A baggage train of Ignean nomads resolved through a cloud of skirling dust. Fifteen men and women with their beasts of burden in tow toiled through grey, undulating dunes. Two outriders mounted on sauroch-bulls ranged ahead of the main group trying to find safe passage for the rest, except there was no safe passage through the endless tract of ash and death.

Most were dressed in rags tightly bound around their limbs and bodies, sand cloaks to ward off the sun. Six guards, armoured in light flak, carried spears and carbines. Not there for the people, they protected the wagons and the hydro-oxygen coolers harboured under leather tarps, the life expectancy of the travellers expressed in litres. None of the Igneans went without rebreathers, though the equipment was crude and wouldn’t last more than a few hours. Heat and thirst were the slow killers but there were many and entirely more aggressive ways to die out on the Scorian Plain.

Ba’ken knew of several and thought the nomads looked ill-prepared to survive any of them as he watched them from a high ridge of sun-baked rock. Below and all around him, the landscape was almost featureless, a veritable ocean of undulating ash-sand that stretched as far as a red horizon. Here the flat plain changed, growing into rugged mountains, the highest of which was a brooding, black colossus of intemperate humour. Mount Deathfire. How any man, even one such as he, could endure that fount of rage when fully roused was a question to which Ba’ken had no answer. Nor did he know the purpose of the stalwart Igneans attempting to brave it. This was the fifth such pilgrimage he had seen since entering the desert. He had heard talk from his brothers on sentry duty of considerably more.

Entire tribes, whole settlements, generations of Igneans.

He had yet to see a single one coming back.

The proud Nocturneans slogged through a nascent storm that was growing into a tempest. They weren’t moving on or seeking refuge in one of the Sanctuary Cities as some did when the rigours of living in the desert beyond the void shields became too much. Rumours had compelled them to leave whatever safety and solace they had found on this most inhospitable world. They were pilgrims in search of a myth.

‘Do you think he’s really out here somewhere?’

‘No,’ Ba’ken told Va’lin flatly.

‘The native Nocturneans must believe it, or else why would they turn out in such droves?’

Ba’ken turned his slab-like face to glower at the Scout.

‘And they are fools for doing so. He’s dead.’

Realising his error, Va’lin apologised. ‘I meant no offence, brother-captain. My intention wasn’t–’

Ba’ken turned away. ‘Forget it,’ he said, but he hid his grief poorly. Va’lin was an asset to the Seventh, remarkable in many ways, but possessed of a credulity that his captain was determined to train out of him.