Dorden stepped across a tiled floor. Half the tiles were broken, littered with glass and pools of oil that shimmered rainbow colours. Corbec loomed out of the shadows nearby, shaking his weary head. 'Doc,' he acknowledged.
'Colonel.'
'Field hospital…' Corbec said, gesturing around himself. Dorden already knew as much. 'Anyone alive?'
'That's why I called for you.'
Corbec led him through to a vaulted hallway. The various stenches were stronger in here. Perhaps five dozen men lay on pallet beds in the chamber, half-lit by pallid yellow sunlight that streaked down through shattered lights in the sloping roof. Dorden walked the length of the room and then back.
'Why have they been left here?' he asked.
Corbec shot him a questioning look. 'Why do you think? We're all retreating. 'Too much to carry. Can you… sort them?'
Dorden cursed quietly. These men are what?'
'Bluebloods. Volpone 50th. You remember those devils from Voltemand? Their command units pulled out this morning, as Per orders.'
'And they left the wounded here?' Corbec shrugged. 'Seems so, Doc.'
'What kind of animal leaves his sick and wounded behind to die?' Dorden spat, moving to change the dressings on the nearest man.
'The human kind?' Corbec asked.
Dorden looked round sharply. This isn't funny. Corbec. It's not even whimsical. Most of these men will live with the proper attention. We're not leaving them.'
Corbec groaned softly. He rubbed the top of his scalp, folding the thick black hair between his big, swarthy fingers. 'We can't stay here, Doc. Commissar's orders…'
Dorden turned and looked at the colonel with fierce, old eyes. 'I'm not leaving them,' he stated plainly. Corbec seemed to start to say something, then hesitated and decided better of it. 'See what you can do for them,' he said, and left Dorden to his work.
Dorden was treating a leg wound when he heard the crunch of gravel on the roadway outside and the rumble of a troop carrier. He looked up to locate the source of the sound only after he had finished what he was doing.
'Thank you, sir,' said the young man whose leg he had treated. The boy was pale and sallow, too weak to rise from his pallet bed.
'What's your name?' Dorden asked.
'Culcis, sir. Trooper, Blueblood.' Dorden was sure that Culcis would have wanted to punctuate that statement with an exclamation mark, but he was too weak to manage it.
'I'm Dorden. Medic. Tanith. You need me, Trooper Culcis, you call my name.'
The boy nodded. Dorden went outside, approaching the Chimera parked below the leaning walls. Corbec was speaking to the tall figure perched on top.
The figure moved, dropped down to the soil, began to march towards him: Gaunt, his cap on, his face a shadow, his long coat flying.
'Sir!' Dorden said.
'Dorden – Corbec says you won't move.'
'Sixty-eight wounded here, sir. Can't leave them; won't leave them.'
Gaunt took Dorden's arm and led him across the muddy yard to the side wall that looked out across trampled farmland and vacant swine pens towards the setting suns beyond.
'You must, Dorden. Enemy forces are half a day behind us. General Muller has called us all to retreat. We can't carry them with us. I'm sorry.'
Dorden shook off the commissar's grip. 'So am I,' he said.
Gaunt turned away. Tor a moment, Dorden thought the commissar might round on him and discipline him with a fist. But he didn't. Instead, the man sighed. On reflection, Dorden knew violence wasn't Gaunt's first or chosen way of command. The endless war and his experience of other officer cadres in the field had soured Dorden's expectation, something he wasn't proud of.
Gaunt looked back at the medic. 'Corbec told me you'd say as much. Took, the counter-push for Nacedon is scheduled for tomorrow night. Then, and only then, Emperor willing, we'll retake this land and drive the enemy back.'
'Few of them will last the night and day unattended. And none if they are found and attended by the Chaos filth!'
Gaunt took off his cap and smoothed his cropped blond hair. The dying suns-light silhouetted his angular profile, but kept his internal thoughts in shadow. 'You have my respect, medic. You've always had it, since the Founding Fields even. The only Ghost who refuses to bear arms, the only man who can keep us alive. The Ghosts owe you, many of them owe you their lives. I owe you for that. I'd hate to have to give you an order.'
Then don't, commissar. You know I'll refuse it. I'm a medic first and a Ghost second. Back on Tanith, as a community practitioner, I worked for thirty years ministering to the sick, the infirm, the new-born and the weak in the Beldane District and County Pryze. I did it because I took an oath at the Medical College in Tanith Magna. You understand allegiances and oaths, commissar. Understand mine.'
'I understand the weight of the medical oath well enough.'
'And you've honoured it! Never asked me to break my vow on confidentiality over men with private problems… drink, pox, mind-troubles… you've always let me do as my oath bids. Let me now.'
