DOUBLE EAGLE by Dan Abnett

Author:Dan Abnett
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Games Workshop
Published: 2019-09-06T23:00:00+00:00

DAY 263

The Makanites, 13.33

The previous day, fate – or the beneficence of the God-Emperor of Man – had decreed them clear passage up through the cold winding passes through the mountains. Not a hint of war had touched them, not an auspex contact, not even the distant murmur of a warplane overhead. Their flasks and cans replenished with cool, brackish water from mountain rills, they had raced ahead, buoyed with a sense of sudden expectation and hope. At nightfall, where previously LeGuin had ordered a rest stop to take advantage of the lower temperatures, they had pressed on, edging on through the dark, grinding along the bottoms of gorges and rock cuts, thundering up across pebble-strewn slopes.

At some hour after midnight, the column passed over the spine of the mountains at a place called Ragnar’s Cut, and began its descent into the broad foothills of the north.

Viltry rode with the Line of Death. He had been offered the place of a gunner killed on the road some days before. He wasn’t expected to perform any tasks. He was simply a passenger.

LeGuin took a turn driving in the mid-period, to relieve the weary Emdeen. Emdeen climbed into the commander’s turret seat and immediately fell asleep. In the bare-metal rocker-seat of the sponson below, Viltry found slumber harder to achieve. The noise of the Pardus tank was ferocious, and its motion far more violent than any plane, even under bad turbulence. It was a vibration, a shaking, not at all like the fluid variances of flight. Loose rocks thrown up by the treads clattered against the heavy hull and the track guards. It was hot, despite the night-chill outside, and the moist air reeked of smoke and oil and unwashed flesh. There was also nothing to see. The night was moonless, the dark enclosing. The convoy elements moved with hooded lamps. Within the tank, there was merely the red cabin light and the glow of the thick-glassed displays.

When LeGuin called out that they had at last passed over the top of the Makanite Ridge, Viltry simply had to take the tanker’s word for it.

Dawn came in, grey and heavy. Emdeen resumed his driving, and LeGuin and Viltry sat in the turret with the hatches open. The air, cold and damp and filled with exhaust from the long line of trundling machines, was at least refreshing after the stuffy interior.

There was still very little to see.

The trail curled down through bare, grey foothills, snaking through a boulder-strewn landscape that seemed devoid of natural growth. Mist choked the valley beyond, stealing away any distant view. Behind them, the Makanites were towers of shadow against a bleached, starved sky.

The sun rose, but the mist refused to clear, and they bore on down into a layer of haze and poor visibility. They passed by three Imperial troop trucks, abandoned by the side of the track, evidence of a previous column fleeing this way, and then, at about ten, overhauled the tail end of it. It was twice the size of LeGuin’s contingent, and moving much more slowly.

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