HE KNEW HE was being tested. He knew that this was responsibility and that he’d better not mess it up. Gaunt also knew that it was his moment to prove to his mentor Oktar that he had the makings of a commissar.
There was no set duration for the training of a cadet. After education at the Schola Progenium and Guard basic training, a cadet received the rest of his training in the field, and the promotion to full commissarial level was a judgement matter for his commanding officer. Oktar, and Oktar alone, could make him or break him. His career as an Imperial commissar, to dispense discipline, inspiration and the love of the God-Emperor of Terra to the greatest fighting force in creation, hinged upon his performance.
Gaunt was an intense, quiet young man, and a commissarial post had been his dearest ambition since his earliest days in the Schola Progenium. But he trusted Oktar to be fair. The commissar-general had personally selected him for service from the cadet honour class, and had become in the last eighteen months almost a father to Gaunt. A stern, ruthless father, perhaps. The father he had never really known.
‘See that burning wing?’ Oktar had said. ‘That’s a way in. The Secessionists must be falling back into their inner chambers by now. General Caernavar and I propose putting a few squads in through that hole and cutting out their centre. Are you up to it?’
Gaunt had paused, his heart in his throat. ‘Sir… you want me to…’
‘Lead them in. Yes. Don’t look so shocked, Ibram. You’re always asking me for a chance to prove your leadership. Who do you want?’
‘My choice?’
‘Your choice.’
‘Men from the fourth brigade. Tanhause is a good squad leader and his men are specialists in room to room fighting. Give me them, and Rychlind’s heavy weapons team.’
‘Good choices, Ibram. Prove me right.’
THEY MOVED PAST the fire and into long halls decorated with tapestries where the wind moaned and light fell slantwise from the high windows. Cadet Gaunt led the men personally, as Oktar would have done, the lasgun held tightly in his hands, his blue-trimmed cadet commissar uniform perfectly turned out.
In the fifth hallway, the Secessionists began their last-ditch counter-attack.
Lasfire cracked and blasted at them. Cadet Gaunt ducked behind an antique sofa that swiftly became a pile of antique matchwood. Tanhause moved up behind him.
‘What now?’ the lean, corded Hyrkan major asked.
‘Give me grenades,’ Gaunt said.
They were provided. Gaunt took the webbing belt and set the timers on all twenty grenades. ‘Call up Walthem,’ he told Tanhause.
Trooper Walthem moved up. Gaunt knew he was famous in the regiment for the power of his throw. He’d been a javelin champion back home on Hyrkan.
‘Put this where it counts,’ Gaunt said.
Walthem hefted the belt of grenades with a tiny grunt. Sixty paces down, the corridor disintegrated.
They moved in, through the drifting smoke and masonry dust. The spirit had left the Secessionist defence. They found Degredd, the rebel leader, lying dead with his mouth fused around the barrel of his lasgun.
Gaunt signalled to General Caernavar and Commissar-General Oktar that the fight was over. He marshalled the prisoners out with their hands on their heads as Hyrkan troops set about disabling gun emplacements and munitions stores.
‘WHAT DO WE do with her?’ Tanhause asked him.
Gaunt turned from the assault cannon he had been stripping of its firing pin.
The girl was lovely, white-skinned and black haired, as was the pedigree of the Darendarans. She clawed at the clenching hands of the Hyrkan troops hustling her and other prisoners down the draughty hallway.
When she saw Gaunt, she stopped dead. He expected vitriol, anger, the verbal abuse so common in the defeated and imprisoned whose beliefs and cause had been crushed. But what he saw in her face froze him in surprise. Her eyes were glassy, deep, like polished marble. There was a look in her face as she stared back at him. Gaunt shivered when he realised the look was recognition.
‘There will be seven,’ she said suddenly, speaking surprisingly perfect High Gothic with no trace of the local accent. The voice didn’t seem to be her own. It was guttural, and its words did not match the movement of her lips. ‘Seven stones of power. Cut them and you will be free. Do not kill them. But first you must find your ghosts.’
‘Enough of your madness!’ Tanhause snapped, then ordered the men to take her away. The girl was vacant-eyed by now and