Son of Sek (Gaunt’s Ghosts) Read online

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  Son of Sek – John French

  About the Author

  A Black Library Publication

  Son Of Sek

  John French

  Sartusa Shrine City, Cabal Epsilon, 777.M41

  (the 22nd year of the Sabbat Worlds Crusade)

  ‘All the sons and daughters, rolled down the red river,

  When will they return?

  When will they sing again?’

  – from the Song of Founding, Vervunhive

  I

  I will hear his voice.

  Knowing this remakes me. There are many deaths and doors which wait for our souls. I will pass through them all, bright and shining, because of what he has already given me. And now I will hear the voice. I will drown in it. I will have no voice. I will come to this existence anew. I will be a son for a second time.

  I am waiting. I have waited for many markings of time. The bowls of oil have burnt dry seven times since I came to this antechamber. The smoke from the flames is sweet. It is the smoke of Sartusa, taken from it while it was newly quieted. The first jars of oil drawn from the render-pits are brought to him, so that he can smell the worlds his sons have quieted. That this oil burns now, for me, is an honour.

  Sartusa’s silence was a thing of beauty. The flames cupped in the bowls send their shadows shivering up the walls. Each red and golden tongue is a child of the fire we made on that blessed world. We took the city’s voices one by one, cut by cut, shot by shot, until there was red flowing free of the doors, and the streets were red mirrors to the pyre. Its people fought. Oh, how they fought. Bullets and flashes roared at us from windows, from the trenches topped with bags of sand, from the pits that shells had dug in the earth. Many of us fell. Many became the meat that is all that life is when it has no voice. I can see them now, the heaped bodies made red and wet. Their voices are one now, and they no longer hear the lie of their hearts, the lie that life is more than passing instants sliced into seconds by a pulse. We came on, though, and the unshriven tried to hold on, to deny us, not to cry out even though smoke hid the sky, and the horizon was flame. Ignorance is not without resilience. They fought until it was just one circle around a statue to their god.

  The pyre had stolen all sound, and we stood in the magnificence of what we had done, in the rain that fell black with ash. We looked in at the few that still resisted, water running from our blades and from the mouths of our guns. They looked back, and shouted as though fury can banish futility: such defiance, such deafness. Their faces were skin masks painted in dust and soot, their eyes wide windows into fear.

  Except one.

  One figure stood tall, a sword still in his hand, head unbowed. They call such creatures heroes. He called on us to come to an end by his hand, cursed us in words that have no meaning, spoke of the armour of contempt, and the shield of the soul. His words bought him nothing, though. He ended there, beneath the eyes of his indifferent god. He died by my hand. He deserves nothing, but for now I will remember him. He is why I am here. His death brought me here. The fires of the world he failed to save touch my eyes, and do me honour. He Whose Voice Drowns Out All Others will ask me of this dead man, because I was the one to end him. I heard the last words from between his teeth.

  I alone know him.

  II

  He was born on a world which ate its young. The fume-stacks reached halfway to the sky, and their smoke joined soot-streaked earth to blank, grey clouds. The sound of hammers was the music of this world. Great blank slabs of iron, brushed panels of plasteel, bright wafers of auric, all came from beneath the blows of men and women too old to walk the streets, and children too small to lift a gun. Crammed into honeycombs of workshops at the edges of the foundries, they breathed air spiced by coal and mineral dust.

  He was one of them, one of the grey world’s children: his eyes turned to a squint by the forge light, which was never more than a glow, his skin greyed by dust and his hands cooked to pink gloss by forge heat. He never knew his parents. They had gone beyond the smoke, to the wars fought in the stars. He thought of them, though, huddling around the memories of hands holding him, and hair brushing his cheek as he fell into sleep. He slept in the workshop. He would curl up in a rockcrete niche at the back, behind the stacked sheets of finished metal, and exhaustion would drop him into oblivion as the hammers rang on and on.

  People faded and vanished from his life. Time took some. Jacobin, the workshop’s master, went in a season of coughs that brought black sludge from his lungs. His death took something away. It took away the voice that screamed louder than even the hammers. It took away the whip of oiled wire. It took away the only face that had stayed the same for as long as he could remember. He had cried when the old man died, and had not known why.

  The hammers rang on.

  Nothing remained for long, except the turning of seasons marked by smothering heat or burning rain. Children grew and vanished to the stars. Others came, ragged people who had travelled from far away, men and women with broken bodies, who screamed through their sleep. Some worked, some tried to work and then just stopped, and some never tried and were taken by the overseers. He supposed that they went somewhere where it did not matter that they stared into space, tears gathering in the corners of their eyes. He hoped that was where they went. He did not think too much on it, though. Nothing lasted, and nothing needed to be part of tomorrow, no matter how much it had been part of yesterday.

  And more new people came, as others around him grew and vanished. That was how Hekadia came to him. She had half a face. Scars cratered the right-hand side. The left half was not there. She covered it with a shell of green plastek. Underneath the mask her skin was like fat left close to a flame. All the way down to the bone. He saw it once, when a beam caught the top of her head and knocked the mask off. He saw, and she saw that he had seen. She did not shout. She just hit him hard enough for him to wake minutes later in a pool of his own vomit.

  Eventually, when she had drunk a jug of tar-liqueur, he asked her half the question he had been holding inside since the first newcomer had arrived.

  ‘Where are you from?’

  ‘Not here.’

  ‘But you… you were somewhere before you were here?’

  ‘I was… serving the Emperor.’ She laughed. It was the same laugh she made when the preachers walked the streets outside the workshops, calling out the rotes of service above the clangour. He did not like the priests. He did not dislike them either. They were just another layer of noise that came and went.

  ‘Where was that?’

  ‘Out there, Anarkos, Khan II, Nyzon… Take your pick.’

  ‘Are they… in the stars?’

  ‘Yeah,’ she nodded.

  ‘What are stars?’

  ‘You want to see them? You want to know?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘How old are you?’

  He shrugged.

  ‘You will find out soon enough,’ she had said, and took a long gulp of black liquor. ‘I guarantee it.’

  Hekadia went later. One day she did not wake up. They took her out to the wagon on its first pass of the day.

  She was right though.

  He grew older, stronger. The cycles of work, and sleep, and grey gruel were his breath and the beat of his heart. The hammer in his hand was as much a part of him as the spark burns on his face, or the soot shading his skin. He learnt enough to know that when people went away they went somewhere to die in a war that sucked up each generation as soon as it was old enough. He knew that he would go to the stars himself one day,
just like the rest. And, though he never made it real by saying it, he wanted to go.

  At least then it would be over.

  III

  There are many steps to silence, from birth to death, from death to revelation.

  We begin as creatures, not as humans – creatures whose existences are a shell of falsehoods. We wear our lies as scales over our true skins. Our voices and thoughts are the noise of confusion and desperation, and fear. We hold tight onto the thread of hope that we believe is our soul, and we babble on, not realising that each syllable of sound, each note of every thought, means nothing.

  I do not know if all who serve He Whose Voice Drowns Out All Others became his sons as I did. Perhaps it is different for each of us, perhaps not.

  My revelation began with the Room of Voices.

  Hands dragged me there, hands and hooks. Stitches held my eyes shut. I wanted to scream, but a spiked tongue of iron held my own tongue still, and kept my mouth closed. They pulled me across floors of warm metal, and bare earth. At last they took the bridle from my mouth, and left me on cold, polished stone.

  For a moment I breathed, and did not move.

  Then I called out.

  The sound cut through me. My cries were all around me, rising higher and higher, echoing and combining until they were a flock of needles and hammers. I tried to press my hands against my ears. Iron thorns had been bound to my fingers. I tore my hands away from my face. I cried again, and the sound of my pain crashed back over me. My own voice was deafening me. The shriek dragged through me like razor wire. I bit my lips closed.

  Slice by slice the echoes faded. I bathed in the silence, so relieved that I wanted to weep, but I made no sound. The silence deepened.

  It was so quiet, so utterly quiet. It was wonderful. It felt like freedom, like breathing after drowning, like…

  My heart beat in my chest. I could hear it, each dull, thump beat, rising, rising, hammering through me from within. My breath quickened as the drum beat rose, each inhalation a saw edge, each exhalation a bellow. I pulled my limbs closer, trying to slow my heart. The rags I wore rustled like a forest in a gale.

  And on and on, each beat and breath a crack of thunder.

  It has to stop.

  It has to stop.

  Please let it stop.

  ‘Please make it stop!’

  And my own weak plea ripped me apart. My eardrums burst. Blood ran from my mouth, and ears, and eyes.

  The sound did not stop. It roared through my skin and bones. I wanted the silence again, its agony forgotten. The thought of it was everything. I shivered, and bit blood from my lips, until the tormenting voice was fading.

  Fading…

  Fading…

  And there was silence, and for a second it felt like everything.

  Then the quiet crowded close again, and the pleas for mercy began to bubble up to my mouth.

  And on it went, until I could bear it no more, and the seconds between silence and cacophony were everything I lived for, and then not enough to live for. And I remembered the iron thorns bound to my hands.

  That last time – as the beat of my heart faded to softness, pure, nothing – they came for me, and they dragged me back into life.

  Someone put a hand on my skull, as other hands lifted me. The fingers on my scalp are warm, resonating metal.

  ‘Do you understand?’ asks a voice, which vibrates through my skull. ‘Do you hear it now?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I… I understand.’

  IV

  Las-fire laced the air above him. He dived low, and the soft mud smacked up into his face. He got a mouthful, a full thick taste of the swamp-mulch. It tasted of chemicals, of things dissolving slowly in still water. The whack-snap of energy bolts was thick in his ears. He pulled his head up, and his eyes hit the strobing sheet of fog above.

  ‘Frag.’

  A black geyser of mud exploded ten strides behind him. Las-bolts smacked into the falling mud in flashes of steam.

  Fizz-thump, fizz-thump, fizz-thump…

  Voices rose against the gunfire. He did not recognise them. They just all sounded raw, ripped from dry throats. They all sounded like sudden and complete terror.

  ‘Castyuran! Gord! Anyone!’

  Fizz-thump, fizz-thump, fizz-thump…

  ‘Medic.’

  ‘Where are they?’

  ‘Left flank.’

  Fizz-thump, fizz-thump, fizz-thump…

  ‘I can’t see them.’

  ‘Medic!’

  ‘Dead ahead.’

  Fizz-thump, fizz-thump, fizz-thump…

  ‘Sacred Throne.’

  ‘Medic!’

  Another weapon started up, something heavy, something that began to tear up the damp folds of ground with lumps of metal.

  He had hold of his lasgun, but it was half buried under him. His helmet was gone, too. He had to move. Fact. No doubt. White-hot certainty ran down his spine.

  He had listened in training. Had done all the drills, and thought through what was likely to happen once they were on the ground. They had been walking that ground for a week, and had seen the corpses of those who had come before them. He had tried to see the lessons in their blank eyes and slumped shapes. He would have read the manuals, too, but he could not do that, never learnt how. All of the training said stay still, work with the squad, look for officers to tell you what to do, and keep hold of your gun.

  Apart from the last part it all now seemed like picking the patch of ground to die on.

  Fizz-thump, fizz-thump, fizz-thump…

  He rolled over, slithering across the black ground. His breath sucked hard between his teeth. The swell of gunfire grew. Earth pattered down on him. People were still shouting. His world was a slit of sight just above the ground. Neon-stitches passed just above his head.

  Fizz-thump, fizz-thump, fizz-thump…

  He rolled over, looked up. A lacework of light covered the sky above.

  Fizz-thump, fizz-thump, fizz-thump…

  Left to right, left to right, always left to right.

  Fizz-thump, fizz-thump, fizz-thump…

  He rolled back over. The world had squeezed in around him. The shouts and gunfire had slid backwards in his mind, like the hammer ring of struck metal.

  ‘Fall back.’

  ‘Fire at will.’

  ‘My hand, they got my hand!

  Fizz-thump, fizz-thump, fizz-thump…

  He could see a ridge of broken bricks poking up from the mud ten paces in front of him. Ten paces.

  The heavier gun opened up again, its base note blending with the cackle of las-fire.

  Ten paces.

  ‘They are moving!’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I think…’

  Fizz-thump, fizz-thump, fizz-thump…

  The heavy gun’s stuttered beat slackened, paused.

  He pulled his legs under him, came up to a crouch, and ran.

  Fizz-thump, fizz-thump, fizz-thump, fizz-thump, fizz-thump, fizz-thump…

  His heart was a fist punching his ribs. Something whipped his legs. Stinging pain, bright sharp.

  He reached the scrap of wall. There was shouting behind him, voices he recognised. He dropped over the wall, pressed himself to the ground, and began to crawl forward. He could see now. The enemy was on his left, a ragged line of muzzle flashes among a stand of splintered trees. He could see something moving, las-light glinting on a fat barrel as it was dragged around. He pulled his gun up, fingers sliding and slapping on the catches.

  Sight, look through the damned sight.

  He looked, paused, breathed, and pulled the trigger. Las-bolts flickered out. Wood puffed to splinters and steam. He heard more shouts. The enemy gunfire weakened. Someone dropped over the wall next to him. He heard heavy breat
hing, and then the crack of a gun firing right next to his ear. He flinched, swearing, his finger coming off the trigger.

  A figure rose from the stand of trees. He saw mud-smudged ochre fatigues, and a face of stitch scars and bright inked feathers. It looked almost comical. It was not a joke though, except perhaps a cruel one.

  For a second, he watched the painted man scuttle forward, hugging the ground, buckles and hooked knives jangling and jumping. Then a blurt of gunfire stung the wall in front of him.

  He ducked, rolled, and came up a pace from where he had been. The painted man was closer, much, much closer. He could see tiny teardrops of bone hanging on loops from the stitched face. There was a fat, dull green sphere in the painted man’s hand, its pin already a silver glimmer on the ground behind. He brought his gun up, and pulled the trigger.

  Nothing.

  He looked down. The empty charge light winked red from the gun casing. The gun of whoever was next to him had gone silent too.

  He looked up in time to see the painted man throw the grenade. He ducked. The grenade hit the soft earth behind the wall and to his left.

  ‘Holy–’

  The grenade detonated. The blast wave juddered through him. His head slammed against the back of his gun. Wet particles pattered down his back. His ears rang. He was breathing.

  He was breathing.

  He looked up. A hump of ripped fabric and wet meat lay next to him. He saw teeth, a string of white shards in mashed pink. A breath sawed out of his mouth. He was still staring at the teeth.

  The painted man came over the lip of wall and landed in a crouch. They stared at each other, as though surprised to meet. The painted man had grey eyes.

  He lunged forward, trying to hit the painted man’s face with the gun in his hand. The edge of the casing hit something. He was aware of hands scrabbling at him, of the clink of a knife slipping from a hook into a hand. The man smelled of sweat and blood and sugared cinnamon. Something punched him in the thigh, hard. The painted man’s eyes were wide in their setting of scars and feathers. Another punch, another numb deadness, like being hit by a hammer. He pulled back, and his legs folded like soft jelly. The painted man rose, a long, dirty needle of a knife in his fist, fresh blood thick on the ochre fatigues.