chasm. But the others had him, striking and pummelling him hard. Three sets of hands, three men.
‘Enough! Ebzan, enough! He’s mine!’
Dazed, Gaunt was dragged upright by the three Patricians. Through fogged eyes, across the cavern, he saw Flense advancing, pushing Dorden before him, a lasgun to the pale old medic’s temple.
‘Gaunt.’
‘Flense! You fething madman! This isn’t the time!’
‘On the contrary, colonel-commissar, this is the time. At last the time… for you, for me. A reckoning.’
The three Jantine soldiers muscled Gaunt up to face Flense and his captive.
‘If it’s the prize you want, Flense, you’re too late. It’ll be gone by the time you get there,’ Gaunt hissed.
‘Prize? Prize?’ Flense smiled, his scar-tissue twitching. ‘I don’t care for that. Let Dravere care, or that monster Heldane. I spit upon their prize! You are all I have come for!’
‘I’m touched,’ Gaunt said and one of the men smacked him hard around the back of the head.
Reluctantly, the three Jantine Patricians set him free and stood back. Head spinning, Gaunt straightened up to face Flense and Dorden.
‘Now we settle this matter of honour,’ Flense said.
Gaunt grinned disarmingly at Flense, without humour. ‘Matter of honour? Are we still on this? The Tanith-Jantine feud? You’re a perfect idiot, Flense, you know that?’
Flense grimaced, pushing the pistol tighter into the wincing forehead of Dorden. ‘Do you so mock the old debt? Do you want me to shoot this man before your very eyes?’
‘Mock on,’ Dorden murmured. ‘Better he shoot me than I listen to any more of his garbage.’
‘Don’t pretend you don’t know the depth of the old wound, the old treachery,’ Flense said spitefully.
Gaunt sighed. ‘Dercius. You mean Dercius! Sacred Feth, but isn’t that done with? I know the Jantine have never liked admitting they had a coward on their spotless honour role, but this is taking things too far! Dercius, General Dercius, Emperor rot his filthy soul, left my father and his unit to die on Kentaur. He ran away and left them. When I executed Dercius on Khedd all those years ago, it was a battlefield punishment, as is my right to administer as an Imperial commissar!
‘He deserted his men, Flense! Throne of Earth, there’s not a regiment in the Guard that doesn’t have a black sheep, a wayward son! Dercius was the Jantine’s disgrace! That’s no reason to prolong a rivalry with me and my Ghosts! This mindless feuding has cost the lives of good men, on both sides! So what if we beat you to the punch on Fortis? So what of Pyrites and aboard the Absalom? You jackass Jantine don’t know when to stop, do you? You don’t know where honour ends and discipline begins!’
Flense shot Dorden in the side of the head and the medic’s body crumpled. Gaunt made to leap forward, incandescent with rage, but Flense raised the pistol to block him.
‘It’s an honour thing, all right,’ Flense spat, ‘but forget the Jantine and the Tanith. It’s an honour thing between you and me.’
‘What are you saying, Flense?’ growled Gaunt through his fury.
‘Your father, my father. I was the son of a dynasty on Jant Normanidus. The heir to a province and a wide estate. You sent my father to hell in disgrace and all my lands and titles were stripped from me. Even my family name. That went too. I was forced to battle my way up and into the service as a footslogger. Prove my worth, make my own name. My life has been one long, hellish struggle against infamy thanks to you.’
‘Your father?’ Gaunt echoed.
‘My father. Aldo Dercius.’
The truth of it resonated in Ibram Gaunt’s mind. He saw, truly understood now, how this could end no other way. He launched himself at Flense.
The pistol fired. Gaunt felt a stinging heat across his chest as he barrelled into the Patrician colonel. They rolled over on the rocks, sharp angles cutting into their flesh. Flense smashed the pistol butt into the side of Gaunt’s head.
Gaunt mashed his elbow sideways and felt ribs break. Flense yowled and clawed at the commissar, wrenching him over his head in a cartwheel flip. Gaunt landed on his back hard, struggled to rise and met Flense’s kick in the face. He slammed back over the rocks and loose pebbles, skittering stone fragments out from under him.
Flense leapt again, encountering Gaunt’s up-swinging boot as he dived forward, smashing the wind out of his chest. Flense fell on Gaunt; the Patrician’s hands clawed into his throat. Gaunt was