Ghostmaker (35 page)

“What’s happening, sir?” Trooper Caffran asked. Rawne bit back the urge to yell at him. The boy was a novice, first taste of battle. And Rawne was the only officer present.

“Planetary assault. The enemy have fallen on us while we were still mustering.”

Others in the squad moaned.

“We’re finished,” Larkin howled and Feygor disciplined him with a blow to his kidneys.

“Enough of that talk!” Rawne snapped. “They’ll not take Tanith without a fight from us! And we can’t be the only unit inside the Elector’s palace! We have a duty to protect the life of the Elector.”

The rest murmured and nodded. It was a desperate course, but it seemed right. They all felt it.

Feygor checked his intercom again. “Nothing. The lines are dead. Must be scrambling us.”

“Keep trying. We have to locate the Elector and form a cohesive defence.”

Brin Milo’s head was spinning. It all seemed so unreal, but he cautioned himself that was just shock at the speed of events. It had been stressful enough to prepare to leave Tanith for ever. All the men had been edgy these last few days. Now… this nightmare.

That was what it was like. A nightmare. A twisting of reality where some things seemed blurred and others bright and over-sharp.

There was no time to settle his nerves or soothe it away Gunfire and a gout of flame rushed down the stone hallway from behind them. The enemy had gained access to the palace Rawne’s squad took cover-places along the wall and returned fire.

“For Tanith!” Rawne yelled. “While it yet lives!”

Eon Kull, the Old One, awoke with a start. He cried out, an animal bark of pain. He found himself lying on the polished stone floor of the Inner Place. For a moment, he did not remember who or what he was.

Then it trickled back, like sand through the waist of an hourpiece, a grain at a time. He had lost consciousness and lain here, undiscovered, in his delirium.

He could barely rise. His hands trembled; his limbs were as weak as a fildassai. Blood was clotting in his mouth and nose. He felt his beating organs and pumping lungs rustle and wheeze inside his ribs like dying birds in a cage.

He had to take stock. Had he been successful?

The spirit stones had all gone dark. Fuehain Talchior sat silent and still in her rack. The rune slivers were scattered across the floor as if someone had kicked over the arrangement. Some glowed red hot and smouldered like iron in a smelter. Others were wisps of curled ash.

Eon Kull Warlock gasped at the sight. He clawed at the runes, gathering up the fragments and the ash, burning his fingers. In the name of Vaul the Smithy-God, what had he wrought this day? What had he done? Attempted too much, that was certain His age and his frailty had failed him, made him pass out and lose control, but surely for only a second or two. What had he unleashed? Sacred Asuryan, what had he done?

His exhausted mind sensed Muon Nol returning to the Inner Place. The warrior should not, would not see him like this, Eon Kull found strength from somewhere and hauled himself back into his throne, clasping the purse of ash and bone-cinders to his belt. Joints cracked like bolter shots and he felt blood rise in his gorge as his head span.

“Lord Eon Kull? Are you… well?”

“Fatigued, no more. How goes it?”

“Your… storm… it is a work of greatness. More fierce than I had imagined.”

Eon Kull frowned. What did Muon Nol mean? He couldn’t show his ignorance to the warrior. He would have to reach out and see for himself. But his mind was so weak and spent.

“The Way must be closed now. The storm won’t last forever.”

Muon Nol knelt on both knees and made the formal gesture of petition. “Lord, I beseech you once more, for the last time, let us not abandon the Way here. Let me send to Dolthe for reinforcements. With exarchs, with the great Avatar itself, we can hold out and—”

Eon Kull bade him rise, shaking his helmeted head slowly. He was glad Muon Nol couldn’t see the blood that tracked down his septum and over his dry lips. “And I tell you, for the last time, it cannot be. Dolthe can spare no more for us. They are beset. Have you any idea of the scale of the foe here on Monthax?” Eon Kull leaned forward and touched Muon Nol’s brow with his bared hand, sending a hesitant mental pulse that conveyed the unnumbered measure of the foe-host as he had sensed it. Muon Nol stiffened and shuddered. He looked away.

“Chaos must not take us. They must be denied access to the Webway. Our Way here must be closed now, as I have wished it.”

“I understand,” the warrior nodded.

“Go see to the final provisions. When all is ready, come and escort me to the High Place. That is where I will meet my end.”

Alone again, Eon Kull the Old One flexed his mind, trying to peer out beyond the Inner Place and sense the outside world. But he had no strength. Had he expended so much? What had Muon Nol meant when he remarked upon his storm?

Shuffling, unsteady, Eon Kull crossed the Inner Place and opened the lid of a quartz box set against the wall. It was full of charred dust and some empty silk bags. A rare few still held objects and he took one out now. The wraithbone wand slipped out of its protective bag into his hand. It was warm, pulsing; one of the last he had left. He shuffled back to the throne, sank onto the seat with a sigh and clutched the wand to his chest. He prayed that there was strength enough in it to channel and focus his dissipated powers. The embers of his power lit through the wand, and the spirit stones around him and set into his armour blinked back into a semblance of life. Most of them, at least. Some remained dull and dead. Many merely flickered with a dull luminosity.

His mind blinked, two or three times, flashing images of the outside which roared and wailed. Then it coalesced and he saw.

He saw the storm, the magnitude of the storm. He cursed himself. He should have realised that he had been too weak to control such a conjuration. He had intended a storm, of course, as a diversion to cover his more subtle, complex illusions. But the stress had robbed him of consciousness, and he had lost control.

He had unleashed a warp-storm, a catastrophic force that now raged entirely beyond his ability to command, far from covering the humans and allow them in close enough for the illusions to work them to his cause, he had all but blasted them away.

His head lolled back. His final deed had been a failure. He had exhausted his entire power, burned his runes, extinguished some of his guide spirits, and all for this. Kaela Mensha Khaine! An elemental force of destruction that fell, unselective, upon all. It roared about him, like a war-hound he had spent months training, only to see it go feral.

There were a few faint spats of light, the traces of a handful of humans who had been close enough to become wrapped in his illusions. But far from enough.

Lord Eon Kull, Old One, warlock, wept. He had tried. And he had failed.

Mkoll had been stumbling through the torrential rain for fifteen or more minutes before he stopped dead in his tracks, shook himself in amazement, and then hurled himself into the cover of a dripping, exposed tree-root.

It was not possible. It was… some kind of madness.

He look up at the stormy sky, shuddered and hugged himself. All along, he had suspected the storm was not natural in origin. Now he knew it was playing with his mind.

This was Monthax, Monthax, he told himself, over and over. Not Tanith.

Then why had he spent the last twenty minutes making his way home to the farmstead he shared with his wife and sons in the nal-groves above Heban?

Shock pounded in his veins. It was like losing Eiloni all over again, though he knew she was dead of canth-fever these last ten, fifteen years. It was like losing Tanith again, losing his sons.

He had been so convinced he was hurrying back through a summer storm from the high-pasturing cuchlain herds, so convinced he had a wife and a farm and a family and a livelihood to return to. But in fact he had been scrambling his way back towards the ruin and the massed forces of the enemy.

How had his mind been so robbed of truth? What witchcraft was at work?

He pulled himself to his feet and made off again, now in the opposite direction, towards what he prayed were friendly lines.

On Lilith’s orders, a sizable force of men began pushing back into the storm-choked jungles. Her bodyguard formed around her, following a roughly equal number of Tanith Ghosts under Gaunt, the regrouped remnants of the first, Second and Seventh platoons. The wounded had been sent on to the lines.

Gilbear had protested, both at the advance and the co-operation of the Tanith, but Lilith had made no great efforts to disguise her contempt for him when she denied his objections. If her fears were realised, this was Gaunt’s business as much as hers. Besides, the Ghosts had already been in there, and had a taste of what to expect, for all the vaunted veteran skills of the Volpone’s elite Tenth Brigade, she wanted a serious fighting force, with enough numbers that losses wouldn’t dent. Sixty men, or thereabouts, half dedicated heavy infantry, ordered to guard her by the general, half the best stealth fighters in the Guard, led by their own charismatic commissar.

A reasonable insurgency force, she reckoned. Still, she had had her astropath signal back for reinforcements. Thoth had been reluctant until she had pulled rank and suggested the magnitude of the threat. Now five hundred Bluebloods under Marshal Ruas and three hundred Roane Deepers under Major Alef and Commissar Jaharn were moving up in their wake, an hour or so behind them. The astropath was now dead from the effort of sending and receiving through the storm. They left his body where it lay.

It seemed bloody-minded to push a unit back into the storm zone when all other Imperials had retreated out of it, and it seemed to compound that error by sending in fresh numbers after them. But Lilith knew that, storm or no storm, Chaos host or no Chaos host, the key to victory on Monthax lay in the heart of that zone. And the focus of her own, personal inquisition too, perhaps.

Lerod led the spearhead, lie had volunteered, brimming with an enthusiasm that Gaunt found faintly alarming. Yael, one of Lerod’s men from the Seventh, had told of Lerod’s miraculous escape from the enemy gunners on the creek bank, and explained that Lerod now thought his life charmed.

Gaunt wondered for a moment. He’d seen that sort of luck-flare before, where a man thought himself invulnerable. The consequences could be appalling. But he’d rather have Lerod laying his “luck” at the front than cursing them lower down the file.

Besides, Lerod was a fine soldier. One of the best, the most level-headed.

And more than that… All of the Ghosts, Corbec included, seemed somehow eager to get back into the deadly storm. It was as if something called to them. Gaunt had seldom seen them so highly motivated.

And then, in a pause, he realised that he, too, was more than willing to turn back into the fatal onslaught besetting the dense jungle and creeks. He couldn’t account for it. It alarmed him.

Lilith’s brigade slogged in through the creek-ways and water-runs, beaten by the rain and wind. The muddy ground became steep slopes, the low rises of upland rain forests above the flooded swamps.

Lilith sent pairs of men forward to secure lines. Corbec and a couple of Ghosts and Bluebloods clambered forward with Lerod up the muddy escarpments, playing out cables that they secured to trees and stumps along the way. Lightning berated them, exploding the tallest trees round about.

The brigade moved forward, following the twin lines of cable the advance had played out.

High on a slope, Corbec nailed the end of his cable line to a stump, and then set watch with his party as the main force struggled up behind. One of the Bluebloods looked at him, smiling.

“Culcis?”

“Colonel Corbec!”

Corbec slapped the younger man on the armoured shoulder, and the other Bluebloods eyed this camaraderie with suspicion.

“Where was it — Nacedon?”

“In the farm. I owe you my life, colonel.”

Corbec guffawed. “I remember you fought as hard as the next that night, Culcis!”

The young man grinned. Rainwater dripping down his face from his helmet lip.

“So you made the Tenth, huh?” Corbec asked, settling in next to the Blueblood and taking aim into the blistering dark.

“Your medic wrote well of me, and your leader, Gaunt, mentioned me in dispatches. Then I got a lucky break on Vandamaar and won a medal.”

“So you’re veteran now? One of the Blueblood elite? Best of the best, and all that?”

Culcis chuckled. “We’re all just soldiers, sir.”

The twin lines of advance progressed slowly up the slopes along the cable lines, weaving between the heavy trees and saturated foliage. The ground was like watered honey, loose and fluid, coming up to their shins. At least there were no insects abroad in the onslaught.

They moved on in fire-team formation, following a deep valley into the jungle uplands and the heart of the roiling storm. Lilith called a halt, to get a fix on their position. She was just raising her data-slate when a searing light flashed and they were deafened.

Lightning had struck a tree twenty paces back, exploding it in a welter of wooden shrapnel. Two Bluebloods had been atomised by electrical arcs and another two, along with one of the Tanith, had been flayed alive by the wood chips.

Major Gilbear slammed into Lilith as he stumbled up the slope. “We must retreat, inquisitor! This is madness!”

“This is necessary, major,” she corrected, and returned her gaze to the slate. Gaunt was by her side. They compared data, pelting rain pattering off the screens of their respective devices.

“There’s your Third platoon,” she said.

“As you had it last fixed before the storm came down,” corrected Gaunt. “They were in the eye of the storm then, but can you get a true fix on their location now? Or on ours?”

Lilith cursed silently. Gaunt was right. They were cut off from orbital locator signals, and the storm was playing merry hell with all their finders and codiciers. All they had to work on was a memory or location and terrain. And none of that seemed reliable.