It was moonlight, and it poured through a gap in the tunnel ceiling. An explosive shell had caused the rockcrete road above to collapse, forming a steep ramp. The boys waited and listened until Bas decided that the sound of alien battle cries and gunfire was far enough away that they could risk the surface again. He and Syrric scrambled up the slope to stand on a street shrouded in thick grey smoke.
Which way? Syrric asked.
Bas wasn’t sure. He had to have a bolthole somewhere near here, but with all the smoke, he couldn’t find a landmark to navigate by. It seemed prudent to move in the opposite direction from the noise of battle.
‘Let’s keep on this way,’ said Bas, ‘at least for now.’ But, just as they started walking, a hoarse shout sounded from up ahead.
‘Contact front!’
The veils of smoke were suddenly pierced by a score of blinding, pencil thin beams, all aimed straight at the two boys.
‘Down!’ yelled Bas.
He and Syrric dropped to the ground hard and stayed there while the las-beams carved the air just above their heads. The barrage lasted a second before a different voice, sharp with authority, called out, ‘Cease fire!’
That voice made Bas shiver. It sounded so much like the Sarge. Could it be the old man? Had he survived? Had he come back for his grandson after all this time?
Shadowy shapes emerged from the smoke. Human shapes.
Nervously, Bas got to his knees. He was still holding Syrric’s hand. Looking down, he tugged the other boy’s arm. ‘They’re human!’
Syrric didn’t move.
Bas tugged again. ‘Syrric, get up. Come on.’
Then he saw it. Syrric was leaking thick fluid onto the surface of the road. Arterial blood.
Bas felt cold panic race through his veins, spinning him, sickening him. His stomach lurched. He squeezed Syrric’s hand, but it was limp. There was no pressure in the boy’s grip. There was no reassuring voice in Bas’s head. There was only emptiness, an aching gap where, moments before, the joy of companionship had filled him.
Bas stood frozen. His mind reeled, unable to accept what his senses told him.
Boots ground to a halt on the rockcrete a metre away.
‘Children!’ growled a man’s voice. ‘Two boys. Looks like we hit one o’ them.’
A black boot extended, slid under Syrric’s right shoulder, and turned him over.
Bas saw Syrric’s lifeless eyes staring at the sky, that defiant glimmer gone forever.
‘Aye,’ continued the rough voice. ‘We hit one all right. Fatality.’ The trooper must have seen the tattoo on Syrric’s head, because he added, ‘He was a witch, though,’ and he snorted like there was something humorous about it.
Bas sprung. Before he realised what he’d done, his grandfather’s knife was buried in the belly of the trooper standing over him.
‘You killed him,’ Bas screamed into the man’s shocked face. ‘He was mine, you bastard! He was my friend and you killed him!’
Bas yanked his knife out of the trooper’s belly and was about to stab again when something hit him in the side of the head. He saw the stars wheeling above him and collapsed, landing on Syrric’s cooling body.
‘Little bastard stabbed me!’ snarled the wounded trooper as he fell back onto his arse, hands pressed tight to his wound to stem the flow of blood.
‘Medic,’ said the commanding voice from before. ‘Man down, here.’
A shadow cast by the bright moonlight fell over Bas, and he looked up into a pair of twinkling black eyes. ‘Tough one, aren’t you?’ said the figure.
Bas’s heart sank. It wasn’t his grandfather. Of course it wasn’t. The Sarge was surely dead. Bas had never really believed otherwise. But this man was cast from the same steel. He had the same aura, as hard, as cold. Razor sharp like a living blade. He wore a black greatcoat and a peaked cap, and on that peak, a golden skull with eagle’s wings gleamed. A gloved hand extended towards Bas.
Bas looked at it.
‘Up,’ the man ordered.
Bas found himself obeying automatically. The hand was strong. As soon as he took it, it hauled him to his feet. The man looked down at him and sniffed the air.
‘Ork shit,’ he said. ‘So you’re smart as well as tough.’
Other figures wearing combat helmets and carapace armour came to stand beside the tall, greatcoated man. They looked at Bas with a mix of anger, curiosity and surprise. Their wounded comrade was already being attended by another soldier with a white field-kit.
‘Gentlemen,’ said the tall man. ‘Unexpected as it may be, we have a survivor here. Child or not, I’ll need to debrief him. You, however, will press on into the town as planned. Sergeant Hemlund, keep channel six open. I’ll want regular updates.’
‘You’ll have ‘em, commissar,’ grunted a particularly broad-shouldered trooper.
Bas didn’t know what a commissar was, but he guessed that it was a military rank. The soldiers fanned out, leaving him and the tall man standing beside Syrric’s body.
‘Regrettable,’ said the man, gesturing at the dead boy. ‘Psyker or not. Were you two alone here? Any other survivors?’
Bas didn’t know what a psyker was. He said nothing. The commissar took silence as an affirmation.
‘What’s your name?’
Bas found it hard to talk. His throat hurt so much from fighting back his sorrow. With an effort, he managed to croak, ‘Bas.’
The commissar raised an eyebrow, unsure he had heard correctly. ‘Bas?’
‘Short for Sebastian… sir,’ Bas added. He almost gave his family name then – Vaarden, his father’s name – but something made him stop. He looked down at the blood-slick knife in his right hand. His grandfather’s knife. The old man’s name was acid-etched on the blade, and he knew at that moment that it was right. It felt right. The old man had made him everything he was, and he would carry that name for the rest of his life.
‘Sebastian Yarrick,’ he said.
The commissar nodded.
‘Well, Yarrick. Let’s get you back to base. We have a lot to cover, you and I.’
He turned and began walking back down the street the way he had come, boots clicking sharply on the cobbles, knowing the boy would follow. In the other direction, fresh sounds of battle echoed from the dark tenement walls.
Bas sheathed the knife, bent over Syrric’s body and closed the boy’s eyelids.
He whispered a promise in the dead boy’s ear, a promise he would spend his whole life trying to keep.
Then, solemnly, he rose and followed the commissar, taking his first steps on a path that would one day become legend.
A BLACK LIBRARY PUBLICATION
Published in 2011 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd., Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK
Cover illustration by Jon Sullivan
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ISBN 978-0-85787-991-2
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