She had claimed the fire was to keep us warm. But I wondered if its true purpose was to summon the orks. Perhaps Shard preferred a death in battle over succumbing to thirst or disease. Or perhaps she truly imagined she could defeat them.

I whispered to Iwazar. The seer-skull whirred in acknowledgement before soaring from the cave’s entrance, taking position in the sky above, ready to capture her last stand. I owed her that. She had saved my life several times. It was fitting I would capture her death.

That day I learned first-hand of a term familiar to military officers across the Imperium: timore tedium. My terror rose as the sun ascended, for I feared an attack at any moment. But as the hours drifted by, the sun continuing its path, I began to yearn for it. Anything was better than waiting. I just wanted it done.

By midday, the sun was so strong Shard had to retreat from the cave’s entrance, shielding her skin from its glare.

‘It’s too bright,’ she said. ‘The glare from the water is almost as bad as the sunlight. Can your skull see anything?’

‘Nothing dangerous.’

I had spent that morning using Iwazar to familiarise myself with our surroundings. We were indeed embedded in the bark of an aged mandack tree. I think it was dead, or close to it, the bark blighted by the taint that seemed to have infested the whole planet. Its vast bulk at least shielded our rear, the spiralling limbs and barbed roots forming an almost imperceptible wall. But Shard’s smoke clearly revealed the crevice’s entrance.

From this vantage point, I could just spy what remained of the Avenger. It lay half-submerged in the swamp, barely a hundred yards from us. Shard had hastily concealed it with branches and leaves, but I knew the orks would find it once they had dispatched us. More scrap for them to salvage. It struck me as irresponsible of Shard to leave it intact.

‘No smoke on the horizon?’ she asked.

Her voice carried, dreamlike. Weakened as I was, I had to focus so as not to lose myself to the seer-skull’s machine-spirit.

‘No,’ I whispered. ‘Are you so anxious for our demise?’

She did not reply, but from the way the smoke thickened she must have thrown more leaves on the fire. There was no doubting the green tint now, though I wondered why she bothered. Though the beasts used the colour as a signal, surely they would investigate any plume for salvage purposes? Perhaps she had no choice, the colour merely a by-product of the fuel. There was little else to burn.