the dead zone; typhus, gangrene, livestock anthrax bred in the corrupting husks of pack animals and cavalry steeds, and the vicious mycotoxins that hungrily devoured all organic matter transforming it into a black, insidious mould.
As first officer to the Tanith First, Corbec had been privy to the dispatches circulated from the general staff. He knew that nearly eighty per cent of the fatalities amongst the Imperial Guard since the invasion began had been down to gas, disease and secondary infection. A Shriven soldier could face you point-blank with a charged lasgun and still your chances of survival would be better than if you took a stroll in no-man’s land.
Muffled and blinkered by the mask, Corbec edged his unit on. They reached a bifurcation in the support trenches and Corbec called up Sergeant Grell, officer of the fifth platoon, instructing him to take three fire-teams to the left and cleanse whatever they found. The men moved off and Corbec became aware of his increasing frustration. Nothing had come back from the scouts. He was moving as blind as he had been before he sent them out.
Advancing now at double-time, the colonel led his remaining hundred or so men along a wide communication trench. Two of his sharper-eyed vanguard moved in front, using magnetically sensitive wands attached to heavy backpacks to sweep for explosives and booby traps. It seemed that the Shriven had pulled back too rapidly to leave any surprises, but every few metres, the column stopped as one of the sweepers found something hot: a tin cup, a piece of armour, a canteen tray. Sometimes it was a strange idol made of smelt ore from the forge furnaces that the corrupted workers had carved into some bestial form. Corbec personally put his laspistol to each one and blew it into fragments.
The third time he did this, the wretched thing he was destroying blew up in sharp fragments as his round tore it open along some fault. Trooper Drayl, cowering a few paces away, was hit in the collarbone by a shard, which dug into the flesh. He winced and sat back in the mud, hard. Sergeant Curral called up the medic, who put on a field dressing.
Corbec cursed his own stupidity. He was so anxious to erase any trace of the Shriven cult he had hurt one of his own.
‘It’s nothing, sir,’ Drayl said through his gas mask as Corbec helped him to his feet. ‘At Voltis Watergate I took a bayonet in the thigh.’
‘And back home on Tanith he got a broken bottle end in his cheek in a bar fight!’ laughed Trooper Coll behind them. ‘He’s had worse.’
The men around them laughed, ugly, sucking sounds through their respirators. Corbec nodded to show he was in tune with them. Drayl was a handsome, popular soldier whose songs and good humour kept his platoon in decent spirits. Corbec also knew that Drayl’s roguish exploits were a matter of regimental legend.
‘My mistake, Drayl,’ Corbec said, ‘I owe you a drink.’
‘At the very least, colonel,’ Drayl said and deftly armed his lasgun to show he was ready to continue.
Eight
THEY MOVED ON. They reached a section of trench where a monumental shell had fallen short and blown the thin cavity open in a huge crater wound nearly thirty metres across. Already, brackish ground water was welling up in its bowl. With only the sweepers ahead of him, Corbec waded in first to lead them across into the cover where the trench recommenced. The water came up to his mid-thigh and was acidic. He could feel it burning the flesh of his legs through his fatigues and there was a faint swirl of mist around the cloth of his uniform as the fabric began to burn. He ordered the men behind him back and scrambled up on the far side to join the sweepers. The three of them looked down at their legs, horrified by the way the water had already begun to eat into the tunic cloth. Corbec felt lesions forming on his thighs and shins.
He turned back to Sergeant Curral at the head of the column across the crater.
‘Move the men up and round!’ he cried. ‘And bring the medic over in the first party.’ Afraid by the exposure of moving around the lip of the crater against the sky, the men traversed quickly and timidly. Corbec had Curral regroup them on the far side in fire-team lines along each side of the trench. The medic came to him and the sweepers,