Other than that, there was little anyone could do.
46
“The colonel will be OK,” said Gavotski, as much to convince himself as to raise the troopers’
morale. “He was only in the water for a couple of minutes, and I’ve seen people survive after ten
times that long. He’ll wake up when he’s ready.”
There were voices coming from the far side of the rise.
Palinev dropped onto his stomach, scrambling the rest of the way up on his elbows. Cautiously,
he raised his head — and his heart leapt into his throat.
The night had well and truly fallen, over an hour ago. There was no moon in the sky, and few
stars. Even Palinev could barely see his hand in front of his face. Still, Gavotski had insisted they
press on. It was what Steele would have wanted.
Gavotski had asked his troopers to carry the colonel two at a time, in shifts. Instead, Borscz had
volunteered to do the job alone. He had slung Steele’s unconscious body across his shoulders and
hefted him with apparent ease.
And now they had reached their goal at last.
At least, their scout had reached it. The ship lay beneath him: an Aquila lander, its red wings
proudly unfurled like those of the two-headed Imperial eagle after which it had been designed and
named. But this eagle’s back was broken, its legs buckled. It sagged in the middle, listing to one
side, and it took Palinev a minute to locate its detached and half-buried tail fin through his field
goggles.
This, then, was the ship in which Confessor Wollkenden had been travelling, the ship that had
been shot down, the ship that Colonel Steele and his squad of Ice Warriors had been dispatched to
find. And, in confirmation of their paymasters’ worst fears, there had been a battle here. A battle
that the Imperium had lost.
The ground was strewn with burnt and broken bodies. Bodies in red and gold. Palinev swept the
goggles over them, searching for a hint of Ecclesiarchal robes among them. There was still a chance
that Wollkenden had escaped the carnage, and let his willing guards lay down their lives for him.
Without a closer inspection, though, it was impossible to tell for sure.
And for now, Palinev was more concerned with the living.
Chaos cultists. The area in front of the lander teemed with them: ordinary men and women,
once, most likely born on Cressida itself. They had probably worked in its mines, served the
Emperor in exchange for His shelter and His succour. Until their minds had snapped. Until they had
succumbed to the infection of their world. Now, they dressed in robes of black and prayed to a
different pantheon. Some had even had their faces tattooed with the obscene eight-pointed star of the
Chaos gods.
The cultists had built a fire, and gathered around it to warm themselves. Its bright orange flames
ruined Palinev’s night vision, but on the plus side they cast a spotlight on his enemies while
deepening the darkness around him.
The cultists had been looting the stricken lander — or rather, they had been directing a number
of grovelling mutant slaves to do the job for them. Two especially deformed specimens appeared in
the hatchway, struggling with a bashed equipment locker. It got out of their control and hit the
ground with a crash, and an enraged cultist yelled in the mutants’ faces and assaulted one of them
with a lasgun butt.
One thing was clear in Palinev’s mind: if Confessor Wollkenden was indeed alive, then he was a
long way from here.
Gavotski concurred with that assessment.
“We need to capture a few of those men alive,” he considered, “make one of them talk. Have
they seen the confessor? Are they holding him?” He spoke in a low voice, because the enemy camp
was only a few hundred metres away.
47
“How many did you see, Palinev?” Pozhar asked eagerly.
“It was hard to tell,” said the scout, “in the dark and with all the activity. At least ten cultists,
maybe four or five mutants, although there could have been more inside the lander. They didn’t
seem too well-equipped.”
“From the way you describe it,” said Mikhaelev, “we have the terrain on our side this time. We
can take cover at the top of that rise, start shooting and have half of them down before they know
where we are.”
Palinev nodded. “There’s nowhere for them to run.”
Gavotski had been worried about leading the squad into combat again today. They were clearly
exhausted, although none of them would have admitted to it. He was feeling the effects of his
exertions himself. But Mikhaelev was right, this seemed like it would be an easy victory for them —
and maybe they needed that right now.
And then there was the ship, of course. If the Ice Warriors could recapture it, then it could
provide them with shelter and some warmth for the night. They would all benefit from that, Steele in
particular. Borscz had set the colonel down while they talked. He had settled into what seemed like
a comfortable sleep, his breathing deep and regular, and his colour was improving.
“OK,” said Gavotski at length, “let’s do this. Barreski, Mikhaelev, take point. Palinev, if you can
sneak around to the other side of the camp, or as near as you can manage, you can pin the cultists
down if they start to run. Everyone try to avoid hitting the lander; I don’t want it damaged any more
than it is already. That means no explosives, Barreski. There’s a small chance that the engines are
still—”
He didn’t get any further.
Steele’s eyes snapped open, and he opened his mouth and let out a long, full-throated scream. A
scream that the cultists couldn’t have failed to hear.
Pozhar didn’t wait for orders, didn’t even wait for the echoes of the scream to die down. The enemy
knew where they were. Any second now they would appear at the top of the rise that separated
them, start picking off the Ice Warriors like targets on a range. Unless the Ice Warriors could gain
and secure that vantage point first.
Pozhar raced as fast as he could, threw himself onto his stomach at the top of the slope, and
started firing before he knew what he was firing at. He was rewarded by the sounds of growls and
squeals. The cultists had sent the mutants ahead, and before Pozhar knew what was happening one
of them had crested the rise, between his las-beams, and leapt upon him.
It was a huge, shambling creature, covered in grey fur. It hit Pozhar like a brick, and tried to
wrest his lasgun from him. He fought it, and they rolled down the slope together. As they reached its
foot, Borscz leapt into the melee, and seized the mutant’s head between his hands as if he thought he
could crack its skull open — but it was too strong, even for him. With an animal roar, it broke his
hold and rounded on him.
The mutant lashed out with a gnarled talon, and Borscz wasn’t fast enough to back out of its
way. Three parallel tears opened across his chest, and the burly Ice Warrior went down.
The mutant turned to Pozhar again as he was still scrambling to his feet, still fumbling with his
weapon. It leapt at him, and he delivered four rapid-fire bursts to its stomach, but they weren’t
enough to stop it. He went down for a second time, with the creature on top of him, bleeding onto
him. Its brow was low, pronounced, and its narrow, crazed eyes bored into Pozhar’s skull as he
fought to keep its blood-dripping talons at bay with the stock of his lasgun.
It was Borscz who came to his rescue again — Borscz who, incredibly, must have kept himself
awake, lifted his massive body from the ground by sheer force of will and the strength of his own
two arms. He landed heavily on the mutant from behind, gripped its ribs between his knees, and
drove his meaty fists again and again into its head until it was insensate. Pozhar slipped out from
48
beneath its bulk as the mutant rallied, as it tried to throw Borscz from its back but found that, this
time, his grip was unbreakable: he was literally holding on for his life.
Pozhar fired again, aiming three more point-blank beams at the gaping wound in the mutant’s
stomach. He must have struck something vital, because the mutant fell at last — but it fell
backwards, and it landed hard on top of the still-clinging Borscz. It was the final straw for the Ice
Warrior: his eyelids fluttered and closed. Pozhar saw that his comrade was still breathing, shallowly,
but he was bleeding from his chest. Borscz needed synth-skin, needed someone to close his wounds
for him, and he needed it soon. Pozhar could have helped him, but it would have cost him precious
seconds, rummaging through his field rucksack for his Guard issue medi-pack.
He surveyed the scene around him. Another four mutants had appeared over the rise, all of them
with the same grey fur, and each of them appeared to be as tough as the first one had been. Two of
them were on fire, no doubt the work of Barreski and his flamer, but still they fought on. One of
them had Gavotski in a bear hug, no doubt hoping he would burn with it. Having seen how resistant
the creatures were to las-fire, Anakora and Blonsky were attacking it with bayonets, trying to loosen
its grip on their sergeant. Another mutant was attempting to get Palinev in a similar hold, but for
now his agility was keeping him out of its clutches.
As Pozhar watched, another creature staggered under a barrage of las-beams from Grayle and
Mikhaelev — staggered, but did not fall. The mutants were doing their job well, keeping their foes
occupied. The Ice Warriors had given up all hope of securing the rise as the first robed cultist
appeared at its top, and levelled a lasgun, able to take his time and choose his target.
It was all the excuse Pozhar needed. He abandoned the fallen, bleeding, dying Borscz and
charged back into the fray.
The burning mutant could ignore Blonsky and Anakora no longer.
It let go of Gavotski, who dropped and rolled in the snow to extinguish the flamer chemicals that
had stuck to his greatcoat. The mutant lashed out at Anakora, but she parried its talon with her
lasgun. For an instant, the creature was wide open to Blonsky, and he took great pleasure in driving
his bayonet through one of its narrow eyes. It howled and recoiled, but he stayed with it, driving the
spike further into its head like a corkscrew, simultaneously blasting at its simian face with las-fire.
The merest touch of this aberration, the brush of its fur against his elbow, the spatter of its blood
on his skin, made him feel unclean. Like the cultists on the other side of the rise, like all of the
insane devotees of Chaos, it must have been human once. It must have known, back then, that this
was what the future held for it, must have seen what lay at the end of its chosen path.
Blonsky had no sympathy for it. It deserved what its gods had done to it.
The mutant died at last, as did one of its fellows, succumbing to a second flamer burst. That left
just two. One was being kept occupied by the nimble Palinev, while the other had just lost a claw to
Grayle and Mikhaelev’s beams and had dropped to its knees. Blonsky set his sights on Palinev’s
opponent, but was suddenly tackled by Anakora. For a second, as they fell, he wondered if her mind
had snapped as well, if she had chosen this moment to turn traitor — but then, a las-beam rent the
air above his head, and he realised that she had just saved his life.
A cultist had attained the top of the rise, a perfect sniping position — and, had he fired again,
with both Blonsky and Anakora on the ground, he could have killed one of them. Instead, he saw
Pozhar charging him, gun blazing, and he turned his fire upon the young trooper — and Pozhar was
hit, a glancing blow to the shoulder. The force of the blast knocked him head over heels, and for the
second time in as many minutes he came rolling back down the slope.
Emboldened by his success, the cultist became careless. He lifted himself up to get a better angle
on his fallen foe, to finish him off — and two las-beams ripped through him. As the sniper fell, his
killers, Blonsky and Anakora, started forward, joined again now by Gavotski. The other cultists had
mistimed their advance, must have hung back too long behind their mutant cannon fodder, because
49
the opposing factions met at the top of the rise. The Ice Warriors were the first to react, and three of
their foes were dead before they could return fire.
The cultists, despite their greater numbers, were outmatched. They were untrained, unarmoured
and, in some cases, even unarmed. The outcome, of the battle was already beyond doubt when
Pozhar waded back into it. He wielded his lasgun in his left hand, his right hanging uselessly by his
side, and most of his shots went wild.
A cultist slipped in beneath the Ice Warriors’ beams, and was suddenly in Blonsky’s face, trying
to push a knife through the layers of his greatcoat.
“You’re too late, Guardsman,” the foul heretic hissed. “Mangellan has the power on this world,
and if you wish to live you will renounce your decadent Emperor and turn to—”
The threat was never completed. Blonsky seized his attacker’s wrist and twisted it until it broke.
The cultist screamed, and the blade dropped from his numbed fingers.
Blonsky raised his bayonet to the wretch’s throat, but remembered that Gavotski had wanted a
hostage. So, as much as it went against his instincts to do so, he turned his lasgun around and drove
its butt into the cultist’s skull, knocking him cold.
Barreski skirted the final mutant, trying to find an angle from which he could torch it without setting
light to Palinev too. The scout was still keeping clear of the mutant’s raking talons, ducking and
weaving, twisting and turning — but the mutant was relentless, starting to wear him down.
Barreski ventured a little closer to it. He thought it was too busy with Palinev to notice him. He
was wrong. The mutant swung around, and suddenly he was the focus of all its attention. With a
powerful swipe, it knocked the flamer from his hands. Barreski recovered his wits only just in time
to avoid a second talon, which would have ripped out his throat. He had no way of fighting back,
didn’t have time to draw his lasgun — and he knew that he was far less agile than Palinev, and
couldn’t evade many more attacks like that one.
Mikhaelev and Grayle came to his assistance. They had finished with their opponent, and turned
their las-fire upon his. The mutant shuddered with the impacts of the beams to its back — but, to
