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  Execution – Rachel Harrison

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  Execution

  Rachel Harrison

  The sky screams. The ground underfoot screams. In the distance, men and women scream too. The noise is catastrophic, underpinned by the thunder of artillery and the crack of the void shields protecting the rebel-held fortress of Morne. They are the sounds of a siege.

  A siege that is failing.

  Commissar Severina Raine ignores it all. She’s focused on the man in front of her. Captain Tevar Lun of the 11th Antari Rifles stands with his lasgun held loose at his side. His grey eyes are locked on hers, unflinching.

  It’s admirable, considering her bolt pistol is pointed at his face.

  ‘You are refusing your orders,’ Raine says coldly.

  Lun puts down his rifle, leaning it against the rough wall of the earthworks. The stock of his gun and his flak armour are scored with kill-markings and prayers carved in spiked Antari script. White scratches against the grey-and-green camouflage plates.

  ‘I will not do it,’ he says. ‘Not my brothers. Not my sisters.’

  Lun’s eyes flicker to the fortress walls. The wall-mounted guns are firing into the dawn sky, tracking after a flight of Valkyrie gunships that pull up and away, tearing holes in the clouds.

  ‘Those guns are built to kill tanks and aircraft,’ he says. ‘They turned Keld and his squad to mist.’

  Raine saw it too. Not just that, she smelled it on the wind. Rich iron in the cold air. The rebels had disengaged the overrides on the guns and used them that way as a show of force. It was a show of something else as well.

  Arrogance.

  ‘Keld was foolish, and slow,’ she says. ‘Be neither, and the Emperor will see us across. I will see us across.’

  It’s his one chance. A chance she would not give to most of the guardsmen serving with her. She extends it to Tevar Lun because of what he is. A clear head. A faithful heart. A captain respected by all of the squads under his command.

  But Tevar Lun doesn’t take the chance he’s offered. He shakes his head instead.

  ‘What you ask of us,’ he says, ‘it’s suicide.’

  There’s a break in the noise of the artillery, as if the world is waiting for her reply. Raine lets out a slow breath. Her aim doesn’t waver.

  ‘That is your mistake,’ Raine says. ‘You think that I am asking.’

  And without pause, without doubt, she pulls the trigger. The report of the bolt pistol is a loud, flat bang. Blood spatters her face. She doesn’t flinch. Doesn’t blink. The blood is hers to bear. As Lun’s body collapses, Raine hears the slow release of breath from the other Antari standing around her. The flexing of gloved fingers. A snatch of whispered prayer. Then the artillery starts up again. Compared to that quiet moment, it almost seems a relief.

  Raine looks at each of them in turn. At Sergeant Daven Wyck and his Wyldfolk, twenty-five strong. At Lydia Zane and the medic, Nuria Lye. At the storm trooper captain, Andren Fel, and his squad of four. None of them look away, even as their captain’s blood soaks the ground at their feet. He made them unflinching too. She is thankful for that.

  ‘We have our orders,’ she shouts over the noise. ‘We know what needs to be done.’

  They all nod, still not looking away. That’s how Raine catches the open resentment in some of those grey Antari eyes. First Wyck, who is no surprise, and hardly needs more reason. He resents her because she is not of Antar, though he masks it with careful words. She expects it from him, but this time he isn’t alone. It’s Varn, too. The big man is breathing hard through his teeth, his fire-scarred hands clenched into fists. The third is Lydia Zane. She was standing close to Lun when he was shot. The others keep a superstitious distance from her. From her pale-veined skin and her crown of cables, and her eyes that see even when they are closed. Zane’s face doesn’t change, but she puts her hand to her throat. To where her captain’s blood has dashed across it. Raine knows that the next moments are critical. That she must turn that resentment against the enemy, against the fortress, or they will fail here and now.

  She also knows that if it comes down to it, she will bear more Antari blood to get it done.

  ‘The orders that Captain Lun refused are not just my orders,’ she says. ‘They are the orders of Lord-General Serek. They are the orders of High Command.’

  She looks at Wyck, then Varn, then Zane.

  ‘Above all, they are the orders of the Emperor himself.’

  There is no change in Wyck or Zane, but Varn blinks. His face drains of colour. Raine hears a muttered prayer from the group.

  ‘So it is that I speak for the Emperor,’ Raine says. ‘Refuse me, and you refuse Him.’

  Zane glances down at her bloody fingertips. Wyck shifts his weight. Around them, the trench network stretches for miles. More than half of the regiment has been deployed outside the fortress of Morne. Over three thousand Antari souls. Infantry, mechanised and artillery. They are not alone, either. The Kavrone 21st took heavy losses recapturing the city of Thadar, but they have brought everything they have left in support of the Antari. Tracks and tank-frames rattle. Petro-chem engines roar. Mortars fire. The sky is lit with explosions. A second sunrise over the world of Drast, and the fortress on the hill. Raine tightens her fingers around the grip of her bolt pistol.

  ‘Will you refuse?’ she says.

  There is a solid, shouted chorus of ‘No, commissar,’ from every soldier in the trench. It is loudest from Varn, who has his head bowed now, penitent. Zane and Wyck are less so, but they say the words like everyone else. That sits fine with Severina Raine. She doesn’t care about their hatred, as long as they obey. Her finger moves away from her pistol’s trigger.

  ‘We will open the way for our forces to take the fortress,’ Raine says. ‘To break it.’

  The combat engineer Crys bares her teeth in a smile. It’s a white stripe in her bloody face.

  ‘Aye, commissar,’ she says.

  The Antari shift. Their mood is turning. Their conviction growing.

  ‘The rebels in that fortress think that this noise they make is thunder,’ Raine says. ‘But they have heard nothing of the Antari Rifles.’

  They all salute her, arms snapping up to make the sign of the aquila.

  ‘In His name!’ Raine cries.

  And it isn’t just Crys that answers, it’s every soldier in the trench.

  ‘In His name!’ they shout over the roar of the guns.

  Raine can never sleep the night before a deployment. Instead, she sits out on the ridge, watching the sky light with distant fires. The wind brings her the sounds of war. The taste of smoke and burned earth. She finds it a comfort.

  In her hand she holds her timepiece, the same way she always does on those nights. It’s brass and bone, marked with her family seal. The only piece of her family that Raine has managed to hang on to.

  ‘Thought I’d find you here.’

  The voice comes from behind her. Raine doesn’t have to turn to see who it is. She puts the timepiece back into the pocket of her greatcoat.

  ‘Come,’ she says. ‘Sit.’

  Andren Fel sits down beside her on the ridge. He is holding two battered tin cups, and he hands one to her. It’s tea. She can see the loose, flat leaves floating in it, even in the dark. Raine had never once had tea. Not until her assignment to the Rifles. Not until she started meeting with Andren Fel. Now it’s tradition, and the Antari take their traditions ve
ry seriously.

  ‘The burned reaches, then.’ Andren follows her gaze. ‘At first light.’

  ‘That’s what they are called now,’ Raine says. ‘They were grain fields, once. Crops for miles, like an ocean of gold.’

  There is nothing left now of the fields, or anything else, thanks to the rebellion. It had started with small betrayals, as such things often do. A spike in the murder rate. Banned texts found on factory workers. Great, ugly symbols burned into the fields of crops. After eight days, the cities were gripped by riots. Eight days after that, a great pyre was raised in Drast’s sprawling capital city of Thadar. Thousands blinded themselves and leapt into the flames one after another in the name of something false and frightening: in the name of the Baleful Eye. Since then, it has not rained, and the sky has become heavy and sick, draped over the world like soaked bandages.

  ‘They’re calling it the unbreakable fortress of Morne,’ Andren says. ‘Saying it’s where the rebel leaders are hiding.’

  The rebel leaders. Once Lord and Lady Morne, servants of the Imperium, now traitors. Heretics. Their own heirs were among those sacrificed in Thadar. Raine watches as a bolt of light spears into the sky in the distance. The boom comes a moment later.

  ‘A half-truth,’ she says. ‘But no fortress is unbreakable. We will drag them out of it, or crush them under it, by His grace.’

  Andren puts down his cup, then steeples his fingers for a moment. It’s a superstitious gesture that Raine has only ever seen from the Antari. Andren does it often.

  ‘By His grace,’ he says.

  ‘The guns fire six hundred rounds before they need to cycle.’

  Raine watches the walls as she speaks. She watches the streaks of white-hot gunfire against the grey sky. Her eyes flicker to the timepiece. The hand ticks down.

  Three.

  Two.

  ‘There,’ she says.

  The guns cease fire. There’s a high-pitched whine as they run dry, then a grinding clatter that echoes across the open ground as the rebels reload. It is answered by shelling from the Antari lines. Dirt is thrown into the air in great plumes, each shell landing closer to the void shield until they impact against it with loud cracks. Even this far out, Raine can smell the ozone.

  ‘How long?’ says Daven Wyck, from beside her.

  ‘Five minutes,’ she says.

  The sergeant narrows his eyes and spits on the ground.

  ‘Plus one or two for them to realign to point downwards,’ says Yulia Crys. ‘If we’re lucky.’

  She looks up at the guns, shielding her eyes. Crys is taller than Raine by a head. Broad in the shoulders and hips. The left side of her face is a mess of old burn scars that run up into her hairline and around the ragged mess of her ear.

  ‘You’re sure?’ Raine says.

  ‘That’s what it looked like,’ Crys says. ‘When they took out Keld’s Fenwalkers.’

  Raine nods. Deaths can be costly, but they are rarely purposeless.

  ‘You’re confident you can breach those walls without heavy weapons?’ she says.

  ‘I wouldn’t say no to heavy weapons, but yes, I can breach it. Anything that’s built, sir.’

  Raine can believe it. The units in her platoon specialise in demolition, but Crys is an expert among experts.

  ‘It’ll be the getting there,’ Crys says. ‘Sure as anything there’ll be rebels in the field, and longshots on the walls, in the towers.’

  ‘We have the Duskhounds,’ Raine says. ‘They will get you there.’

  Wyck smiles. Unlike the others, he isn’t scarred or tattooed. He is tall and lean with handsome, even features and fair hair, like the old illuminations of saints. Despite all of that, his smile is wholly unpleasant.

  ‘More importantly, we have faith,’ he says. ‘And our blades.’

  The words sound right, but Raine knows Wyck. He casts good words about him like a cloak to hide the sharp edges of his soul; the part that truly enjoys killing. That’s why he’s wound tight, his hands white-knuckled on the stock of his gun. That and the stimms. He thinks that she doesn’t know. That he’s capable of hiding it from her.

  Things don’t remain hidden from Severina Raine. She digs them out and drags them into the light. When he ceases to be useful, she’ll do exactly the same to Daven Wyck.

  ‘There is one more thing,’ Raine says. ‘Zane.’

  There’s a flicker of distaste in Wyck’s eyes.

  ‘Where is she?’ asks Raine.

  Crys looks past Raine, back up the trench.

  ‘She’s with Lun, sir,’ she says.

  Lydia Zane sits cross-legged in the trench beside the body of her former captain. He’s been draped with his Antari rain-cloak. Zane has hold of the corner of it between her thumb and forefinger. She doesn’t open her eyes, doesn’t let go.

  ‘I will do what you ask,’ she says, before Raine has the chance to speak. ‘Whatever you ask.’

  ‘I know,’ Raine says.

  ‘Good,’ Zane says. ‘Duty comes first in all things, though I do not need to tell you so, commissar.’

  Raine nods, though Zane’s eyes are still closed. She knows that the psyker doesn’t need them to see.

  ‘In the moments before he did it, I knew Lun would refuse you,’ Zane says. ‘Just as I knew how you would answer his refusal. Strange, how even the deaths you expect still sting.’

  Zane opens her eyes. They are bloodshot, like always. She smiles, and her thin skin crinkles like parchment left too long in the sun.

  ‘Which I also do not need to tell you, of course.’

  Raine doesn’t nod this time. She doesn’t acknowledge Zane’s words at all. The deaths she carries with her are not for sharing. Zane’s smile disappears and she looks down at Lun’s body.

  ‘He was not afraid, you know,’ she says. ‘Well, we are all of us afraid sometimes, but that is not why he stood against you.’

  Raine looks down at Lun’s body as well.

  ‘It doesn’t matter why,’ she says. ‘It was a moment of weakness, and weakness cannot be tolerated. If you allow cracks to appear in glass, then you should not be surprised when it breaks and bloodies you.’

  A long moment passes between them.

  ‘You are correct, of course,’ Zane says. ‘I know this better than most.’

  She lets go of the corner of the drape and gets to her feet, leaning on her staff. It is made of a dark wood, set with gems and wound tight with cables. More cables snake from her hairless head, glimmering silver. A witch’s crown. The psyker is tall, like most Antari, but her limbs are corded and thin, the bones showing easily through her skin. It could be mistaken for fragility, but Raine knows better. She has seen Lydia Zane pull apart a tank, piece by piece, peeling the armour back with a curl of her hand. It was chilling to watch, though it was nothing compared to what Zane did to those cowering inside.

  ‘Stick close to the Duskhounds,’ Raine says. ‘They will watch you. Whatever Fel says, do it without question. As if it were me.’

  Zane nods.

  ‘As if it were you, commissar.’

  ‘So, then,’ Raine says. ‘I believe you owe me a story, captain.’

  Andren’s posture changes slightly. A shift in his shoulders. It’s how he looks at ease, or as close to at ease as a man like Andren Fel can get.

  ‘Sure enough,’ he says. ‘And what story would you like me to tell?’

  The two of them began sharing stories as a way for her to better understand the regiment. At least that’s what she told herself it was. Raine couldn’t say what it is now, but she knows that she has grown to need it. Another comfort, of a kind.

  ‘Tell me about the Wyldfolk,’ Raine says. ‘Where does the name come from?’

  Andren takes a drink from his cup. The steam catches in the air like gun-smoke.

  ‘The Wyldfolk
are Wyck’s squad,’ Andren says. ‘You should ask him.’

  ‘I’m asking you,’ she says.

  Andren laughs. He does it easily, and often. It’s a peculiarity of his.

  ‘That you are. They are a folk story, like all of our squad names.’

  Raine nods. She knows this. Andren’s own storm troopers are the Duskhounds. It’s another Antari story. One about a great hound made of shadow that tears out the throats of those who refuse to die when they are fated to. It’s wholly apt for what Andren and his squad do.

  ‘The wyldfolk are forest spirits,’ he says. ‘Wicked ones.’

  Andren puts down his cup and rolls back the sleeve of his black fatigues. His arms are tattooed with lines of scripture. Entwined around the verse, there are figures. Raine sees the duskhound, inked in grey. Andren points to another tattoo just above it of twisted briars that look like clawed hands.

  ‘Wicked is right,’ Raine says. ‘So, how does the story go?’

  ‘It goes that a woodsman and his family lived on the edge of the great black forest,’ he says. ‘The woodsman knew that before anything was taken from the forest, something must be given, lest the wyldfolk grow angry.’

  He draws his combat blade from his belt and turns it, resting it against the pad of his thumb.

  ‘Every day, before the woodsman felled timber, or took to the hunt, he would cut his thumb and let three drops of blood fall onto the stump of the same tree.’

  Andren presses his thumb against the blade, just hard enough to draw blood. He waits for three fat drops to fall onto the ground before he continues.

  ‘Then he would go into the forest and claim his prize. On his return, the blood would be gone without trace.’

  Andren turns his hand, watching blood paint a line down to his palm.

  ‘One day, the woodsman’s wife came down with a sickness,’ he says. ‘And so he sent his son to take the hunt alone. He gave him his bow, his arrows and his cutting knife. The woodsman’s son went to the stump of the same tree, but he was too cowardly to cut his hand. Too selfish to pay the price. Thinking he could fool the forest, the woodsman’s son tipped three drops from his waterskin onto the stump, then slipped between the trees, laughing.’