TWELVE

Regara stood atop a ridge a quarter of a mile from Lodden and scoured the town through a pair of magnoculars. Shiller had commenced his advance, three hundred men descending with bayonets fixed and rifles charged. A pair of Hellhound flame tanks trundled beside them, the armoured rigs touting bulky fuel canisters – a terror weapon when deployed in close-quarter engagements. Pardus urban camo patterned their hulls, mustard yellow traded for grey and black, and a clutch of Talpa hung on to the cargo netting strewn across the forward glacis.

‘They’re moving in…’ Regara uttered.

Below and behind him, the rest of the army waited in disciplined ranks. He had three other officers on the ridge with him, Rensaint, Grussman and Barbastian.

‘Should have sent in the bloody Tunnel-Rats to smoke them out first,’ groused Grussman. ‘Scared up the quarry a notch or two.’

‘And announce to the Pact that we’re here?’ countered Barbastian, eyebrow raised. ‘Not exactly subtle.’

‘Nothing subtle about a flame tank either,’ Grussman countered, to which Regara found he had to concede. ‘If you want hornets, lieutenant colonel, then use a sharp stick. That’s all I’m saying.’

They had kept most of the auxiliaries back, including most of the Agrians, preferring discipline to expendability – though not even Eythor would admit that, and he was a callous bastard on his best day. Besides, city fighting played to the Volpone’s strengths. Their equipment, their superior armour, their tactics and training. The Slokans had little left in the way of military strength, despite their assertions to the contrary, and the Ohrek were better suited to rural terrain – though a few had been utilised in the advance party as scouts – whilst the Agrians were farmers and trench builders conscripted into military service. As for the Talpa… Regara had seen death row penal legions that were less savage. Still, they played their part. The truth of it, though, was far less finessed. Glory motivated everything the Volpone did. Another laurel for the banner, another gilded honour. A victory to erase the stain of defeat. Bluebloods knew only how to win; anything else was anathema.

The leather of Rensaint’s gloves creaked noisily as he gripped the hilt of his sword. ‘Why haven’t they fired the weapon?’ he asked.

A similar thought had occurred to Regara. According to the magos, they were well inside the range of Godsword. It either meant the First Sons had been successful, in which case why had there been no reaction from inside the town, or something else had happened. The not knowing bothered him the most.

He lowered the scopes and pointed them in the direction of Kobor.

‘Column’s moving,’ he said, tweaking the magnification, but it was a fair distance and all he really saw was a large dust plume. ‘Should be in range of the guns soon.’

‘Isn’t it obvious?’ said Deviers as he climbed up the ridge, a pair of Scions in tow. ‘The bastards want a fight.’

He had emerged from his command vehicle armoured and armed – not in his parade finest that he had so histrionically discarded to appeal to the common masses, but in his Volpone grey carapace, his helm and sabre, his snub-nosed laspistol. Even the crimson half-cloak was absent, though he still wore the silver lion-headed shoulder guard.

‘And we’re going to give it to them, by the Throne.’

Regara blinked back his surprise. ‘Sir?’

Deviers unsheathed and sheathed his blade, testing the smoothness of withdrawing it. ‘Did you think I came here just to make speeches, major?’ He smiled, that charming, savage smile. ‘I came here to win a war, to lead. The only way I know how to do that is from the front.’

Even Grussman, a long-time confidant of the general, balked. ‘Brigadier, I must protest. There is no need for this–’

‘There is every need, Colonel Grussman. I pledged to fight alongside these men. I won’t break an oath I only just swore.’

Grussman drew in close to the general, his voice low, his eyes flitting to the other officers, searching for supporters. By the way he was acting, Regara assumed Deviers had done this before. The man was known for his acts of bravura. It had won wars.

‘There are soldiers for this…’ Grussman began.

Deviers turned and held his gaze. There was steel in it. Unbendable steel.

‘This, colonel? Do you mean fighting? Dying? I am a soldier. We all are. Volpone glory to the end.’

Regara had heard of it before, vainglorious officers who sought out the worst of all warfronts, always craving the heart of the battle. Not for bloodlust. For the honour of it. Such men did not last long, but Deviers had some years on him. Throne, Regara knew he himself had more than a few, but the rejuvenat the general used was primus-grade and even it couldn’t hide every crack.

He trooped on, leaving a frustrated Grussman in his wake.

‘You’ll have strategic command from here, colonel,’ snipped Deviers, a parting shot for the colonel’s apparent insolence. ‘Major…’ he ordered.

Regara stepped to, handing off the magnoculars to Barbastian, who would remain to see to field command. Two squads fell in, all handpicked men, Blueblood veterans every one. Deviers had a small cohort of Scions, his two shadows and three others making up a fire-team. A Chimera stood nearby, engines already idling.

Deviers apparently meant to join the front with only a small retinue. His next words confirmed it.

‘We’ll join up with Shiller. Ensure he’s prepared for us.’

A voxman the general had turned his attention to saluted.

Rensaint had watched the entire theatre with apparent cool reserve but as the troopers filed out, he swept down off his perch to join them. Only the slightest pinch around his eyes suggested his annoyance. Although he had only spent a few hours with the commissar, Owyn Rensaint struck Regara as a man who planned methodically and in detail, considering every potential exchange and scenario. Almost a form of prescience. Evidently, he hadn’t foreseen this.

‘I think I’ll stretch my legs, general, if you’ll permit me to join you?’ he said cordially. ‘Commissar Eythor has matters in hand here. I see no need to remain.’

Eythor lurked below, amongst the masses. If he felt anything about being left behind, he didn’t show it. The man was as emotionless and inert as a corpse, a sharp contrast to the smoothly politic Rensaint.

Deviers paused as he was climbing into the back of the transport, favouring Rensaint with a curt, backwards glance. ‘As you wish, lord commissar. The Prefectus must go where it is needed, by the Emperor’s will.’

Rensaint gave a shallow nod. ‘His will,’ he murmured, and followed Deviers and the Scions aboard.

Regara went next. His leg was bothering him again. Phantom pain, he knew, but it often presaged trouble. The major wasn’t a particularly superstitious man and he didn’t consider himself credulous either, but he would have been a fool not to heed this sign.

He looked back as he mounted the ramp, and saw Barbastian watching him from the ridge. A sudden pang seized him, akin to a loss not yet experienced yet still felt. In that moment, he wondered if he would see Filip again, but by then it was too late and the press of bodies had shuffled him on into the interior and the red-lit dark of the transport’s hold.

Fenk was good at spotting when something was out of place. He had the knack. It was the very same knack that made him good at moving unseen, unnoticed.

He knew almost every soldier in Lance Company, and the only reason he had any gaps in his knowledge at all was on account of the casualties they had sustained during the retreat. Troopers from the 86th and 101st had filled in the ranks, made the company viable again. So, Fenk accepted there would be troopers he didn’t know, but fighting men stood out. They had a look: the eyes, the way they moved, a wariness, a readiness that spoke to a shared experience.

The commissar, Gannika, didn’t have it. She had something at once cold and fiery behind her eyes, a taut-string tension that made her stiff and jerking like an automaton. But it wasn’t her Fenk had noticed as they crept stealthily across the threshold into the eastward-facing gates of Lodden. It was a trooper he didn’t know. Young, but moving with practised skill. Like he had watched someone do it over and over again, and had managed to replicate the behaviour. An imitator.

Maybe 86th or 101st, maybe somewhere else. It didn’t matter. Wherever they had come from, the trooper didn’t belong.

‘Redfern,’ he said, summoning the corporal as they crossed an empty arcade, the columns and porticos riddled with bullet holes. ‘Do you know that trooper?’ Fenk tipped his knife in the direction of the trooper, who was running on ahead with his squad.

Redfern frowned, his face a patchwork of old scars and skin like leather. He was a bruiser was Redfern, a gutter noble who cared nothing for standing or prestige, only that he had and others had not, and that this gave him a measure of power over his lessers.

‘Never seen him before, sir,’ he said, his voice a raw-edged growl that rattled in his throat. ‘Probably Eighty-Sixth or Hundred-and-First.’

The advance squad were establishing sentry positions, watching rooftops and corners. Still no engagement, and the quiet was unsettling some.

‘Is he a problem, sir?’ Redfern had a glint in his eye, the one that usually preceded violence. He had killed before, and not just on the battlefield. A taste for the blood, some said. Fenk would agree. The grey host might have dealt with Redfern long ago, but Fenk liked having a mad dog that was his to unleash.

‘Not yet…’ Fenk answered truthfully, and gave the order to follow.