'How many times?'
'As many as is necessary.' Larkin closed his eyes again, opened them, shuffled, closed his eyes.
'Eventually, when you open your eyes, the gun will be pointing precisely, naturally, exactly where your body falls and directs it.'
'You're breathing slowly,' said the Angel, a whisper in his ear. 'Why?'
Larkin smiled, but ever so slightly as to not disrupt the perfect pattern of his firing position. 'Once you're in position, breathe slow, a regular rhythm. Keep it going, nice and relaxed. When you get the shot, take a couple of deep breaths, pause, breathe out just a tad, and then hold. Then fire. Then breathe out fully.'
'How long will this take?' the Angel asked behind him. 'As long as it takes to get a target.'
Nokad the Smiling sang to his brethren as they advanced down the upper canal of the aqueduct. An echelon of things that had been men, now trailing long tattered robes sewn from the hides of those they had defeated. They brandished weapons, slapping them in dull time to the chant. They passed over the butchered and exploded remains of the foe who had assaulted their one weak link that afternoon.
Nokad the Smiling was well over two metres tall, his frame heavy set and powerful. Piercings studded his naked torso and arms: loops, rings, chains and spikes armouring his sheened skin and glittering as brightly as his perfect teeth.
'Make trophies of them!' Nokad grinned as he passed the corpses. Imperial Guard, weak, puny things, draped in dull fatigues and anonymous cloaks. There was fighting ahead, the barking returns of lasguns at close range.
Corbec was in the canal gully with three remaining men and Rawne yelling through the intercom.
'It's no good! They've got it sealed tight! We have to withdraw!'
'Feth you, Rawne! This is the only way! We move in! Bring your men forward!'
'It's suicide, Corbec, you fool! We'll all be dead in a moment!'
'Are you deserting me, major? Is that what you're doing? There's a price for that!'
'Feth you, you insane moron! You'd have to be utterly mad to go in there!'
Nokad advanced. His men loved him. They sang together, jubilant as they forced the invaders back.
On the canal lip, Nokad howled his inspirational verses to his men, arms uplifted, chainsword whirring.
There was a crack, a stab of light – and Nokad's head vanished in a film of blood.
Larkin fell back in the doorway, frothing and convulsing, spasms snapping his body as the brain fever took hold once more.
'Larks? Larks?' Corbec's voice was soft.
Larkin lay in a foetal ball, messed by his own fluids, in the doorway of the shattered chapel. As he came around he felt his mind was clear, violently clear, like it had been purged with light.
'Colm…'
'You son of a bitch, Larks!' Corbec pulled him upright, unsteady on his legs. Larkin's lasgun lay on the floor, its barrel broken, burnt and spent.
'You got him! You got him, you old bastard! You smoked him good!'
'I did?'
'Listen to that!' Corbec crowed, pulling Larkin around towards the doorway. There was a cheering and chanting noise rising from below the aqueduct. 'They've surrendered! We've taken Bucephalon! Nokad is fried!'
'Shit…' Larkin sank to his knees.
'And I thought you'd run on us! Honestly! I thought you'd fething deserted!'
'Me?' Larkin said, looking up.
'I shouldn't have doubted you, should I?' Corbec asked, bear-hugging the wiry little sniper.
'Where's the angel gone?' Larkin said quietly.
'Angel? There's no angel here except her!' Corbec pointed to the damaged statue of the angel above the chapel font, a beautiful winged woman knelt in the attitude of prayer. Her perfect hands were clasped. Her head was bowed demurely. The inscription on the plinth rejoiced that she was a symbol of the God-Emperor, a personification of the Golden Throne who had come to the elders of Bucephalon in the first days of the colony and watched over them as they conquered the land.
An old myth. A hunk of stone.
'But—' Larkin started as Corbec dragged him to his feet. 'But nothing!' Corbec laughed.
Larkin began to laugh too. He convulsed and gagged with the force of laughter inside him.
Corbec dragged him from the chapel, both laughing still.
The very last thing Larkin saw before Corbec wrenched him away was his fallen lasgun, with the peerless, scorched white cloth still wrapped around the barrel.
A sudden barrage of enemy guns, distant, impatient, came on just before the middle of the night over Monthax, and stippled the belly of the low brown sky with reflected flashes of fire and light. Wet, hollow rumbles barked and growled through the swamps and ground mist like starving hounds. Leagues away, some brutal night-combat was underway.
Gaunt woke instinctively at the sound of the guns and took a walk out of the command shed. The sound was coming from the east and he had a sergeant circle around to check on the sentry lines. The artillery sounded like someone flapping and cracking a large, sweat-damp sheet in the hot, heavy air.
He crossed a gurgling creek via a duck-board bridge and made it into the tree line just as the humidity broke and cold drooling rain began to fall through air suddenly stirred by chill breezes. It was almost a relief, but the rain was sticky and sappy and stung his eyes.
