First and Only by Dan Abnett

counterattacked now he might as well be on his own.
    As they progressed, they swept each blackened factory bunker, storehouse and forge tower for signs of the enemy, moving beneath flapping, torn banners, crunching broken stained glass underfoot. Machinery had been stripped out and removed, or simply vandalised. There was nothing whole left here – apart from the Chaos shrines which the Shriven had erected at regular intervals. Like Colonel Corbec, the commissar had a flamer brought up to expunge any trace of these outrages. However, ironically, he was moving in exactly the opposite direction along the trench lines to Corbec’s advance. Communication was lost and the breakthrough elements of the Tanith First-and-Only were wandering blind and undirected through what was by any estimation enemy territory.
    The sound of the drums rolled in. Gaunt called up his vox-caster operator, Trooper Rafflan, and tersely barked into the speech-horn of the heavy backpack set, demanding to know if there was anyone out there.
    The drums rolled.
    There was a return across the radio link, an incomprehensible squawk of garbled words. At first, Gaunt thought the transmission was scrambled, but then he realised that it was another language. He repeated his demand and after a long painful silence a coherent message returned to him in clipped Low Gothic.
    ‘This is Colonel Zoren of the Vitrian Dragoons. We are moving in to support you. Hold your fire.’
    Gaunt acknowledged and then spread his men across the silo concourse in cover, watching and waiting. Ahead of them something flashed in the dull light and then Gaunt saw soldiers moving down towards them. They didn’t see the Ghosts until the very last minute. With their tenacious ability to hide in anything, and their obscuring cloaks, Gaunt’s Ghosts were masters of stealth camouflage.
    The Dragoons approached in a long and carefully arranged formation of at least three hundred men. Gaunt could see that they were well-drilled, slim but powerful men in some kind of chain-armour that was strangely sheened and which caught the light like unpolished metal.
    Gaunt shrugged off the Tanith stealth cloak that had been a habitual addition to his garb since he joined the First-and-Only, and moved out of concealment, signalling them openly as he rose to his feet from cover. He advanced to meet the commanding officer.
    Close to, the Vitrians were impressive soldiers. Their unusual body armour was made from a toothed metallic mail which covered them in form-fitting sections. It glinted like obsidian. Their helmets were full face and grim with narrow eye slits, glazed with dark glass. Their weapons were polished and clean.
    ‘Commissar Gaunt of the Tanith First and Only,’ Gaunt said as he saluted a greeting.
    ‘Zoren of the Vitrian Dragoons,’ came the reply. ‘Good to see that there are some of you left out here. We feared we were being called in to support a regiment already slaughtered.’
    ‘The drums? Are they yours?’
    Zoren slid back the visor of his helmet to reveal a handsome, dark-skinned face. He caught Gaunt with a quizzical stare. ‘They are not… we were just wondering what in the name of the Emperor it was ourselves.’
    Gaunt looked away into the smoke and the fractured buildings around them. The noise had grown. Now it sounded like hundreds of drums… thousands… from all around. For each drum, a drummer. They were surrounded and completely outnumbered.
    Ten
    C AFFRAN DRAGGED HIMSELF across the mud and slid into a crater. Around him the bombardment showed no signs of easing. He had lost his lasgun and most of his kit, but he still had his silver knife and an auto-pistol that had come his way as a trophy at some time or other.
    Wriggling to the lip of the crater he caught sight of figures far away, soldiers who seemed to be dressed in glass. There was a full unit of them, caught in the crossfire of the serial bombardment. They were being slaughtered.
    Shells fell close again and