Sym would have known, but Sym is dead. Gaunt exhales. He really has to train himself to stop doing that. Sym had been his adjutant and Gaunt had come to rely on him; it still seems perfectly normal to turn and expect to find Sym there, waiting, ready and resourceful. Sym had known how to procure a dress coat in the middle of the night, or a pot of collar starch, or a bottle of decent amasec, or a copy of the embarkation transcripts before they were published. He’d have known the Munitorum serial code for a tent/temperate winter. The structure Gaunt is sitting in is not a tent/temperate winter. It’s an old tropical shelter left over from another theatre. It’s waxed against rain, but there are canvas vents low down along the base hem designed to keep air circulating on balmy, humid days. This particular part of Voltemand seldom sees balmy humid days. The east wind, its cheeks full of rain, is pushing the vents open and invading the tent like a polar gale.
Under A better tent he writes: A portable heater.
He hardly cares for his own comfort, but he’d noted the officers and their junior aides around the table that morning, backs hunched, moods foul, teeth gritted against the cold, every single one of them in a hurry to get the meeting over so they could head back to their billets and their own camp stoves.
Men who are uncomfortable and in a hurry do not make good decisions. They rush things. They are not thorough. They often make general noises of consent just to get briefings over with, and that morning they’d all done it: the Tanith officers, the Ketzok tankers, the Litus B.R.U., all of them.
Gaunt knows it’s all payback, though. The whole situation is payback. He is being punished for making that Blueblood general look like an idiot, even though Gaunt’d had the moral high ground. He had been avenging Tanith blood, because there isn’t enough of that left for anyone to go around wasting it.
He thinks about the letter in his pocket, and then lets the thought go again.
When he’d been assigned to the Tanith, Gaunt had relished the prospect as it was presented on paper: a first founding from a small, agrarian world that was impeccable in its upkeep of tithes and devotions. Tanith had no real black marks in the Administratum’s eyes, and no longstanding martial traditions to get tangled up in. There had been the opportunity to build something worthwhile, three regiments of light infantry to begin with, though Gaunt’s plans had been significantly more ambitious than that: a major infantry force, fast and mobile, well-drilled and disciplined. The Munitorum’s recruitment agents reported that the Tanith seemed to have a natural knack for tracking and covert work, and Gaunt had hoped to add that speciality to the regiment’s portfolio. From the moment he’d reviewed the Tanith dossier, Gaunt had begun to see the sense of Slaydo’s deathbed bequest to him.
The plans and dreams have come apart, though. The Archenemy, still stinging from Balhaut, burned worlds in the name of vengeance, and one of those worlds was Tanith. Gaunt got out with his life, just barely, and with him he’d dragged a few of the mustered Tanith men, enough for one regiment. Not enough men to ever be anything more than a minor infantry support force, to die as trench fodder in some Throne-forgotten ocean of mud, but just enough men to hate his living guts for the rest of forever for not letting them die with their planet.
Ibram Gaunt has been trained as a political officer, and he is a very good one, though the promotion Slaydo gave him was designed to spare him from the slow death of a political career. His political talents, however, can usually find a positive expression for even the worst scenarios.
In the cold lowlands of Voltemand, an upbeat interpretation is stubbornly eluding him.
He has stepped away from a glittering career with the Hyrkans, cut his political ties with all the men of status and influence who could assist him or advance him, and ended up in a low-value theatre on a third-tier warfront, in command of a salvaged, broken regiment of unmotivated men who hate him. There is still the letter in his pocket, of course.
He looks down at his list, and writes:
Spin this shit into gold, or get yourself a transfer to somewhere with a desk and a driver.
He looks at this for a minute, and then scratches it out. He puts the stylus down.
‘Trooper,’ he calls to the infantryman in the mouth of the tent. He knows the young man’s name is Caffran. He is generally good with names, and he makes an effort to learn them quickly, but he is also sparing when it comes to using them. Show a common lasman you know his name too early, and it’ll seem like you’re trying far too hard to be his new best friend, especially if you just let his home and family burn.
It’ll seem like you’re weak.
The infantryman snaps to attention sharply.
‘Step inside,’ Gaunt calls, beckoning with two hooked fingers. ‘Is it still raining?’
‘Sir,’ says Caffran non-committally as he approaches the table.
‘I want you to locate Corbec for me. I think he’s touring the west picket.’
‘Sir.’
‘You’ve got that?’
‘Find Colonel Corbec, sir.’
Gaunt nods. He picks up his stylus and folds one of the flimsies in half, ready to write on the back of it. ‘Tell him to ready up three squads and meet me by the north post in thirty minutes. You need me to write that down for you?’
‘No, sir.’
‘Three squads, north post, thirty minutes,’ says Gaunt. He writes it down anyway, and then embosses it with his biometric signet ring to transfer his authority code. He hands the note to the trooper. ‘Thirty minutes,’ he repeats. ‘Time for me to get some breakfast. Is the mess tent still cooking?’
‘Sir,’ Caffran replies, this time flavouring it with a tiny, sullen shrug.
Gaunt looks him in the eye for a moment. Caffran manages to return about a second of insolent resentment, and then looks away into space over Gaunt’s shoulder.
‘What was her name?’ Gaunt asks.
‘What?’
‘I took something from every single Tanith man,’ says Gaunt, pushing back his chair and standing up. ‘Apart from the obvious, of course. I was wondering what I’d taken from you in particular. What was her name?’
‘How do you–’
‘A man as young as you, it’s bound to be a girl. And that tattoo indicates a family betrothal.’
‘You know about Tanith marks?’ Caffran can’t hide his surprise.
‘I studied up, trooper. I wanted to know what sort of men my reputation was going to depend upon.’
There is a pause. Rain beats against the outer skin of the tent like drumming fingertips.
‘Laria,’ Caffran says quietly. ‘Her name was Laria.’
‘I’m sorry for your loss,’ says Gaunt.
Caffran looks at him again. He sneers slightly. ‘Aren’t you going to tell me it will be all right? Aren’t you going to assure me that I’ll find another girl somewhere?’
‘If it makes you feel better,’ says Gaunt. He sighs and turns back to look at Caffran. ‘It’s unlikely, but I’ll say it if it makes you feel better.’ Gaunt puts on a fake, jaunty smile. ‘Somewhere, somehow, in one of the warzones we march into, you’ll find the girl you’re supposed to be with, and you’ll live happily ever after. There. Better?’
Caffran’s mouth tightens and he mutters something under his breath.
‘If you’re going to call me a bastard, do it out loud,’ says Gaunt. ‘I don’t know why you’re so pissed off. You were walking out on this Laria anyway.’
‘We were betrothed!’
‘You’d signed up for the Imperial Guard, trooper. First Founding. You were never going to see Tanith again. I don’t know why you had the nerve to get hitched to the poor cow in the first place.’