Ghostmaker by Dan Abnett

Author:Dan Abnett
Language: eng
Format: epub

A circuit of the wounded took another hour and a half. Tesp and the other orderlies had done well, and many had eaten or at least taken fluid. There were twelve who were too far gone to remain conscious, and Dorden carefully rationed out his supply of drugs to prioritise them. The boy, Culcis, along with a few others, were now sitting up, chatting, grateful. All of them, Volpone aristo-blood, were disdainful of the Tanith, but civil nevertheless. Being cut adrift by their regiment, and spared from death only by a barbarian unit, would seem to have altered many of their deeper prejudices and snobberies. For that at least, Dorden felt pleased.

He saw Trooper Caffran, coming in soaked from a patrol circuit, taking his bowl of broth to sit with Culcis. They were about the same age, Dorden reckoned. The same age as Mikal. He heard them share a joke.

Lesp took his arm. One of the critical cases was showing signs of fading. With Chayker’s help, they carried the man out into what had once been the household kitchen, and now served as a surgical theatre. A refectory table sat there, long enough for a man, and they heaved him onto it.

The Blueblood, a Corporal Regara by his tags, had lost a leg below the knee and taken shrapnel in the chest. His blood was far from blue. The refectory table became slick and blood drooled off onto the flagstones. Chayker almost slipped and Dorden ordered him to fetch a mop and more wadding.

“There are no mops,” Chayker shrugged.

“Then find something like a mop.”

Dorden had to take off more of the ruined leg from the shrieking Regara with his handsaw before he could staunch and tie the haemorrhage. He directed Tesp’s sure fingers in to suture the breach with fine, sail-maker’s stitches. By then, Chayker had returned. Dorden found he was mopping the floor with shredded strips from his cape tied to an old rake handle. For a Ghost to tear up his treasured stealth cloak to mop blood… Dorden’s admiration for his volunteers’ devotion to duty grew.

They carried the softly moaning Regara back to his bed. With luck, and a fever-breaking shot of mascetamine, he might yet live. But Dorden was called away almost at once to a seizure that Toskin couldn’t cope with, and then to a man who had woken from near-coma, only to begin violently retching blood.

The ward fell quiet towards midnight, as other dramas came and passed. Dorden was scrubbing his chrome rib-spreaders in a bucket of scalding water when Mkoll came in, shaking the water from his cape. The storm was still booming outside and thunder rattled the casements and roofing. Every now and then, loose glass in a window somewhere fell in, or tiles slipped off and shattered. The storm had continued all that evening, but until then, Dorden had blanked it out.

He watched Mkoll sit and clean his gun, the first thing he always did before seeing to other duties like food or warmth.

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