Milo looked into the fire. He could sense Baffels was scared by his new responsibilities. The man was a great soldier, but he’d never expected unit command. He didn’t want to fail and Milo knew he wouldn’t, just as Gaunt had known when he’d made the promotion. But if it helped Baffels’ confidence, Milo would do as he was asked. Certainly, through that strange, organic process Milo had observed in the firefight that morning, soldiers chose their own leaders in extremis, and Baffels and Milo had been chosen.
“Where’s Tanith, d’you think?”
Milo glanced round, initially assuming Baffels had asked a rhetorical question. But the older man was looking up at the sky.
“Tanith?”
“Which of those stars did we come from?”
Milo gazed up. The Shield was a glowing aura of green light, fizzing with rain that fell outside. But even so, they could just glimpse the starfields pricking the blackness.
Milo chose one at random.
“That one,” he said.
“You sure?”
“Absolutely.”
It seemed to please Baffels and he stared at the winking light for a long time.
“D’you still have your pipes?”
Milo had been a musician back on Tanith and before he’d made trooper he’d played the pipes into battle.
“Yes,” he said. “Never go anywhere without them.”
“Play up, eh?”
“Now?”
“My first order as sergeant.”
Milo pulled the tight roll of pipes and bellows from his knapsack. He cleared the mouth-spout and then puffed the bag alive, making it whine and wail quietly. The hum of conversation died down at fires all around at the first sound.
Pumping his arm, he got the bellows breathing and the drone began, rising up in a clear, keening note. “What shall I play?” he asked, his fingers ready on the chanter.
“My Love Waits in the Nalwoods Green,” Domor said suddenly from beside him.
Milo nodded. The tune was the unofficial anthem of Tanith, more sprightly than the actual planetary anthem, yet melancholy and almost painful for any man of Tanith to hear.
He began to play. The tune rose above the yard, above the flurries of sparks rising from the oil drums. One by one, the men began to sing.
“What is that?” asked Bulwar hoarsely as Corbec sang softly. Across the yard, the NorthCol men were silent as the bitter, haunting melody filled the air. “A song sung by ghosts,” Corbec said as he reached for the sacra..
The Main Spine rang with the sound of massed voices. In the halls of the Legislature and the grand regimental chapel of House Command, victory choirs thousands strong sang victory masses and hymns of deliverance.
Crossing a marble colonnade with Captain Daur and several officers on the approach to House Command, Gaunt paused on a balcony and looked down into the regimental chapel auditorium. He sent his contingent on ahead and stood watching the mass for a while. Twelve hundred singers in golden robes, red-bound hymnals raised to their chests, gave voice to the hymn “Behold! The Triumph of Terra” in perfect harmony, and the air vibrated.
The auditorium’s high, arched roof was adorned with company banners and house flags, and censer smoke billowed into the candlelit air. A procession of Ministorum clerics carrying gilt standards and reliquary boxes, their long ceremonial trains supported by child servitors, shuffled down the main aisle towards the Imperial Shrine, where Intendant Banefail and Master Legislator Anophy waited. There were hooded Administratum officials in the procession and three astropaths from the guild, their satin-wrapped bulks bulging with tubes and pipes and feed-links. The astropaths were carried on litters by adult servitors, and many of the tubes and pipes issuing from the folds of their cloaks were plugged to cogitator systems built into the silver-plated litter-pallets.
“It lifts the heart, does it not?” a voice from behind Gaunt asked.
Gaunt turned. It was Kowle.
“If it lifts the morale of Vervunhive, so be it. In truth, it is premature.”
“Indeed?” Kowle frowned, as if not convinced. “I am going to House Command. Will you walk with me?”
Gaunt nodded and the two grim, black figures in peaked caps strode together down the marble colonnade under the flickering ball-lamps strung along the walls.
“This day has seen victory, yet you seem low in spirit.”
Gaunt grunted. “We drove them off. Call it a victory. It was bought too costly and the cost was unnecessary.”
“May I ask on what you base that assessment, colonel-commissar?”
They strode under a high arch where banners flapped in the cool air. The choir echoed after them.
“Vervunhive’s command and control systems are inadequate for a military endeavour of this magnitude. The system broke down. Deployment was crippled behind the front and devastated at the sharp end. There is much to be criticised in the command structure of the Vervun Primary itself.”
Kowle stopped short. “I would take such criticisms personally. I am, after all, the chief disciplinary officer of this hive.”
Gaunt stopped as well and turned back to face Kowle. There was an immoderate darkness in the man’s face. “You seem to excel in your duties, Commissar Kowle. You understand, better than any man I have ever met, the uses of propaganda and persuasion. But I wonder if you hold the officer ranks in place by force of will and fear rather than sound tactical order. The commanders of Vervun Primary have no experience of war on this scale. They know what they know from texts and treatises. They must be made to acknowledge the experience of active field officers.”
“Such as yourself and the other Guard commanders like General Grizmund?”
“Just so. I trust I can count on your support in this when we meet with House Command. I want you with me, Kowle. We can’t be pushing from different angles.”
“Of course. I am of one mind with you on this, colonel-commissar.”
They walked on. Gaunt could read Kowle’s soothing tone—and he despised it. He was well aware of the two dozen requests for transfer back into the active Guard which Kowle had made in the past three years. A master politico, Kowle was clearly courting Gaunt’s favour, assuming Gaunt could make a good report and effect him that transfer.
“I understand you executed Modile,” Kowle said matter-of-factly.
“A necessary measure. His negligence was criminal.”
“It was, as you described, his inexperience, that let him down. Was summary execution too harsh for a man who might yet learn?”
“I hope you would have done the same, Kowle. Modile caused many deaths by his inaction and fear. That cannot be conscienced. He ignored both pre-orders and direct commands from above.”
Kowle nodded. “Where a seasoned Guard commander would have held fast to the chain of command.”
“Indeed.”
Kowle smiled. It was an alarming expression on such a cruel face. “Actually, I applaud your action. Decisive, forceful, true to the spirit of the Commissariat. Many have feared the great Gaunt has grown soft now he has a command of his own, that his commissarial instinct might have been diluted. But you disabused that notion today with Modile.”