Gaunt and Corbec withdrew to their men.
'This will be the first blooding for this regiment, for the Tanith First-and-Only,' began Gaunt.
'For Gaunt's Ghosts,' someone murmured. Mad Larkin, Corbec was sure.
Gaunt smiled. 'Gaunt's Ghosts. Don't disappoint me.'
They needed no other instructions. At Corbec's gesture, they hurried forward in pairs, slipping their camo- cloaks down as shrouds around them, lasguns held loose and ready. The hybrid weave of the hooded cloaks blurred to match the dark grey mud of the ridgeway, and each man stooped to smear his cheeks and brow with wet mud before slipping over the earthwork.
Thoren watched the last one disappear and then span the trench macro-periscope around. He looked out, but of the sixty plus men who had just passed his position, there was no sign.
'Where in the name of Solan did they go?' he breathed.
Gaunt was amazed. He'd seen them practise and train in the belly holds of the big carrier ships, but now here, in the wild of a real deadzone, their skills startled him. They were all but invisible in the stinking mire, just tiny blurs of movement edging between stacks of debris and over mounds of wreckage towards the slumped but massive curtain walls of the citadel.
He pulled his own Tanith camo-cloak around him. It had been part of his deal with Corbec: he insisted on leading them in to assure loyalty, they insisted he didn't give their position away.
The micro-bead in his ear tickled. It was Corbec. 'First units at the tunnels now. Move up close in pairs.'
Gaunt touched his throat mike. 'Hostiles?' he asked.
'A little light knife work,' crackled the reply.
A few moment later he was entering the dripping, dark mouth of the rubble tunnel. Five Chaos-bred warriors in the orange robes of their cult lay dead. Before him, the Tanith were forming up. Corbec was wiping blood from the blade of his long, silver knife.
'Let's go,' said Gaunt.
The Elector of Tanith, may his soul rest, had not lied about anything, Gaunt decided. The Ghosts had proved their cunning stealth crossing the open waste of the deadzone, and he had no clue as to how they threaded their way through the crazy lightless warren of the tunnels so surely. They do not get lost,' the Elector had boasted, and it was true. Gaunt suspected that the foe had assumed nothing bigger than a cockroach would ever find its way through those half-collapsed, deathtrap tunnels.
But Corbec's men had, effortlessly, in scant minutes. Rising from the tunnels' ends inside the curtain wall of the city, and taking long, silver Tanith knives to pallid, blotchy throats, they had burned their way in through the enemy's hindquarters. Now the Tanith First-and-Only were proving they could fight. Just like the Elector had said.
From behind a shattered pillar, Gaunt blasted with his bolter, blowing two cultists apart and destroying a doorway. Around him, the advancing Tanith lacerated the air with precise shots from five dozen lasguns.
Near to Gaunt, a sharp-faced, older Tanith Gaunt had heard the men call Larkin was sniping cultists off the top of the nearest balconies. His eye was tremendous. A little further on, a huge man, a gentle giant called Bragg, was shouldering the heavy bolter and taking down walls and columns. The big weapon had originally been pintle- mounted on a sled, but Bragg had torn it off its mount and slung it up like a rifle. Gaunt had never seen a heavy bolter carried by an unarmoured man before. The Tanith called Bragg ''Try Again'' Bragg. He was a terrible shot, admittedly, but with firepower like that he could afford to be sloppy.
Just ahead, a six man fire-team led by Corbec gained the entrance to a temple building complex, grenaded the doorway and went in with lasguns, paired off to give bounding cover.
'Heavy fire in my section!' Corbec radioed to Gaunt. 'Some kind of church or temple. Could be a primary target.' Gaunt acknowledged. He would move more teams up.
Creeping down the aisle of the massive temple, Corbec edged through rubble and heavy crossfire. He nodded a pair past him – Rawne and Suth – and then the next. His own cover partner, Forgal, bellied up close in the mica dust of the temple floor and unslung his lasgun.
'Down there,' he hissed, his eyes as sharp as ever. 'There's a lower storey down behind the altar. They've got a lot of defence around that doorway. The big arch under the stained-glass.'
It was true.
'You smell that?' Rawne asked over the radio.
Corbec did. Decay, stale sweat, dead blood. Rank and harsh, oozing from the crypt.
Forgal began to crawl forward. A lucky shot vaporised the top of his head.
'Sacred Feth!' Corbec howled and opened up in rage, bringing the entire stained glass window down in a sheet onto the altar.
Rawne and Suth took advantage of the confusion to grab a few more yards. Rawne unwrapped a tube-charge and hurled it over-arm into the archway.
The blast was deafening.
Gaunt heard Corbec's call in his ear-piece. 'Get in here!' He scrambled into the smoky interior of the temple. At the door, he paused. 'Larkin! Bragg! Orcha! Varl! With me! You three, cordon the door! Cluggan, take two teams down the flank of the building and scout!'
Gaunt entered the chapel, mashing broken glass under foot. He could smell the stink.
Corbec and Rawne were waiting for him, their other men stood around, watching with lasguns ready.
'Something down here,' Rawne said and led Gaunt on down the littered steps. Gaunt slammed fresh rounds home into his boltgun, then holstered it and picked up Forgal's fallen las-gun.
Beneath the chapel was an undercroft. Dead cultists were strewn like rag dolls around the smouldering floor. In the centre of the chamber stood a rusty, metallic box, two metres square, its lid etched with twisted sigils of Chaos.
Gaunt reached out. The metal was warm. It pulsed.
