘Are you disobeying direct orders, Gaunt? I’d heard you’d come back from that place with an unruly streak to you. A touch of taint, they say. A lack of proper discipline. No place for that in the Imperial Guard. I’ve given you your orders. Are you going to follow them?’

  Gaunt glared at Wilder. ‘Yes, sir,’ he said, and saluted.

  ‘Excellent. Carry on.’ Wilder saluted back and turned away.

  ‘The Emperor protects,’ Gaunt said.

  Wilder snorted. ‘Some of us he does.’

  The angle of fire from the top of Hill 56 was as good as Wilder had hoped. He formed A Company up, and began laying fusillades down across the scrub, where the enemy formations were now in sight, toiling forward through the scorched and smoking land.

  ‘Keep the rate up, A Company!’ Wilder yelled. There seemed to be a near impossible number of targets crossing the valley below, hordes of red and black figures, machines that rolled or walked. The woods beyond burned like a blast furnace and threw smoke up the towering compartment wall. Stalkers had appeared in great numbers too, no doubt from their mysterious doorways. Many were bounding ahead of the enemy troops like gigantic attack dogs, hooting and roaring. Some were gigantic things.

  Down on the trackway to the west of A Company, the last of their comrades moved away, south, into the enclosing darkness.

  Genadey Novobazky strode down the A Company line, his voice firm and defiant. ‘On the Shores of Marik, my friends,’ he declaimed, ‘the fathers of our fathers made a stand under the flag of Belladon. Did they break and run? Yes! But only in their minds. They ran to friendly places and loved ones, where they could be safe… and then, by the providence of the God-Emperor, they saw what those friendly places and loved ones would become if they did not stand fast, and so stand fast they did! How do you feel?’

  There was a triumphant bellow from the ranks.

  ‘Belladon blood is like wine on the Emperor’s lips!’ Novobazky stormed. ‘Belladon souls have a special place at his side! If we spill our blood here today, then this is the soil He has chosen to bless and anoint! Oh, lucky land!’ He took out the plasma pistol, and carefully toggled off the safety. No mistakes this time. ‘Stand firm and fire, my friends, stand firm and fire! If they’re going to have our precious blood, then they’ll find the cost is dearer than they can afford! Fury of Belladon! Fury! Fury!’

  Wilder grinned as he heard the surge of Novobazky’s speech. A piece of art that, he’d always thought. And never more so than now.

  ‘Keshlan!’ The vox-officer ran to him.

  ‘Yes, colonel!’

  ‘Wilder beckoned for the vox-horn. ‘Speaker broadcast, please, Keshlan. All the volume you’ve got.’

  ‘Yes, sir!’

  The first of the Archenemy warriors began to charge up the slopes of Hill 56, into the hail of gunfire. Hundreds fell, but there were thousands behind them to take their places. The Blood Pact horns bellowed into the night air. Blades flashed, banners swung. Feral mutants and wrought beasts led the attack.

  Crookshank Thrice-wrought was at the very front of the storming line, shrugging off the flashes of light that stung at his hide. He came up the long slope, roaring through his throat sacs. He could see and smell the meat ahead of him. The rows of little meat figures who curiously refused to flee at the sight of him.

  Bounding forward, the thrice-wrought opened his mouth and engaged his teeth.

  Wilder thumbed on the vox-horn and raised it to his mouth. When he spoke, his voice boomed out from Keshlan’s vox, distorted with volume.

  ‘Stand firm, A Company! Fury of Belladon! Hold this line and deny them!’

  His amplified voice echoed out across the bleak hillside, carrying his command away into the rain and the raging night.

  His last command.

  EPILOGUE

  00.07 hrs, 200.776.M41

  Ancreon Sextus

  The sun came out, in the middle of the night, and the step-cities died. Even from a great distance, it was impossible for observers to look directly at the bombardment without filters or glare-shades. Devastating pillars of white light came down from the top of the sky and burned deep, black holes into the world.

  It took the warships of the Imperial Navy five hours of sustained orbital bombardment to wipe the ancient and cursed stones of the monolithic cities from existence.

  In the days that followed, all that remained at the sites where the step-cities had once stood were gaping wounds in the earth, some a kilometre deep. Within these slowly cooling cavities, jewelled beauty lurked. The fury of the weapons had transformed the rock and sand, fusing it into swathes of glass that glinted and swam with colour in the bright sun.

  Just after midnight, Gaunt was amongst the many hundreds of Imperial officers congregated on the hull-top landing pads of one of the command Leviathans to watch the distant doom of Sparshad Mons. Zweil stood by his side. He’d borrowed Eszrah’s glare-shades, and winced and gasped at every flash of light.