The first of the monstrous caimans lumbered into view out of the swirling vapour. Bronzi had never seen animals so enormous: dull-eyed heads the size of ground speeders, bodies the bulk of Imperial tanks. Their tails seemed to go on forever. From the ornate howdahs and fighting platforms on their massive backs, Nurthene archers in blue silks and silver mail fired salvo after salvo of iron darts from small, double-curved bows.
The caimans were inexorable. Their black scales shrugged off small-arms fire and snapped pike hafts, and they simply ran over anything that got in their way.
Bronzi sheathed his sabre, and took aim with his pepperpot. The clothes on his back felt heavy, and he knew it was due to the weight of the blood soaking into them. He lined up on the howdah of the nearest crocodilian, and discharged all six barrels at once.
Bronzi made up his own cartridges, tight packing them with twists of monofilament wire, adamantium shot and pebbles of xygnite putty. Six of them were enough to explode and shred the howdah and everything in it. Flying shot and wire injured the animal too. It rocked, and shifted its slow bulk in a slovenly pain response. Bronzi broke open his pepperpot, the smoking cases ejecting automatically, and rammed in six more with shaking fingers.
The caiman was turning towards him, flicking men into the air with its vast snout. Bronzi clacked the stockless weapon shut and re-aimed, the ball of his right thumb wedged into his cheek. He fired again, and the tiny, lethal debris of his rounds blew out the creature’s throat and right shoulder in a shower of meat and blood. It crashed over, its snout gouging into the ground like a ploughshare and its hindquarters kicked out in spasm. The tail whipped around and three dozen bodies, caught in its stroke, flew into the air.
He was about to reload, but there was no opportunity. Two echvehnurth came at him with their falxes. He managed to block the first swipe with his spent weapon and then let go of it to wrestle with the Nurthene. The man was screaming at him, but Bronzi had hold of his falx, and jerked him close to dish out a head butt that crushed the man’s nose. The Nurthene became more pliant and Bronzi used his grip on the falx to heave the warrior around as a shield. The other echvehnurth had committed a swing of his falx at Bronzi, and the blade cut through his kin’s back instead.
The falx belonged to Bronzi suddenly. He pulled it out of the dead fingers, rotated it, and thrust it at the second echvehnurth. The long blade plunged in through the man’s left cheek, and the tip came out of the back of his head. Bronzi jerked the unfamiliar weapon free, and slashed wildly at a third echvehnurth who was closing to his left. The blow missed, but the echvehnurth toppled over dead anyway.
Tche grabbed Bronzi by the shoulder. His pistol shot had slain the enemy warrior.
‘Back, het!’ Tche yelled. “We have to get back!’
Bronzi knew Tche was right. It was turmoil. All semblance of row and order had vanished, and the Jokers were being broken up into melee units as the Nurthene poured in. The mortar positions had been abandoned and overrun, and over to the right flank, the Outremars seemed to have collapsed entirely.
The rolling wall of dust that came in with the Nurthene like a shroud was washing softly in across the Jokers’ stand.
They had done all they could. It felt to Hurtado Bronzi that they had been fighting for thirty or forty minutes, but in fact it had been little more than ten. The ’cept was urging the geno fighting men to fall back and reposition.
‘Do it!’ Bronzi yelled to his bashaw. ‘Disengage and fall back!’ He was nursing a fancy that his men could pull away and regroup as skirmishers to harry the Nurthene flanks.
But the dust was enveloping them, and there were Nurthene warriors everywhere. He realised that they would be lucky to get away alive.
T
HERE WAS NO
sign at all of Lord Namatjira’s infamous rage. He patiently studied the minute by minute reports Tactical was providing in a composed, reflective manner. It was a curious trait, one that had undoubtedly contributed positively to Namatjira’s ascent to the highest military rank. In the grip of a genuine crisis, a glacial calm surrounded him. Lord Namatjira had no time or energy to waste on tirades or recriminations. Those would come later, after the fact. In the heat of open war, a cold, analytical focus was required.
‘Our first line of resistance, which included the Jokers geno company, has been smothered,’ Major General Dev told him. ‘Outremar 234, Outremar 3667 and the Hort Eighteenth have all been lost or put to rout.’
Namatjira nodded. Major General Dev and the senior offices waited for him to speak. From all sides came the low murmur of the adepts and the hum of cogitators.
‘The Titans?’ Namatjira asked.
‘Six minutes from contact,’ Lord Wilde replied. ‘They should turn this around.’
Namatjira turned and strode out of the chamber. His retinue followed him. Chayne paused, and nodded to Dev, indicating that he should follow.
Bounding with the vitality of a much younger man, Namatjira took the stairs up to the observation deck two at a time, holding up the skirts of his rakematiz robes. His Lucifers jogged double time to keep up.
They came out into the open air, into the curdled dawn. A large, low-walled terrace in the upper part of the palace precinct had been turned over to distance observation. Heavy scopes and detection grids had been erected along the parapet, and tall clusters of vox masts stood like pollarded trees in the centre of the terrace area. The observation crews made respectful namastes as the Lord Commander appeared.
‘Carry on’, he told them, with a solemn nod that seemed almost respectful. He walked across to the east-facing section of the parapet, and two adepts bowed and stood aside from a high-gain optical scope mounted on a tripod servitor.
‘I wanted to see for myself,’ Namatjira said quietly as Dev joined him.
‘Yes, lord.’
Namatjira peered into the scope’s viewer, and carefully adjusted the resonance as he turned it slowly from left to right.
The crest of the earthwork rampart filled the skyline to the north-east. To the south, in the broad road gully that Imperial pioneers had constructed beyond the palace walls, a steady line of transports and tanks were churning east along the track, heading into the incoming storm. A flock of Jackals whined overhead in tight formation, and turned south-east to begin strafing passes. Despite the scope’s powerful resolution, Namatjira couldn’t see the enemy, but he could see the vast veil of rolling vapour that mantled them and filled the sky.
‘Extraordinary,’ said Namatjira, straightening up. He looked at Dev. His eyes were bright, almost excited.
‘When a man finds war commonplace, it is time for him to retire from service,’ said Namatjira. ‘This reminds me why I am content to serve the Emperor for a while longer.’
‘Sir?’ asked Dev. ‘Why is that?’
‘Because it’s a challenge, Dev, a revelation. The enemy has done the unexpected, and that tests us. In all of the predictive scenarios, did we ever consider that the enemy might launch a full-scale counter-offensive?’
‘No, sir. Petty raids and line assaults, perhaps, harrying attacks along our picket, but nothing like this. We didn’t realise they had the manpower left.’
‘They have taught us a lesson about expectation,’ said Namatjira. ‘We have them besieged, we have them outnumbered, and we hold a clear advantage in technology. Yet they have invaded us.’
‘An act of desperation,’ suggested Dev. ‘We are about to take their world from them. This is a last stand, perhaps, a last effort to drive us out.’
‘And a brave one,’ Namatjira replied, ‘yet it plays to our advantage.’
Dev hesitated. ‘Our advantage, sir?’
‘They have broken the siege. They have come out into the open and demanded a pitched battle. We will give them that. We will annihilate them. Nurth will be an Imperial dominion by nightfall. After months of grinding, nuisance war, they have handed us a swift and comprehensive final victory.’
Dev nodded.
Namatjira glanced up at the slow-turning sky. ‘It’s almost as if that is their intention,’ he mused. ‘For all the losses we may take, initially, to their brute assault, they must know our superior firepower will ultimately slaughter them. It is almost as if they are committing suicide as a race. It is almost as if they want to die, in one last firestorm, rather than linger on to ignominious defeat.’
Namatjira turned back towards the stairs. ‘Commit the Hort and the Torrent in full order to follow the Titans in and crush the enemy. No quarter, major general.’ He paused. ‘By the way, where are the Alpha Legion?’
‘I… I don’t know, sir,’ said Dev.
‘Signal them, major general,’ said Namatjira. For a second, a tiny flash of his carefully suppressed rage showed itself. ‘Inquire as to their status and ask, respectfully, if they intend to join us.’
T
HERE WAS A
distinct possibility that Hurt was already dead.
Soneka stood on the brow of a dune hill eight kilometres west of the battle, and felt the presentiment sink in. He felt it in his marrow. Hurt was dead. Tactical had informed him that the lokers had been caught right in the path of the enemy onslaught. He had twice requested permission to draw the Clowns in along the southern service track to support the front line, but had been denied both times. The Clowns were to hold their position. ‘At this time, we do not know if the enemy will attempt to penetrate our line in other locations.’
Soneka knew that made sense. The Army had to maintain a defence formation right along the earthwork wall, or be guilty of the most basic military sin. Besides, at the rate the dust cloud was creeping in, the Clowns would be in it too, in no more than an hour.
Yet he dearly wished he could go to his friend’s aid.
He’d had less than eight hours to get to know his new command. The transport had delivered Soneka and his bashaws to the Clown billet long after dark the night before. The Clowns had already begun their fireside revels, and had welcomed their temporary commander with vocal enthusiasm. It had turned into a late night under the stars, fuelled by the Clowns’ bottomless supply of znaps.
Soneka had spent two hours talking with Strabo,
fugging Strabo,
who turned out to be a far more competent and likeable man than Dimi Shiban had suggested. Strabo had done his best to keep the company functioning and viable in the absence of a senior gene het. By the end of their chat, Soneka had felt a grudging admiration for the bashaw, who had evidently been holding the Clowns together with a glue composed of charisma and coercion. They spoke of Shiban, and Soneka related some of the things that had passed between him and Dimi at Tel Khat. He chose not to tell Strabo the truth of Shiban’s demise. How could a man explain that a fine officer like Dimiter Shiban had been executed by the Alpha Legion, and not have it sound like treason?
Soneka stared out across the dawn landscape. Where the sun should have risen, the ominous pall of vapour hung across the skyline. The sky had congealed into a slick of brown and amber clouds, all wandering slowly against the wind and common sense. The vapour was brighter than the sky, a creamy mass like a deep desert dune caught in noon sunlight. Soneka could smell something on the wind, a resiny smell like myrrh or wormwood.
He had been thinking about Shiban a lot in the last few days. Should he have noticed some change in him, some tell-tale sign that Shiban was not himself? How did one detect the trace of Chaos? The Alpha Legion, if they were to be believed, had some infallible method.
If they were to be believed. Soneka tutted to himself. After all this, and I’m still not inclined to trust them.
Drinking with Strabo the night before, Soneka had remembered an idle conversation he’d had with Shiban at Visages. It had meant nothing at the time, but in hindsight, Soneka wondered if it was some kind of sign or symptom.
‘I have been dreaming lately,’ Dimi had said. ‘In my dreams, I hear a verse.’
‘A verse, huh?’ Soneka had replied.
‘I’ll tell you how it goes, shall I?’
‘You remember it, then?’
‘Don’t you remember your dreams word for word?’ Shiban had asked.
‘Never,’ Soneka had said.
Shiban had shrugged. ‘Fancy that.’
‘This verse?’ Soneka had prompted.
That? Oh, that goes—
From the hagg and hungrie goblin
That into raggs would rend ye,
And the spirit that stands by the naked man,
In the Book of Moones defend ye!
’
‘I know that,’ Soneka had said.
‘You do?’ Shiban had replied. ‘Really?’
‘My mother used to sing it to me when I was a boy. She called it the Bedlame Song. There were other verses that I now forget.’
‘Really? What does it mean?’
Soneka had shrugged. ‘I have no idea.’
He still had no idea, except for the awful feeling that it had been the shards of Nurthene bone lodged in Dimi Shiban’s throat shaping the words, and not Dimi Shiban at all.
Those shards of bone had been polluting his friend, corrupting him. The Alpha legionnaires had seen it instantly, and turned their weapons on him. Chaos had laced its poison claws into Dimi Shiban’s soul.
If that was true, why did Soneka know the verse? Why had his mother known it to sing it to him?
‘Sir?’
Soneka snapped out of his thoughts and looked to his left. Lon was approaching, carbine swinging from its long strap.
‘Any news?’ Soneka asked.
Lon shook his head. ‘Command repeats its instruction to hold here. Two units of Outremars are moving in from the east to cement this as a rearguard defence position.’
Soneka nodded. ‘Thank you. Let’s make ready to slot them in.’
‘Oh, and Strabo wants you, sir,’ Lon added.
Soneka looked back along the ridge of the dune. The Clowns were assembled in file order, facing the gauzy-wound in the dust cloud where the sun should have been climbing. Their shouldered pikes glinted in the toxic light, and the company banners hung like moribund kite sails. Strabo was picking his way up the cinnamon dust of the dune towards them, followed by two riflemen, and a tall man wearing the uniform of a geno het.