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hair, a tangled, braided beard and thick, bare arms decorated with blue spiral tattoos, smiled jauntily and saluted, bringing up his lasgun. “Colonel Corbec, Tanith First-and-Only. Our pleasure, I’m sure.”
    Ortiz nodded back. He found he was still shaking. He could barely bring himself to look down at the dead Chaos Marine, sprawled in the mud nearby. “Takes discipline to ambush an ambush. Your men certainly know stealth. Why is—”
    He got no further. The bearded giant, Corbec, suddenly froze, a look of dismay on his face. Then he was leaping forward with a cry, tackling Ortiz down into the blue-black mud.
    The “dead” World Eater lifted his horned skull out of the muck and half-raised his bolter. But that was all. Then a shrieking chainsword decapitated him.
    The heavy, dead parts flopped back into the mud. One of them rolled.
    Ibram Gaunt brandished with his keening chain sword like a duellist and then thumbed it to “idle”. He turned to Corbec and Ortiz as they got up, caked in black filth. Ortiz stared at the tall, powerful man in the long dark coat and cap of an Imperial Commissar. His face was blade thin, his eyes as dark as space. He looked like he could rip a world asunder with his hands.
    “Meet the boss,” Corbec chuckled at Ortiz’s side. “Colonel-Commissar Gaunt.” Ortiz nodded, wiping his face. “So, you’re Gaunt’s Ghosts.”
     
    Major Gilbear poured himself a brandy from the decanter on the teak stand. “Just who the hell are these awful barbarian scum?” he asked, sipping from the huge crystal balloon.
    At his desk, General Noches Sturm put down his pen and sat back. “Oh, please, help yourself to my brandy, Gilbear,” he muttered, though the sarcasm was lost on his massive aide.
    Gilbear reclined on a chaise beside the flickering amber displays of the message-caster, and gazed at his commander. “Ghosts? That’s what they call them, isn’t it?”
    Sturm nodded, observing his senior adjutant. Gilbear — Gizhaum Danver De Banzi Haight Gilbear, to give him his full name — was the second son of the Haight Gilbears of Solenhofen, the royal house of Volpone. He was nearly two and half metres tall and arrogantly powerful, with the big, blunt, bland features and languid, hooded eyes of the aristocracy. Gilbear wore the grey and gold uniform of the Royal Volpone 50th, the so-called Bluebloods, who believed they were the noblest regiment in the Imperial Guard.
    Sturm sat back in his chair. “They are indeed called Ghosts. Gaunt’s Ghosts. And they’re here because I requested them.”
    Gilbear cocked a disdainful eyebrow. “You requested them?”
    “We’ve had nigh on six weeks, and we can’t shake the enemy from Voltis City. They command everything west of the Bokore Valley. Warmaster Macaroth is not pleased. All the while they hold Voltemand, they have a road into the heart of the Sabbat Worlds. So you see I need a lever. I need to introduce a new element to break our deadlock.”
    “That rabble?” Gilbear sneered. “I watched them as they mustered after the drop-ships landed them. Hairy, illiterate primitives, with tattoos and nose rings.”
    Sturm lifted a data-slate from his desktop and shook it at Gilbear. “Have you read the reports General Hadrak filed after the Sloka took Blackshard? He credits Gaunt’s mob with the decisive incursion. It seems they excel at stealth raids.”
    Sturm got to his feet and adjusted the sit of his resplendent Blueblood staff uniform. The study was bathed in yellow sunlight that streamed in through the conservatory doors at the end, softened by net drapes. He rested his hand on the antique globe of Voltemand in its mahogany stand by the desk and span it idly, gazing out across the grounds of Vortimor House. This place had been the country seat of one of Voltemand’s most honoured noble families, a vast, grey manse, fringed with mauve climbing plants, situated in ornamental parkland thirty kilometres south of Voltis City. It had been an ideal location to establish his Supreme