Rawne looked the Narmenian officer up and down. Maupin’s clothes were clean, and he’d had a shave that morning. A few hours earlier, he’d been asleep in a bed somewhere. Probably the Urdeshic Palace.
‘We held this line and took a bruising,’ Rawne said. ‘Now you’re here to reinforce. It’s time to rotate us out.’
Rawne looked at the signal the Narmenian had handed him again. A direct communique from Lord General Grizmund. Raindrops flicked and tapped the flimsy paper.
They were standing in a street in the Millgate Quarter, under the shadow of the now silent Tulkar Batteries. It had been the scene of the heaviest fighting against the Sons of Sek four days earlier. From the seawall and esplanade, the edge of the city was a mess of burned and bombed habs and manufactories, through the tight warren of Millgate Quarter south-east into the mercantile districts of Vapourial and Albarppan. Smog rolled in from the sea in the heavy rain, and behind the fume of petrochemical smoke that made the sky seem oppressively low, huge fires burned to the south of them in the Northern Claves, as though pit-gates down to the inferno had opened up.
Maupin’s column had arrived ten minutes before. His line of Vanquishers and Conquerors stood waiting on the esplanade highway, tailing back into the upper streets of Millgate, engines idling.
‘Grizmund has command of this theatre, does he?’ Rawne asked.
‘Lord Grizmund does, yes,’ Major Maupin said, stressing the ‘lord’ gently to correct Rawne’s lack of protocol. ‘Staff has charged him with the securement of the south-western line in advance of further enemy assault.’
‘So secure it, sir,’ said Rawne. ‘You’ve brought your big guns and everything.’
Maupin smiled.
‘The lord general’s approach is two-pronged. To secure these quarters of the city, house-to-house, using infantry, and to advance the armour into the Northern Claves and hammer a proper pushback against any remaining enemy forces holding there.’
‘My Ghosts are tired,’ said Rawne. ‘They were in the thick of it four days ago. We drove the bastards back. They haven’t slept since.’
‘Resources are stretched,’ replied Maupin. ‘We are awaiting reinforcements. You are a vital infantry asset.’
‘You withdrew the Helixid.’
‘In part.’ Maupin sighed. He looked at the tired and filthy Ghosts standing around them, watching, and drew Rawne aside.
‘In all candour,’ he said quietly, ‘the Helixid forces are competent at best.’
‘They broke here,’ said Rawne.
‘They did. It’s been noted. Inquiries will follow. Your Ghosts, colonel, are a prestige unit. Famously specialised. Lord Grizmund knows you of old, I gather, and values your abilities. You might consider this a compliment.’
‘Doesn’t feel like one,’ said Rawne.
‘I’m sure it doesn’t, right now. We have signals of assurance that brigades of Urdesh, Keyzon and Vitrians will move up to relieve you in the next thirty hours. The Urdeshi will be on station before that, in fact. Look, colonel, the First Lord Executor gave Lord Grizmund this command personally. The two of them have a history, you know that. And your Ghosts are the Lord Executor’s personal regiment. Lord Grizmund wants people he can trust to keep this line tight. And he trusts Gaunt’s Ghosts.’
‘Major,’ said Rawne, ‘you keep making everything sound like it’s doing us a favour and bestowing an honour on us. Gaunt would have pulled us out of here long since.’
‘The Lord Executor has delegated zone command to Lord Grizmund, and Lord Grizmund has chosen the Lord Executor’s elite troops to assist him in this endeavour.’
Rawne sighed and nodded.
‘Then…’ he said. ‘Signal received. Happy hunting, major.’
‘You too, colonel,’ Maupin replied as he walked back to his waiting tank.
Colonel. That still sat uneasily with Rawne. He wandered back to the waiting Ghost squads.
‘We’ve been delegated,’ he said.
‘What?’ asked Ludd.
‘Skip it,’ said Rawne. ‘We’re holding this quarter for now. Another thirty hours.’
They tramped into the partial shelter of a damaged manufactory. Rain pattered down through sections of missing roof. Oysten, Rawne’s adjutant, had spread area maps out on a printmaker’s table.
‘We’re stretched thin,’ remarked Elam.
‘I know,’ said Rawne.
‘The armour could clear this zone out in a couple of hours,’ said Obel.
‘The tanks are moving south,’ said Rawne.
‘And this area is still inhabited,’ said Ludd. ‘We can’t just flatten it.’
‘Update on that?’ Rawne asked.
‘These quarters were not evacuated before the assault began, sir,’ said Major Pasha. ‘There are hundreds of citizens and workers cowering in these ruins, waiting to get out. They’ve been sheltering in basements and whatever. Now the shelling has stopped, they are emerging. Short of water, food, medical supplies.’
‘Our sweeps are making contact with them all the time,’ said Obel. ‘They’re risking exposure because they can’t stay where they are any more. We’re sending all we find into the city, to the nearest waypoints. There are camps in Gaelen that can take them.’
‘Which makes our job harder,’ said Varl. ‘Any contact we encounter on the sweeps could be a friendly. Could be women, kids. We’re holding ourselves in check, every building we clear, every door we kick–’
‘I know,’ said Rawne.
‘Which means no flamers,’ said Brostin, as if this was the biggest disappointment of his life.
‘I feel your pain,’ said Rawne. He stared at the map and scratched at a scab on his chin. It was a mess. Even before the recent assault, the city of Eltath had been porous. The Tanith had found that out to their cost at the Low Keen billet. There were insurgent forces inside the city, either Sek soldiers moving in unseen or sympathisers already embedded in bolt-holes. The recent fighting had left the Millgate and Vapourial Quarters even more penetrable. Add to that, enemy units that had been left behind or detached during the withdrawal.
And the withdrawal itself. Rawne’s mind kept coming back to that. The Ghosts and other Imperial defence forces had held off the full-on assault. A victory to be proud of. Except, they shouldn’t have won. The Archenemy had fielded significantly superior numbers, backed by armour momentum against thinly stretched and hastily prepared defence lines. Despite extraordinary individual actions by Ghosts like Pasha and her anti-tank teams, the marksmen, and – Throne rest him – Mkoll, the outcome should have been decisive in favour of the Anarch’s forces. Millgate should have broken. The batteries should have been overrun. Eltath should have been opened up.
But the Archenemy had, suddenly, fallen back. Not in defeat. By choice. A deliberate retreat.
As if, Rawne thought, they had achieved their objective.
The thought troubled him. He knew it troubled his officers too, and hoped it troubled staff, and the lords general, and even his newly crowned excellency the First Lord Executor. Sek was a wickedly cunning bastard. He’d done something, and they had no idea what it was. He’d had a knife to the Imperial throat, and he’d taken it away without finishing the slice.
‘Because the knife was a distraction,’ Rawne murmured to himself.
‘What’s that?’ asked Varl.
‘Nothing,’ said Rawne. He wanted to know. To figure it out, he had to try to think like a Sek packson, and that was something he didn’t relish. Archenemy tactics on Urdesh had been incomprehensible from the very start of the campaign. It was like trying to play a game when no one had bothered to teach you the rules.
Well, he was going to learn them. Lord Grizmund, one of the few senior commanders Rawne had any time for, had misjudged things. Operations in Millgate and Vapourial weren’t a simple matter of hold and secure. Though the main fighting had ceased, there was still a coordinated enemy action going on, as far as Rawne was concerned.