Chapter 7 ~ The Harsh Lesson of Retreat
Any soldier who, in the face of the enemy, runs away, or shamefully abandons his post or guard, or induces others to do the like, or casts away his arms or ammunition, or attempts to take his own life shall be shot on the spot
— The Imperial Guardsman's Uplifting Primer, M41
Berganau sat on a narrow parapet overlooking the cliffs and watched the sun slowly rise over the Southern Ocean. It was a tiny, daily moment of peace that he relished, this brief time between the terror of the night and the toil of the day. Looking out over the sea at dawn, he could almost imagine that there was no war and that life on Grolla carried on as it always had.
It would soon be summer. The planet's eccentric orbit meant that much of the world was kept in a near-permanent ice age. Only the twin peninsulas around the equator experienced a moderate climate. Soon, the Dacquoit fishing fleets would have been due into the bay, having endured the northern hemisphere's winter in the hidden harbours of their inhospitable island homes. Their boats reappeared at this time each year, laden with fish, just as the rains began and the peninsula exploded with evidence of life; green shoots in the fields, trees full of blossom and the skies suddenly home to vast flocks of birds.
Berganau glanced down at the bottle of the Drill Abbott's amasec. He'd brought it up here, intending to drain it, yet he hadn't. Now it was dawn, it felt like a bad idea. The Commissar would smell it on him.
Pavlík. The thought of the commissar brought the unwelcome concerns of leadership rushing back. The Dacquoit were increasingly jittery. They'd long been a problem, but things were reaching breaking point. Hadn't Lakond's man, Sturm, spotted it straight away?
"I've seen this before," the grim-faced corporal had said, "when a group of soldiers get this scared. First, they start acting all sulky towards their officers and NCOs, and then they start having their own little secret meetings. Next thing you know, it's open insurrection. Right now, your lot are one good push short of murdering us all in our sleep."
Sturm's response had been to put Gunner Gosvilik in the medicae with a dislocated and broken jaw, three broken ribs and a concussion. An 'example', he'd said.
Commissar Pavlík had been incandescent with fury. She'd marched Jens Sturm into the great hall where Berganau and Lakond had been studying the map late into the night. Despite Berganau's entreaties, Pavlík had wanted to execute the corporal on the spot.
Lakond hadn't been much help. The little man had just leant back in his seat with an amused expression playing across his ruined features.
Eventually, Berganau had talked Pavlík down. Sturm's status as an Imperial soldier was ambiguous, Berganau argued. After all, he was supposedly on Grolla as an emissary of the space marines. Anyway, according to the letter of the law, execution was the punishment for striking a superior officer. Even if Sturm was a member of the Astra Militarum, he outranked Gosvilik.
Very well, Pavlík had eventually conceded. Sturm's punishment for fighting in barracks would be fifty lashes.
However, it was Lakond who had the last word. "Planetary Defence Force Commissars have no authority over Astra Militarum personnel," he'd said with a twisted grin, "but you're free to try and discipline Sturm if you like, Commissar. I'm just curious to see what he'll do to you if you touch that whip at your belt."
Berganau had not known that PDF commissars were somehow different to their Astra Militarum brethren. A commissar was a commissar, surely? But Pavlík's silence told him that Lakond must be correct. Still, her blood was now up, and she was not someone it was wise to push.
He sighed, looking back out to sea. On the horizon were the hulks of several ruined ferries and a promethium tanker. They were huge seagoing giants, abandoned and left to rot a few miles from shore since the start of the war. The superstitious Dacquoit said the wrecks were ghost ships. They would not countenance going near them.
Berganau found it weirdly comforting to believe that these vast behemoths were haunted. The thought of something that colossal floating on the ocean, as quiet and lifeless as a tomb, was somehow worse. He shuddered and looked down at the bottle of amasec.
Someone behind him coughed. Berganau turned to find Lakond standing on the narrow stair that led to his vantage spot.
Lakond looked grave. "Sorry to disturb you, Major. One of your men just arrived here in a state. Apparently, the enemy has found another of your hidden guns. They hit it hard."
Berganau swore and clambered to his feet. He left the amasec on the parapet. Getting filthy drunk was definitely no longer an option.
#
They found the soldiers of C Troop 2 Battery in their wooded holding position along with the smoking remains of their two heavy mortars. The bodies had been collected after the slaughter and carefully draped over the branches of trees in a kind of obscene decoration. Some of the dead had been blown apart by mass reactive rounds, others had been eviscerated at close quarters. The centrepiece of the awful tableau, however, was Sergeant Dalibor.
He hung from the largest tree, with both arms extended out wide. Two long lengths of skin had been peeled back from his torso, stretched out and pinned to his hands with bayonets, creating the impression of wings. The effect was clearly deliberate. Dalibor hung from the branches in a grotesque parody of a living saint.
Berganau and Lakond viewed the grim spectacle while Dorik and five of his men fanned out, lasguns raised, to cover the clearing. No one spoke. Judging by the heat of the damaged guns, the attack had been recent. The enemy would still be nearby.
Berganau felt little as he regarded the desecrated bodies. He tried to recall what any of the dead men and women looked like. He conjured Dalibor's face, eventually. Garrulous, for a Dacquoit, he'd been a handsome man with a mane of jet black hair and a gold tooth of which he was inordinately proud.
None of these images produced any reaction in Berganau at all. Perhaps he'd seen too much horror. The dead were simply meat now.
Lakond moved to get a closer look at Dalibor's body. Berganau seized him by the arm. "Don't," he said in a low whisper. "They often booby trap corpses with grenades or mines."
Lakond grimaced and turned away. Berganau followed him across the clearing to the wreckage of the heavy mortars. Jens Sturm crouched between the guns, surveying the trees at the edge of the clearing with narrow eyes. A sophisticated-looking long las of a mark Berganau didn't recognise was slung over his shoulder.
Lakond ran a hand over the barrel of one of the ruined mortars. "Throne, have you seen these things, Jens?" he said quietly enough that only Sturm and Berganau could hear. "They belong in a museum."
Sturm didn't move his gaze from the treeline. He shrugged.
Berganau felt a small knot of anger rise inside him. The 13th Artillery had lost men and women today and Lakond was insulting the regiment's pride. "It's all we have," he hissed. "The Munitorum didn't exactly bless us with an oversupply of Baneblades, even before the war."
You never had any Baneblades to start with, the nagging voice in his head chided him — and it was true. Berganau had never even seen one except in books.
At the start of the conflict, the full strength PDF regiment had consisted of mostly heavy mortars, a handful of las cannon and two decrepit Hydras. On the long retreat from Terojz, the high attrition rate amongst the enginseers soon left them unable to maintain the ancient tanks. Berganau had reluctantly abandoned them, but it had not helped them escape their harrying foe. By the time the 13th Artillery limped from the western wetlands into the woods around the schola, they'd been reduced to the heavy mortars and single lascannon that their five remaining trojans could pull.
Even less than that now, he thought grimly. It's just as well: we don't have the numbers left to crew them, anyway.
"No!"
Berganau was pulled from his morbid reverie by Lakond's cry. The little man was running back towards the bodies. Two of Dorik's men were attempting to pull Dalibor down from the tree. They knew better than that, surely?
Then he saw the reason — Dalibor was still alive.
The sergeant's eyes were open. He was moaning weakly. The two soldiers spoke to him in low, rapid dialect as they frantically tried to remove the bayonets and other implements fixing him to the tree.
Berganau too ran towards them. Lakond was several metres ahead of him, yelling at the men. They ignored him.
"Stop, you fools!" Berganau bellowed in Grollan.
There was a violent clap. The noise reverberated around the clearing like the sound of a heavy object being dropped in an empty cathedral. Lakond flew backwards through the air and collided with Berganau. The blast force carried both men several metres further back before slamming them to the ground. Up and down momentarily lost meaning as a wall of dirt and shards of wood rained upon them.
Berganau staggered to his feet, stupefied by the collision and the sheer volume of the blast. His head rang. He could hear nothing but a dull whining noise in both ears.
He saw Lakond clambering to his feet, looking dazed. There was blood on his face. Lakond picked up his cap and absently dusted it down before wiping his face with a sleeve. Cleared of much of the blood, Berganau saw for the first time exactly how much of the Leigoran captain's head was scar tissue. But there was no sign of any fresh cut.
Still hearing nothing but the high-pitched droning in his ears, Berganau put a hand to his own face. He felt a warm wetness in his palm, and something small and hard which pressed against his cheek. He withdrew his hand, finding it covered in blood and tiny fragments of bone. Cradled in the centre of his palm was a gold tooth. Berganau stared at it stupidly for a moment, then fell to his knees and retched.
The vomiting helped disperse some of the cognitive fog caused by the explosion. He became aware of a hand gripping his upper arm. It was Lakond. The little man was mouthing something at him.
A moment later, Berganau's hearing returned abruptly with a rushing, roaring sensation as if his ears had just been unblocked of water.
"Get. Up." Lakond was hissing "Get up, Berganau. We have to move." He turned away from Berganau to look at Dorik. The sergeant hovered a few metres away from the two officers with the remnants of his squad. His dark eyes flicked back and forth across the clearing, his right hand fingering the trigger of his lasgun.
"Sergeant," Lakond said, "We're going back the way we came. Go."
Dorik stared at him, unmoving. Lakond uttered a small growl. "We must leave now. The traitors left this little surprise for us. They'll be nearby and God Emperor help us, they are fast." Dorik nodded and turned to his troops. They had already begun to creep backwards in the direction of the schola, needing no encouragement to depart.
Lakond turned to Sturm. The big man stood at his shoulder, apparently uninjured by the blast. Lakond pointed at the ring of trees at the far edge of the clearing. "Jens, get some height. Odds are they're coming from there. It's coastline in every other direction. See if you can't spot them before they spot us." The corporal nodded, then disappeared into the trees.
Lakond turned and set off, following in the wake of Dorik's squad at a brisk pace. He was still gripping Berganau's arm in a tight grip. Berganau stumbled and almost fell, surprised by the smaller man's strength.
"Come on, Major." Lakond urged. "That blast will draw them here like flies to a grox turd."
They plunged into the undergrowth, making no attempt at stealth. Ahead of them, Dorik's troops had split into two staggered lines. The members of the first line covered those of the second while they fell back, then the two groups swapped roles. Their movement was practised and fluid.
Lakond nodded. "At least your lot know how to retreat like soldiers, if nothing else."
We've had a lot of practice, Berganau thought glumly. Then another thought struck him. "You left Sturm back there alone. When the traitors return, he's a dead man."
"Yes, I did," Lakond swung to face him. "I ordered him to stay there and die. And he did as ordered. Do you know why?" His ugly scars contorted as he glared at Berganau. "Because he's a bloody soldier and I'm his commanding officer, that's why. It's all the reason he needs and it should be the only reason you need — all of you." He swept an arm in a gesture encompassing Dorik's squad. "You're all soldiers of the Imperium. If your commanding officer gives you an order, you do it. If it means you get to die for the Emperor, then you do that too."
"But —" Berganau tried, but Lakond silenced him with a raised finger.
"I'm not finished," he hissed. "Major, it's a miracle that commissar of yours hasn't put a bolt through your head long before now. For Throne's sake, stop worrying about what your soldiers think of you and lead them." He sighed and shook his head. "I've probably just sent the best damn guardsman I've ever served with to his death, just to save the lives of a few miserable PDF troops. But if you take a lesson from this, it just might be worth it."
Lakond tramped past the line of troops covering them and into the darkness of the trees beyond. Berganau followed. Still stunned by the horror in the clearing, the fury of Lakond's outburst left him struggling for words.
No one spoke again until they reached the schola.