name “Hero of Broucheroc” to all my different titles. I will not allow matters here to go any other
way.
Then, noticing a single page sitting alone among the flotsam spread of maps and documents
lying across the table, the Grand Marshal saw something there that excited his interest. It was the
latest edition of The Veritas, the city’s twice-daily newsletter and, as so often in the past when he
felt weighed down by all his troubles, the Grand Marshal turned to the newsletter in the hope of
comfort.
Orks Defeated in Sector 1-13, the headline read. Jumael 14th Victorious!
Yes, he thought, reading the story written below it. It doesn’t matter what the others say, here is
the proof that I was right all along. The proof of impending victory and the proof my battle plans
are sound. We are winning victories. We are defeating the orks. We are winning this war.
It says so right here in the news.
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CHAPTER ELEVEN
17:54 Central Broucheroc Time
Boy and the Taking of Broucheroc’s Children — Trench Repairs Parts 1, 2 & 3 — Questions as to
the Whys and Wherefores of Survival — A Reappraisal of the Tale of his Fathers
His name was Boy. Granted, his Ma had given him another name but she had been dead for more
than three something years now and he had been so young he could no longer remember what it was
she had called him. Instead, he had taken the name the auxies used for him when they tried to catch
him to take him to the machine-men and their big making-places. “Come here, boy,” they would
say. “We don’t want to hurt you, boy,” their voices breathless from running, their stupid faces red
and panting, trying to chase him as he danced away from them across the rubble. Some of them, the
clever ones he guessed, would even try to trick him. “We have food, boy,” they’d say. “Come down
here and we will share some with you.” But they could never fool him. He was Boy, and he lived
wild and swift and free in the ruins of this city. Try as they might, the auxies and the machine-men
would never get him.
Now, the cloak he had made from rat skins and scavenged sacking-cloth wrapped tight about
him to keep out the cold, Boy crouched hidden in a hollow in the rubble waiting to see if one of the
children of Cap’n Rat would take his bait. The pickings had been good this week, with Cap’n Rat
sending at least one of his children along each day for Boy to kill and eat. In return Boy had done
right by the Cap’n just liked he’d promised him: forsaking all other gods and praying to Cap’n Rat
over each of his kills. As far as agreements went Boy reckoned it had been a pretty good one. Only
problem was, despite the fact he had been waiting in the same place for hours now, so far today the
Cap’n didn’t seem in any great hurry to live up to his end of the bargain.
Then, at last, Boy saw signs of progress. Tempted from his burrow by the promise of easy
pickings, a rat emerged from a nearby hole in the rubble and moved quickly across the rocks
towards the bait. Until, coming to the small piece of greasy flesh Boy had set out as a lure, the rat
paused with whiskers twitching warily as though some inner instinct had alerted it to danger.
Too late to be twitching with your whiskers now, Brother Rat, Boy thought, a feral smile playing
across his cracked lips as he aimed his slingshot and loosed the taut string to let fly with a two-inch
metal nail. Shouldn’t oughta have been so greedy, coming out in the open in the suntime like that.
Flying fast and true the nail took the rat square in the back of the neck, stabbing through its spine
and into the skull. On his feet and moving before the nail had even hit its target, Boy jumped from
cover to race scampering across the rabble to retrieve his prize. Grabbing the dead rat by the tail, he
turned and ran back to find refuge again in his hiding place. Then, pulling the nail free and daubing
two smears of the rat’s blood across his cheeks, he knelt to send a silent prayer of thanksgiving to
his unseen benefactor.
Praise’m, Cap’n Rat, he thought as he looked down at the body of his catch and considered its
worth. Praise’m for making so many of your children. Praise’m for making them big and fat. And
praise’m for sending them to me so I don’t starve.
It was a good rat, fine and sleek, with the kind of big meaty haunches he knew would make for
tasty eatings. Nor did the value of the rat to Boy end there. He could make clothing from its pelt,
sewing thread from its sinews, needles and traphooks from its bones, teeth, and claws. No part of the
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rat’s body would go wasted. By virtue of the survival skills he had learned first by watching his
mother and then on his own after her death, Boy could find a use for anything.
Abruptly, he found himself thinking of how things used to be when his Ma was still alive. He
remembered the cellar where they used to live, her kind and careworn face, the soft lullabies she
would sing to drift him off to sleep. He remembered sitting on her knee as she told him the reasons
they must stay in hiding. “They say we must give up our children,” she had told them. “The
generals. They say children are a distraction in wartime, that the people of Broucheroc must all
serve in the auxiliaries while their children are cared for in the orphanariums. But I don’t believe
them. I think they want to give the children over to the Adeptus Mechanicus — the machine-men —
so they can train them to be workers in the manufactoriums, the big dangerous making-places. But I
won’t let them do it, my baby boy. I won’t let them take you. No matter what happens, you can
always know your Ma will keep you safe.”
His heart growing heavy, Boy remembered other things as well. He remembered the sound of
thunder rolling across the ground above their heads one night while they crouched huddled in the
cellar. He remembered the cave-in and his mother’s body lying crushed among the rubble. He
remembered her eyes staring at him, cold and dead from a face covered in a thick layer of dust. He
remembered crying for hours, scared and lonely, not understanding how it was she could have left
him. Then, his own eyes stinging wetly at the corners, Boy found he didn’t want to have anything
more to do with remembering for a while.
Sucking a breath of air and rubbing the back of his hand across his face to clear his eyes, Boy
decided it was time to head back to his warren and get to eating Brother Rat. Too smart to just head
there directly in case anyone was looking, he took the long way, cutting a twisting path through the
maze of shattered buildings and mounds of rubble all around him. Then, as he crossed near the
summit of one of the mounds, he noticed something that gave him pause. A smell, almost.
Something gathering on the wind…
For a moment, feeling a sudden chill at the base of his spine, Boy stood looking out toward the
east. Before him the city seemed quiet, its deserted streets appearing every bit as dead and lifeless as
the mined burnt-out buildings that surrounded them on every turn. Boy was not fooled. After three
something years living alone among the rubble now he had developed a sixth sense when it came to
the city and its ways. A sense that, right here and now, told him he had best be wary.
Oughta be getting myself back underground and staying there a while, he thought as he finally
turned to make for home. There’s trouble brewing: the wind says it clear and loud. A bad day is
coming, and like as not a lots of peoples is gonna die…
“What was life like where you were born?” Larn asked Bulaven, lifting another shovelful of earth
onto the blade of his entrenching tool as the big man stood beside him. “On your homeworld, I
mean?”
“On Vardan?” Bulaven said, pausing in his work long enough to wipe the sweat from his
chapped brow before it could freeze. “It was good enough I suppose, new fish. Certainly, there are a
lot of worse planets a man could be from.”
They were standing in the trench with shovels in their hands, Davir and Scholar beside them
while Zeebers stood on the firing step on watch, trying to repair the damage done to the trench in the
course of the shelling. Returning to their trench in the aftermath of the bombardment, the fireteam
had arrived to find the explosion of a nearby shell had caused part of the trench’s rear wall to
collapse, half-burying the trench interior in clods of frozen earth. Now, after half an hour of
backbreaking labour the trench floor was mostly cleared, the excess earth having been piled out of
the way into another corner of the trench.
“Personally, I would say you are doing our homeworld a grave disservice, Bulaven.” Davir said,
sitting on the end of his shovel and watching them as they moved the last of the fallen earth.
“Frankly, my own recollections suggest Vardan was every bit as much a stinking hellhole as
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Broucheroc. Granted, we didn’t have all these orks to contend with there. I’m sure I don’t remember
having to do so much digging back home though.”
“I don’t seem to have noticed you doing too much digging here either.” Bulaven said. “Most of
the time in fact you have been standing there and leaving all the work to others.”
“Phah. It is a simply a matter of maintaining a proper division of labour,” Davir said. “Each man
performs the task to which he is best suited. Which, in this case, means that you, Scholar, and the
new fish do the don-keywork while I oversee your labours in a supervisory capacity. Besides,
someone must watch to make sure the new fish can tell one end of a spade from the other.”
“Not to mention your vital role in keeping us all warm,” Larn said, so annoyed now at the ugly
dwarf’s constant insults that he found himself responding in kind without even thinking. “Emperor
knows, if it wasn’t for all your hot air spewing about this trench we might have frozen to death long
ago.”
For a moment, shocked at his response, the others looked at him in silence. Then, abruptly,
Scholar and Bulaven broke into surprised laughter. Even Davir’s face briefly cracked into a
grudging smile. Only Zeebers seemed unmoved, scowling down at Larn from the firing step with
the same hostile expressions he always wore.
“Hah! Hot air!” Bulaven said, laughing. “That’s a good one. The new fish may not have been
here very long, Davir, but you have to admit he got your number fast enough!”
“Yar, yar, yar. Keep on laughing, pigbrain,” Davir said, his gruff demeanour abruptly restored as
he turned to look at Larn in tight-lipped derision. “So, it seems our little puppy has claws. Very
good, new fish. Well done. You made a joke. Ha, ha, you are very funny. But don’t let your head get
too big now. The orks like nothing better than to see a new fish with a big head. It gives them more
of a target to aim at.”
The repairs continued. Having finally cleared the trench of earth, they laid down their shovels. Then,
as Larn watched them, Bulaven and Scholar picked up an oblong sheet of metal lying across the
trench floor and pressed it against the ragged hole in the trench wall, holding upright it as Davir took
a wooden prop and used his shovel to hammer the prop in place to keep the sheet in position.
“There,” Davir said, checking the hole was fully covered and putting his weight against the prop
to make sure it was tight. “That should hold it long enough for us to finish the repairs.”
“What now?” Larn asked. “We have cleared the floor. How do we repair the hole itself?”
“How?” said Davir. “Well, first thing, you pick up your shovel again, new fish. You see that pile
of earth over there?” he said, pointing towards the clods of frozen earth they had already moved
over to the corner of the trench. “The pile you just moved? Well now, you take your shovel and
move it back over here. Then, you use it to fill in the original hole. I know, I know, you needn’t say
it. With all this endless excitement, who can believe that anyone ever told you that life in the Guard
might be boring?”
“I don’t understand how this is supposed to work,” Larn said later, his hands blistered through his
gloves and his back aching from using the shovel as they refilled the hole in the trench wall with
soil. “Even after we have filled the hole in, won’t the wall just collapsed again the moment we take
the prop away?”
“We don’t take the prop away, new fish,” Bulaven said, shovelling beside him. “Not at first,
anyway. First, we fill in the hole. Next, we wet the soil. Then, we tamp it all down and leave it to
freeze for a while. Then, after a couple of hours, we finally remove the prop and the wall will be as
good as new. Trust me, new fish, it always works. You wouldn’t believe how many times we’ve had
to repair this trench since we first dug it.”
“Wet it?” Larn asked. “Don’t we need a bucket then to fetch more water? We haven’t got much
left in our canteens.”
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“Bucket? Canteens?” Bulaven said, pausing in his labours to look at Larn with raised eyebrows.
“We are repairing a trench wall, new fish. We don’t use drinking water for that.”
“But then, what do we use?” Larn asked, beginning to feel foolish as he realised the others were
smirking at him.
“What do we use, he says,” Davir said, rolling his eyes towards the heavens. “My broad Vardan
backside. I swear, new fish, just when I was starting to think you might not be a total idiot you say
something stupid and ruin my good opinion of you. If it helps you to answer your question, here are
a couple of hints. One, it is always better to use warm water when repairing trench walls in frozen
conditions. Two, every human being carries a ready supply of the stuff in question about their
person.”
“Warm?” said Larn, a new understanding slowly dawning on him. “You mean we…”
“Ah, finally, he understands,” Davir said. “Yes, that’s right, new fish. And guess what? It’s your
turn first. Now, get up there and start pissing. I only hope to hell you haven’t got a nervous bladder.
Emperor knows, I have better things to do with my time than standing around here waiting for you
to piss.”
“What about your own world then, new fish?” Bulaven asked afterwards, as they sat in the trench
waiting for the newly repaired wall to freeze. “You asked me about Vardan before. What was your
own homeworld like?”
Trying to think of an answer, for a moment Larn was quiet. He thought about his parents’ farm,
the endless golden wheatfields swaying in the breeze. He thought of his family, all of them sitting at
