he had screwed the panel back in place, Larn realised his reasons for wanting to see it repaired went
far beyond such practical considerations. Like it or not, tomorrow he would be leaving the farm
forever and saying farewell to the only land and life he had ever known, never to return. He
understood now that he had felt the need to perform some last act of service to those he would be
leaving behind. He had wanted to complete some final labour on their behalf. An act of penance
almost, to give closure to his grief.
This morning, when his father had asked him to look at the pump and see if he could fix it, it had
seemed the perfect opportunity to achieve that aim. Now though, the recalcitrant machine spirits
inside the pump and his own lack of knowledge had conspired against him. No matter how hard he
tried, the pump was broken beyond his powers to repair it and his last act of penance would go
unfulfilled.
Larn collected his tools together and made ready to turn for home, only to pause again as he
noticed a change in the sunset. Ahead, the sun had already half disappeared below the horizon,
while the sky around it had turned a deeper and more angry red. What gave him pause was not the
sun or the sky, but the fields below them. Where once they had been bathed in spectacular shades of
gold and amber, now the colour of the fields had become more uniform, changing to a dark and
unsettling shade of brownish red, like the colour of blood. At the same time the evening breeze had
risen almost imperceptibly, catching the rows of wheat in the fields and causing them to flow and
shift before Larn’s eyes as though the fields themselves had become some vast and restless sea. It
could almost be a sea of blood, he said to himself, the very thought of it causing him to shiver a
little.
A sea of blood.
And, try as hard as he might, he could read no good omen in that sign.
By the time Larn had put his tools away, the sun had all but set. Leaving the barn behind, he walked
towards the farmhouse, the yellow glow of lamplight barely visible ahead of him through the slats of
the wooden shutters now closed over the farmhouse windows. Stepping onto the porch Larn lifted
the latch to the front door and walked inside, carefully removing his boots at the threshold so as not
to track mud from the fields into the hallway. Then, leaving the boots just inside the doorway, he
walked down the hall towards the kitchen, unconsciously making the sign of the aquila with his
fingers as he passed the open door of the sitting room with its devotional picture of the Emperor
hung over the fireplace.
Reaching the kitchen he found it deserted, the smell of woodsmoke and the delicious aromas of
all his favourite foods rising from the pans simmering on the stove. Roasted xorncob, boiled derna
8
beans, alpaca stew and taysenbeny pie: together, the dishes of the last meal he would ever eat at
home. Abruptly it occurred to him, in whatever years of his life might yet come, those selfsame
aromas would forever now be linked with a feeling of desperate sadness.
Ahead, the kitchen table was already laid out with plates and cutlery ready for the meal. As he
stepped past the table toward the sink, he remembered returning from the fields two nights earlier to
find his parents sitting in the kitchen waiting for him, the black-edged parchment of the induction
notice lying mutely on the table between them. From the first it had been obvious they had both
been crying, their eyes red and raw from grief. He had not needed to ask them the reason for their
tears. Their expressions, and the Imperial eagle embossed on the surface of the parchment, had said
it all.
Now, as he moved past the table Larn spotted the same parchment lying folded in half on top of
one of the kitchen cupboards. Diverted from his original intentions, he walked towards it. Then,
picking up the parchment and unfolding it, he found himself once more reading the words written
there below the official masthead.
Citizens of Jumael IV, the parchment read. Rejoice! In accordance with Imperial Law and the
powers of his Office, your Governor has decreed two new regiments of the Imperial Guard are to be
raised from among his people. Furthermore, he has ordered those conscripted to these new
regiments are to be assembled with all due haste, so that they may begin their training without delay
and take their place among the most Holy and Righteous armies of the Blessed Emperor of All
Mankind.
From there the parchment went on to list the names of those who had been conscripted, outlining
the details of the mustering process and emphasising the penalties awaiting anyone who failed to
report. Larn did not need to read the rest of it — in the last two days he had read the parchment so
many times he knew the words by heart. Yet despite all that, as though unable to stop picking at the
scab of a half-healed wound, he continued to read the words written on the parchment before him.
“Arvin?” He heard his mother’s voice behind him, breaking his chain of thought. “You startled
me, standing there like that. I didn’t hear you come in.”
Turning, Larn saw his mother standing beside him, a jar of kuedin seeds in her hand and her
eyes red with recently dried tears.
“I just got here, Ma,” he said, feeling vaguely embarrassed as he put the parchment back where
he had found it. “I finished my chores, and thought I should wash my hands before dinner.”
For a moment his mother stood there quietly staring at him. Facing her in uncomfortable silence,
Larn realised how hard it was for her to speak at all now she knew she would be losing him
tomorrow. It lent their every word a deeper meaning, making even the most simple of conversations
difficult while with every instant there was the threat that a single ill-chosen word might release the
painful tide of grief welling up inside her.
“You took your boots off?” she said at last, retreating to the commonplace in search of safety.
“Yes, Ma. I left them just inside the hallway.”
“Good,” she said. “You’d better clean them tonight, so as to be ready for tomorrow…” At that
word his mother paused, her voice on the edge of breaking, her teeth biting her lower lip and her
eyelids closed as though warding off a distant sensation of pain. Then, half turning away so he could
no longer see her eyes, she spoke again.
“But anyway, you can do that later,” she said. “For now, you’d better go down to the cellar.
Your Pa’s already down there and he said he wanted to see you when you got back from the fields.”
Turning further away from him now, she moved over to the stove and lifted the lid off one of the
pans to drop a handful of kuedin seeds into it. Ever the dutiful son, Larn turned away. Towards the
cellar and his father.
The cellar steps creaked noisily as Larn made his way down them. Despite the noise, at first his
father did not seem to notice his approach. Lost in concentration, he sat bent over his workbench at
9
the far end of the cellar, a whetstone in his hand as he sharpened his wool-shears. For a moment,
watching his father unawares as he worked, Larn felt almost like a ghost — as though he had passed
from his family’s world already and they could no longer see or hear him. Then, finding the thought
of it gave him a shiver, he spoke at last and broke the silence.
“You wanted to see me, Pa?”
Starting at the sound of his voice, his father laid the shears and the whetstone down before
turning to look towards his son and smile.
“You startled me, Arv,” he said. “Zell’s oath, but you can walk quiet when you’ve a mind to. So,
did you manage to fix the pump?”
“Sorry, Pa.” Larn said. “I tried replacing the starter and every other thing I could think of, but
none of it worked.”
“You tried your best, son,” his father said. “That’s all that matters. Besides, the machine spirits
in that pump are so old and ornery the damned thing never worked right half the time anyway I’ll
have to see if I can get a mechanician to come out from Ferrasville to give it a good look-over next
week. In the meantime, the rain’s been pretty good so we shouldn’t have a problem. But anyway,
there was something else I wanted to see you about. Why don’t you grab yourself a stool so the two
of us men can talk?”
Pulling an extra stool from beneath the workbench, his father gestured for him to sit down.
Then, waiting until he saw his son had made himself comfortable, he began once more.
“I don’t suppose I ever told you too much about your great-grandfather before, did I?” he said.
“I know he was an off-worlder, Pa.” Larn said, earnestly. “And I know his name was Augustus,
same as my middle name is.”
“True enough,” his father replied. “It was a tradition on your great-grandfather’s world to pass
on a family name to the first-born son in every generation. Course, he was long dead by the time
you were born. Mind you, he died even before I was born. But he was a good man, and so we did it
to honour him all the same. A good man should always be honoured, they say, no matter how long
he’s been dead.”
For a moment, his face grave and thoughtful, his father fell silent. Then, as though he had made
some decision, he raised his face up to look his son clearly in the eye and spoke again.
“As I say, your great-grandfather was dead long before I could have known him, Arvie. But
when I was seventeen and just about to come of age my father called me down into this cellar and
told me the tale of him — just like I’m about to tell you now. You see, my father had decided that
before I became a man it was important I knew where I came from. And I’m glad he did, cause what
he told me then has stood me in good stead ever since. Just like I’m hoping that what I’m going to
tell you now will stand you in good stead likewise. Course, with what’s happened in the last few
days — and where you’re bound for — I’ve got extra reasons for telling it to you. Reasons that,
Emperor love him, my own father never had to face. But that’s the way of things: each generation
has its own sorrows, and has to make the best of them they can. That’s all as may be, though. Guess
I should just stop dancing around it and come out and say what it is I have to say.”
Again, as though wrestling inwardly for the right words, his father paused. As he waited for him
to begin, Larn found himself suddenly thinking how old his father looked. Gazing at him as though
for the first time he became aware of the lines and creases across his father’s face, the slightly
rounded slump of his shoulders, the spreading fingers of grey in his once black and lustrous hair.
Signs of aging he would have sworn had not been there a week previously. It was almost as though
his father had aged a decade in the last few days.
“Your great-grandfather was in the Imperial Guard,” his father said at last. “Just like you’re
going to be.” Then, seeing his son about to blurt out a string of questions, he held his hand up to
gesture silence. “You can ask whatever you want later, Arvie. For now, it’s better if you just let me
tell it to you like my father told me. Believe me, once you’ve heard it you’ll know why it is I said I
thought you should hear it.”
10
Hanging on every word in the quiet stillness of the cellar, Larn heard his father tell his tale.
“Your great-grandfather was a Guardsman,” his father said again. “Course, he didn’t start out to be
one. No one does. To begin with he was just another farmer’s son like you or me, born on a world
called Arcadus V. A world not unlike this one, he would later say. A peaceful place, with lots of
good land for farming and plenty of room for a man to raise a family. And if things had followed
their natural course, that’s just what your great-grandfather would have done. He would have found
a wife, raised babies, farmed the land, same as generations of his kin on Arcadus V had done before
him. And in time he would have died and been buried there, his flesh returning to the fertile earth
while his soul went to join his Emperor in paradise. That’s what your great-grandfather thought his
future held for him when he came of age at seventeen. Then he heard the news he’d been
conscripted into the Guard and everything changed.
“Now, seventeen or not, your great-grandfather was no fool. He knew what being conscripted
meant. He knew there was a heavy burden that goes with being a Guardsman — a burden worse
than the threat of danger or the fear of dying alone and in pain under some cold and distant sun. A
burden of loss. The kind of loss that comes when a man knows he is leaving his home forever. It’s a
burden every Guardsman carries. The burden of knowing that no matter how long he lives he will
never see his friends, his family, or even his homeworld again. A Guardsman never returns, Arvie.
The best he can hope for, if he survives long enough and serves his Emperor well, is to be allowed
to retire and settle a new world somewhere, out among the stars. And knowing this — knowing he
was leaving his world and his people for good — your great-grandfather’s heart was heavy as he
said farewell to his family and made ready to report for muster.
“Though it may have felt like his heart was breaking then, your great-grandfather was a good
and pious man. Wise beyond his years, he knew mankind is not alone in the darkness. He knew the
Emperor is always with us. Same as he knew that nothing happens in all the wide galaxy without the
Emperor willing it to be so. And if the Emperor had willed that he must leave his family and his
homeworld and never see them again, then your great-grandfather knew it must serve some greater
purpose. He understood what the preachers mean when they tell us it isn’t the place of Man to know
the ways of the Emperor. He knew it was his duty to follow the course laid out for him, no matter
that he didn’t understand why that course had been set. And so trusting his life to the Emperor’s
kindness and grace, your great-grandfather left his homeworld to go find his destiny among the
stars.
“Now, the years that followed then were hard ones. Although he would never speak of it much
afterwards, in his time as a Guardsman your great-grandfather saw more than his fair share of
wonders and horrors. He saw worlds where billions of people lived right on top of each other like
insects in giant towers, never able to breathe clean air or see the sun. He saw worlds that lay gripped
