At his desk, General Noches Sturm put down his pen and sat back. 'Oh, please, help yourself to my brandy, Gilbear,' he muttered, though the sarcasm was lost on his massive aide.
Gilbear reclined on a chaise beside the flickering amber displays of the message-caster, and gazed at his commander. 'Ghosts? That's what they call them, isn't it?'
Sturm nodded, observing his senior adjutant. Gilbear – Gizhaum Danver De Banzi Haight Gilbear, to give him his full name – was the second son of the Haight Gilbears of Solenhofen, the royal house of Volpone. He was nearly two and half metres tall and arrogantly powerful, with the big, blunt, bland features and languid, hooded eyes of the aristocracy. Gilbear wore the grey and gold uniform of the Royal Volpone 50th, the so-called Bluebloods, who believed they were the noblest regiment in the Imperial Guard.
Sturm sat back in his chair. They are indeed called Ghosts. Gaunt's Ghosts. And they're here because I requested them.'
Gilbear cocked a disdainful eyebrow. 'You requested them?'
'We've had nigh on six weeks, and we can't shake the enemy from Voltis City. They command everything west of the Bokore Valley. Warmaster Macaroth is not pleased. All the while they hold Voltemand, they have a road into the heart of the Sabbat Worlds. So you see I need a lever. I need to introduce a new element to break our deadlock.'
'That rabble?' Gilbear sneered. 'I watched them as they mustered after the drop-ships landed them. Hairy, illiterate primitives, with tattoos and nose rings.'
Sturm lifted a data-slate from his desktop and shook it at Gilbear. 'Have you read the reports General Hadrak filed after the Sloka took Blackshard? He credits Gaunt's mob with the decisive incursion. It seems they excel at stealth raids.'
Sturm got to his feet and adjusted the sit of his resplendent Blueblood staff uniform. The study was bathed in yellow sunlight that streamed in through the conservatory doors at the end, softened by net drapes. He rested his hand on the antique globe of Voltemand in its mahogany stand by the desk and span it idly, gazing out across the grounds of Vortimor House. This place had been the country seat of one of Voltemand's most honoured noble families, a vast, grey manse, fringed with mauve climbing plants, situated in ornamental parkland thirty kilometres south of Voltis City. It had been an ideal location to establish his Supreme Headquarters.
Outside, on the lawn, a squad of Blueblood elite in full battle dress were executing a precision synchronised drill with chainswords. Metal flashed and whirled, perfect and poised. Beyond them, a garden of trellises and arbours led down to a boating lake, calm and smoky in the afternoon light. Navigation lights flashed slowly on the barbed masts of the communications array in the herbarium. Somewhere in the stable block, strutting gaudcocks whooped and called.
You wouldn't think there was a war on, mused Sturm. He wondered where the previous owners of the manse were now. Did they make it off world before the first assault? Are they huddled and starving in the belly hold of a refugee ship, reduced overnight to a level with their former vassals? Or are they bone-ash in the ruins of Kosdorf, or on the burning Metis Road? Or did they die screaming and melting at the orbital port when the legions of Chaos first fell on their world, vaporised with the very ships they struggled to escape in?
Who cares? thought Sturm. The war is all that matters. The glory, the crusade, the Emperor. He would only care for the fallen when the bloody head of Chanthar, demagogue of the Chaos army that held Voltis Citadel, was served up to him on a carving dish. And even then, he wouldn't care much.
Gilbear was on his feet, refilling his glass. 'This Gaunt, he's quite a fellow, isn't he? Wasn't he with the Hyrkan 8th?'
Sturm cleared his throat, 'Led them to victory at Balhaut. One of old Slaydo's chosen favourites. Made him a colonel – commissar, no less. It was decided he had the prestige to hammer a new regiment or two into shape, so they sent him to the planet Tanith to supervise the rounding there. A Chaos space fleet hit the world that very night, and he got out with just a few thousand men.'
Gilbear nodded. That's what I heard. Skin of his teeth. But that's his career in tatters, stuck with an under- strength rabbit-like that. Macaroth won't transfer him, will he?'
Sturm managed a small smile. 'Our beloved overlord does not look kindly on the favourites of his predecessor. Especially as Slaydo granted Gaunt and a handful of others the settlement rights of the first world they conquered. He and his Tanith rabble are an embarrassment to the new regime. But that serves us well. They will fight hard because they have everything to prove, and everything to win.'
'I say,' said Gilbear suddenly, lowering his glass. 'What if they do win? I mean, if they're as useful as you say?'
'They will facilitate our victory,' Sturm said, pouring himself a drink. 'They will not achieve anything else. We will serve Lord Macaroth twofold, by taking this world for him, and ridding him of Gaunt and his damn Ghosts.'
'You were expecting us?' Gaunt asked, riding on the top of Ortiz's Basilisk as the convoy moved on.
Colonel Ortiz nodded, leaning back against the raised top-hatch cover. 'We were ordered up the line last night to dig in at the north end of the Bokore Valley and pound the enemy fortifications on the western side. Soften them up, I suppose. En route, I got coded orders sent, telling us to meet your regiment at Pavis Crossroads and transport you as we advanced.'
Gaunt removed his cap and ran a hand through his short fair hair. 'We were ordered across country to the crossroads, all right,' he responded. 'Told to meet transport there for the next leg. But my scouts picked up the World Eaters' stench, so we doubled back and met you early.'
Ortiz shuddered. 'Good thing for us.'
Gaunt gazed along the line of the convoy as they moved on, taking in the massive bulk of the Basilisks as they ground up the snaking mud-track through the sickly, dim forest. His men were riding on the flanks of the great war machines, a dozen or more per vehicle, joking with the Serpent crews, exchanging drinks and smokes, some cleaning weapons or even snoozing as the lurch of the metal beasts allowed.
'So Sturm's sending you in?' Ortiz asked presently.
'Right down the river's floodplain to the gates of Voltis. He thinks we can take the city where fifty thousand of his Bluebloods have failed.'
'Can you?'
