'Was this your idea?' Gaunt asked.
The boy shook his head. 'It's tradition. For every visitor, the pipes of Tanith will play, wherever they go, to lead them back through the forest safely.'
'I'm not in the forest, so shut up!' Gaunt paused. He turned back to the boy. 'I respect the traditions and customs of the Tanith, but I… I have a headache.'
'I'll stop then,' the boy said. 'I— I'll wait outside. The Elector told me to attend on you and pipe you while you were here. I'll be outside if you need me.'
Gaunt nodded. On his way out of the door, the boy collided with Sym, who was on the way in.
'I know, I know…' Gaunt began. 'If I don't hurry, I'll be late for the dinner and— What? Sym? What is it?'
The look on Sym's face immediately told Gaunt that something was very, very wrong.
Gaunt gathered his senior staff in a small, wood-panelled lobby off the main banqueting hall. Most were dressed for the formal function, stiff in gilt collars and cuffs. Junior Munitorium staff watched the doors, politely barring the entry of any Tanith dignitaries.
'I don't understand!' said a senior Departmento Munitorium staffer. 'The nearest edge of the warzone is meant to be eighty days from here! How can this be?'
Gaunt was pacing, reviewing a data-slate with fierce intensity. 'We broke them at Balhaut, but they splintered. Deep intelligence and the scout squadrons suggested they were running scared, but it was always possible that some of their larger components would scatter inwards, looping towards us, rather than running for the back end of the Sabbat Worlds and away.'
Gaunt wheeled on them and cursed out loud. 'In the name of Solan! On his damn deathbed, Slaydo was quite precise about this! Picket fleets were meant to guard all the warpgates towards territories like Tanith, particularly when we're still at founding and vulnerable like this! What does Macaroth think he's playing at?'
Sym looked up from a flatplan-chart he had unfurled on a desk. The lord high militant commander has deployed most of the Crusade Forces in the liberation push. It is clear he is intent on pressing the advantage won by his predecessor.'
'Balhaut was a significant win…' began one of the Ecclesiarchy.
'It will only stay a victory if we police the won territories correctly. Macaroth has broken the new front by racing to pursue the foe. And that's let the foe through, in behind our main army. It's text book stupidity! The enemy may even have lured us on!'
'It leaves us wide open,' another Ecclesiarch agreed flatly.
Gaunt nodded. 'An hour ago, our ships in orbit detected a massive enemy armada coming in-system. It is no exaggeration to say that Tanith has just hours of life left to it.'
'We could fight—' someone ventured bravely.
'We have just three regiments. Untried, unproven. We have no defensive position and no prepared emplacements. Half of our force is already stowed in the troop carriers upstairs and the other half is penned in transit. We couldn't turn them around and get them unlimbered and dug in in under two full days. Either way, they are cannon fodder.'
'What do we do?' Sym asked. Some of the others nodded as if urging the same question.
'Our astropaths must send word immediately to the main crusade command, to Macaroth, and tell him of the insurgency. If nothing else, they need to turn and guard their flank and back. The rest of you: the carrier ships will leave orbit in one hour or at the point of attack, whichever comes first. Get as much of the remaining disembarked men and equipment aboard as you can before then. Whatever's left gets left behind.'
'We're abandoning Tanith?' a Munitorium aide said, disbelief in his thin voice.
Tanith is already dead. We can die with it, or we can salvage as many fighting men as we can and re-deploy them somewhere they will actually do some good. In the Emperor's name.'
They all looked at him, incredulous, the enormity of his decision sinking in.
'DO IT!' he bawled.
The night sky above Tanith Magna caught fire and fell on the world. The orbital bombardment blew white-hot holes out of the ancient forests, melted the high walls, splintered the towers, and shattered the paved yards.
Dark shapes moved through the smoke-choked corridors of the Assembly, dark shapes that gibbered and hissed, clutching chattering, whining implements of death in their stinking paws.
With a brutal cry, Gaunt kicked his way through a burning set of doors and fired his bolt pistol. He was a tall, powerful shape in the swirling smoke, a striding figure with a long coat sweeping like a cloak from his broad shoulders. His bright eyes tightened in his lean, grim face and he wheeled and fired again into the gloom. In the smoke-shadows nearby, red-eyed shapes shrieked and burst, spraying fluid across the stonework.
Las fire cut the air near him. He turned and fired, and then took the staircase at a run, vaulting over the bodies of the fallen. There was a struggling group up ahead, on the main landing. Two bloodied fighting men of the Tanith militia, wrestling with Sym at the doors to the launch silos.
'Let us through, you bastard!' Gaunt could hear one of them crying, 'You'd leave us here to die! Let us through!'
Gaunt saw the autopistol in the hand of the other too late. It fired the moment before he ploughed into them.
Raging, he broke one's jaw with the butt of his bolter, knocking the man backwards to the head of the stairs. He picked up the other and threw him over the stair rail into the smoke below.
Sym lay in a pool of blood.
'I— I've signalled… the carrier fleet, as you ordered… for the final withdrawal… Leave me and get aboard the cutter or—' Sym began.
