Despite the fact they were in shade, the caves offered no respite from the heat. If anything, it was even hotter in their dusky confines.
‘Hear that, sir?’ asked Drado, leaning with his ear towards the darkness. With the Longstriders moving cautiously a few metres in front, they’d breached the threshold of the caves and were advancing slowly.
‘Machinery of some kind?’ It was a low thrumming sound, like the action of an engine constantly turning over.
‘That’s what I thought,’ Drado replied. ‘Could be the reason it’s so hot. A generator perhaps?’
Culcis nodded. The air was growing thicker by the minute. Heat and the scent of metal cloyed it.
They moved on.
A palpable sense of menace hung in the air like a bad tranq of combat drugs. Culcis felt his senses go instantly on edge. The Longstriders had felt it too. Hauke brought them all to a stop.
They were deep now, far into the subterranean. It was stifling, the Volpone’s uniforms dark with sweat. Even Hauke was dappled with beads of perspiration like tiny, transparent pearls on his tanned skin.
The Longstrider captain held up four fingers, utilising Guard battle-sign so the Volpone could understand.
Four hostiles.
Most likely sentries.
Four of the Longstriders hurried off into the darkness at Hauke’s command. After a few minutes they returned with hatchets bloodied.
‘Scratch four bad guys,’ grinned Speers.
Something about his bloodlust unnerved Culcis. Worse still, he’d felt it too. They were closing on the source. The lieutenant only hoped they’d find it soon, otherwise the Volpone’s guns might do the traitors’ work for them.
The first thing they knew of the ambush was a grunt from Sergeant Brutt. The man crumpled, clutching ineffectually at the arterial bleed in his neck.
Caught in a narrow defile, concealed ridges above the Longstriders and the Volpone offered murderously advantageous firing positions to the enemy. Another Volpone and one of the Kauth were killed before both groups pressed to the walls, cutting down the angle of exposure, and returned fire.
Ahead of them, the machine thrum had built to a cacophony. The air was so redolent of metal it was like Culcis’s mouth was filled with blood. He spat out a gobbet of saliva but it didn’t help.
The source, the thing the Kauth had found and knew was in these caves, was just beyond, through a natural archway in the rock.
First, though, they had to break the ambush.
‘I think this is the bulk of them, sir,’ said the lieutenant, hunkering down alongside Regara.
‘I agree,’ the major replied between shots. ‘We need only get a kill-team beyond that archway and take out whatever is causing this madness.’
Hauke was close by and had overheard them.
‘Your men hold,’ he said, indicating their gloom-shrouded opponents above them. ‘Mine draw out,’ he added, pointing first towards the archway and then to Regara, Culcis and his own banner bearer, ‘We run.’
‘That’s suicide for your men, captain,’ Culcis informed him needlessly.
‘Sacrifice is part of Kauth way, Volpone. Hold, draw out, run,’ he repeated.
Even Regara nodded this time.
‘Very well,’ he said, ‘Corporals Speers and Drado too.’
‘Yes, sir.’ Culcis beckoned the two aides over as Hauke was relaying orders to his men. The fight had reached an impasse for now, both sides unable to lay any meaningful fire into the other. It at least allowed the Volpone/Kauth coalition to formulate their plan.
In a few minutes it was done and the kill-team was gathered together to make a dash for the archway.
‘Just because the savages are offering themselves up on a plate to these bastards, doesn’t mean they won’t shoot at us,’ said Regara.
Culcis nodded.
‘Quick and quiet,’ the major added. ‘No delays, even if someone falls, even if I fall. Understand, lieutenant? Whatever’s beyond that archway, we must be ready for it.’
Culcis nodded again, slower this time.
Regara gave the signal to Hauke that they were ready.
An ear-piercing shriek scythed out of Hauke’s mouth and the order was given.
Suppressing fire lanced from the Volpone as they expended what was left of their hellguns to keep the ambushers at bay. At the same time, the Longstriders exploded into the open, moving back down the defile as if in retreat, guns blazing. Meanwhile, the kill-team led by Regara was running.
Culcis felt the patter of solid shot glancing off his bowl helm but kept moving. Shots tore up the earth around them, pranged off jutting stones and ricocheted from the walls. The incoming fire was light. The Kauth had done their work well. Culcis was only glad he didn’t have to turn and see them slain.
The kill-team breached the archway intact and found themselves in an expansive chamber.
It was like descending into some visceral hell-realm.
Walls like incarnadine flesh shone slick with blood. They were ribbed, too, like meat. The stink of it was strong. It was emanating from a deep reservoir in the centre of the room. Squatting over it was a vast and tortured machine. Twisted and spiked, it was a thing utterly unlike any engine Culcis had ever seen. The machine was some kind of drilling platform, part metal, part organic. It had four pseudo-fangs plunged deep into the earth, pumping and siphoning a clear liquid into the bloody morass.
It took Culcis a few seconds to realise the Tongues of Tcharesh had tapped into the promethium wells that veined the region in tributaries of vital fuel. Except now, the fuel was vital in the most literal way. It was alive, sentient and tainted by blood sacrifice.
Further machines were visible in silhouette beyond this first infernal engine, dormant but foreshadows of the insurgents’ plan yet to come.
The very thing the Crusade reserve was meant to be protecting was the very thing driving them insane. The red rime of their jackets, the ruddy sand underfoot – the entire Sagorrah camp was tainted by the promethium-blood. Bad enough if an encampment of nearly a million Guardsmen was turned – Culcis paled at the consequences if the fuel was allowed to infect the rest of the Crusade forces. And the architect of that depravity was close by.
Crouched by the edge of the pool, a slain Guardsman in her talon-like clutches, was what used to be a woman. She was hideous. Even her presence felt anathema to Culcis, as if she shouldn’t even be. A dirty, blood-flecked smock covered her frail, bony limbs. She was withered and wretched like a corpse. Her lank hair was grey and matted with dark stains. Ranks of teeth stood in blackened nubs as she grinned at him.
Something hard and cold clutched at the lieutenant’s chest and he forced it down through sheer effort of will.
‘Stay close!’ warned Hauke, indicating the banner.
Culcis, even the other Volpone, obeyed. As he neared the scrap of cloth, the lieutenant felt the discomfort from the witch’s presence ebb.
‘Emperor have mercy...’ he heard Drado mutter.
Speers made the sign of the aquila. The corporal’s hands were shaking.
Regara’s mouth was drawn in a taut line.
The witch was not alone. A beast of a soldier, too broad and tall not to have been genhanced, was standing a few metres from the witch at the edge of the machine. His hard armour was dark and he wore a grotesk to hide his graven features.
Culcis knew Blood Pact when he saw it.
Drawing a serrated sabre, the soldier waved his retinue forwards – four men, all Tongues of Tcharesh elite like the Volpone had fought in the slum town square.