Blood Pact, page 23
Gaunt moved forward to restrain him. He called out the Belladon’s name again, in the hope that it might snap some sense or recognition into the man.
Maggs came up, out of his stumbling collision with the paint pails, clutching a fat plank of timber. He hefted it like a bat or a club, and swung it. Gaunt had to jerk back to avoid being hit.
‘For Throne’s sake, Maggs.’
Maggs advanced on him, swinging the timber hard. Maggs was making a whining, sobbing noise.
‘Maggs!’
Gaunt tried to dodge around Maggs, but Maggs caught him across the shoulder with the makeshift club, and Gaunt fell sideways into one of the work curtains. He clutched at it for support, and the top edge tore away from its iron fixings with a sharp, rending sound. Maggs came at him again, the plank raised over his head in both hands, ready to slam across Gaunt’s skull.
Gaunt tried to shield himself. He twisted hard, wrapping the heavy curtain tarp around him and over his head. He felt the blow, but the lethal force of it was soaked up by the taut curtaining.
Gaunt scrambled free of the curtain, and stumbled into the adjoining chamber of the refurb. The curtain’s thick, waxy seams caught on the buttons of his uniform, tangling him, and he was forced to pull free of his coat to get clear. The contents of his pockets, upended, scattered onto the floor.
Maggs wrenched his way through the work curtain after Gaunt. He was still clutching the plank, and he was still whining and sobbing, the thick, wet sounds mixing with rapid panting noises. His eyes were pink and bloodshot. He blinked, trying to focus, trying to see where Gaunt had gone.
Gaunt had ducked to the right, just inside the doorway. Maggs only saw him at the very last moment. Gaunt had found a workman’s mop, and swung it like a bat of his own. It caught Maggs across the shoulder blades, and the old handle snapped in half, but the force of the blow was sufficient to knock Maggs sprawling onto his hands and knees. The fat plank of wood clattered out of his grip. Maggs tried to grab for it, but Gaunt struck it out of reach with the splintered end of his mop handle. Gaunt brought the mop handle around as a baton, aiming it at Maggs’s head, but Maggs, still on his knees, intercepted it with his right hand, and stopped it dead.
The fever had bred an astonishing power inside Wes Maggs. He only had one hand on the broken handle compared to Gaunt’s two, and he was kneeling where Gaunt was better braced on both feet. With a grunt of exertion, he tore the handle out of Gaunt’s hands.
He rose. Gaunt backed away.
Gaunt expected Maggs to attack him with the mop handle, but Maggs threw the broken shaft aside.
Gaunt saw why. On his hands and knees, Maggs had found a better weapon. He had found the damogaur’s soot-caked rite knife. It had fallen out of Gaunt’s coat pocket.
Maggs took a step forwards, holding the jagged knife low and ready. His breathing had become really laboured. He lunged, and Gaunt jumped back. Maggs lunged again, sweeping the knife around. Gaunt barely avoided the second blow.
The third blow – a vicious, front-on stab – came closest of all. Gaunt had almost run out of space to back up. There was a wall close behind him. Maggs was boxing him in. The ground was uneven. There was no space in which to turn. Gaunt wondered if he could feint left or right. He was fairly certain that the panting, sweating, blood-shot Belladon would be too quick.
He had run out of choices. The only option remaining was the one he wanted to avoid most of all.
He drew his bolt pistol and aimed it at Maggs.
‘Stop it,’ he warned. ‘Stop it, Maggs. Drop the blade and stop this.’
Maggs growled.
‘Don’t make me finish it this way, Wes,’ Gaunt whispered. His finger tensed on the hard curve of the trigger. He wasn’t getting through. He could feel another lunge about to come his way.
There was a loud and dull metallic impact. Maggs swayed, and then collapsed sideways. He hit the ground bonelessly and lay still.
There was an ugly bruise on Doctor Kolding’s temple. He lowered the dented metal bucket he’d swung into the back of Maggs’s head.
‘Are you all right?’ Gaunt asked him.
Kolding didn’t answer.
Gaunt ducked forward and plucked the rite knife out of Maggs’s limp fingers. Maggs was deeply unconscious.
‘We need to tie him up,’ said Gaunt. ‘Throw me that bolt of twine. Over there, doctor.’
As if slightly dazed, Kolding put the dented bucket down, and fetched the twine. Gaunt quickly began to bind Maggs’s wrists together.
‘I thought he’d killed you,’ Gaunt said.
‘He hit me,’ said Kolding. ‘He hit me hard. I’m not a soldier. I don’t know how to fight. Once I went down I decided to stay down for my own good.’
‘That was probably very wise,’ said Gaunt.
‘It doesn’t feel very courageous,’ said Kolding. ‘Not now, and not when I was sixteen.’
‘You saved my life,’ said Gaunt, ‘and for that, and more besides, you have my thanks.’
Kolding pointed at Maggs. ‘He is running an awful fever. I think that may have driven him to this. He was seeing things. They were things that he was evidently scared of.’
‘It’s more than that,’ said Mabbon Etogaur.
The prisoner looked like an upright corpse. The fever was still upon him, and his breathing was as laboured as Maggs’s. He was leaning in the doorway behind them, holding onto both the torn work curtain and the doorpost for support.
‘You should not be on your feet,’ said Kolding, striding towards him. ‘Help me get him settled again,’ he added, over his shoulder, to Gaunt.
They supported the prisoner and walked him back to the bed that Kolding had set up for him in the adjoining room. The prisoner was leaden and unsteady. There was a sort of diseased smell coming off him that Gaunt did not like at all.
‘He woke me,’ said Mabbon. ‘He woke me from my fever dream, tearing at my throat. He was trying to break my neck.’
‘Don’t waste your strength,’ said Gaunt.
They settled him back. ‘I tried to move. To call out.’
He looked at Kolding, who was preparing another shot from his case.
‘Are you a doctor?’ he asked.
‘You were wounded. We found a doctor to help us,’ said Gaunt.
‘I would have died,’ Mabbon said to Kolding.
‘You may still die,’ Kolding replied tersely. ‘I’ve treated your wound, but you have developed a secondary infection, probably due to the less than ideal circumstances of your post-operative recovery. The fever–’
‘My wound isn’t causing the fever,’ said Mabbon quietly. ‘It’s them.’
Gaunt looked at him.
‘It’s the work of the ones who have been sent to silence me,’ said Mabbon. The spaces between his words were getting longer. ‘They’ve got warpcraft into my blood. Into your man’s blood too, I think.’
‘How?’ Gaunt asked.
‘They have a witch with them,’ Mabbon wheezed, ‘a strong one. She is upon my soul, and she’s calling out to me in my dreams, commanding me to die. I can hear her. She’ll have been in your friend’s dreams too, urging him to kill.’
‘How do we fight this witch?’ Gaunt asked. ‘Do you know?’
‘You must let him rest,’ Kolding insisted.
‘Do you know how to fight the witch?’ Gaunt demanded.
Mabbon Etogaur’s eyes closed, and then flicked back open.
‘She’s wickedly strong,’ he breathed, ‘but I know a trick or two. I was an etogaur in the Pact. Give me that rite knife.’
‘Now wait a minute!’ Kolding exclaimed.
‘Listen to me,’ Mabbon hissed. ‘She’s in my blood. She’s upon my soul. That means this game is close to being over. They know where we are. All the while she’s in my blood, they’ll be able to find us. I need to break that tie, and then we must move to another place.’
‘How do we break the tie?’ Gaunt asked.
‘I cannot believe you’re even listening to this,’ Kolding exclaimed. ‘The man’s feverish. He’s delusional. What’s more, he–’
‘How do we break the tie?’ Gaunt snapped.
Mabbon held out his hand. ‘I have to bleed her out of me, and then I have to bleed her out of your friend.’
‘I’m not going to be part of any barbaric ritual,’ Kolding said, but he handed Gaunt a small medicine basin.
Gaunt took the stainless steel bowl from the doctor and walked back to the prisoner. He’d carried Maggs’s bound body through from the other side of the curtain and laid him down beside the etogaur. Maggs was still unconscious, and twitching deliriously in the embrace of a dream that Gaunt had no desire to share.
Gaunt put the basin down and, after a final, thoughtful pause, handed Mabbon the rite knife, handle first.
‘Keep the basin ready,’ said Mabbon, his breath rasping in and out. ‘We mustn’t spill a drop, or leave any they can use.’
Gaunt nodded.
‘Hurry up,’ he said. ‘I don’t like this at all.’
Gaunt held the basin close. Mabbon opened one of Maggs’s bound hands, held it firmly, and sliced the rite knife’s blade across the palm. Maggs shook.
‘It won’t take much,’ said Mabbon. ‘The witch, she’s monstrously powerful, but to bind into our blood, she has to make a link, you see? For us to be tied to her, she has to be tied to us.’
He squeezed Maggs’s hand, and the blood welled and ran.
A fit came upon her. It came without warning. Eyl was so shocked by it that he recoiled.
His sister screamed. She had her hands in the sterilising baths, elbow-deep in red liquid, and as she screamed, the right-hand jar shattered. Over six litres of blood product vomited out of the exploded cylinder and gushed across the theatre bench.
Ulrike staggered backwards, pulling her hand out of the intact bath. Blood splashed out across the tiled floor in long, drizzled sprays from her hands. She cried out again, a squeal of rage and pain.
She turned to Eyl.
‘Sister? What is it, sister?’
She was breathing so hard that the front of her veil was sucking in and out. Droplets of blood had caught in the lace net and glittered like cabochon rubies. She raised her right hand and opened the palm towards him. The whole hand and arm was dripping with blood, but he could see the wound across her palm. He supposed she had been cut by broken glass from the exploding bath.
‘Your knife!’ she wailed.
‘What?’
‘He’s got your knife, and he’s bleeding me out of them!’
‘The pheguth? You mean the pheguth?’ Eyl demanded.
She screamed at him again, but this time it was a petulant scream of frustration and anger. She sank to the floor.
‘It hurts!’ she complained. ‘He’s hurt me. He’s cutting the tie!’
Eyl knelt down beside her, and held her tight, rocking her. She sobbed. Her clutching hands made bloody imprints on the tan leather of his coat sleeves.
He heard his men at the theatre door. Her screams had drawn them downstairs in concern.
‘Magir?’ Karhunan called out, unwilling to cross the threshold.
‘It’s all right!’ Eyl shouted back. ‘It’s all right. Leave us. Go back upstairs, and get the men ready to move.’
Eyl felt her wince again in his arms. She opened her left palm and held it out for him to see.
He watched as an invisible edge sliced the palm open.
Mabbon grunted out a breath and clenched his left hand over the basin. His blood spattered out of his fist and collected with the measure they’d already taken from Maggs.
‘Are we done?’ Gaunt asked.
Mabbon nodded.
‘Doctor?’ Gaunt called.
Kolding was just finishing the compression dressing on Maggs’s palm. He got up and came over.
Gaunt handed him the basin. ‘Get a lid sealed on that, then bind the prisoner’s hand.’
Kolding took the basin. He looked scornful and disapproving.
‘Quickly, please,’ Gaunt said. He wasn’t in the mood for the man’s disdain. Gaunt had crossed a few lines in his life, always out of necessity. Some heathen blood-magic ritual felt like one of the worst.
It had better damn-well work.
There was a noise from the refurb’s outer entrance.
Gaunt signalled to Kolding to keep quiet, drew his pistol and hurried towards the entrance.
It was Criid, squeezing back in through the boarded window from the street. Her hair was wet with snow, and she’d obviously been running hard.
‘You’re back sooner than I expected,’ said Gaunt, holstering his pistol.
She shook her head.
‘They’re close,’ she said. ‘We have to move.’
‘No argument,’ Gaunt replied. He bent to pick up his cap. It had been on his lap when he’d been sitting watch, and heard the gunshots.
‘Get any food?’ he asked.
‘There wasn’t time.’
She followed him into the chamber where Kolding was tending Maggs and the prisoner.
‘What the feth happened here?’ she asked.
‘They got to Maggs somehow,’ Gaunt said.
‘What?’
Gaunt stepped through the work curtain he’d half-torn down, and began to retrieve his coat and the items that had scattered from his pocket. Criid followed him.
‘It doesn’t really matter,’ said Gaunt. ‘The simple truth is, they know exactly where we are, so we need to switch locations. Gather your things and help the doctor.’
‘We need to run,’ said Criid.
‘Maggs is sick, and the prisoner is sick and wounded,’ said Gaunt. ‘The purpose of this entire exercise is keeping him alive, and moving him any distance is going to be contrary to that aim. We’ve moved him too much already. I have to trust the doctor on this.’
‘So where do we go?’ she asked.
Gaunt stopped to pick up his pen and his copybook.
‘I have an idea,’ he replied.
TWENTY-TWO
Contact
‘Will it work?’ asked Ludd, dubiously.
Trooper Brostin looked insulted.
‘Of course it’ll work,’ he insisted. ‘I cooked it up, didn’t I? Just like you asked. I know this stuff.’
‘He does know this stuff,’ said Beltayn.
‘See?’ said Brostin.
Ludd took the small paper twist from Brostin’s permanently grimy paw. It was about four centimetres long, and no thicker than a pencil. The end had been folded down and sealed with what looked like treacle.
‘This isn’t going to be in any way…’ he began.
‘What?’ asked Brostin.
‘Excessive?’ Ludd replied.
The wounded look returned to Brostin’s face.
‘I did it just like you asked,’ he said.
‘All right, all right,’ said Ludd. ‘It’s just that I know your stuff too, Brostin, and for you there’s no such thing as too big.’
Brostin grinned and shook his shaggy head.
‘This is small. It’s cute. It’ll be pretty.’
‘All right,’ said Hark. The small huddle of troopers turned to look at him. ‘You all know what to do. Let’s get on with it.’
Ludd took a deep, calming breath, and walked into the company vox office. It was late afternoon, and it was already twilight outside. Driving snow tapped against the grubby windows.
The room was gloomy and over-warm. The electric filament heater units on the wall were kicking out a dull blast of dry heat, regulated by Aarlem’s automated thermostats. It was stuffy.
There were six large vox-caster units set up in the office; three were active and in use. Signal strength indicators flickered and glowed, and Ludd could hear the background murmur of a thousand voices, as dry and parched as the heat.
The Ghosts’ regular vox-operators had been turfed out when the Inquisition arrived. Three Inquisitorial vox specialists were on station, each manning one of the active casters. They were attentive and diligent men in sober black suits, their ears cushioned in large headphones. They were carefully monitoring all traffic in and out of Aarlem Fortress. Portable memory recorders had been plugged into the three casters to assist with any later transcription work, and the operators were making regular, abbreviated notes on the data tablets that rested beside their right hands.
Their supervisor was a haughty-looking ordo agent called Sirkle. He too was dressed in black, though part of his attire was body armour. He was pacing behind the operators, hands clasped behind his back, occasionally pausing to lean over and read one of the noted comments.
When Ludd walked in, Sirkle glanced at him dubiously. Ludd had only seen Inquisitor Rime at a distance during his visit, but he was struck by the marked facial similarity between Rime and his henchman.
‘Can I help you?’ Sirkle asked.
‘Sorry to intrude,’ said Ludd with what he hoped was a relaxed grin. ‘I was just wondering if there was any news.’
‘News?’
‘Of the colonel-commissar,’ said Ludd.
‘Why do you want to know?’
Ludd laughed. ‘You’re kidding? The men want to know, friend. The Ghosts are a very loyal bunch. Feelings are running quite high in the barracks. They want to know what’s going on.’
‘This facility is the subject of an investigation by the holy ordos. There are strict–’
‘I understand that, friend,’ said Ludd. ‘I was just hoping, you know, off the record, just between us…’
Sirkle stared at him.
‘You must know what it’s like to feel loyalty to a senior commander.’
Sirkle paused thoughtfully.
‘There’s nothing yet,’ he said. ‘No trace of Gaunt’s whereabouts at this time, although the signs are that he did exit Section alive.’
