Another hatchway took them into another long, white-tiled corridor, the trademark style of the detention levels, it seemed. There were no doors and no windows, just a long, gleaming white tunnel.
‘Which way?’ asked Prisoner B.
Raiders appeared down the tunnel to their right, and made the decision for them.
They started to run. As shots began to streak their way, Gaunt turned and fired, bundling Prisoner B ahead of him. He hit someone, and made the others duck back.
‘Move!’ Gaunt yelled.
Baltasar Eyl stepped over the bloody mess that had once been one of his men.
‘Where?’ he asked.
‘This way, upon my soul!’ Naeme declared, pointing down the hallway.
‘You sure it’s him?’
‘I saw him,’ said Imrie.
Eyl pushed past them and started to run. He had trodden in the blood of his dead comrade, and he left bloody footprints on the white tiles.
They were coming after them. Gaunt could see them every time he looked back. They were giving chase. One of them, a big man in a beige leather coat, was leading the way, a carbine in his hands. His grotesk was silver.
The officer, Gaunt thought, the mission leader.
Shoving Prisoner B on, Gaunt turned again and fired. The screaming bolt-round barely missed the Blood Pact officer on their heels, but the man in the silver mask didn’t even flinch.
He’s sworn to this deed, Gaunt thought. He doesn’t care about his own life. He is resolute.
Gaunt fired. He missed the leader in the silver mask again, but the round explosively eviscerated the Pacted warrior running at his side. Still running, the silver-masked leader raised his carbine, and fired from the shoulder like a huntsman. A las-bolt hit the floor. Another went through Gaunt’s coat tail. A third stabbed into Prisoner B’s left shoulder blade.
Prisoner B didn’t fall, but he grunted and stumbled. Gaunt grabbed him to keep him upright, and tried to hustle him on. Shots smacked into the walls around them.
The white-tiled corridor was getting narrower. They struggled past a point where it was actually stepped in on both sides, losing about a quarter of its width. Five metres further, and the corridor stepped in again. The tall, white-tiled corridor had been designed progressively narrower in width.
It had been specifically designed to place increasing restrictions on anyone moving along it: to stop a man from turning or breaking free from the guards flanking him in escort.
Gaunt suddenly realised there wasn’t going to be an exit ahead of them. They had unwittingly run into a dead end, a literal dead end. The narrowing corridor was the long, deliberately confined approach to the execution chamber, the last walk that all capital prisoners of the Commissariat took, the last walk from which there was no turning back.
Baltasar Eyl extended his long stride. His beige coat flew out behind him. The corridor’s overhead lights strobe-flashed off his silver grotesk.
He raised his carbine.
TWELVE
A Place of Execution
Like the narrowing throat of the hallway that had brought them to it, the execution chamber was entirely lined with glossy white tiles. They were easier to wash, easier to hose down. There were small brass drain covers in the floor under the stout gibbet beam set in the ceiling.
Gaunt bundled Prisoner B through the doorway into the hopeless little box of a room. Despite his wound, Prisoner B made no show of pain. Two las-bolts shrieked past their ears and struck the far wall of the chamber. Gaunt turned. The Archenemy leader in the silver grotesk was right on them.
Gaunt fired.
The blast threw their pursuer’s body backwards along the distressingly tight gullet of the execution walk. It crashed into two of the men behind it and brought them all down. The narrow space filled with the stink of charred skin and fyceline.
Gaunt moved to the door, a heavy hatch, and began to swing it shut, hoping to bar or lock it in place. It didn’t seem to want to move.
‘Help me!’ he snarled, struggling.
Prisoner B was leaning against the wall nearby, breathing hard. The left-hand side of his coat was soaked in blood.
Gaunt ignored him and heaved at the door again. He holstered his bolt pistol to get a good grip on its frame with both hands. It began to budge, very slightly. Gaunt exclaimed in frustration. The wretched thing felt like it was made of stone. Several more las-bolts zipped in through the open doorway and creased off the far wall.
The door moved another couple of reluctant centimetres.
Something crashed into Gaunt and carried him across the execution chamber into the facing wall. The impact squashed the air out of him.
He was grappling with the man in the silver grotesk. The enemy leader’s face and chest were scorched and burned, and his gloved hands were torn and bloody, but he was far from dead. Gaunt’s bolt-round, intended as a hasty body-shot, had struck the carbine in Eyl’s hands and blown it up in his face. The force of the detonation had tossed him backwards into his men, but the round had not killed him.
Eyl forced Gaunt into the wall, and hooked a hand around his throat. Wide-eyed in surprise, his arms too pinned for a proper blow, Gaunt jabbed with an elbow, following it up with a clumsy kick that rocked his attacker back a step.
Gaunt broke the constricting grip around his arms, and smashed Eyl’s hands away. Eyl threw a clawing punch that was supposed to seize Gaunt’s face and twist his head around, but Gaunt deflected it, caught the extended firearm under his armpit, and violently levered Eyl into the chamber wall by way of his straightened arm.
Eyl grunted at the impact. Gaunt tried to slam him into the wall a second time, but Eyl’s left fist came around, catching Gaunt across the jaw. He reeled backwards, losing his grip on Eyl’s right arm.
Eyl immediately went on the offensive again. There was no hesitation. The intense, blow-upon-blow speed of the fight was manic and frantic. Eyl aimed a kick at Gaunt’s ribs, which didn’t properly connect, but, as Gaunt tried to shield himself, Eyl aimed another kick with the other foot.
Gaunt deflected it with his forearm, but wasn’t fast enough to catch the heel or ankle. Changing step, Eyl tried a third kick, from the original angle that had grazed Gaunt’s ribs. Warding off the successive kicks was driving Gaunt across the small chamber towards the doorway.
This time, Gaunt caught the raider’s heel. It smacked into his palm with a satisfying slap. He yanked and dragged the foot upwards, kicking Eyl’s other leg out from under him.
Eyl slammed over onto his back on the white tiles, but broke free and executed an alarmingly agile flick of his body that whipped him back onto his feet. He was upright in time to meet Gaunt’s fist coming the other way.
Gaunt was aiming for the throat, but he misjudged, and caught his knuckles across the edge of the silver grotesk. Eyl’s misdirected response drove a fist into Gaunt’s left collar bone. As Gaunt recoiled, Eyl went for his throat. Eyl was tall, with a long reach, and he was astonishingly strong, but it wasn’t his strength so much as his solidity that was a problem for Gaunt. He was an unyielding force, like a weight or a gravitic wave. It was as if he was made of some substance far denser than human matter. Gaunt had never tackled a man so implacable or so hard to unseat.
Eyl’s iron-hard hands brushed Gaunt’s fists aside and closed around his neck. As he felt his windpipe shut, and the tendons of his throat throttle and grind, Gaunt responded with instinct rather than any coherent plan. His gut verified that the only remaining thing he could use against his attacker was his attacker.