‘Baskevyl? Tell him I’ll see him as soon as I can. In fact, send Captain Daur down to admit him and take his brief. Any word on the main Ghost force?’
‘Nothing, sir,’ said Beltayn. ‘Vox-control suggests there may be signal jamming in their sector.’
Gaunt nodded, and pushed through the press towards Biota.
‘Do we have an update on the Tanith First?’ he asked the tactician.
Biota took him aside to one of the hololith plates, and wanded through data.
‘They log as still in position, as per orders,’ he said. ‘Tulkar Batteries defence, at the east end of Millgate.’
‘They’re holding?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Contact?’
‘Heavy jamming, sir,’ Biota replied with a shake of his head.
Gaunt looked at the data display. ‘Throne,’ he murmured, ‘that’s a bloodbath. They’re right at the heart of it. I sent them right into the heaviest fighting in the zone.’
‘My lord,’ said Biota. He hesitated. ‘My lord, we have an unconfirmed report that a significant enemy advance is pushing along the south shore into Millgate. Your Ghosts, sir… They are the principal unit standing in its way.’
The transports rumbled in through the gatehouses, and entered the compound of the Urdeshic Palace. It was almost dawn, but the sky was choked with smoke plumes running north off Zarakppan and the burning mills. Munitorum staffers with light poles guided the vehicles to parking places on the hard standing, and cargo crews moved in to help the retinue unload.
‘How many are you?’ a Munitorum official asked Meryn. Meryn handed him the manifest list.
‘We have accommodation assigned in the west blockhouses,’ the man said. ‘The crews will show you the way.’
‘I need a medicae,’ said Meryn. ‘We have a concussion injury.’
The official waved over a medicae. Meryn pointed him to Fazekiel and Dalin, who were helping Felyx out of one of the trucks. He had a bedroll and a combat cape wrapped around him like a shawl, and looked pale and unsteady.
She, Meryn reminded himself. She.
‘Looks like you escaped the worst of it, captain,’ the Munitorum official said lightheartedly. ‘They say it’s a living hell down in the zones.’
‘Yeah,’ said Meryn. ‘We got away with it, all right.’
He looked across the crowd of off-loading personnel, the women and children of the retinue and the Ghosts escorting them. He saw Blenner, and tried to catch his eye.
But Blenner determinedly did not look back.
Elodie moved through the busy crowd in the half-light. She was still shaken. She wasn’t sure what had happened at the billet, but fear and shock still clung to her like a camo-cloak.
‘Yoncy? Yoncy?’
The girl was standing alone behind the trucks, away from the rest. Her shaved head seemed very pale and fragile in the gloom. They’d sponged the blood off her, but her shift dress was dark and caked with bloodstains. She hadn’t said much since she’d recovered consciousness.
‘Yoncy?’ said Elodie. ‘Come on, honey.’
Yoncy was staring at the fortress gatehouses, apparently fascinated by the sight of the massive gates as they slowly closed on their hydraulic buffers.
‘Yoncy?’ Elodie took her hand. ‘Come on, it’s cold out here.’
‘We’re home now,’ said Yoncy softly. ‘Home and safe. Just like Papa told me to be.’
‘That’s right,’ said Elodie. For a second, she heard the bone-saw shriek, an echo in the night. She shuddered. Just a memory. Just a sharp, brief recall of the night’s horror.
‘Come on,’ she said.
The gates slammed shut with a resounding boom. Yoncy sighed, and turned as Elodie led her away to join the others. The officials with light poles were leading processions of new arrivals across the compound.
As she was led along, Yoncy glanced over her shoulder at the thick darkness under the high walls of the yard. She frowned, as if she had seen something or heard something.
‘Bad shadow,’ she whispered. ‘Naughty shadow. Not yet.’
The fire rate coming at them was breathtaking. The whole sky over the shore was on fire, and las-rounds rained in like a neon monsoon. Two Ghosts directly beside Rawne had just been cut down.
‘Medic!’ Rawne yelled over the deafening hail of fire. There was blood on his face that wasn’t his.
‘We have to get closer!’ Pasha yelled to him, down in cover nearby.
Rawne knew they did. But they were outgunned at a ratio of about five to one. The agriboat fleet was swarming with Sek’s warriors, and they were laying down so much fire, Rawne couldn’t get any of his units past the sea wall. There was no way to call in air support, and the promised armour had never arrived. Runners from Ludd had brought him word that Criid’s companies were facing a meat-grinder in the throttled streets around Turnabout Lane.
‘If we could just get a foothold on those boats,’ Rawne growled.
Beside him, head down, Oysten nodded. But she had absolutely no idea what to suggest.
‘You’ll have to pull back!’ Curth snapped as she struggled to patch one of the fallen troopers. There was blood all over her too.
‘Yeah, right,’ Rawne replied. ‘Do that, and we basically open the city to the fethers.’
‘Have you seen our casualty rate?’ Curth yelled back. ‘Much more of this and you won’t have any troops left to pull back!’
‘What the hell?’ said Spetnin suddenly.
Rawne looked up. The fire rate had just dropped dramatically. The withering storm of las-bolts had reduced to just a few sporadic shots.
Rawne waited. A last few cracks of gunfire, then something close to silence.
He started to rise.
‘Be careful!’ Pasha snapped.
He rose anyway, and took a look over the chipped and splintered lip of the sea wall. A haze of gunsmoke lay across the rusting agriboat fleet. Some of the vessels were burning, and they all showed signs of heavy battle damage.
There was no trace at all of the enemy force that had been hosing them with shots a few minutes before.
‘The feth..?’ Rawne muttered.
‘It’s a trick,’ warned Pasha.
‘What kind of trick?’ Rawne replied. ‘One squad, with me. Pasha, reposition our units. Get them in better order in case this starts up again.’
Rawne slithered over the sea wall, surprised to find that no one shot at him. The rockcrete was dimpled with shot holes and wafting smoke. The settling fyceline was so thick it made him cough. Ghosts slipped over the wall with him. Weapons up, they scurried towards the dock and the condemned fleet.
His regiment’s gunfire and rocket assault had damaged all the boats in the vicinity. Rawne could hear water gushing in and filling hulls holed by tread fethers. He saw the enemy dead on upper decks, or hanging over broken railings. More corpses choked the low-water gap between the dock wall and the hulls.
‘Where the feth did they go?’ asked Brostin, his flamer ready.
Rawne clambered onto the nearest hull, stepping over enemy dead. Where the feth had they gone?
‘We have to listen,’ said Zhukova.
‘What?’
She moved past Rawne, and slipped down a through-deck ladder. He followed. Down inside the dark, stinking hull, she got on her knees and pressed her ear to the deck.
‘Movement,’ she reported. ‘Like I heard before.’
She looked up at Rawne, and wiped grease off her cheek.
‘But moving away from us,’ she said.
‘What?’
‘They’re retreating, back through the hulks. Back the way they came.’