Dan Abnett - Ghostmaker

The ork was nearly three metres tall and almost as wide. Impossibly large muscles corded its shoulders and arms and stinking furs swaddled its bulk. Its head was huge, twice the size of a human's, thrust forward and seated on the vast lower jaw. Blackened teeth stuck like chisel blades out of the rotten gums. He couldn't see the eyes. He could smell the reeking breath, the corrosive saliva that spattered and dripped from the half-open mouth.

Playing dead, he watched as it toyed with his medi-pouch, rooting through the contents with hands big enough to break a human throat like a twig. It took out a roll of gauze and bit it munching and then spitting out.

It's hungry, thought Rawne, and his guts iced and tightened at the idea.

Suddenly, it moved to him, pulling him up by the hair and jerking him back like a puppet, rummaging in his clothing with the other hand for food pouches, rations, munitions.

Blood spilled out of Rawne's jerked-open mouth, spattering down his chest. He tried to remain limp, but his left hand crept down towards the knife sheathed at his waist. The huge ork jerked and twisted him like a sack of bones, sniffing and gurgling behind his ear, hot breath on Rawne's neck, rancid smell in his nose.

Rawne found his knife and slid it out. He must have tensed doing so because the ork froze and then muttered something in its arcane tongue. Rawne moved to swing his knife, but the ork's huge paw was suddenly around his blade-hand, crushing it and slamming it into the icy wall beside them. Two slams and Rawne's hand gave up. The Tanith dagger whipped away.

The ork roared, a guttural bellow that deafened Rawne and shook his diaphragm. Holding him from behind, it bear-hugged, pulling its arms apart, determined to rip his torso in two. Rawne screamed, fighting futilely at the greater strength, tearing his arms free. He was dead, he knew that. Death was a moment away.

Pain made him reach into his mouth, to pull at whatever throbbed in his tongue. He found the end of the surgical needle, protruding from the flesh of his tongue. He yanked it out. A shockingly long spurt of blood followed it. Then he stabbed back behind his head with the little sliver of metal.

The ork screamed and dropped him. Rawne landed, spitting and coughing blood from his pulsing tongue. The ork was flailing around the cave wildly, holding one eye that dribbled with clear fluid and stained ichor. The noise of its rage was deafening in the ice-hole.

Rawne scrambled for a weapon, but the ork turned and sent him flying across the cave with a flat backhand. Rawne hit the ice wall hard with his shoulders, upside down and horizontal. His shoulder blade cracked and he dropped to the floor.

The ork charged him, one eye half-closed and oozing around the stub-eye of the surgical needle impaling it. Rawne rolled.

His lasgun was on the far side of the cave, but his knife was in reach.

His knife. How many fights had he won with that? How many throats had he cut, how many hearts had he burst, how many stomachs had he opened?

He reached it, grasped it, turned in a low crouch to meet the attacker, a gleeful look on his face.

The ork faced him, its back to the cave mouth, a huge, crude bolt-pistol in its ichor-spattered fist.

The ork spoke, slow, rumbling, alien. Rawne didn't know what it said, but he knew what it meant.

There was a blinding flash and the roar of a weapon loosed in the confines of the cave.

Rawne had always wondered what it would feel like to take the killing hit. To be shot mortally. To die. But there was no feeling. No sense.

In the blink of an eye, he saw the ork explode, its mid-section disintegrating in a burst of light.

It fell, almost in two parts. Its body fluids froze as it flopped to the ground.

There was a tall figure in the care entrance, blocking the light. 'Major Rawne?'

Ibram Gaunt entered the cave and holstered his bolt-pistol.

It seemed that the commissar had fared no better than him. The ork warband had decided to take advantage of the chaos of the crusade's push to seize Typhon as part of its attempt to build a raiding foothold into the Sabbat Worlds. Charged with destroying the menace, the Ghosts had deployed into the long gorges and ice-floes of the moon and come undone. As Rawne's platoon had been cut down along the eastern edge of the screaming valley, so Gaunt's had to the west. In retreat, the greenskins had proved the more determined adversaries.

The commissar and the major crouched down in the ice cave together. Rawne had made no sign of gratitude. In many ways he knew he would rather be dead than remain beholden to the off-worlder.

'How's your tongue?' Gaunt asked, getting a fire lit with chemical blocks. 'Why?'

'You're not saying much.'

Rawne spat. 'It's fine. A clean wound with a sharp instrument.' Truth was, his swollen tongue felt like a bedroll in his mouth, but he would not let the commissar have the satisfaction of knowing his discomfort. But he could not disguise the pain his leg gave him.

'Let me see to that,' Gaunt said.

Rawne shook his head.

'That was an order,' Gaunt sighed.

He moved over, pulling his own medi-pouch open. His clips were frozen too, but he warmed them over the chemical flame and then pinched the lips of Rawne's thigh wound shut. He sprayed the area with antiseptic from the one-use flask. Rawne felt his limb go dead.

Then Gaunt warmed his numb fingers and threaded surgical cord into a fresh needle. He handed Rawne his dagger. 'Bite the hilt.'

Rawne did so and stayed silent as Gaunt sewed the torn flesh together.

Gaunt bit off the cord and tied it, wrapping a dressing over the wound. Rawne spat the dagger out.

Gaunt packed the kit away and then settled a kettle pan over the flames, dropping a scoop of ice into it.

'Seems to me Typhon has levelled us, major,' he said after a while.

'How so?'

The high-born commissar, with all his airs and graces and rank, his schola training and his expertise; the low-life Tanith gangster with his wiles and tricks and diversions – it's put us on a level. Equals. Both fighting the same hostility with the same chances.'

Rawne didn't manage his retort. His tongue was too swollen and sore. He managed to spit again.

Gaunt smiled and watched the ice-water boil in the pan.

'Good. Maybe not. If you can still spit at me and hold me in contempt, we're not equal. I can lower myself down towards your level to help you… Feth, save you. But the day we're both on a level, your level, I'll kill myself.'

'Is that a promise?' Rawne asked.

Gaunt laughed. He dropped some dehydrated food cubes into the bubbling pan and stirred them. Dry-powdered bean soup puffed and formed. He was still laughing as he poured the soup into two tin cups.

The wind rose as night fell. It howled outside the mouth ot the cave, raising the volume and intensity of the screaming They sat together in the dark, watching the fire. There were only four fuel-blocks left to feed the blaze and Gaunt was being careful.

'You want to know some other differences between us, Rawne?'

Rawne wanted to say ''No'', but his tongue was now too swollen and useless. He spat at Gaunt again instead.

Gaunt smiled and nodded down at the spittle freezing on the ice.

There's one: this place might be a ball of frozen moisture, but you won't see me going around losing body moisture like that. The wind will freeze you dry in a few hours. Conserve your body water. Stop spitting at me and you might live.'

He held out a bowl of tepid water to Rawne and after a moment, the major took it and drank.

'Here's another. It's warm in here. Warmer than outside. But it's still close to zero. You're half-stripped and you're shivering.

Gaunt was still dressed in his full uniform and his cloak was pulled around him. Rawne realised how numb he had become and began to pull his vest and cloak around him again.