'We'll see,' Gaunt said, without the flicker of a smile. 'The Ghosts are new, unproven but for a skirmish on Blackshard. But they have certain… strengths.' He fell silent, and seemed to be admiring the gold and turquoise lines of the feather serpent design painted on the barrel of the Basilisk's main weapon. Its open beak was the muzzle. All the Ketzok machines were rich with similar decorations.
Ortiz whistled low to himself. 'Down the Bokore Valley into the mouth of hell. I don't envy you.'
Now Gaunt smiled. 'Just you keep pounding the western hills and keep them busy. In fact, blow them all away to kingdom come before we get there.'
'Deal,' laughed Ortiz.
'And don't drop your damn aim!' Gaunt added with a threatening chuckle. 'Remember you have friends in the valley!'
Two vehicles back, Corbec nodded his thanks as he took the dark thin cigar his Basilisk commander offered.
'Doranz,' the Serpent said, introducing himself.
'Charmed,' Corbec said. The cigar tasted of licorice, but he smoked it anyway.
Lower down the hull of the tank, by Corbec's sprawled feet, the boy Milo was cleaning out the chanters of his Tanith pipe. It wheezed and squealed hoarsely. Doranz blanched. 'I'll tell you this: when I heard that boy's piping today, that hell-note, it almost scared me more than the damn blood cries of the enemy.'
Corbec chuckled. The pipe has its uses. It rallies us, it spooks the foe. Back home, the forests move and change. The pipes were a way to follow and not get lost.'
'Where is home?' Doranz asked.
'Nowhere now,' Corbec said and returned to his smoke.
On the back armour of another Basilisk, hulking Bragg, the biggest of the Ghosts, and small, wiry Larkin, were dicing with two of the tank's gun crew. Larkin had already won a gold signet ring set with a turquoise skull. Bragg had lost all his smokes, and two bottles of sacra. Every now and then, the lurch of the tank beneath them would flip the dice, or slide them under an exhaust baffle, prompting groans and accusations of fixing and cheating.
Up by the top hatch with the vehicle's commander, Major Rawne watched the game without amusement. The Basilisk commander felt uneasy about his passenger. Rawne was slender, dark and somehow dangerous. A starburst tattoo covered one eye. He was not… likeable or open like the other Ghosts seemed to be.
'So, major… what's your commissar like?' the commander began, by way of easing the silence.
'Gaunt?' Rawne asked, turning slowly to face the Serpent. 'He's a despicable bastard who left my world to die and one day I will slay him with my own hands.'
'Oh,' said the commander and found something rather more important to do down below.
Ortiz passed Gaunt his flask. The afternoon was going and they were losing the light. Ortiz consulted a map-slate, angling it to show Gaunt. 'Navigation puts us about two kilometres or so short of Pavis Crossroads. We've made good time. We'll be on it before dark. I'm glad, I didn't want to have to turn on the floods and running lights to continue.'
'What do we know about Pavis?' Gaunt asked.
'Last reports were it was held by a battalion of Bluebloods. That was at oh-five-hundred this morning.'
'Wouldn't hurt to check,' Gaunt mused. 'There are worse things than rolling into an ambush position at twilight, but not many. Cluggan!'
He called down the hull to a big, grey-haired Ghost sat with others playing cards.
'Sir!' Cluggan said, scrambling back up the rocking Basilisk.
'Sergeant, take six men, jump down and scout ahead of the column. We're two kilometres short of this crossroads,' Gaunt showed Cluggan the map. 'Should be clear, but after our tangle with the damn World Eaters we'd best be sure.'
Cluggan saluted and slid back to his men. In a few moments they had gathered up their kits and weapons and swung down off the skirt armour onto the track. A moment more and they had vanished like smoke into the woods.
'That is impressive,' Ortiz said.
At Pavis Crossroads, the serpents spoke. Stretching their great painted beaks towards the night sky, they began their vast barrage.
Brin Milo cowered in the shadow of a medical Chimera, pressing his hands to his ears. He'd seen two battles up close: the fall of Tanith Magna and the storming of the citadel on Blackshard, but this was the first time he had ever encountered the sheer numbing wrath of armoured artillery.
The Ketzok Basilisks were dug in along the ridge in a straggled line about a mile long. They were hull-down into the grey earth, main weapons swung high, hurling death at the western hills across the valley nine kilometres away. They were firing at will, a sustained barrage that could, Corbec had assured him, go on all night. Every second at least one gun was sounding, lighting the darkness with its fierce muzzle flash, shaking the ground with its firing and recoil.
Pavis Crossroads was a stone obelisk marking the junction of the Metis Road that ran up the valley from Voltis City, and the Mirewood track that carried on towards the east. The Serpents' armour had rolled in at nightfall, ousting the encamped Bluebloods who held the junction, and deploying around the ridge-line, looking west. As the first stars began to shine, Ortiz's men began their onslaught.
Milo kept his eyes sharp for the commissar, and when he saw Gaunt striding towards a tented dugout beside the orbital communication stack, accompanied by his senior officers, Milo ran to join them.
'My scope!' requested Gaunt over the barrage. Milo pulled the commissar's brass-capped nightscope from his pack and Gaunt stepped up onto the parapet, scanning out of the dugout.
Corbec leaned up close by him, a thin black tube protruding from his beard.
Gaunt glanced round. 'What is that thing?' he asked.
Corbec took it out and displayed it proudly. 'Cigar. Liquorice, no less. Won a box off my gun-crate's CO. and I
