‘You have a certain way of expressing yourself, Sol.’ Though he couldn’t see him, Ba’ken thought he detected a rare smile in Argos’s voice as he used the captain’s given first name. It fled quickly as he gave his final statement.

‘The chances of Va’lin’s survival are minimal according to the readings I am seeing. So too your aspirants.’ Another pause, this time not caused by static but by the Forge Master’s desire to find the appropriate emotional response. ‘I am sorry, brother-captain.’

‘No you’re not, Argos, but the gesture is appreciated nonetheless. Ba’ken out.’ He cut the feed, let the speeder idle along in silence for a few more seconds.

‘I should not have let him go,’ Ba’ken berated. ‘A death sentence, he said it himself.’

‘Va’lin is the most resourceful warrior I know in the Seventh,’ said Exor. ‘If there is a way to make it out of the fire canyon, he will find it.’

The speeder came to a halt, hovering just beyond the storm’s edges and minimum safe distance.

‘And that is the problem, Exor.’ Ba’ken glowered and the hard crags of his face bunched together in a fist of black rock. He paused for a beat, thinking. ‘Phosphor-flares. Now. Stake them as close as you can and at every possible aperture out of that hell hole.’

Exor unclipped his gunner’s harness and climbed over into the speeder’s troop hold. A satchel of flares was slung over his shoulder when he touched down on the plain.

‘Plant them deep. Do it fast,’ snapped Ba’ken, watching the Scout go to work. ‘I’ll drive around, see if the view is any better farther along.’

As the speeder started up again, he snarled, angry. At the wastefulness of it all, at Va’lin, at himself.

‘Impetuous fool. If he does live through this, I’ll bloody kill him myself.’

Gunning the engines, Ba’ken drove the speeder around the other side of the canyon in the desperate hope of finding a way through.

Illion’s wounded hand made the climb more difficult. It was tough already but the pathfinder was determined not to let something as inconsequential as pain slow him down. His bindings, laced with morphia gel from his modest field kit, took the edge off but only so he wouldn’t pass out. Slight, perhaps; young, most certainly, Illion had survived against the odds – his facial scars were a daily reminder of that – and he wasn’t about to relinquish the life he had been given easily.

‘Which way?’ he heard the Themian ask from below.

Illion was barely holding on with both hands, so he nodded up to the natural causeway he had found in the canyon’s flank and hoped Kade would catch on.