The box skeleton of the Old Crossing and, behind it, the New Polis Bridge, loomed up ahead.
Any line veteran can tell you that adjusting to retired life is a hard slog. That morning, Criid felt particularly twitchy. It could have been the news about Rawne, but her palms were damp, and there was a coppery taste in her mouth. It felt like adrenaline, combat adrenaline, the feeling you got in the zone, the feeling of being on all the time. She hadn’t had it this bad in weeks, and it seemed to be getting worse and worse as she jogged in under the shadow of the bridge.
She came to a halt, pulse thumping, and looked around. For an overwhelming few seconds, it felt as if she was back on the line, advancing through some hab burb, knowing the enemy was behind every wall and window. She had to fight back a desire to duck for cover.
What was doing it? What had set her off? She looked around, turning a full circle, but there was nothing to see and no one around. She was hyper-aware of the distant hum of traffic, the iron shadow of the bridge, the sky like arctic camo, the crusts of snow, hard and bright in the morning sun, the languid lap of a river running glossy with ice mush, the drab black of the dank stone walls, the ouslite and travertine, the smells of river-rot and sewage outfall and gnawed stone, the fume of her breath in the air, the beat of her heart, a golden aquila on a steeple across the river catching the light, and the flaked and faded paint of the name Ennisker’s Perishables on a nearby building.
Nothing.
She sniffed a breath, and took off again, running east.
Baltasar Eyl relaxed his grip on the handle of the packing knife. There had been someone right outside, and he had braced himself to deal with an intruder.
Whoever it was, whatever it was, it had gone now. Eyl climbed up into one of the crumbling arches that overlooked the riverside walk. There was no one down there. He kept watch for another minute, and then went back down to the loading dock.
In the dock space, both containers were open, and all those who would ever wake had been woken. One of Eyl’s two headmen, his sirdar Karhunen, was supervising the revival of the philia in the fluttering naphtha light. Some of the company, the most recently roused, were just sitting and shivering, too numb to do anything except rock and stare blankly. Others had become more mobile, flexing their sore limbs to get the circulation going, or prostrating themselves in prayer and offering fierce words of thanks to the Kings of the Warp.
A few were injecting stimm shots from what remained of the medicae’s pack. Valdyke’s medicae had done everything in his power to bring the men out of their hibernation torpor. Karhunen had eventually decided that the medicae’s blood was more useful to them than his skills, and had found a packing knife of his own.
The most alert members of the philia had begun their duties. Ritual marks of gratitude to the High Powers were finger-drawn on their cheeks and foreheads with the blood of the medicae, Valdyke and his minders. The men greeted Eyl with deep bows and firm embraces as he walked amongst them. Shorb was renewing the pact-marks on his left hand with a rite knife. He made a firm incision in Eyl’s honour and held the hand up, palm out, to his damogaur.
Eyl kissed the bloody palm.
‘We should remake all the vows upon our souls as we step on this earth, damogaur,’ Shorb said. ‘The old rites must be performed.’
‘They must, they should,’ Eyl agreed, ‘but time is bleeding away. Duty comes first. The philia must hit the ground and move.’
‘Do we know the location of the pheguth?’ Imrie asked.
‘Soon,’ Eyl assured him.
Imrie nodded. He was binding his foot. Freezerbite had reduced most of the toes to blackened pegs.
Malstrom, Gnesh and Naeme were seeing to the weapons. Eyl had listed his exact requirements in the messages he had sent ahead, and Valdyke seemed to have supplied everything that had been asked for. The materiel was all Guard issue, packed in khaki munition boxes that Valdyke had brought in and unloaded long before dawn. There were assorted lasguns, autorifles, pistols, a few heavier pieces and a fair quantity of ammunition.
‘What’s the quality like?’ Eyl asked.
Malstrom shrugged, checking the action of a carbine he had picked from the crates.
‘Beggars can’t be choosers, Eyl Damogaur,’ he said. ‘It’s old. Surplus, most of it. Sourced through illegal markets and decommission plants.’ He tilted his head back and held the weapon up to examine it better by the light of the naphtha flares. His teeth were pink with blood.
‘Good enough, though?’
‘Mostly. I’ll need to clean and bless a few pieces.’
‘Do it quickly.’
Malstrom nodded.
‘Upon my soul, magir,’ he replied.
Naeme was pulling laspistols from another crate, checking them deftly, and snapping power cells into their receivers. As ever, he was muttering his list of names.
‘Utaleth, then it is Sharhoek, next it is Muulm…’
He looked up as Eyl approached, and offered him one of the loaded pistols. Eyl took it.
‘How goes the pedigree?’ he asked.
The old soldier smiled.
‘I wake today in this strange place and find, upon my soul, I’m nearer the end,’ he said. He paused, and looked away, as if hearing a distant voice. He began to mutter again. ‘Next it is Hjeve, then it is Umeth…’
It was Naeme’s chosen rite, one he had taken as a burden upon his soul as a young man first pacted. He would attempt to utter, in his lifetime, every single one of the uncounted names of Death, and having said them all, would become Death. The Pedigree of Death was a popular rite amongst the philias of the Blood Pact, though Eyl had never met a soldier who had progressed so far through the holy catalogue.
Malstrom uttered a quiet curse, and Eyl looked back at him.
‘There’s no explosive, damogaur,’ Malstrom said.
‘Have you checked?’
‘All the boxes. There are a few grenades, but no charges.’
Eyl thought for a moment. Valdyke hadn’t been so reliable after all. It was a setback.
‘We’ll have to use a blood wolf,’ said Gnesh.
Eyl nodded.
‘Yes,’ he said, ‘we will.’
In the chamber beside the loading dock, Barc and Samus were stripping down the corpses that had been used to pack and ritually seal the containers. The mission profile had relied on there being weapons available at the target area, because a munition payload of any decent size would have been too visible to Imperial sensors. Nevertheless, it had been vital to bring certain items, and these had been packed inside the spare carcasses to minimise their traces.
The company’s rite knives – saw-toothed, single-edged blades about the length of a man’s hand, with grips turned from human bone – had been sutured in under the meat and muscle, against the long bones of the arms and legs. Barc and his companion had gouged the first two out, and then used them for the remainder of the fleshwork. Body cavities had been used to stow the company’s iron grotesks.
When Eyl entered the chamber, Barc was using the tip of his rite knife to strip sheets of yellow fat and translucent tissue away from a ribcage so that he could open it. Eyl offered him the larger, cleaver-like packing knife, and Barc took it eagerly. He began to strike the ribs away like a butcher preparing a crown rack. He reached into the cavity he had opened, and lifted out one of the grotesks.
Eyl took the heavy iron mask and turned it over in his hands. From the particular design of the scowling eyes and howling mouth, he recognised that it belonged to Johnas, but Johnas Katogaur was one of the men who hadn’t survived the hibernaculums. The mask would go unused. It would need to be ritually disposed of to appease Johnas and his patron spirits.