Gendler stood for a moment, breathing hard. The bastard had knifed him in the shoulder. Blood soaked the front of Gendler’s uniform. Little bastard! It hurt like a fether!
Shaking, he looked down at the unconscious boy. He hadn’t meant to hit him so hard. The boy had cracked his head on the bricks, and blood from the wound was spiralling into the stall’s drain plate and soaking the grubby towel that the boy had half wrapped around himself–
‘Holy gak,’ Gendler breathed.
Not a boy. Not a boy at all.
‘What have you done?’
Gendler looked around. Wilder had entered the shower block. He was staring in shock at the crumpled, half-naked body on the tiles.
‘Oh, shit, Gendler! What have you done?’
‘The little brat went for me,’ said Gendler. ‘Bloody stuck me. I’m bleeding!’
‘Fething Throne, Gendler,’ said Wilder. ‘She’s a girl. It’s a girl.’
Wilder looked at Gendler.
‘What the feth do we do?’ he asked, panic rising. ‘You have just dropped us in so much shit.’
‘We… we say she slipped. Slipped in the shower,’ said Gendler. ‘Yeah, she slipped. We found her. We helped her.’
‘You gak-tard! What will she say?’ asked Wilder.
Gendler thought about that for a second. Then he knelt down, wincing from the pain of his stab wound, and put his hand around Felyx’s throat.
‘Nothing,’ he said, calmly. ‘She slipped and she fell and she died.’
‘Throne, Gendler!’ Wilder gasped.
Gendler’s knuckles began to tighten.
There was a spitting hiss. Gendler tumbled back as if he’d been hit with a mallet. He landed sitting up, with his back to the brick wall. An iron quarrel was lodged in his chest.
Eszrah Ap Niht stood in the doorway, his reynbow aimed.
‘Touch her not, soule,’ he growled.
Gendler coughed blood.
‘You feth-wipe,’ he gurgled. He wrenched his sidearm from its holster, and aimed it at Ezra.
The reynbow spat again. The quarrel hit Gendler in the middle of the forehead, and smacked his skull against the bricks. He lolled, head back, staring at the ceiling with dead eyes.
Jakub Wilder wailed in dismay. He pulled his sidearm.
But Ezra had already reloaded. The quarrel punched through the meat of Wilder’s right thigh in a puff of blood, and dropped him to his knees. Wilder squealed, and tried to aim his weapon. Ezra dropped another iron bolt into his bow, and fired again, quick and methodical. The quarrel hit Wilder in the shoulder of his gun-arm, spun him sideways off his feet and sent the pistol skittering away across the floor. Wilder lay on the ground, sobbing and moaning, blood leaking out onto the tiles.
‘The feth is going on in here?’ Meryn yelled as he and Blenner stormed in. They looked at the bodies on the ground in dismay.
‘Feth…’ Meryn said.
‘They would to kill her,’ said Ezra.
‘It’s a fething girl!’ said Meryn.
Drawn by the commotion, people were crowding around the door outside. Meryn turned and yelled at them.
‘Out! Get out! Get out now!’ he bellowed, driving them back, and slamming the ratty wooden door shut.
He looked at Ezra again.
‘Are you… are you saying Gendler and Wilder attacked this… attacked this girl?’
Ezra nodded.
Meryn glanced at Blenner. Blenner was shaking. He could see the frantic desperation in Meryn’s eyes.
‘That’s… that’s actionable, isn’t it, commissar?’ Meryn said. ‘Gross assault? That’s summary, right there!’
‘I…’ Blenner began.
‘That’s right, isn’t it, commissar?’ Meryn urged.
‘Feth… Meryn, please…’ Wilder moaned from the floor. ‘For pity’s sake, help me…’
‘I’m right, aren’t I, Commissar Blenner?’ Meryn demanded. Blenner could read the message Meryn was sending him, the message blazing out of his eyes. Shut this down. Shut this down before Wilder sells us out too. Shut this down and keep this contained.
Vaynom Blenner’s sense of justice crumbled beneath the weight of his fear. Somewhere, during that, his heart broke.
He drew his sidearm.
‘Captain Jakub Wilder,’ he began. His voice sounded very small. ‘You have shamed the honour code of the Astra Militarum with actions base, vile and cowardly.’
‘Oh, no,’ Wilder cried, trying to rise. ‘Are you bloody kidding me? Blenner, no! No!’
‘By the authority of the Officio Prefectus,’ said Blenner, ‘punishment is immediate.’
Jakub Wilder started to scream. Blenner shot him through the head. Blood flecked the walls. His body fell hard on the tiles.
Meryn looked at Ezra.
‘Good work,’ he said. ‘Very good work, Ezra. Thank the Holy Throne you were here.’
‘Gaunt, he told me to watch his child,’ said Ezra.
‘Well, you’ve served him well,’ said Meryn. He stooped to recover the laspistol Wilder had dropped. ‘Very diligent. Really, thank Throne you were here. The Emperor protects.’
Meryn fired Wilder’s sidearm three times, point-blank, into Ezra’s upper back between the shoulder blades. Ezra fell without a sound.
Blenner stood and stared with his mouth wide open.
‘What a mess, eh?’ Meryn whispered to him, putting the gun down beside Wilder’s lifeless right hand. ‘Ezra saved the girl, but Wilder shot him, so you had to execute him.’
He looked at Blenner.
‘Right?’ he asked firmly.
‘Meryn, I–’
‘We’re in this together, Blenner. You and me. It’s a simple, sad tale, and our stories will match. All right?’
Blenner nodded.
‘Good,’ said Meryn. ‘Now let’s find a fething corpsman.’
Twenty-Two: The Tulkar Batteries
The sea was close, less than half a mile away, but all Rawne could smell was the rank promethium smoke blowing in from the south. Vast banks of black smoke were making the night air opaque, as though a shroud lay over the city. Ten kilometres south of his position, a zone of mills and manufactories along the edge of the Northern Dynastic Claves became an inferno. The horizon was a wall of leaping orange light that back-lit the buildings nearby. There was a steady thump of artillery and armour main-guns, and every now and then a brighter flash lit up the flame belt, casting sparks and lancing spears of fire high into the darkness.
The Ghosts were waiting, silent. Rawne had eighteen of the regiment’s twenty companies with him, a complement of over five thousand Guardsmen. The Tanith First had advanced south from K700, moving fast, and had entered the Millgate quarter of the city under cover of darkness and rain. There, they’d ditched their transports and hefted the heavy weapons and munitions by hand.
The area was deserted, and the Ghosts companies had fanned out across a half-mile front through empty streets, advancing fire-team by fire-team down adjacent blocks. Rawne knew they were tired from the fast deploy, but he kept the pace up and maintained strict noise discipline. The Ghosts had melted into the zone, pouring down the dark streets, one company flanking the next. The only sounds had been the quiet hurrying of feet.
At a vox-tap from Rawne, the regiment had halted in the neighbourhood of Corres Square, a few streets short of the batteries. Rawne knew the five thousand ready Guardsmen were in the vicinity, but they were so quiet and they’d hugged into the shadows so well, he could barely see any of them.