I did not save you, thought Kantor. Alessio did.

She was right about the orks. More would come. Many more. It was as inevitable as the sunrise. The ork bikers often rode at the head of a much larger contingent. When that contingent arrived, there would be no saviors a second time. The woman and her little ones would provide a brief moment of entertainment before they were butchered like the livestock they had once depended on

But if we take responsibility for these people, Kantor thought bitterly, where does it end? Are we to save every other man, woman and child we happen across? They will slow us down when our greatest need is to move quickly.

He grappled with the most human part of himself, fighting to lock it away behind walls of resolve. He needed to crush these feelings of pity. They would do him no good now.

The Chapter must endure, he told himself, repeating it like a mantra. The Chapter must endure. Nothing else comes close. Good intentions will undo us. They will lead to our destruction. If that happens, we might as well have died with the others when the missile hit.

It was hard to do, but he stepped back and pulled his boot from under the woman’s head. Only now did she look up at him, and her large brown eyes, wet with tears, sought his.

‘Please, lord!’she cried out. ‘What hope do we have alone?’

What hope, indeed, thought Kantor. I could say the same for my brothers and I. What hope do sixteen have against a Waaagh?

He turned from her and called out to his men to make ready for their departure, then he marched towards the fire where his three squads had finished their checks. The sound of her weeping followed him, clawing at his resolve.

He heard his inner voice say, ‘Turn from those who need you, and you will lose everything that defines you.’

Master Visidar had spoken those words to him just a decade before his death. Kantor cursed, knowing them for truth

When he was ten meters from Jilenne, he turned and looked over his shoulder. He felt himself speak to her, heard the words in his ears as if they were someone else’s. They seemed to pass from his lips automatically.

‘I will not stop you from trying to follow us,’ he told her. ‘But you will not be able to keep up. Not for long. While you can, however, no greenskin will take you, nor any of your children.’

He turned his eyes forward again, adding, ‘This is the best I can do for you.’

To Jilenne, it was enough. The timbre of her sobs changed from sorrow and fear to gratitude.

Kantor heard her urge her children to stand and follow as she fell into step behind him. He continued towards the fire, not slowing his pace, but not increasing it, either.

All the same, as he and his Crimson Fists left the farming settlement with their gaggle of refugees in tow, Kantor couldn’t escape a feeling of deep foreboding. He had crossed a line. The woman would soon realise he had given her false hope. She and her children would tire quickly and the Astartes would begin to pull ahead until they disappeared from view altogether.

Cortez was sure the woman would collapse soon. The children she carried were small, but even a small weight took its toll on a long hard march. It was a pity. He found that he respected her a great deal. Her arms and shoulders must have been burning with lactic acid, not to mention her legs and the muscles of her lower back. But she kept putting one step out in front of the other.

Then, just as he was about to turn around, he saw her left leg crumple under her and she went down, turning to protect her little ones from impact with the ground even as she fell. It looked like her foot had snagged in a clump of grass.

Her other children shuffled to her side and crouched there, urging her to stand.

Fenestra had seen it, too. ‘It is over, then,’ he said. ‘About time. We can move at speed.’

Cortez opened a link to the Chapter Master. ‘Pedro, it’s me. The woman has fallen. I don’t think she’ll be getting up. I just wanted to let you know.’

There was a moment before Kantor replied. ‘She fought hard to hang on. Impressive that she lasted as long as she did, is it not?’

‘It is,’ said Cortez after a beat. ‘But it ends here. Her burden is too great to continue.’ Again he paused. ‘I… I should not have saved her, Pedro. I merely postponed the inevitable and prolonged her torment. Perhaps I should…’

‘…grant her the final mercy?’said Kantor, finishing Cortez’s sentence for him.

‘Yes.’

There was such a long pause this time that Cortez started to think the Chapter Master had cleared the link. Then, finally, Kantor said, ‘Hold position and wait for me, but tell the rest of your men to keep moving towards the tree line. I want our squads in cover before the suns are visible.’

Even though Kantor’s armour was scratched, chipped, dented and burned black in places, he still looked like a figure of legend, still everything a Chapter Master should be. His golden halo shone in the growing light.

When he was three meters from Cortez, he stopped and looked east. ‘The suns will be up very soon, Alessio. We should have been in the cover of the forest by now. We run great risk of being spotted from the air.’ Cortez nodded. He knew the habits of the orks, knew they seldom flew at night. Their eyesight was poor compared to their sense of smell, and darkness brought a kind of malaise down on them without which they might have butchered each other in the dark, so violent were their tendencies. They only ever launched night attacks by the light of flaming torches or searchlights, which was doubly fortuitous because such lights made convenient markers for Imperial artillery fire. As soon as the suns were up, the sky would fill with noisy, ugly flying machines.

Kantor was right. They had to get to the cover of the forest within the next ten minutes.

‘Come,’ said the Chapter Master, and he strode in the direction of the children where they hovered over their mother’s unmoving form.

The children heard the two massive Space Marines approaching and, with fear apparent on their faces, took a few nervous steps back, conflicted between feelings of concern for their mother and concern for their own lives. Cortez saw them eyeing his weapons, especially his power fist. He wondered what they were thinking. Did they really believe he would crush them with it? In a universe as cruel as this, perhaps they did.

Come to think of it, what exactly were Pedro’s intentions? Did he plan to put the entire brood out of its misery?

Kantor crouched at the woman’s side and removed his helmet.

Cortez tried to read his face, but it betrayed no emotion.

‘Jilenne,’ said the Chapter Master. ‘Can you hear me?’

The woman’s eyes were closed, but her lips parted. Weakly, quietly, she said, ‘They were so heavy. So heavy…’

Kantor nodded. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘but you did well to bring them this far.’

Reaching out, he lifted the two smallest children away from her and gestured to the older children to take them. They did so, and Kantor turned back to the woman.

The Emperor’s mercy, thought Cortez. You should not have to do this, Pedro.

It is my fault. It is my soul that should bear the stain.

Before he could communicate this, Kantor spoke.

‘It is time,’ he said, and he reached down to the woman with his gauntleted hands. ‘Time that someone carried you now.’

As Cortez watched, the Chapter Master lifted the woman and stood to his full height, cradling her exhausted form in his arms. She looked so small and fragile against his sculpted ceramite chest, little more than a rag-doll.

Then the Chapter Master turned to Cortez and said over the link, ‘Once we are among the trees, they will have a better chance. They are charges of the Chapter now, and we cannot abandon them.’