‘No, I was trying to say, maybe this gives us a chance we didn’t have before,’ Gaunt tells them.
He ducks down beside Gutes again, and peers out into the mist and rain, craning for a better view. There is still no sign of the flamer, but he can certainly hear it clearly now, retching like some volcanic hog clearing its throat. He can smell promethium smoke too, the soot-black stench of Imperial cleansing.
He looks up at the ominously low ceiling bellying down at them.
‘What’s upstairs?’ he asks.
‘Another floor,’ says Guheen.
‘Presuming it’s not all crushed in on itself,’ adds Domor.
‘Yes, presuming it’s not,’ Gaunt agrees. ‘Which of you is the best shot?’
‘He is,’ Domor says, pointing to the fourth man. Guheen and Gutes both nod assent.
‘Merrt, isn’t it?’ Gaunt asks. The fourth man nods.
‘Merrt, you’re with me. You three, sustained fire pattern here, through these windows. Just keep it steady.’
Gaunt clambers over the scree of rubble and broken furniture to the back of the chamber. A great deal of debris has poured down what had once been the staircase, blocking it. Wires and cabling hang from ruptured ceiling panels like intestinal loops. Water drips. Broken glass flickers when the lightning scores the sky outside.
Merrt comes up behind Gaunt and touches his arm. He points to the remains of a heat exchanger vent that is crushed into the rear wall of the guild house like a metal plug. They put their shoulders against it and manage to push it out of its setting.
Light shines in. The hole, now more of a slot thanks to the deformation of the building, looks directly out on to rubble at eye level. They hoist themselves up and out, on to the smashed residue of a neighbouring building that has been annihilated, and has flooded its remains down and around the guild house, packing in around its slumped form like a lava flow sweeping an object up.
Gaunt and Merrt pick their way up the slope, and re-enter the guild house through a first-floor window. The floor is sagging and insecure. A few fibres of waterlogged carpet seem to be all that’s holding the joists in place.
‘You’re a decent shot, then?’ Gaunt murmurs.
‘Not bad.’
‘Pull this off, I’ll recommend you for a marksman lanyard.’
Merrt grins and flashes his eyebrows.
‘Should’ve got one anyway,’ he says. ‘The last one went to Larkin. After his psyche evaluation, marksman status was the only special dispensation Corbec could pull to get his old mate a place in the company.’
‘Is that true?’ Gaunt asks.
‘You ought to know. I thought you were in charge?’
Gaunt stares at him.
‘I’m really looking forward to meeting a Tanith who isn’t insolent or cocksure,’ says Gaunt.
‘Good luck with that,’ says Merrt.
Gaunt shakes his head.
‘I’ve got a smart mouth, I know,’ says Merrt. ‘I said a few things about Larkin getting my lanyard, earned some dark looks from the Munitorum chiefs. My mouth’ll get me in trouble, one day, I reckon.’
‘I think you’re already in trouble,’ says Gaunt. He gestures out of the window. ‘I think this qualifies.’
‘Feels like it.’
‘So you reckon you’re good?’
‘Better than Larkin,’ says Merrt.
They settle in by the window. The mist shrouding the concourse and the surrounding ruins has grown thicker, as though the discharge of weapons has caused some chemical reaction, and it’s disguising the enemy approach.
Below, about fifteen metres shy of them, they can see the blasts of the approaching flamer, like a sun behind cloud.
‘Nasty weapon, the flamer,’ says Gaunt.
‘I can well imagine.’
‘Then again, it is essentially a can or two of extremely flammable material.’
‘You going to be my shot caller?’ Merrt asks.
‘We have to let it get a little closer,’ says Gaunt. ‘You see where it burps like that?’
Another gout of amber radiance backlights the fog in the square below.
Merrt nods, raising the lasrifle to his shoulder.
‘Watch which way the glow moves. It’s moving out from the flamer broom.’
‘Got it.’
‘So the point of origin is going to be behind it, and the tank or tanks another, what, half a metre behind that?’
The flamer roars again. A long, curling rush of fire, like the leaf of a giant fern, emerges from the mist and brushes the front of the guild house. Gaunt hears Domor curse loudly.
‘He’s widened the aperture,’ Gaunt tells Merrt. ‘He’s seen buildings ahead, and he’s put a bit of reach on the flame, so he can scour the ruins out.’
Merrt grunts.
‘We’ve got to do this if we’re going to,’ says Gaunt.
There is another popping cough and then another roar. This time, the curling arc of fire comes up high, like the jet of a pressurised hose.
Gaunt grabs Merrt, and pulls him back as the fire blisters the first-storey windows. It spills in through the window spaces, roasting the frames and sizzling the wet black filth, and plays in across the ceiling like a catch of golden fish, coiling and squirming in a mass, landed on the deck of a boat.
The flames suck out again, leaving the windows scorched around their upper frames and the ceiling blackened above the windows. All the air seems to have gone out of the room. Gaunt and Merrt gasp as if they too have just been landed out of a sea net.
Gaunt recovers the lasrifle and checks it for damage. Merrt picks himself up.
‘Come on!’ Gaunt hisses.
As Merrt settles into position again, Gaunt peers down into the swirl.
‘There! There!’ he cries, as the flames jet through the mist and rain again.
Merrt fires.
Nothing happens.
‘Feth!’ Merrt whispers.
‘When the flame lights up, aim closer to the source,’ Gaunt says.
The flamer gusts again, ripping fire at the front of the guild house.
Merrt fires again.
The tanks go up with a pressurised squeal. A huge doughnut of fire rips through the mist, rolling and coiling, yellow-hot and furious. Several broken metal objects soar into the air on streamers of flame, shrieking like parts of an exploding kettle.
Gaunt raises his head cautiously and looks down. He can see burning figures stumbling around in the fog, PDF troopers caught in the blast. They sizzle loudly in the rain.
‘Let’s get out of here,’ he says to Merrt.
Gaunt calls to the three Tanith men below, and all five leave the guild house together and work their way back along the edge of the concourse to the advance main force, skirting the open spaces.
‘I’ve been looking for you,’ says Corbec matter-of-factly when Gaunt appears.
‘Not hard enough, I’d say,’ Gaunt replies.
Corbec tuts, half entertained.
‘You set something off over there?’ he asks.
‘Just a little parlour trick to keep them occupied while we got out of their way.’
‘“A little parlour trick”...’ Corbec chuckles. ‘You’re a very amusing man, you know that?’
‘Wait till you get to know me,’ says Gaunt.
Corbec looks at him sadly and says nothing.
‘What shape are we in, colonel?’ Gaunt asks.
‘Fair,’ Corbec replies.
‘No losses so far?’
‘Couple of scratches. But look, their numbers are increasing all the time. Another hour or so, we could start losing friends fast.’
‘Can we vox in for support?’
‘The vox is still dead as dead,’ says Corbec.
‘Recommendation?’
‘We pull back before the situation becomes untenable. Then we rustle up some proper strength, come back in, finish the job.’
Gaunt nods.
‘There are problems with that,’ he says.
‘Do tell.’