#straight silver

“Smoke wept out of the forest like blood from a wound. The storm had passed, heading out at last across the peaks of the Massif, but the air was still damp and the sky still black.” Of course the storm passes after the big battle. More dramatic that way.

“Varl was waiting for him at the battered porch of the manse. Enemy dead littered the lawn. An old woman — Corbec had no idea who the feth she was — was kneeling on the gravel path and weeping over the body of a young Alliance soldier. On the steps of the porch, a Krassian corpsman was treating a Tanith trooper for multiple injuries. He was shouting out for a medic as he worked. The Tanith man was so covered in blood he was unrecognisable at first. A bad leg wound, a gut shot, a scalp wound, something messy through the left shoulder.” I like this kind of outsider POV, where the reader knows things the character doesn’t.

“I found Muril upstairs with Larks. The bastards had bayonetted her.” NOOOOO. (And Cuu’s fine, of course)

EIGHTEEN ENDING IN THE MIDDLE

“Colonel-Commissar Ibram Gaunt, still limping slightly from the rifle-round that had scraped him during the six-hour break-out from the Shadik lines, came up the steps of the Sezaria, a gold-domed building that dominated the skyline of the dirty northern city.” I kind of wish I could read about the break-out.

“For every victory, a loss. For every metre taken, a death. The war simply ground on, like a furnace fed by manpower.” How do you make WWI grimdark? Make it never-ending!

“He felt a peculiar sense of shock. He’d never been pulled out of a warzone before the fighting was done. In his opinion, there was still a year or more of bloodshed to go on Aexe Cardinal before the Imperium could claim victory. Macaroth was pulling the Tanith First out. It was like ending in the middle of things. According to the slate, elements of the Second Crusade Army were moving in to replace them and finish the job.” They do generally stay until things are through.

And Gaunt gets a medal he hates.

“ There was no trace of the Chapel of the Holy Light Abundant, Veniq. Nothing, except the lingering perfume of a particular flower.” And the woman they met there was part of Saint Sabbat’s retinue, 6000 years before. That’s significant.

“The sky was full of stars. They were pink, and vaguely oblong. On the horizon, sheaves of white fireworks danced and burst, like the firecrackers of a victory parade. The air was pulsing with a strange humming sound, like a moaning human voice swimming in and out of hearing. A dark shadow suddenly eclipsed the stars. A big shadow that filled the sky. “Wake up,” said a voice.” Uh oh, Larkin’s seeing shapes. That’s really not good.

They send Jajjo off to bring word of the Blood Pact to the main Guard. 

Muril’s going to make scout! :D

“He didn’t look it. He looked dreadful. His thin face was almost white except for the livid bruising, and his eyes were dark hollows.” Uh oh.

Also, Muril’s planning on telling Corbec about Cuu trying to kill Larkin. That will in no way affect her survival. /s

“Brostin had an infamous affinity with fire. Now the enemy was in range, he started bursting sprays of liquid flame up over the barricade and the wall of the kitchen garden, sliding it round angles that las-rounds couldn’t touch. He washed the jumbled wood of the felled green house with a blanket of warm, orange fire, blistering the old paint and cooking the wood, and then ignited the toasted kindling with a spear of blue, super-hot fire. Another enemy voice rose up in a scream. A blizzard of touched-off grenades added to the raging fire.” Brostin is dangerous.

“He went into spasms. His back arched and his eyes rolled back until they were just bloodshot whites. Blood spattered as he bit his tongue. As the seizure smashed through his stringy body and limbs, he made an unearthly groan.” Oh no!

“With a cry, she swept round, as fast as any Tanith scout had ever moved, before or since. 

Straight silver punched through flesh and bone and didn’t stop until it had impaled the beating heart.” Gee, I sure hope that’s Muril killing Cuu!

“When the monsters roared, the ground shook and the air came past hot and acrid, in a pressurised Shockwave. The light flashes were painful and immense, like grounded stars being switched on and off in the night. The sound shook teeth and bone and marrow.” Very evocative.

“But looking on the guns was virtually impossible. The flashes seared eyesight, leaving idiot repeats glowing on the back of the eyelids. The Shockwaves came like slaps. The discharge blasts felt like they were exploding eardrums. Beltayn reported that the pulse shock had killed all voxlinks.” Interesting that the guns are so powerful that they’re dangerous in multiple ways.

They decide to destroy the train lines to the guns, since they’re too huge to move any other way.

“Beyond Beltayn, Criid was urging her Ghosts on, deploying them in right groups even in the melee of an impromptu charge. 

I made a good choice in Tona, Gaunt thought.” Yay!

Caffran just stands up to Feygor and ignores his order. I’d feel bad, but Feygor’s an asshole (even if I do like him.)

““Piet, Larks… sweep the ground,” said Feygor. His manner was calmer now. Having made the decision to stay, he was eager to reimpose his leadership. Both Larkin and Gutes looked at Caffran first and only left the kitchen when he nodded.” He’s trying. Too bad no one sees him as fit to lead.

“His skull felt like it was splitting from the blow Cuu had given it, and he could taste one of his migraines creeping in.” Oh no!

Blood Pact are attacking.

Rerval gets hit. I don’t remember when he first showed up, but he’s been in the books for a while.

“Nine men dead. Six injured. Three more sick with gas-related injuries caused by tears in their kit. Seventeen platoon was a mess. And Raglon knew it. Gaunt could tell the novice sergeant was badly shaken and terribly ashamed of himself. His first field office, and he’d ended up with less then fifty per cent of his platoon alive or able-bodied.” Poor Raglon.

“This wasn’t the site of a battle, this was landscape transformed by the brute sorcery of relentless fighting. Stripped, burned, poisoned, malformed, killed.” :(

“He could do this. He could break the Pocket just like it had once broken him.” Poor Golke.

Dorden, of course, won’t let Gaunt kill Costin, who fucked up by drinking on duty. Gaunt nearly kills Dorden.

“The stand-off had shown Gaunt was human. Ironically, that wasn’t necessarily a good thing. Even more ironically, most of the First probably knew it already.”

“When men died, you simply mourned their absence. The lack of them. You missed their presence. He could think of many like that: Baffels, Adare, Doyl, Cluggan, Maroy, Cocoer, Rilke, Lerod, Hasker, Bam, Blane, Bragg…” ;_;

“There was a kind of light. It twinkled through the imperfect plastic lenses of her hood. Amber, dull. Just enough to pick out the landscape of no-man’s land. Smoggy vapour fumed from the craters. It hid the wires. Pools of chemical water in deep shell holes gave off a leery phosphorescent glow.” Obviously this is a great place!

“Agun Soric was sweating inside his hood. He hated hood work. He was blind and stifled, his already reduced vision cut down to a pathetic scrap.” Oh, that would suck.

And someone loses a boot to the mud.

Sorin gets more messages from himself and acts on them, this time.

“Criid ducked into a shallow crater with Nessa and Vril, and they found themselves swimming alongside bloated, swollen corpses.” Oh, God, ew.

“She’d chosen to be a soldier, and worked to get the pins. Love was just an anchor she didn’t need. Not right now.” :(

“Suth was a good scout. Costin, his buddy, was a drunk.“ Uh oh

“The glass bottle flashed as the background light caught it.” UH OH

And a bunch of guys get wounded and Suth gets killed.

“A strange, ugly statuette made of painted clay that Criid smashed against the wall the moment she saw it.” Smart

Criid’s unit finds a tunnel leading under enemy lines, but close it with a tube charge.