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up Forgal’s fallen las-gun.
    Beneath the chapel was an undercroft. Dead cultists were strewn like rag dolls around the smouldering floor. In the centre of the chamber stood a rusty, metallic box, two metres square, its lid etched with twisted sigils of Chaos.
    Gaunt reached out. The metal was warm. It pulsed.
    He snatched his hand back.
    “What is it?” asked Corbec.
    “I don’t think any of us want to know,” Gaunt said. “Some relic of the enemy, some unholy object, an icon… Whatever, it’s something valuable to these monsters, something they’re defending to the last.”
    “That Sloka colonel was sure there was a reason they were holding on,” Corbec said. “Maybe they’re hoping support will arrive in time to save this.”
    “Let’s spoil those chances. I want a systematic withdrawal from this point, back out under the wall. Each man is to leave his tube-charges here. Rawne, collect them and rig them — you seem to be good with explosives.”
    Within minutes, the Ghosts had withdrawn. Rawne crouched and connected the firing pins of the small but potent anti-personnel charges. Gaunt watched him and the door.
    “Pick it up, Rawne. We haven’t much time. The enemy aren’t going to leave this area open for long.”
    “Nearly done,” Rawne said. “Check the door again, sir. I thought I heard something.”
    The “sir” should have warned him. As Gaunt turned, Rawne rose and clubbed him around the back of the head with his fist. Gaunt dropped, stunned, and Rawne rolled him over next to the charges.
    “A fitting place for scum like you to die, ghost maker!” he murmured. “Down here amongst the vermin and the filth. It’s so tragic that the brave commissar didn’t make it out, but the cultists were all over us.” Rawne drew his laspistol and lowered it towards Gaunt’s head.
    Gaunt kicked out and brought Rawne down. He rolled and slammed into him, punching him once, twice. Blood marked Rawne’s mouth.
    He tried to hit again but Gaunt was so much bigger. He struck Rawne so hard he was afraid he’d broken his neck. The Tanith lolled in the dust.
    Gaunt got up, and eyed the timer setting. It was just dropping under two minutes. Time to leave.
    Gaunt turned. But in the doorway of the room, the warriors of Chaos moved towards him.
     
    The blast sent a column of dirt and fire up into the sky that could be seen from the Guard trenches across the deadzone. Six minutes later, the defenders’ big guns stopped and fell silent. Then all firing ceased completely from the enemy lines.
    Guard units moved in, cautiously at first. They found the cultists dead at their positions. Each one had, in unison, taken his own life, as if in response to some great loss. In the conclusion of his report on the victory at Blackshard, General Hadrak surmised that the destruction of the Chaos relic, which had given meaning to the cult defence, robbed them of the will or need to continue. Hadrak also noted the significant role in the victory played by the newly founded Tanith 1st, which had supplemented his own forces. Though as C-in-C of the Blackshard action, he took overall credit for the victory, he was magnanimous in acknowledging the work of “Gaunt’s Ghosts”, and particularly recommended their stealth and scouting abilities.
    Colonel-Commissar Gaunt, wounded in the stomach and shoulder, emerged alive from the deadzone twenty minutes after the blast and was treated by medical teams before returning to his frigate. He might have made his way out of the enemy lines faster, had he not carried the unconscious body of one of his officers, a Major Rawne, back to safety.
     
    Stiff with drug-dulled pain, Gaunt walked down the companion way of the troop carrier and into the holding bay. Nearly nine hundred of the Tanith were billeted here. They looked up from their weapons drills and Gaunt felt the silence on him.
    “First blood to you,” he said to them. “First blood to Tanith. The first wound of vengeance. Savour it.”
    By his side, Corbec began to clap. The men