Fewer and fewer supplies were getting through.

‘What you think?’ Ivan asked.

‘We fall back to Brand’s Fort,’ I said. ‘It’s got the best chance of holding out against a big assault.’

‘It’s a death-trap if we’re caught in it.’

‘This whole salient is, unless we’re reinforced soon. At least there we’ll be dug-in with food and medical supplies and as much ammunition as we’re ever likely to get.’

Brand’s Fort was a massive bunker excavated from the inside of a small hill and covered in rockcrete. Over the past couple of years it had been reinforced and reinforced again, with more weapons blisters, more rockcrete and more barbed wire. Effluent sumps poured slimy liquid down the sides. Skeletons lay within clusters of wire. Some joker had built a small wall of human skulls around the base of one of the bunkers and then spelled out the words Come and die here in bones on the slope beneath them. Where did these people find the time?

A Banshee scream filled the air and there was the sudden thunder of an explosion. I threw myself flat and all the Lion Guard around me did the same. The distant heretic batteries had opened fire once again.

Anton spidered his way up alongside me – all long legs and elbows – and out of the side of his mouth said, ‘I wonder if this is all part of Richter’s Great Plan.’

I knew what he meant but I wasn’t going to be drawn into a reply. It was possible this was an artillery barrage meant to precede the rebel attack and that there had been some mistake on the enemy side that had resulted in its delayed launch. The Emperor knows I’ve seen enough such things happen on our side of the trench system. Or maybe this was the harbinger of another assault.

We lay there for long minutes, acutely aware that it would only take one of those shells to drop on our section of trench and we would all be gone. I felt the earth shake beneath me. The pain in my leg was getting worse and I felt a little light-headed. I told myself it was because we’d been on short rations for so long, but part of me knew that it was not hunger.

I raised my head and watched a cluster of explosions stalk up the side of Brand’s Fort, carving out new indentations in the rockcrete, destroying the wall of skulls and the message written in bones.

A crouched figure made its way up the trench towards us. He wore the grey uniform of a Grosslander with a yellow armband that marked him as a messenger. His hand was fumbling nervously in his belt for a pistol. I waved at him to let him know that even though we were not part of his regiment we were not enemies.

‘What’s new?’ I shouted in Imperial Gothic.

He moved up to our position and said, ‘Big heretic offensive incoming. I’m on my way to the Great Bog to let Lieutenant Snorrison know he should hold his ground.’

‘Snorrison is dead, along with his whole command,’ I said.

‘You sure?’

‘I was there not an hour ago. Assault squad hit his position and wiped it out. Not five minutes later a crowd of heretics came through. We bloodied their nose but we didn’t have enough to hold them.’

‘You should have,’ he said accusingly.

‘Is my name Snorrison?’ I asked. ‘Am I wearing a Grosslander uniform?’

His eyes widened behind the lenses of his rebreather mask and I think for the first time he noticed the lion emblem on my tunic. He probably couldn’t tell the colour – with all the grime it would have been hard.

‘No, sir,’ he said shakily. He looked into the distance embarrassed. ‘You sure the lieutenant is dead?’

‘Either that or he’s run away,’ I said. ‘There was nobody left alive in the Great Bog.’

‘Lieutenant Snorrison would not do that,’ said the youth. I realised now he was very young and very green. I could not quite bring myself to feel sorry for him.