Edur shoved Mercure and his escort onwards with one hand, and turned to make for the nearest staircase. He saw a drop of blood, a single drop of blood, hovering and wobbling in the air, its gleaming surface tension undulating. He realised it was hanging there, in virtual freeze frame, and that his own limbs and movements had run slow, and that time was disjointed again.
The blood wolf ripped free from the spear of energy with which Inquisitor Rime had staked it to the floor. The sceptre was wrenched from his grip and whirled away across the blood-soaked floor. Rime was slammed back into the wall and pinned there, his legs kicking. His mantle of white fur caught fire, and then his hair did too. In a second, his entire head was engulfed in raging flames. He was screaming. The blood wolf let him go. He slid down the wall, found his feet somehow, and then staggered forwards, ablaze from the shoulders up.
His henchmen tried to close with the beast. Edur saw one disembowelled and another flung away like a broken doll. Rime fell to his knees, and then collapsed on his face, his head and shoulders still engulfed. The keening grew loud again.
Edur ran.
Gaunt stared at the ceiling, listening. He could hear gunfire. It was distant, but there was a lot of it. He’d heard at least two significant explosions, and a great deal of commotion. A lot of voices were echoing down to him, muffled through the floors.
He glanced at the prisoner, who was as still and silent as before, and then headed to the door. There was no one in the corridor outside. He could still hear the shouting and the shooting from above.
A detention officer suddenly ran into view, red-faced and out of breath.
‘What’s going on?’ Gaunt asked.
The man didn’t stop.
‘Get this area secure!’ he yelled as he ran past.
‘Don’t give me orders!’ Gaunt shouted after him. ‘What’s going on? Hey!’
The officer ran out of sight.
‘Hey!’
Gaunt wondered why he was asking the question. He knew what was happening. He knew in his bones and in his heart. He’d seen it. He’d seen what was coming.
He knew how fast and how bad things were going to get, and it scared him to think how he might know that.
He knew what he had to do.
He drew his bolt pistol and walked to the door of the holding cell.
The carbine in Kaylb Sirdar’s hands retched twice and spat ugly blades of red light. They punched into the Imperial trooper coming up the staircase towards him, hurling him backwards with a strangled cry. The trooper crunched and cartwheeled down the stairs, and ended up face down on the landing below.
Kaylb barked commands to his element, and they clattered on down the stairwell. Emergency lights had come on, and the smell of smoke was getting stronger. Behind the plaintive wail of the sirens, they could all hear the keening.
There were two exits on the landing.
‘Which way?’ asked Barc. Weapons ready, the men waited for instructions, covering the staircase access, up and down.
There were signs. Kaylb traced his finger across the letters and tried to make the unfamiliar words in his mouth. It was hard to know. He dragged up his left sleeve and consulted the blood map that the witch had put in his forearm. She’d given one to both sirdars and to Eyl too, a little schematic plan of the target building mapped from her divination, and formed by raised veins and swollen capillaries under the skin. As the element advanced through the area, the blood map on the patch of skin moved with them. Kaylb ran his filthy fingertips over the bumps and ridges.
‘That way,’ he pointed. ‘The left-hand hatch.’
‘Holy Throne,’ Meryn whispered. ‘Holy fething Throne!’
He was right up against the bars of his cell in Detention Four, his hands clamped around them.
‘Rawne?’ he hissed.
‘What?’
Rawne cast a look at Meryn with hooded eyes. The fear they were all feeling was most obviously etched on Captain Meryn’s face. It wasn’t a fear of fighting, because they’d all done more than their share of that in their lives, nor was it a fear of death.
It was a fear of being trapped. It was a fear of helplessness.
‘This is definitely not good,’ said Leyr.
‘The building’s under attack,’ stammered Meryn. ‘I mean, it’s under assault. You can hear it. You can smell it.’
‘You can shut up,’ said Rawne.
Meryn was right. For several minutes, they’d been able to hear the muffled scream of alarms from somewhere above them. The alarms had begun just after it had got really cold. Then, straining, they’d begun to hear the other sounds, coming very faintly through the reinforced walls and floors of the detention leveclass="underline" cries, shots, detonations.
‘We’ve got to get out of these cages,’ said Meryn.
Rawne looked at him, looked at the ceramite bars, and then looked back again.
‘I mean it,’ Meryn barked.
‘He means it,’ said Varl.
‘Yeah, well unless you’ve got a key made out of solid wishes,’ said Rawne.
Meryn got on his knees and started to examine the lock mechanism of his cage door again.
Ban Daur was still sitting back on his cot, his arms folded, a sour look on his face.
‘That’s a good idea, Meryn,’ he said. ‘Brilliant. The locks in the detention blocks of Commissariat sections are famously easy to pick, especially if you’re only using fingernails and nostril hair.’
‘Shut the feth up, you superior son of a bitch!’ Meryn yelled, turning on Daur. ‘You do something. You think of something! We’re stuck in here, and something bad’s coming. We’re stuck in here and, when it comes, we will be helpless, and we’ll die like fething rats!’
Daur swung to his feet and faced Meryn through the bars. He was taller than Meryn. He looked down on him in almost every way.
‘We’re stuck in here because we were stupid,’ Daur said. A twitch of his head showed that he meant that to include everyone. ‘We were stupid, and this is what happens to stupid people.’
‘Oh, you feth-head,’ said Meryn. ‘This is your philosophy, is it, Mr Goody-fething-two-shoes? Be a man and face your punishment?’
‘Pretty much,’ replied Daur.
‘You’re fething unbelievable!’ retorted Meryn.
‘And you’re an idiot,’ said Daur. ‘You’re crapping yourself over nothing. This is a drill.’
‘A drill?’ asked Meryn in disbelief.
‘Yes, of course it is!’ said Daur. ‘Come on, they’re blasting the sirens and shooting off some dummy ammo. It’s a shake-down. It’ll be over in another five minutes.’
He looked around at the other Ghosts. Everyone was looking at him.
‘What? Come on, it’s got to be, right?’
Daur looked at Leyr, and the big scout looked uncomfortable. Daur looked at Varl, but Varl sniffed and looked at the floor. He looked at Cant. The young trooper just looked scared.
‘This is Balhaut!’ Daur declared. ‘This is gakking Balhaut, for Throne’s sake. We’re so far from the front line it’s not even worth joking about. Who the gak’s going to attack Commissariat Section in the middle of Balopolis…’
His voice trailed off. He looked at Banda. She looked back at him, smiled a little sad smile, and shook her head.
He looked at Rawne.
‘Major? Come on, help me out here,’ said Daur.
Rawne looked at him.
‘It’s not a drill,’ Rawne said.
Daur opened his mouth, and then closed it again.
‘Feth,’ he said, eventually.
The cell bay door clanged opened. A detention officer burst in and stared at them all for a moment, his eyes flicking from one cage to the next: the seven Ghosts, the slumbering Oudinot, and the lone Varshide in the cell next to Rawne’s.