Chapter 10: You May Now Tend the Flock for the Emperor
The light in the corridor was sharp after the dimness of the medical bay.
Duvette's wounds were under control. The burns pulled when he moved and the bandaging across his back was tight, but the worst of it had been dealt with. He made himself walk without the wall's support.
The medical bay occupied what had been a government administration building. The building had been converted into a field hospital some time before his arrival, and the transformation showed. Both sides of every corridor were lined with stretchers and improvised beds. The smell was antiseptic over blood, the constant low register of wounded men. Medical orderlies in stained white coats moved through the press of injured at a pace that made it clear there were not enough of them.
From the uniforms on the men he passed, he could see that this facility was treating soldiers from several regiments, not only the Ash Watchers. The window at the far end of the corridor had been partially boarded over with planks, and through the gaps he could see grey sky and falling snow.
The cult assault had apparently stalled in the cold. It gave the defenders something like a pause, though Duvette had a persistent sense that the silence was not peaceful. It was the kind of quiet that precedes something worse.
He moved along the corridor with one hand occasionally touching the wall when his footing felt uncertain. The bandaging around his head reduced his field of vision. He found the door to the senior officer critical ward without too much difficulty.
Heavy solid wood. A metal sign above the handle read: Critical Ward. Keep Quiet.
He pushed it open.
The corridor beyond was quieter and narrower than the one outside. Individual rooms on both sides, each with a metal plate on the door bearing a name and rank. The smell in here was medication and cleaning fluid rather than blood. Slightly better.
Duvette stopped at one of the doors. The plate read: Leonard Hoffman, Commissar, Ash Watchers 101st Regiment. He knocked. No response from inside.
After a moment he pushed the door open.
The room was very dark. The only light source was a single oil lamp burning at low wick. The moment the door moved, a smell came out that made Duvette stop breathing through his nose: dense, organic, the smell of advanced tissue decay.
In the lamp's dim circle, a figure lay on the bed at the room's center. He wore a breathing mask, the soft tube running from it to a small ventilator beside the bed that made a steady rhythmic sound. The sheets had clearly been changed recently, but thread-thin lines of red and yellow were already seeping through the fabric, making slow spreading patterns on the white.
Duvette stood in the doorway and tried to connect the skeletal shape on the bed to the memory he carried of a man who had never once been seen with his uniform out of order, who had never needed a wall to keep himself upright, whose spine had been ramrod straight in every circumstance he could recall.
He looked at the status display that had appeared above the still figure.
[Leonard Hoffman]
[Ash Watchers, 101st Regiment, Commissar]
[Loyalty: 100%] [Morale: 90%] [Status: Dying] [Stability: 86%] [Chaos Corruption: 97% (Irreversible)]
Ninety-seven percent. Duvette knew what that number meant. At that level of corruption, maintaining human form at all was not a given. Maintaining a coherent mind was something beyond medicine.
The figure on the bed seemed to register his presence. The eyes opened slowly. The eye sockets were deep and the skin had receded until it lay tight against bone, but the eyes themselves were unexpectedly clear. Duvette could see pain and exhaustion in them, both carefully held down.
Then those eyes found him in the doorway, and something in them ignited that should not have had the energy to ignite.
With visible effort, Hoffman moved his fingers. Then he got one elbow beneath himself and pressed upward, forcing himself to a sitting position, the ventilator tube swaying with the movement.
"Duvette." The voice through the breathing mask was muffled but recognizable. "Come here."
Duvette walked to the bedside. He drew himself up and gave a regulation salute. "Commissar."
Hoffman did not answer immediately. He breathed for a moment, then reached up and removed the mask from his face.
Where the mask had been covering, the skin on his jaw and throat had broken down. The muscle beneath was visible, a dark red exposed where tissue had failed.
"From when your parents died in battle," Hoffman said, his voice clearer now, each phrase separated by a careful breath, "to the day you graduated from the Schola Progenium on Apsterman VI... twenty years."
He paused.
"I remember the war against the Orks. They died with honor."
Duvette kept his expression neutral.
That was not correct. Either of those details.
"Commissar," he said carefully. "My parents were killed fighting Imperial traitors. And I graduated from the Schola on Hopstoo III."
Hoffman looked at him for a moment. Then the corners of his ruined mouth moved. Duvette had never seen Leonard Hoffman smile before. He had not been certain the man was capable of it.
"Is that so," Hoffman said. "I must have misremembered."
He paused again, breathed through the mask for a few seconds, then removed it once more.
"The survivors of 6th Company have given me a full account of what you did out there." He waited for another breath. "Beck. The ritual sites. The tunnel. The decisions you made when they needed to be made." A third pause. "You did well."
Duvette said nothing.
In the memories he carried, Hoffman had never offered praise. He had offered standards and the expectation that they would be met, and he had demonstrated by example what meeting them looked like. He had treated Duvette the same way he treated every other soldier in his care: with the absolute demand for performance, and nothing warmer than that. When he had deployed Duvette to the front lines to fight alongside the rank and file, that had been the same logic.
Duvette kept his voice level. "I did what the position required."
Hoffman coughed. Blood came with it, scattering across the sheet and the mask still hanging at his neck. Duvette moved forward instinctively.
Hoffman raised one hand. The hand was almost nothing, skin over scaffolding. But the gesture held the same authority it always had. Duvette stopped.
"Open the cabinet." Hoffman's voice was thin now, working for each word. His other hand moved under the pillow and emerged holding a small key, which he extended toward Duvette with visible effort.
Duvette took the key and crouched before the bedside cabinet. The lock turned. The door swung open.
Two items inside. A data-slate. A bolt pistol in its holster.
"Take them out."
Duvette brought both items to the bedside and set them on the sheet.
Hoffman looked at the two objects for a moment, then looked back up at Duvette. The expression had changed. Whatever else had left him, the gravity in those eyes had not.
"I will not last much longer," he said. "The wounds I took against the traitors. Making it back at all." He breathed. "The Emperor's protection."
A pause.
"I had intended to give you formal appointment after this campaign concluded." Another breath. "Given your record. And my current circumstances. I have decided to do it now."
He looked at the bolt pistol and the data-slate.
Then Leonard Hoffman, who had perhaps a day left in him at the outside, straightened his ruined body on the bed. He did it with the same precision and deliberateness that he had straightened his uniform every day for however many years he had been wearing it. His voice, when it came, was clear. Each word arrived with full weight and no hesitation.
"Duvette Erdmann."
The full name, formally. Duvette stood very straight.
"You may now tend the flock for the Emperor."