Anton walked over to one of the survivors of the company. ‘How many of them attacked you?’ He sounded as cocky and arrogant as usual but he was just trying to be friendly.
The soldier looked up at Anton as if he was an idiot, a thing that Anton must’ve been very used to by now. ‘Just the one,’ he said.
Anton shook his head and made a low tut-tutting sound. He walked over to another soldier; this one’s face was all smudged with soot as if he had been standing next to a blazing building or perhaps had worked in one of the forges back on Belial. ‘How many of them attacked you?’ Anton asked again.
The soldier looked up at Anton and shook his head. ‘You heard Boris,’ he said. ‘Are you deaf?’
Anton turned around and looked at us, his face blank. He made a circling motion with his little finger close to the side of his forehead. He quite clearly thought that the soldiers had been made just a little bit crazy by what they had just been through. We had all seen that before. He went over to third soldier and said, ‘How many?’
‘One, you moron,’ said the soldier. Anton’s eyes narrowed and I was not sure whether it was because of the insult or because of the information that the soldier had imparted. It was starting to look as if there was no mistake here.
I walked over to the first soldier that Anton had talked to and I squatted down beside him. I offered him a lho stick from one of my packs and he took it and stuffed it into his mouth gratefully. I produced my igniter and he squirmed away at the sight of the flame as if it brought back some terrible memory.
‘Just one of them did all this?’ I kept my voice flat and level and did not let any fraction of emotion show. He took a long puff on the lho stick and he nodded. A cloud of smoke emerged from his lips and he pulled it back in again with a long breath as if he somehow thought that he could cover the smell of burning flesh that surrounded him with the odour of tobacco.
‘That’s right,’ he said, ‘just the one.’
‘Was he in a Hellhound, complete with a flamethrower attached?’ Anton asked. He was never the most sensitive of souls.
‘He was a psyker, one of those priests,’ the soldier said. The others nodded agreement. I saw Anton flinch. I did too. None of us liked the idea of having to face a psyker. Regimental rumour had it that an unbonded psyker could be possessed by daemons. It was one of the truths preached by the Imperial cult and none of us had any reason to doubt it. Ivan gave out a low whistle. It was the one he used to indicate that he was disturbed. The New Boy looked as pale as the soldiers who had been fighting against the psyker. I don’t suppose I looked any better.
The first soldier continued to puff away at the lho stick. His eyes were focused on its burning. It looked as if he was seeing something strange there. Maybe he was. Who can tell?
‘We got a call,’ he said. ‘We were told that there was a heretic preacher ranting in the street and that someone had better come and do something.’
‘You did,’ Anton said.
‘We arrived in force,’ the soldier said. ‘We did not know what to expect but we thought we were prepared for the worst.’
He shook his head, considering how silly that statement sounded now. ‘There was a preacher here – he was dressed in simple robes and he was telling the crowd how the Angel of Fire would return and scour the face of this world, cleansing it of unbelievers. The commissar ordered Honza and Johan to go forwards and arrest him. The rest of us were to watch in case of ambush. There was an ambush all right – it just did not come the way we expected it.’
‘The preacher was a psyker?’ The New Boy looked frightened as he spoke. The soldier nodded his head.
‘As soon as Honza and Johan got close, he just laughed and called upon the Angel of Fire to smite the heretics. That’s when it happened–’
‘What?’ Anton asked.
‘Wings of fire erupted from his back and a halo of flame surrounded his head. He gestured with his hands and Honza and Johan were burned down on the spot. They just caught alight – one second they were there, the next second they were surrounded with just as much flame as the preacher. The only difference was that it burned them; it did not burn him.’
‘You opened fire?’ Anton said.
‘Of course we did,’ the soldier said. ‘Some of us tried hard not to hit our boys but most of us just fired our lasguns. We might as well have been using flashlights for all the difference it made. The bolts from our lasguns just seemed to make the preacher stronger and he kept invoking the name of the Angel and telling us that we were all going to be destroyed. The sacred flame was going to cleanse this world and we should repent.’
‘I take it you didn’t,’ Anton said. I stared at him hoping to forestall any more misguided attempts at humour.
‘We kept firing and firing and firing,’ the soldier said. His eyes were fixed in the middle distance now and it was obvious that he was not looking at us but at the scene that the words were pulling from his memory. ‘It didn’t make the slightest difference. It just made him stronger. The commissar told us to stop shooting and use grenades. It was the last order he ever gave. The heretic burned him down where he stood.’
Anton looked at me. His eyes were wide and he looked a little more frightened now. He had always assumed that commissars enjoyed a special protection from the Emperor in return for their faith.
‘Of course, most of the boys just kept on firing. Some of us tried using grenades but there was something in the air around the heretic that sent them flying back towards us. The explosions killed even more of our lads.’
‘But you got the bastard in the end,’ Anton said. ‘Otherwise you would not be sitting here talking to us now.’
The soldier shook his head. ‘Those wings of fire on his back spread wide open and he leapt into the air. It was like something out of one of those old pictures from the time when the Emperor walked among men. He just hovered in the air and threw bolts of fire at us. All the time he was smiling and laughing and ranting. His voice got louder and when I looked I saw his eyes were glowing, like there was a fire inside his skull.’
My mouth felt dry and I wanted to mock but I could not. The soldier just kept talking. ‘He looked happy, ecstatic, there was this glow within him now, getting brighter, as if there was a light inside of him so brilliant it could shine through flesh. He shouted that he was going to meet the Angel and the Angel would come and judge us all then he jumped among us, his body on fire. Everyone he touched just burned. They rolled on the ground, beating at themselves but nothing could put the flames out. The heretic kept on coming. His flesh was being consumed from within now. He was getting thinner and thinner, vanishing like a sugar cube in water. He had almost reached me when he was gone. The flames leapt up all of a sudden and I thought I was dead, but when I opened my eyes there was no one there, except our boys, all burning and dying.’
Anton looked on appalled. Ivan studied something in the middle distance. Corporal Hesse and the New Boy moved around, dispensing med-packs, applying sacred balm.
‘You know the worst of it?’ the soldier said.
‘What?’
‘I kept thinking, what if he was right? What if the Angel had blessed him and we were the heretics here and we were all going to be judged?’
‘Just as well your commissar got burned,’ Anton said. ‘If he was alive now you and he would be having words.’
‘You never know,’ the soldier said. ‘He might have agreed with me.’
