CHAPTER 2 ~ The Ferment
Hell is empty and all the devils are here.
- Attributed to the dramaturge Shakespire, M2
The monsters always come after dark.
Major Tomast Berganau woke with a start. He'd only intended to rest his eyes for a moment, but it had been long enough for sleep to take him involuntarily — and his nightmares had come, just as they always did.
How long had he been asleep? The roar of waves crashing against the cliffs on which the building stood was just audible through the stone walls. The tide was coming in.
Berganau's eyes went unbidden to his chrono. Just under an hour before dark. He exhaled a long breath; that was plenty of time.
By then, he and the other remnants of the Grolla Planetary Defence Force 15th Artillery would have sealed themselves into the vaults of the abandoned schola. Only an unlucky handful would remain above ground as sentries.
Not that the watch would do any good. The enemy seemed to care nothing for taking the Grollans' makeshift base. Instead, their foe came at night in small numbers, silently dropping amidst defensive positions, seeking only murder. They butchered anyone left above ground then lingered, taking their time to transform the bodies into novel and obscene shapes for Berganau's troops to discover in the morning. In the worst cases, the victims of the hideous remoulding were still alive when they were found the next day.
"Major Berganau."
He was pulled from his grim reflections as Commissar Pavlík entered the room he'd made his office. Berganau didn't like the woman, but the weeks of near-nightly butchery had worn morale down to nothing. Every other senior officer in the regiment was dead or missing. Berganau's reliance on his last remaining discipline officer was almost total.
He nodded at Pavlík. "Commissar." He already knew what she was going to say.
"Major, I'd like to take the watch this—"
"We've been over this before, Commissar. You are too valuable to risk above ground at night." Grollan soldiers went missing all the time, but since the atrocities began, desertion had become a near-epidemic. The missing were dacquoit mainly, men and women conscripted from the oceanic world's northern archipelago. Most spoke only thickly-accented Grollan when pressed, each preferring the company of soldiers from their own island, with whom they descended into their own inpenetrable local dialects. These northern bandits felt no bonds of loyalty to Gothic-speaking officers from the southern peninsula.
Earlier in the campaign, Pavlík and the other commissars had kept desertion to acceptable levels, but no longer.
Because they are more scared of the monsters now than they ever were of her.
Berganau shook his head. Increasingly, such unwelcome thoughts came to him as if spoken by another person. Fatigue must be getting to him. The nightmares dogged his sleep and he couldn't manage more than twenty minutes at a time.
"Major." Pavlík leant forward on the desk, looming over the seated Berganau. "Did you hear what I said?"
Berganau realised that he'd drifted back into his thoughts while the Commissar was speaking to him. With an effort, he met Pavlík's stony glare. "You know as well as I do that the enemy targets commissars." He tried not to recall the footage of Commisar Sladek's final hours that had somehow forced itself onto the schola's cogitator monitors. The grainy pict feed had shown Sladek laid naked on a bloodied table like the carcass of a slaughtered beast. He was skinless, limbless and blinded, yet somehow still alive. At the prompting of his unseen tormentor he'd frantically croaked blasphemy after blasphemy against the God Emperor of Mankind, a litany of heresy which went on for hours before he was finally allowed to die.
Berganau screwed his eyes shut to banish the memory. When he reopened them he smiled weakly, showing his palms to Pavlík in what he hoped was a placatory gesture. "The truth is, Pavlík, I can't afford to lose you."
The Commissar's features contorted into a snarl. "And what is your plan, Major? Remain trapped like rats on this cliff edge while we are picked off one by one by the heretics?"
Berganau stiffened. Pavlík's emphasis on his rank was a reminder that he was very junior to be leading the Planetary Defence Force in the peninsula. Yet who else was left?
Eventually, she will find a pretext to shoot you and take command.
The sea was clearly audible now as the incoming waves bestrode shattered sea defences and dashed themselves against the schola walls. "Do not imagine that I am not frustrated also, Commissar," he said levelly. "Do you suppose that I crave a death like this — cut off from the Militarum regiments in the north, at the mercy of these beasts with nothing but a thousand kilometres of open sea at our backs?"
Pavlík opened her mouth to reply, but at that moment, the study door crashed open and a dark-haired, bearded trooper stumbled into the room. He stopped, his gaze moving from Berganau to Pavlík and back.
"What is it, Sergeant Dorik?" Berganau said quickly, irritated by the man's hesitation.
The NCO straightened his posture. "Ship! We see it, comin' in." Like all the Dacquoit, Dorik frequently ignored the proper forms of address. "Sir," he added after a moment, glancing at Pavlík.
Berganau stared at him. What was the man on about? "A boat — at sea?"
A grin split Dorick's weathered features. "Not boat, ship." He put out both arms to indicate wings and rocked from side to side. "Thunderhawk. Impeer-yal."
An instant later, Berganau was out of his chair and pulling his overcoat on. He grabbed his hat from the desk and all but barged Pavlík out of his way in his haste.
They have come. They heard your message and they have come.
His heart thumped at he strode along the corridior, fighting the urge to run. Could it be true? Their prayers had been answered. His message had been received.
The Emperor's angels had finally come to Grolla in her hour of need.