'Which is?'
'Pray to the Emperor. Mkoll said there was an old shrine out back of this place. Prayers are all we have left.'
Together, Corbec and Dorden pulled their way through a litter of rubble and debris and broken furniture into the little room at the back of the farmhouse. It had lost its roof and the stars twinkled above them.
Corbec had brought a lamp. He played its light over the rear walls, picking up the flaking painted image on the ornamental screen Mkoll had mentioned. It showed the Divine Emperor subduing the Heretics, and smaller figures of a man, a woman, and three small children, shown in obeisance to the central figure of the God-emperor of Man.
'There's an inscription here,' Dorden said, scraping the dirt away from the wall with his cuff pulled up over the ball of his hand.
'A pig! What is this?'
Corbec raised the lamp and read off the inscription. 'Here's irony for you, Doc: this was a trophy world. A New Tanith. The master of this hall was a Parens Cloker, of the Imperial Guard, Hogskull Regiment. The Hogskulls won this world during the first advance into the Sabbat one hundred and ninety years ago Winning it, they were awarded settlement rights. Cloker was a corporal in the Guard, and he took his rights gladly. Settled here, made a family, raised swine in honour of the mascot beast of his old regiment. His kin have honoured that ever since.'
Corbec faltered, something like sadness in his eyes. 'Feth! To get there, to win it, to take the trophy world… and still it comes down to this?'
'Not for all. How many trophy worlds are there out there where the soldiers of the Guard have retired and lived out their days?'
'I don't know. This is all too real. To fight for your lifetime, get the prize you wanted, and then this?'
Corbec and Dorden sank down together in the debris-strewn chapel.
'You asked me why I stayed with you, Doc. I'll tell you now as we're dead and we have nothing to live for.' With that last remark, Corbec flung his hand towards the reredos' inscription.
'Well?'
'You were the doctor for Pryze County for twenty years.'
'Twenty-seven. And Beldane.'
Corbec nodded. 'I was raised in Pryze. My family were wood workers there. I was born out of wedlock and so I took my father's name, when I knew him. My mother now… I was a difficult birth.'
Dorden stiffened, knowing somehow what must come next.
'She'd have died in labour, had it not been for the young medic who charged out in the night and saw to her. Landa Meroc. Remember her?'
'She would have died if I hadn't—'
Thank you, Doctor Dorden.'
Dorden looked round at Corbec in wonder. 'I delivered you? Feth! Fething feth! Am I that old?!'
They laughed together until they were choking. And until the thump of artillery began, blasting the quiet of the night away.
The Imperial Guard drove the enemy back with their shelling and Gaunt was on the foremost half-track as they ploughed back into the fenlands in the early light of dawn. They caught the enemy almost unawares, and were blasting the Chaos artillery and infantry even as the enemy wheeled their own blasphemous guns around into position in the dark.
The farmhouse, and its shattered defence of horseshoe fences, was almost unrecognisable. Mud, burnt flak- board and shattered corpses lay piled amidst the devastated ruins. He ordered the vehicle to stop, and it spun wheels on the fenland muck as it slid to a halt.
Trooper Lesp was on duty at the gateway. He saluted the colonel-commissar as he passed in. Dorden and Corbec were waiting for him in the littered yard.
'Medical evac is coming,' Gaunt told them. 'We'll get the Volpone wounded out of here.'
'And our own too?' Dorden asked, thinking of Tremard, and Mkoll's lacerated face.
'All of the wounded. So, you've had an adventure out here, it seems?'
'Nothing to speak of, sir,' Corbec said.
Gaunt nodded and moved off into the manor house ruin.
Corbec turned to Dorden and showed him the pig's tooth he had clutched in his hand. 'I won't forget this,' he said. 'It may not have worked here on Nacedon for this guardsman, but hv this tooth, I'll trust it will work for us Ghosts. A trophy world, brighter and better than you can imagine.'
Dorden's hand held a pig-tooth too, marked ''The Emperor''.
'I trust you to do that, Colm. Do it. Doctor's orders.'
Swing, address, stab, return… swing, address, stab, return…
In the shade of the cycads at the edge of the Tanith encampment on Monthax, Trooper Caffran was practising bayonet discipline. Stripped to the waist, his powerful young shoulders glistening with sweat, he whirled his lasgun in time to his rhythmic chant, snapping it round, clutching it horizontally, lunging forward and killing the bole of one of the trees over and again. After each strike, he tugged it free with effort, and repeated the drill. The trunk was slashed and puckered, oozing orange sap from the wounds left by his nimble work.
'Good skill,' Gaunt said from behind him. Caffran snapped around, realising he was being watched. He shook sweat from his brow and began a salute.
