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It was summer here, apparently.

Intermittent but heavy rain sluiced the Imperium lines from a sky wrinkled with grey cloud cover. Barbed, twisted root-plants with florid, heavy leaves groped their way out of every inch of muddy land and poked from the shimmering waterbeds too. As land went, most of it had gone. Lagoons and long pools of sheened water forked through the groves of undergrowth, home to billowing micro-flies and unseen, chirruping insects.

There was a smell in the air, a smell like rank sweat. The smell didn’t surprise Colonel-Commissar Ibram Gaunt. What did surprise him was that it wasn’t coming from his men. It was exuding from the water, the plants, the mud. Monthax reeked of corruption and rot.

There was no digging-in on Monthax. Trenches were raised abutments of imported flak-board and locally cut timber. Levees and sand-bagged walls had been dug out and raised by the Ghosts. For three days, since the drop-ships landed them, there had been no other sound except the squelch of entrenching tools as work parties filled plastic sacks. No other sound except the chirrup of a billion insects.

Seeping sweat into his freshly-donned tunic from the moment he had it on, Gaunt emerged from his command shed, a three chamber modular habitat staked up on girder poles out of the soupy water. He put his commissar’s cap squarely on his head, knowing full well that it would make sweat run into his eyes. He wore high boots, breeches and a tunic shirt, carrying his weatherproof overcoat over his shoulders. It was too hot to wear it, too wet to go without.

Ibram Gaunt stepped down off the shed steps and his feet settled in satin-skinned water twenty centimetres deep. He paused. The oily ripples ebbed away and he looked down at himself. A reflected Gaunt lay horizontal in the rank water at his feet. Tall, lean, with a sculpted, high-cheeked face that ironically mocked his name.

He looked away, up, through the fleshy leaves of the thickets and the coiled low cover of the plant growth. On the horizon, partly screened by sweating mist, firepower roared back and forth as Imperial gunnery duelled with the heavy artillery of Chaos.

He strode forward through the slushy water, up through the dry land of an islet thick with tendrils and overhanging flowers, and along a duck-board walkway towards the lines.

Behind a long, meandering, S-shaped embankment levee three kilometres long, the Tanith First-and-Only stood ready. They had raised this dyke themselves, armouring it with rapidly decaying planks of flak-board. Artificial mounds had been dug behind the defence to keep ammo piles out of the water. His men stood ready in fire-teams, fifteen hundred strong, dressed in the black capes and dull body-armour uniform that was their signature. Some stood at eyeholes in the dyke, guns fixed. Others manned heavy weapon nests. Others stood and smoked and chatted and speculated. All stood in at least fifteen centimetres of murky slime.

The bivouacs, also raised on girder legs out of the swamp, were set back from the dyke line by about thirty metres. Little sanctuaries of dryness lifted out of the ooze.

Gaunt wandered along the dyke to the first group of men, who were digging up a footstep by the dyke wall from mud spaded out of the waterline.

Whooping birds swung overhead, large-winged and stark-white with folded, gangly pink legs. The insects chirruped.

Sweat made half moons in the underarms of his tunic in less than a dozen paces. Flies stung him. All thoughts of future glory, of the bitter action to come, left Ibram Gaunt’s mind. Instead, the echoes came. The memories.

Gaunt cursed quietly, wiped his brow. It was days like this, in the slow, loaded hours while they waited for combat, that the memories flooded back at their most intense. Of the past, of lost comrades and missed friends, of glories and defeats long gone, of ends.

And of beginnings…

ONE

Ghostmaker

Fire, like a flower. Blossoming. Pale, greenish fire, scuttling like it was alive. Eating the world, the whole world…

Opening his eyes, Ibram Gaunt, Imperial commissar, gazed into his own lean, pale face.

Trees, as dark green as an ocean at night, rushed past behind his eyes.

‘We’re making the final approach now, sir.’

Gaunt looked round, away from his reflection in the small, thick port of the orbital cutter, and saw his adjutant, Sym. Sym was an efficient man of middle years, his slightly puffy flesh marked across the throat and cheek by a livid, ancient burn.

‘I said, we’re making the final approach,’ Sym repeated.

‘I heard you,’ Gaunt nodded gently. ‘Remind me again of the schedule.’

Sym sat back in his padded leather G-chair and perused a data-slate. ‘Official greeting ceremony. Formal introductions to the Elector of Tanith and the government assembly. Review of the Founding regiments. And a formal dinner tonight.’

Gaunt’s gaze drifted back to the vast forests that flew by under the window. He hated the trappings of pomp and protocol, and Sym knew it.

‘Tomorrow, sir, the transfer shifts begin. We’ll have all the regiments aboard and ready to embark before the end of the week,’ the man said, trying to put a more positive spin on things.

Gaunt didn’t look round but said, ‘See if you can get the transfers to begin directly after the review. Why waste the rest of today and tonight?’

Sym nodded, thoughtful. ‘That should be possible.’

A soft chime signalled imminent landfall, and they both felt the sudden pull of deceleration G-forces. The other passengers in the craft’s long cabin: an astropath, silent in his robes, and officials of the Adeptus Ministorum and the Departmento Munitorum, began to buckle their harnesses and settle back for landing. Sym found himself looking out of the port, watching the endless forests that so intrigued Gaunt.

‘Strange place this, this Tanith. So they say.’ He rubbed his chin. ‘They say the forests move. Change. The trees apparently… uhm… shift. According to the pilot, you can get lost in the woods in a matter of minutes.’

Sym’s voice dropped to a whisper. ‘They say it’s a touch of Chaos! Can you believe that? They say Tanith has a touch of Chaos, being this close to the Edge, you see.’

Gaunt did not reply.

The spires and towers of Tanith Magna rose to meet the small barbed shape of the cutter. The city, set here amid the endless oceans of evergreen trees, looked from the air like a complex circle of standing stones, dark grey slabs raised in a clearing in defiance of the forest around. Banners and brazier smoke fluttered from the higher fortress walls, and outside the city perimeter, Gaunt could see a vast plain cut from the forest. Row upon row of tents stood there, thousands of them, each with its own cookfire. The Founding Fields.

Beyond the tent-town, the huge black shadows of the bulk transports, whale-mouths and belly ramps open, squatting in fire-blackened craters of earth, ready to eat up the men and the machines of the new regiments of Tanith. His regiments, he reminded himself, the first Imperial Guard regiments to be founded on this enigmatic, sparsely populated frontier world.

For eight years, Gaunt had served as political officer with the Hyrkan 8th, a brave regiment that he had been with from its founding on the windy hills of Hyrkan to the ferocious victory of Balhaut. But so many had fallen, and another founding would fill familiar uniforms with unfamiliar faces. It was time to move on, and Gaunt had felt grateful to be reassigned. His seniority, his experience… his very notoriety made him an ideal choice to whip the virgin units of Tanith into shape. Part of him, a young, eager but small part deep inside, relished the prospect of building a fresh name for the Guard’s roll of honour. But the rest of him was dull, set rigid, empty. More than anything, he felt he was simply going through the motions.

He had felt that way since Slaydo’s death. The old commander would have wanted him here, wanted him to carry on to glory… after all, wasn’t that why he’d made his gift? Promoting him there, on the firefields of Balhaut, to colonel-commissar… making him one of the few political officers in the Guard capable of commanding a regiment. Such trust, such faith. But Gaunt was so tired. It didn’t seem much like a reward now.

The cutter dipped. Great brass shutters atop one of the city’s largest towers hinged open like an orchid’s petals to receive it.

On the Founding Fields, the men looked up as the approaching cutter purred overhead, banked against the slow cloud and settled like a beetle over the city wall towards the landing tower.

‘Someone important,’ noted Larkin, squinting up at the sky. He spat on the wirecloth in his hand and resumed polishing his webbing buckles.

‘Just more traffic. More pompous off-worlders.’ Rawne lay back and turned his face to the sun.

Corbec, stood by his tent, shielded his eyes against the glare and nodded. ‘I think Larkin’s right. Someone important. There was a big Guard crest on the flank of that flier. Someone come for the Founding Review. Maybe this colonel-commissar himself.’

He dropped his gaze and looked about. On either side of him, the rows of three-man tents stretched away in ordered files, and Guardsmen in brand new uniforms sat around, cleaning kit, stripping guns, eating, dicing, smoking, sleeping.

Six thousand men, all told, mostly infantry but some artillery and armoured crews, three whole regiments and men of Tanith all.

Corbec sat down by his own cook stove and rubbed his hands. His new, black-cloth uniform chafed at the edges of his big frame. It would be the very devil to wear in. He looked across at his tent-mates, Larkin and Rawne. Larkin was a slender, whipcord man with a dagger face. Like all the Tanith, he was pale-skinned and black-haired. Larkin had dangerous eyes like blue fire, a left ear studded with three silver hoops, and a blue spiral-wyrm tattoo on his right cheek. Corbec had known him for a good while: they had served together in the same unit of the Tanith Magna militia before the Founding. He knew Larkin’s strengths – a marksman’s eyes and a brave heart – and his weaknesses – an unstable character, easily rattled.

Rawne he did not know as well. Rawne was a handsome devil, his clean, sleek features decorated by a tattoo starburst over one eye. He had been a junior officer in the militia of Tanith Attica, or one of the other southern cities, but he didn’t talk about it much. Corbec had a bad feeling there was a murderous, ruthless streak under Rawne’s oily charm.

Bragg – huge, hulking, genial Bragg – shuffled over from his tent, a flask of hot sacra in his hands. ‘Need warming up?’ he asked and Corbec nodded a smile to the giant man. Bragg poured four cups, and passed one to Larkin, who barely looked up but muttered thanks, and one to Rawne, who said nothing as he knocked it back.

‘You reckon that was our commissar, then?’ Bragg said at last, asking the question Corbec knew he had been dying to get out since overhearing Corbec’s remark.

Corbec sipped and nodded. ‘Gaunt? Yeah, most like.’

‘I heard stuff, from the Munitorum blokes at the transports. They say he’s hard as nails. Got medals too. A real killer, they say.’

Rawne sniffed. ‘Why can’t we be led by our own, is what I want to know. A good militia commander’s all we need.’

‘I could offer,’ Corbec joked softly.

‘He said a good one, dog!’ Larkin snapped, returning to his obsessive polishing.

Corbec winked across at Bragg and they sipped some more.

‘It seems funny to be going though, dunnit?’ Bragg said after a spell. ‘I mean, for good. Might never be coming back.’

‘Most like,’ Corbec said. ‘That’s the job. To serve the Emperor in his wars, over the stars and far away. Best get used to the idea.’

‘Eyes up!’ Forgal called from a tent nearby. ‘Here comes big Garth with a face on!’

They looked around. Major Garth, their unit commander, was thumping down the tent line issuing quick orders left and right. Garth was a barrel-chested buttress of a man, whose sloping bulk and heavy, lined features seemed to suggest that gravity pulled on him harder than most. He drew up to them.

‘Pack it up, boys. Time to ship,’ he said.

Corbec raised an eyebrow. ‘I thought that was tomorrow?’ he began.

‘So did I, so did Colonel Torth, so did the Departmento Munitorum, but it looks like our new colonel-commissar is an impatient man, so he wants us to start lifting to the troop-ships right after the Review.’

Garth passed on, shouting more instructions.

‘Well,’ Colm Corbec said to no one in particular, ‘I guess this is where it all starts.’

Gaunt’s head ached. He wasn’t sure if it was the interminable introductions to Tanith dignitaries and politicos, the endless small talk, the achingly slow review of the troops out on the marshalling yard in front of the Tanith Assembly, or simply the bloody pipe music that seemed to be playing in every damn chamber, street and courtyard of the city that he walked into.

And the troops hadn’t been that impressive either. Pale, dark-haired, undernourished-looking somehow, haggard in plain black fatigues, each with a piebald camo-cloak swept over the shoulder opposite the one to which their lasgun was slung. Not to mention the damn earstuds and hoops, the facial tattoos, the unkempt hair, the lilting, sing-song accents.

The ‘glorious 1st, 2nd and 3rd of Tanith’, the new regiments: a scrawny, scruffy mob of soft-voiced woodsmen indeed, and nothing to write home about.

The Elector of Tanith, the local planetary lord, himself sporting a cheek tattoo of a snake, had assured Gaunt of the fighting mettle of the Tanith militia.

‘They are resolute and cunning,’ the Elector had said as they stood on the terrace overlooking the massed ranks. ‘Tanith breeds indefatigable men. And our particular strengths are in scouting and stealth. As you might expect on a world whose moving forests blur the topography with bewildering speed, the Tanith have an unerring sense of place and direction. They do not get lost. They perceive what others miss.’

‘In the main, I need fighters, not guides,’ Gaunt had said, trying not to sound too snide.

The Elector had merely smiled. ‘Oh, we fight too. And now for the first time we are honoured to be adding our fighting spirit to that of the Imperium. The regiments of Tanith will serve you well, colonel-commissar.’

Gaunt had nodded politely.

Now Gaunt sat in private in an anteroom of the Assembly. He’d slung his greatcoat and his cap on a hardwood chest nearby and Sym had laid out his dress jacket for the dinner that would commence in thirty minutes. If only he could rid himself of his headache and of the bad taste in his throat that he had landed a weak command.

And the music! The damn pipe music, invading his head even here in the private rooms!

He got to his feet and strode to the sloping windows. Out beyond the cityscape and the Founding Fields, orange fire thumped into the twilight as the heavy transports departed and returned, ferrying the regimental components to the vast troop carriers in high orbit.

That music still!

Gaunt walked to a set of dark green velvet drapes and swept them aside. The music stopped.

The boy with the small set of pipes looked at his raging eyes in astonishment.

‘What are you doing?’ Gaunt asked, as threatening as a drawn knife.

‘Playing, sir,’ the boy said. He was about seventeen, not yet a man, but tall and well-made. His face, a blue fish tattoo over the left eye, was strong and handsome. His be-ringed fingers clutched a Tanith pipe, a spidery clutch of reeds attached to a small bellows bag that was rhythmically squeezed under the arm.

‘Was this your idea?’ Gaunt asked.

The boy shook his head. ‘It’s tradition. For every visitor, the pipes of Tanith will play, wherever they go, to lead them back through the forest safely.’

‘I’m not in the forest, so shut up!’ Gaunt paused. He turned back to the boy. ‘I respect the traditions and customs of the Tanith, but I… I have a headache.’

‘I’ll stop then,’ the boy said. ‘I– I’ll wait outside. The Elector told me to attend on you and pipe you while you were here. I’ll be outside if you need me.’

Gaunt nodded. On his way out of the door, the boy collided with Sym, who was on the way in.

‘I know, I know…’ Gaunt began. ‘If I don’t hurry, I’ll be late for the dinner and– What? Sym? What is it?’

The look on Sym’s face immediately told Gaunt that something was very, very wrong.

Gaunt gathered his senior staff in a small, wood-panelled lobby off the main banqueting hall. Most were dressed for the formal function, stiff in gilt collars and cuffs. Junior Munitorum staff watched the doors, politely barring the entry of any Tanith dignitaries.

‘I don’t understand!’ said a senior Departmento Munitorum staffer. ‘The nearest edge of the warzone is meant to be eighty days from here! How can this be?’

Gaunt was pacing, reviewing a data-slate with fierce intensity. ‘We broke them at Balhaut, but they splintered. Deep intelligence and the scout squadrons suggested they were running scared, but it was always possible that some of their larger components would scatter inwards, looping towards us, rather than running for the back end of the Sabbat Worlds and away.’

Gaunt wheeled on them and cursed out loud. ‘In the name of Solan! On his damn deathbed, Slaydo was quite precise about this! Picket fleets were meant to guard all the warpgates towards territories like Tanith, particularly when we’re still at founding and vulnerable like this! What does Macaroth think he’s playing at?’

Sym looked up from a flatplan-chart he had unfurled on a desk. ‘The lord high militant commander has deployed most of the Crusade Forces in the liberation push. It is clear he is intent on pressing the advantage won by his predecessor.’

‘Balhaut was a significant win…’ began one of the Ecclesiarchy.

‘It will only stay a victory if we police the won territories correctly. Macaroth has broken the new front by racing to pursue the foe. And that’s let the foe through, in behind our main army. It’s textbook stupidity! The enemy may even have lured us on!’

‘It leaves us wide open,’ another Ecclesiarch agreed flatly.

Gaunt nodded. ‘An hour ago, our ships in orbit detected a massive enemy armada coming in-system. It is no exaggeration to say that Tanith has just hours of life left to it.’

‘We could fight–’ someone ventured bravely.

‘We have just three regiments. Untried, unproven. We have no defensive position and no prepared emplacements. Half of our force is already stowed in the troop carriers upstairs and the other half is penned in transit. We couldn’t turn them around and get them unlimbered and dug in in under two full days. Either way, they are cannon fodder.’

‘What do we do?’ Sym asked. Some of the others nodded as if urging the same question.

‘Our astropaths must send word immediately to the main crusade command, to Macaroth, and tell him of the insurgency. If nothing else, they need to turn and guard their flank and back. The rest of you: the carrier ships will leave orbit in one hour or at the point of attack, whichever comes first. Get as much of the remaining disembarked men and equipment aboard as you can before then. Whatever’s left gets left behind.’

‘We’re abandoning Tanith?’ a Munitorum aide said, disbelief in his thin voice.

‘Tanith is already dead. We can die with it, or we can salvage as many fighting men as we can and re-deploy them somewhere they will actually do some good. In the Emperor’s name.’

They all looked at him, incredulous, the enormity of his decision sinking in.

‘DO IT!’ he bawled.

The night sky above Tanith Magna caught fire and fell on the world. The orbital bombardment blew white-hot holes out of the ancient forests, melted the high walls, splintered the towers, and shattered the paved yards.

Dark shapes moved through the smoke-choked corridors of the Assembly, dark shapes that gibbered and hissed, clutching chattering, whining implements of death in their stinking paws.

With a brutal cry, Gaunt kicked his way through a burning set of doors and fired his bolt pistol.

He was a tall, powerful shape in the swirling smoke, a striding figure with a long coat sweeping like a cloak from his broad shoulders. His bright eyes tightened in his lean, grim face and he wheeled and fired again into the gloom. In the smoke-shadows nearby, red-eyed shapes shrieked and burst, spraying fluid across the stonework.

Las fire cut the air near him. He turned and fired, and then took the staircase at a run, vaulting over the bodies of the fallen. There was a struggling group up ahead, on the main landing. Two bloodied fighting men of the Tanith militia, wrestling with Sym at the doors to the launch silos.

‘Let us through, you bastard!’ Gaunt could hear one of them crying, ‘You’d leave us here to die! Let us through!’

Gaunt saw the autopistol in the hand of the other too late. It fired the moment before he ploughed into them.

Raging, he broke one’s jaw with the butt of his bolter, knocking the man backwards to the head of the stairs. He picked up the other and threw him over the stair rail into the smoke below.

Sym lay in a pool of blood.

‘I– I’ve signalled… the carrier fleet, as you ordered… for the final withdrawal… Leave me and get aboard the cutter or–’ Sym began.

‘Shut up!’ Gaunt snapped, trying to lift him, his hand slick with the man’s blood. ‘We’re both going!’

‘T-there’s no time, not for me… just for you! Go, sir!’ Sym rasped, his voice high with pain. From the bay beyond, Gaunt heard the scream of the cutter’s thrusters rising to take-off readiness.

‘Damn it, Sym!’ Gaunt said. The aide seemed to reach for him, clawing at his tunic. For a second, Gaunt though Sym was trying to pull himself up so that Gaunt could carry him.

Then Sym’s torso exploded in a red mist and Gaunt was thrown back off his feet.

At the head of the stairs, the grotesque shock troops of Chaos bayed and advanced. Sym had seen them over Gaunt’s shoulder, had pulled himself up and round to shield Gaunt with his own body.

Gaunt got to his feet. His first shot burst the horned skull of the nearest beast. His second and third tore apart the body of another. His fourth, fifth and sixth gutted two more and sent them spinning back into their comrades behind on the steps.

His seventh was a dull clack of dry metal.

Hurling the spent bolter aside, Gaunt backed away towards the silo bay doors. He could smell the rancid scents of Chaos over the smoke now, and hear the buzz of the maggot-flies. In a second they would be on him.

Autocannon fire blasted into the heathen nightmares, sustained heavy fire from an angle nearby. Gaunt turned, and saw the boy, the piper with the fish tattoo. He was laying down an arc of covering fire from the portico of the silo bay with a sentry’s autocannon that he had rested across the stonework. ‘Get in! The last cutter’s waiting for you!’ cried the boy.

Gaunt threw himself through the bay doors into the fierce whirlwind of the cutter’s engine backwash. The side hatch was just closing and he scrambled through, losing the tails of his coat to the biting hinge.

Enemy weapons fire resounded off the hull.

Gaunt was face down on the cabin floor, drenched in blood, looking up at the terrified faces of the Munitorum officials who made up this last evacuation flight to the fleet.

‘Open the door again!’ he yelled. ‘Open it again!’

None of them moved to do so. Gaunt hauled himself up and heaved on the hatch lever. The door thumped open and the boy scrambled inside.

Gaunt dragged him clear of the hatch and yanked it shut. ‘Now!’ he bellowed down the cabin to the pilot’s bay. ‘Go now if you’re going!’

The cutter rose from the tower bay hard and fast, lifter jets screaming as they were jammed into overdrive. Aerial laser fire exploded the brass orchid-shutters around them and clipped a landing stanchion. Hovering, the cutter wobbled. Below it, Tanith Magna was a blazing inferno.

Forgetting fuel tolerances, flight discipline, even his own mother’s name, the pilot hammered the main thrusters to maximum and the cutter fired itself up through the black smoke like a bullet.

Left to die, the forests burned.

Gaunt fell against a bulkhead and clawed his way to a porthole. Just like in his dreams – fire, like a flower. Blossoming. Pale, greenish fire, scuttling like it was alive. Eating the world, the whole world.

Ibram Gaunt gazed into his reflection, his own lean, pale, bloody face. Trees, blazing like the heart of a star, rushed past behind his eyes.

High over the cold, mauve, marbled world of Nameth, Gaunt’s ships hung like creatures of the deep marine places. Three great troop carriers, their ash-grey, crenellated hulls vaulted like monstrous cathedrals, and the long, muscular escort frigate Navarre, spined and blistered with lance weapons and turrets, hooked and angular like a woodwasp, two kilometres long.

In his stateroom on the Navarre, Gaunt reviewed the latest survey intelligence. Tanith was lost, part of a conquered wedge of six planet systems that fell to the Chaos armada pincer which Macaroth had allowed to slip behind his over-eager warfront. Now Crusade forces were doubling back and re-engaging the surprise enemy. Sporadic reports had come in of a thirty-six hour deep-space engagement of capital ships near the Circudus. The Imperial Crusaders now faced a war on two fronts.

Gaunt’s ruthless retreat had salvaged three and a half thousand fighting men, just over half of the Tanith regiments, and most of their equipment. The cruellest, most cynical view could call it a victory of sorts.

Gaunt slid a data-slate out from under a pile of other documents on his desk and eyed it. It was the transcript of the communiqué from Macaroth himself, applauding Gaunt’s survival instinct and his great feat in salvaging for the crusade a significant force of men. Macaroth had not seen fit to mention the loss of a planet and its population. He spoke of ‘Colonel-Commissar Gaunt’s correct choice, and frank evaluation of an impossible situation’, and ordered him to a holding position at Nameth to await deployment.

It made Gaunt queasy. He tossed the slate aside.

The shutter opened and Kreff entered. Kreff was the frigate’s executive officer, a hard-faced, shaven-headed man in the emerald, tailored uniform of the Segmentum Pacificus Fleet. He saluted, a pointless over-formality given that he had been covering as Gaunt’s adjutant in Sym’s place, and had been in and out of the room ten times an hour since Gaunt came aboard.

‘Anything?’ Gaunt asked.

‘The astropaths tell us that something may be coming soon. Perhaps our orders. There is a current, a feeling. And also, uhm…’ Kreff was obviously uncomfortable. He didn’t know Gaunt and vice versa. It had taken Sym four years to get used to the commissar.

Sym…

‘What is it?’ Gaunt asked.

‘I wondered if you would care to discuss our more immediate concern? The morale of the men.’

Gaunt got up. ‘Okay, Kreff. Speak your mind.’

Kreff hesitated. ‘I didn’t mean with me. There is a deputation from the troop-ships–’

Gaunt turned hard at this. ‘A what?’

‘A deputation of Tanith. They want to speak to you. They came aboard thirty minutes ago.’

Gaunt took his bolt pistol out of the holster slung over his chair back and checked the magazine. ‘Is this your discreet way of announcing a mutiny, Kreff?’

Kreff shook his head and laughed humourlessly. He seemed relieved when Gaunt reholstered his weapon.

‘How many?’

‘Fifteen. Mostly enlisted men. Few of the officers came out alive.’

‘Send three of them in. Just three. They can choose who.’

Gaunt sat down behind his desk again. He thought about putting his cap on, his jacket. He looked across the cabin and saw his own reflection in the vast bay port. Two metres twenty of solid bone and sinew, the narrow, dangerous face that so well matched his name, the cropped blond hair. He wore his high-waisted dress breeches with their leather braces, a sleeveless undershirt and jack boots. His jacket and cap gave him command and authority. Bare-armed, he gave himself physical power.

The shutter clanked and three men entered. Gaunt viewed them without comment. One was tall, taller and older than Gaunt and built heavily, if a little paunchy. His arms were like hams and were decorated with blue spirals. His beard was shaggy, and his eyes might once have twinkled. The second was slim and dark, with sinister good looks that were almost reptilian. He had a blue star tattooed across his right eye. The third was the boy, the piper.

‘Let’s know you,’ Gaunt said simply.

‘I’m Corbec,’ said the big man. ‘This is Rawne.’

The snake nodded.

‘And you know the boy,’ Corbec said.

‘Not his name.’

‘Milo,’ the boy said clearly. ‘Brin Milo.’

‘I imagine you’re here to tell me that the men of Tanith want me dead,’ said Gaunt simply.

‘Perfectly true,’ Rawne said. Gaunt was impressed. None of them even bothered to acknowledge his rank and seniority. Not a ‘sir’, not a ‘commissar’.

‘Do you know why I did what I did?’ Gaunt asked. ‘Do you know why I ordered the regiments off Tanith and left it to die? Do you know why I refused all your pleas to let you turn and fight?’

‘It was our right–’ Rawne began.

‘Our world died, Colonel-Commissar Gaunt,’ Corbec said, the title bringing Gaunt’s head up sharp. ‘We saw it flame out from the windows of our transports. You should have let us stand and fight. We would have died for Tanith.’

‘You still can, just somewhere else.’ Gaunt got to his feet. ‘You’re not men of Tanith any more. You weren’t when you were camped out on the Founding Fields. You’re Imperial Guard, servants of the Emperor first and nothing else second.’

He turned to face the window port, his back to them. ‘I mourn the loss of any world, any life. I did not want to see Tanith die, nor did I want to abandon it. But my duty is to the Emperor, and the Sabbat Worlds Crusade must be fought and won for the good of the entire Imperium. The only thing you could have done if I had left you on Tanith was die. If that’s what you want, I can provide you with many opportunities. What I need is soldiers, not corpses.’

Gaunt gazed out into space. ‘Use your loss, don’t be crippled by it. Put the pain into your fighting spirit. Think hard! Most men who join the Guard never see their homes again. You are no different.’

‘But most have a home to return to!’ Corbec spat.

‘Most can look forward to living through a campaign and mustering to settle on some world their leader has conquered and won. Slaydo made me a gift after Balhaut. He gave me the military rank of colonel and granted me settlement rights to the first planet I win. Help me by doing your job, and I’ll help you by sharing that with you.’

‘Is that a bribe?’ Rawne asked.

Gaunt shook his head. ‘Just a promise. We need each other. I need an able, motivated army, you need something to take the pain away, something to fight for, something to look forward to.’

Gaunt saw something in the reflection on the glass. He didn’t turn his head. ‘Is that a laspistol, Rawne? Would you have come here and murdered me?’

Rawne grinned. ‘What makes you put that in the past tense, commissar?’

Gaunt turned. ‘What do I have here then? A regiment or a mutiny?’

Corbec met his gaze. ‘The men will need convincing. You’ve made ghosts of them, hollow echoes. We’ll take word back to the troop-ships of why you did what you did and what the future might hold. Then it’s up to them.’

‘They need to rally around their officers.’

Rawne laughed. ‘There are none! Our command staff were all on the Founding Fields trying to embark the men when the bombardment started. None of them made it off Tanith alive.’

Gaunt nodded. ‘But the men elected you to lead the deputation? You’re leaders.’

‘Or simply bold and dumb enough to be the ones to front you,’ Corbec said.

‘It’s the same thing,’ Gaunt said. ‘Colonel Corbec. Major Rawne. You can appoint your own juniors and unit chiefs and report back to me in six hours with an assessment of morale. I should have our deployment by then.’

They glanced at each other, taken aback.

‘Dismissed,’ prompted Gaunt.

The trio turned away confused.

‘Milo? Wait, please,’ Gaunt said. The boy stopped as the shutter closed after the two men.

‘I owe you,’ Gaunt told him baldly.

‘And you paid me back. I’m not militia or Guard. I only got off Tanith alive because you brought me.’

‘Because of your service to me.’

Milo paused. ‘The Elector himself ordered me to stay with you, to see to your needs. I was just doing my duty.’

‘Those two brought you along because they thought the sight of you might mollify me, didn’t they?’

‘They’re not stupid,’ noted Milo.

Gaunt sat back at his desk. ‘Neither are you. I have need of an adjutant, a personal aide. It’s dogsbody, gopher work mostly, and the harder stuff you can learn. It would help me to have a Tanith in the post if my working relationship with them is going to continue.’

Before Milo could answer, the shutter slammed open again and Kreff entered, a slate in his hand. He saluted again. ‘We’ve got our orders, sir,’ he said.

Distant, rumbling explosions seemed a constant feature of the deadzone on Blackshard. The persistent crump of heavy gunnery drummed the low, leaden sky over the ridgeline. An earthwork had been built up along the ridge’s spine and, under hardened bunkers, a detachment of Imperial Guard – six units of the 10th Royal Sloka – were readying to mobilise.

Colonel Thoren walked the line. The men looked like world-killers in their ornate battledress: crested, enamelled scarlet and silver warsuits built by the artisans of Sloka to inspire terror in the enemy.

But perhaps not this enemy. General Hadrak’s orders had been precise, but Thoren’s heart was heavy. He had no relish for the approaching push. He had no doubt at all it would cost him dearly.

To push blind, unsupported, into treacherous unknown territory in the hope of finding a wormhole into the enemy positions that might not even be there. The prospect made him feel sick.

Thoren’s subaltern drew his attention suddenly to the double file of sixty men moving down the covered transit trench towards them. Scrawny ruffians, dressed in black, camo-cloaks draped over them, plastered to their bodies by the rain.

‘Who in the name of Balor’s blood…?’ Thorne began.

Halting his column, the leader, a huge blackguard with a mess of tangled beard and a tattoo – a tattoo! – marched up to Thoren and saluted.

‘Colonel Corbec, First Tanith. First-and-Only. General Hadrak has ordered us forward to assist you.’

‘Tanith? Where the hell is that?’ asked Thoren.

‘It isn’t,’ replied the big man genially. ‘The general said you were set to advance on the enemy positions over the deadzone. Suggested you might need a covert scouting force seeing as how your boys’ scarlet armour stands out like a baboon’s arse.’

Thoren felt his face flush. ‘Now listen to me, you piece–’

A shadow fell across them. ‘Colonel Thoren, I presume?’

Gaunt dropped down into the dugout from the trench boarding. ‘My regiment arrived here on Blackshard yesterday night, with orders to reinforce General Hadrak’s efforts to seize the Chaos stronghold. That presupposes co-operative efforts between our units.’

Thoren nodded. This was Gaunt, the upstart colonel-commissar, it had to be. He’d heard stories.

‘Appraise me, please,’ said Gaunt.

Thoren waved up an aide who flipped up a map-projector, and displayed a fuzzy image of the deadzone. ‘The foe are dug in deep in the old citadel ruins. The citadel had a sizeable standing defence force, so they’re well equipped. Chaos cultists, mostly, about seventeen thousand able fighting men. We also…’ he paused.

Gaunt raised a questioning eyebrow.

‘We believe there may be other abominations in there. Chaos spawn.’ Thoren breathed heavily. ‘Most of the main fighting is contained in this area here, while artillery duels blight the other fronts.’

Gaunt nodded. ‘Most of my strength is deployed along the front line. But General Hadrak also directed us to this second front.’

Thoren indicated the map again. ‘The foe are up to more than simply holding us out. They know sooner or later we’ll break through, so they must be up to something – trying to complete something, perhaps. Recon showed that this flank of the city might be vulnerable to a smaller force. There are channels and ducts leading in under the old walls, a rat-maze, really.’

‘My boys specialise in rat-mazes,’ Gaunt said.

‘You want to go in first?’ Thoren asked.

‘It’s mud and tunnels. The Tanith are light infantry, you’re armoured and heavy. Let us lead through and then follow us in support when we’ve secured a beachhead. Bring up some support weapons.’

Thoren nodded. ‘Very well, colonel-commissar.’

Gaunt and Corbec withdrew to their men.

‘This will be the first blooding for this regiment, for the Tanith First-and-Only,’ began Gaunt.

‘For Gaunt’s Ghosts,’ someone murmured. Mad Larkin, Corbec was sure.

Gaunt smiled. ‘Gaunt’s Ghosts. Don’t disappoint me.’

They needed no other instructions. At Corbec’s gesture, they hurried forward in pairs, slipping their camo-cloaks down as shrouds around them, lasguns held loose and ready. The hybrid weave of the hooded cloaks blurred to match the dark grey mud of the ridgeway, and each man stooped to smear his cheeks and brow with wet mud before slipping over the earthwork.

Thoren watched the last one disappear and then span the trench macro-periscope around. He looked out, but of the sixty plus men who had just passed his position, there was no sign.

‘Where in the name of Solan did they go?’ he breathed.

Gaunt was amazed. He’d seen them practise and train in the belly holds of the big carrier ships, but now here, in the wild of a real deadzone, their skills startled him. They were all but invisible in the stinking mire, just tiny blurs of movement edging between stacks of debris and over mounds of wreckage towards the slumped but massive curtain walls of the citadel.

He pulled his own Tanith camo-cloak around him. It had been part of his deal with Corbec: he insisted on leading them in to assure loyalty, they insisted he didn’t give their position away.

The micro-bead in his ear tickled. It was Corbec. ‘First units at the tunnels now. Move up close in pairs.’

Gaunt touched his throat mike. ‘Hostiles?’ he asked.

‘A little light knife work,’ crackled the reply.

A few moment later he was entering the dripping, dark mouth of the rubble tunnel. Five Chaos-bred warriors in the orange robes of their cult lay dead. Before him, the Tanith were forming up. Corbec was wiping blood from the blade of his long, silver knife.

‘Let’s go,’ said Gaunt.

The Elector of Tanith, may his soul rest, had not lied about anything, Gaunt decided. The Ghosts had proved their cunning stealth crossing the open waste of the deadzone, and he had no clue as to how they threaded their way through the crazy lightless warren of the tunnels so surely. ‘They do not get lost,’ the Elector had boasted, and it was true. Gaunt suspected that the foe had assumed nothing bigger than a cockroach would ever find its way through those half-collapsed, death-trap tunnels.

But Corbec’s men had, effortlessly, in scant minutes. Rising from the tunnels’ ends inside the curtain wall of the city, and taking long, silver Tanith knives to pallid, blotchy throats, they had burned their way in through the enemy’s hindquarters. Now the Tanith First-and-Only were proving they could fight. Just like the Elector had said.

From behind a shattered pillar, Gaunt blasted with his bolter, blowing two cultists apart and destroying a doorway. Around him, the advancing Tanith lacerated the air with precise shots from five dozen lasguns.

Near to Gaunt, a sharp-faced, older Tanith Gaunt had heard the men call Larkin was sniping cultists off the top of the nearest balconies. His eye was tremendous. A little further on, a huge man, a gentle giant called Bragg, was shouldering the heavy bolter and taking down walls and columns. The big weapon had originally been pintle-mounted on a sled, but Bragg had torn it off its mount and slung it up like a rifle. Gaunt had never seen a heavy bolter carried by an unarmoured man before. The Tanith called Bragg ‘Try Again’ Bragg. He was a terrible shot, admittedly, but with firepower like that he could afford to be sloppy.

Just ahead, a six man fire-team led by Corbec gained the entrance to a temple building complex, grenaded the doorway and went in with lasguns, paired off to give bounding cover.

‘Heavy fire in my section!’ Corbec radioed to Gaunt. ‘Some kind of church or temple. Could be a primary target.’

Gaunt acknowledged. He would move more teams up.

Creeping down the aisle of the massive temple, Corbec edged through rubble and heavy crossfire. He nodded a pair past him – Rawne and Suth – and then the next. His own cover partner, Forgal, bellied up close in the mica dust of the temple floor and unslung his lasgun.

‘Down there,’ he hissed, his eyes as sharp as ever. ‘There’s a lower storey down behind the altar. They’ve got a lot of defence around that doorway. The big arch under the stained-glass.’

It was true.

‘You smell that?’ Rawne asked over the radio.

Corbec did. Decay, stale sweat, dead blood. Rank and harsh, oozing from the crypt.

Forgal began to crawl forward. A lucky shot vaporised the top of his head.

‘Sacred Feth!’ Corbec howled and opened up in rage, bringing the entire stained glass window down in a sheet onto the altar.

Rawne and Suth took advantage of the confusion to grab a few more metres. Rawne unwrapped a tube-charge and hurled it over-arm into the archway.

The blast was deafening.

Gaunt heard Corbec’s call in his ear-piece. ‘Get in here!’ He scrambled into the smoky interior of the temple. At the door, he paused. ‘Larkin! Bragg! Orcha! Varl! With me! You three, cordon the door! Cluggan, take two teams down the flank of the building and scout!’

Gaunt entered the chapel, mashing broken glass under foot. He could smell the stink.

Corbec and Rawne were waiting for him, their other men stood around, watching with lasguns ready.

‘Something down here,’ Rawne said and led Gaunt on down the littered steps. Gaunt slammed fresh rounds home into his boltgun, then holstered it and picked up Forgal’s fallen lasgun.

Beneath the chapel was an undercroft. Dead cultists were strewn like rag dolls around the smouldering floor. In the centre of the chamber stood a rusty, metallic box, two metres square, its lid etched with twisted sigils of Chaos.

Gaunt reached out. The metal was warm. It pulsed.

He snatched his hand back.

‘What is it?’ asked Corbec.

‘I don’t think any of us want to know,’ Gaunt said. ‘Some relic of the enemy, some unholy object, an icon… Whatever, it’s something valuable to these monsters, something they’re defending to the last.’

‘That Sloka colonel was sure there was a reason they were holding on,’ Corbec said. ‘Maybe they’re hoping support will arrive in time to save this.’

‘Let’s spoil those chances. I want a systematic withdrawal from this point, back out under the wall. Each man is to leave his tube-charges here. Rawne, collect them and rig them – you seem to be good with explosives.’

Within minutes, the Ghosts had withdrawn. Rawne crouched and connected the firing pins of the small but potent anti-personnel charges. Gaunt watched him and the door.

‘Pick it up, Rawne. We haven’t much time. The enemy aren’t going to leave this area open for long.’

‘Nearly done,’ Rawne said. ‘Check the door again, sir. I thought I heard something.’

The ‘sir’ should have warned him. As Gaunt turned, Rawne rose and clubbed him around the back of the head with his fist. Gaunt dropped, stunned, and Rawne rolled him over next to the charges.

‘A fitting place for scum like you to die, ghost maker!’ he murmured. ‘Down here amongst the vermin and the filth. It’s so tragic that the brave commissar didn’t make it out, but the cultists were all over us.’ Rawne drew his laspistol and lowered it towards Gaunt’s head.

Gaunt kicked out and brought Rawne down. He rolled and slammed into him, punching him once, twice. Blood marked Rawne’s mouth.

He tried to hit again but Gaunt was so much bigger. He struck Rawne so hard he was afraid he’d broken his neck. The Tanith lolled in the dust.

Gaunt got up, and eyed the timer setting. It was just dropping under two minutes. Time to leave.

Gaunt turned. But in the doorway of the room, the warriors of Chaos moved towards him.

The blast sent a column of dirt and fire up into the sky that could be seen from the Guard trenches across the deadzone. Six minutes later, the defenders’ big guns stopped and fell silent. Then all firing ceased completely from the enemy lines.

Guard units moved in, cautiously at first. They found the cultists dead at their positions. Each one had, in unison, taken his own life, as if in response to some great loss. In the conclusion of his report on the victory at Blackshard, General Hadrak surmised that the destruction of the Chaos relic, which had given meaning to the cult defence, robbed them of the will or need to continue. Hadrak also noted the significant role in the victory played by the newly founded Tanith 1st, which had supplemented his own forces. Though as C-in-C of the Blackshard action, he took overall credit for the victory, he was magnanimous in acknowledging the work of ‘Gaunt’s Ghosts’, and particularly recommended their stealth and scouting abilities.

Colonel-Commissar Gaunt, wounded in the stomach and shoulder, emerged alive from the deadzone twenty minutes after the blast and was treated by medical teams before returning to his frigate. He might have made his way out of the enemy lines faster, had he not carried the unconscious body of one of his officers, a Major Rawne, back to safety.

Stiff with drug-dulled pain, Gaunt walked down the companion way of the troop carrier and into the holding bay. Nearly nine hundred of the Tanith were billeted here. They looked up from their weapons drills and Gaunt felt the silence on him.

‘First blood to you,’ he said to them. ‘First blood to Tanith. The first wound of vengeance. Savour it.’

By his side, Corbec began to clap. The men picked it up, more and more, until the hold shook with applause.

Gaunt eyed the crowd. Maybe there was a future here, after all. A regiment worth the leading, a prize worth chasing all the way to glory.

His eyes found Major Rawne in the crowd. Their eyes fixed. Rawne was not applauding.

That made Gaunt laugh. He turned to Milo and gestured to the Tanith pipes cradled in his aide’s hands.

‘Now you can play something,’ he told him.

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A BLACK LIBRARY PUBLICATION

First published in Great Britain in 2000.
This eBook edition published in 2015 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd, Willow Road, Nottingham NG7 2WS UK

Cover illustration by Nicotine.

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