armbands they wore on their sleeves, Larn realised they must be militia auxiliaries levied from
among the local population. Wheeling the cart past him, they halted beside the line of corpse and
wearily began to lift them into the cart. Until at last, as their labours revealed the face of a corpse
hidden deeper in the pile, Larn saw something that made him cry out and race towards them.
“Wait!” he yelled.
Startled, cringing away as though afraid he might hurt them, the women stopped their work.
Then, seeing Larn standing by the pile to peer down at the face of a corpse, one of the women spoke
to him in a voice made dull and lifeless with fatigue.
“You knew him?” she said. “One of the dead men?”
“Yes,” Larn said. “I knew him. He was a friend. A comrade.”
It was Leden. His face slack and pale, his body covered in gruesome and horrendous wounds, he
lay at the centre of the pile with dead eyes staring up at the foreboding sky overhead. Having not
seen Leden die during their mad flight across no-man’s land, Larn had harboured the hope the
simple-minded farmboy might have made it to the Vardan lines and survived just as he had. Now
that hope was dashed. Looking down at Leden’s face, Larn realised his last living link with his
homeworld had been severed. He was truly alone now. More alone than he could have ever thought
possible. Alone, on a strange new world that seemed entirely given over to randomness, brutality
and madness.
“He was a hero,” the old woman said.
“A hero?”
Unsure of her meaning, Larn looked at her in confusion. For a moment, her eyes dim and
uncomprehending with exhaustion, she returned his gaze in silence. Then, barely more animated
than the dead bodies before her, she tiredly shrugged and spoke once more.
“They are heroes,” she said in a listless voice, as though reciting a speech she had heard a
thousand times herself. “They all are: all the Guardsmen who die here. They are martyrs. By giving
their blood to defend this place they have made the soil of this city into sacred ground. Broucheroc
is a holy and impregnable fortress. The orks will never take it. We will break their assault here.
Then, we will push them back and reclaim this entire planet.”
“So the commissars tell us,” she added, without conviction.
Returning to their work the women made to lift Leden from the pile. Finding him held fast and
stuck to the other bodies by frozen and congealed blood, one of the women took a pry bar from the
side of the cart. Sickened to his stomach, Larn watched her slide the bar under Leden’s body and put
her weight on it, the corpse rising with a crack of splintered ice as her sisters pulled it free and
tossed it on the cart. Then, two of them pushing down the handles of the cart while the others stood
by the side to stop its contents from falling out, the old women began to wheel away the bodies they
had collected.
“What will you do with them?” Larn called out after them, not altogether sure he wanted to
know the answer.
“They will be buried,” the women he had spoken to earlier said. “Like heroes should be. Buried,
up on the hill past the old plasteel works on the Grennady Plass. Heroes’ Hill, it is called. Or at least
that is what they tell us,” she shrugged again. “We just transport the bodies. Others deal with their
disposal.”
43
With that she turned back to the burden of the cart, pushing it away with the other women in the
direction of the outskirts of the city. As he watched them go, Larn belatedly tried to remember one
of the prayers he had been taught as a child. A prayer to ease the passage of the departed souls of his
comrades into the afterlife as they went to join their Emperor in paradise. His mind was a blank, his
heart so sick with grief it felt dull and empty. All his prayers had left him.
“Take off your jacket and pull back your tunic,” he heard a voice say behind him.
Turning, Larn found himself face-to-face with a gaunt Vardan medic wearing a blood-splattered
greatcoat and carrying a satchel slung across his shoulder.
“If you want me to treat that shoulder wound I will have to be able to see it,” the medic said,
opening his satchel.
Looking at his own left shoulder, much to his surprise Larn noticed a small bloodstained hole in
the epaulette of his jacket. Dimly remembering the sudden pain he had felt there when the ork bomb
had exploded in the trench behind him, he did as the medic had asked, removing his jacket and
pulling down his tunic shirt to allow him access to the wound.
“Hmm. The good news is you’ll live,” the medic said, prodding at the wound while Larn
shivered in the cold. “Looks like you were winged by a piece of shrapnel. Took a little bit of flesh
with it, but it doesn’t look as though the bone is broken.”
Taking a sachet of white powder from inside his bag the medic poured it liberally on the wound
and pressed a gauze pad over the hole, applying half-a-dozen pieces of adhesive tape to hold the
dressing in place.
“You didn’t realise you had a hole in you, I take it?” he said. Then, seeing Larn nod, he
continued. “Probably shock. Get yourself some recaf. Food too, if you can find it. It’ll help you get
yourself together. Though I warn you, you probably won’t thank me for that advice in an hour’s
time. Once you get your feeling back, chances are you’ll find that wound aches like a bitch. You
have morphia?”
“Four phials,” said Larn. “In my med-pack.”
“Good. Let me see it,” the medic said. Then, when he saw Larn hesitate, he held out his hand in
command. “Kit inspection. As company medical officer, it is my job to make sure you are properly
equipped.”
Pulling the slim oblong wooden case of the med-pack he had been issued with on Jumael from
his belt, Larn handed it over. Breaking the seals on the box lid the medic slid it open and checked
the contents.
“Morphia. Vein clamps. Sterilising fluid. Synth-skin canister. Wherever you’re from they
obviously don’t believe in sending their sons under equipped to war. Still, my need is greater than
yours. I’m going to have to requisition some of your supplies.”
“But you can’t just help yourself to my med-pack,” Larn said in outrage. “The regulations say—
”
“The regulations say a lot of things, new fish,” the medic replied, taking a handful of items from
inside the med-pack and dropping them into his satchel. “Though you can be sure whichever genius
wrote them never troubled himself actually finding out if they worked in practice. Anyway, I’m
leaving you with half of the gauze, morphia, and clamps. Plus, you get to keep the insect repellent.
Given the climate, there’s not much call for it hereabouts.”
“But if I should get seriously wounded—”
“Then you’ll need a medic. Just scream loudly and I’ll come running.”
Tossing the depleted med-pack back to him, the medic closed his satchel before looking at Larn
once more.
“Now,” he said, “seeing as you’re standing about here on your own, I take it you’ve not been
assigned to duties yet?”
“No… I… my company was destroyed and…”
44
“Go see Corporal Vladek,” the medic said. “He’ll sort you out. Tell him Medical Officer Svenk
sent you.”
“Corporal Vladek?”
“Over there,” the medic said, pointing to one of the dugout entrances as he turned to walk away.
“Barracks Dugout One. Vladek is our quartermaster — the biggest scavenger, thief, pack rat, and all
round scrounger in the sector. You’ll know him when you see him. Oh, and a word to the wise, new
fish. Don’t drink any more than two cups of Vladek’s recaf. Or else, next thing you know you could
be charging the ork lines on your own in a one-man assault.”
Walking down the rough earthen steps underground into the dugout, Larn was greeted with a warm
blast of air thick with the smell of smoke and the odour of stale sweat. Eyes watering at the stench
of it, he stepped past a couple of Guardsmen playing dice just inside the doorway and made his way
into the barracks. Inside, he saw two lines of rusting metal bunks arranged either side of an iron
stove at the centre of the room where a group of Vardans sat talking, eating, or cleaning their
weapons. For a moment, Larn considered asking them if any of them had seen Corporal Vladek.
Then, seeing a flabby unshaven Vardan in a stained undershirt sitting alone at a table in a corner of
the room, Larn remembered the medic’s description and knew he had found his man.
Crammed on ramshackle shelves and in alcoves cut directly into the earth of the wall behind the
corporal was a treasure trove of scavenged equipment. Larn could see lasgun power packs, frag
grenades, boxes of dry rations, shotgun shells, bayonets and knives of all shapes and sizes, spades,
picks, hand axes, lanterns, uniforms, helmets, flak jackets, even a large metal claw that could only
have come from the arm of a dead ork. Meanwhile, on the table and the floor around him were a
number of standard issue Guardsmen’s field rucksacks, the contents of which the corporal was
currently busy digging through with the grim enthusiasm of a bandit chieftain surveying his latest
spoils.
“Corporal Vladek?” Larn asked, approaching the table. “Medical Officer Svenk said I should
come see you.”
“Ah, more cannon fodder,” the corporal said, pushing the rucksacks aside to clear a space as he
looked up at Larn with the glint of a smile in his red-rimmed eyes. “Always good to see some new
grist for the mill. Welcome to the 902nd Vardan, new fish. Find yourself a chair. You would like
some recaf? I have some brewing.”
Turning to the battered pot of recaf perched precariously on a small hotplate beside him, the
corporal produced a pair of enamel cups and filled them to the brim with black steaming liquid. He
noticed Larn staring darkly down at one of the rucksacks still left on the table.
“Here we go. Two cups of Vladek’s special recaf, nice and hot,” the corporal said. “Sadly, we
have to make do with a ground-up concoction of local roots and tubers rather than the real thing.
Even the Emperor himself would be hard pressed to find any real recaf in this hellhole, and we all
know he can work miracles. To give it a bit more kick I mix in a tenth of a dose of powdered stimms
which, incidentally, works wonders for the flavour. But I see you seem to be interested in one of my
latest acquisitions, new fish. Though, from the expression on your face, I have a feeling you’re not
about to make me an offer.”
“This rucksack,” Larn said, feeling dead inside as he looked at the words Jumael 14th stamped
on the side. “It could have belonged to one of my friends.”
“I wouldn’t be surprised,” Vladek said, then gestured at the pile of rucksacks lying on the floor
beside him. “If not this one, then perhaps one of these other packs did. So? What of it? It is not as
though this equipment is likely to be of help to its previous owners anymore. While it could mean
the difference between life and death for someone still living on the line. It is a simple matter of the
fair and logical distribution of resources, new fish. Which, in this case, means that the living get to
keep the things the dead no longer have any use for. Besides, if I hadn’t had the foresight to liberate
these packs from the bodies of the dead, someone else would have. You would have preferred I had
45
let the militia auxiliaries get them so they could make us trade for the contents? This is Broucheroc,
new fish. Forget all that nine-tenths rubbish. Here, possession is the whole of the law.”
“And if I was killed?” said Larn, angrily. “Would you loot my body as well?”
“In a heartbeat, new fish. Your lasgun, your bayonet, your pack, your boots, not to mention
whatever medical supplies the esteemed Svenk was kind enough to leave you with. Anything that
might be of use to us. But you needn’t feel so put upon. It is the same for everyone here, myself
included. If I am killed tomorrow, I should expect to have my equipment stripped and re-allocated
before my body even goes cold.”
“Not much likelihood of that happening,” Larn spat. “Not with you sitting warm and safe in here
in this dugout while outside good men are dying!”
“Good men?” Vladek said, his voice low with menace as the warm facade of moments earlier
abruptly faded. “Don’t talk to me about good men dying, new fish. In ten years in this stinking
cesspit I’ve seen men — good and bad — die by their thousands. Some of them were friends of
mine. Others weren’t. But any one of them was worth more than you and all your idiot recruit
friends put together. You think just because I’m sitting here I don’t know what it is to fight? I was
killing the Emperor’s enemies when you were still sucking greedily at your mother’s teat. How else
do you think I ended up with a leg like this?”
Taking an enormous combat knife from the table before him Vladek smacked it down against
his left leg for emphasis, the flat of the blade making a dull metallic noise through his trouser leg as
it struck his knee.
“You have an augmetic leg?” Larn said, shocked.
“Augmetic? Phah. The chance would be a fine thing! Along with everything else bionics are in
short supply hereabouts. This is a Mark 3 Non-Motive Prosthetic, Left Leg Model. I had to barter
the salvaged parts from a knocked-out sentinel for it, never mind what it cost me to get the damned
apothecary to fit it. Now, I think it’s time you sat down and stopped your mewling, new fish. Before
I become so offended at your big mouth and flagrant disregard for my hospitality that I waste this
good recaf by throwing it in your stupid snot-nosed face.”
Hearing someone laugh in another part of the dugout, Larn suddenly realised the other Vardans
must have heard every word Vladek had said to him. His face burning with shame and
embarrassment Larn took a chair and sat opposite the corporal with eyes lowered, unwilling to meet
the other man’s gaze for fear his cheeks were still flaring scarlet.
“Drink your recaf, new fish,” the corporal said, the storm of his anger passing as abruptly as it
had started. “We will begin again, you and I. Wipe the slate clean. I know it has been a hard day for
you after all, and so I am willing to make allowances. It is not every day that a Guardsman finds he
has been dropped on the wrong planet.”
“You know about that?” Larn said, stunned. “Did one of the men I was in the trench with tell
you? Repzik said—”
“Repzik is dead, new fish,” Vladek said. “He died in the last attack. We talked about good men?
