‘And you will join the Devastators, along with Exor. Can I be certain you won’t be as reckless again?’

Va’lin opened his mouth to speak but Ba’ken raised his hand to prevent him.

‘No need to answer. I already know you will. In donning the black carapace you’ll become a battle-brother, one knuckled finger of two clenched fists.’

‘I will serve with honour and duty until death, captain.’

Ba’ken nodded but his thoughts had strayed to other matters as he turned away to face the now quiescent Mount Deathfire.

‘What happened out on the plain? Where did you go, Va’lin?’

The Scout looked up to find his captain looking straight at him.

‘I don’t know.’

He was tempted to try and retrace his steps, to locate the shrine for some kind of answer that made sense, but a part of Va’lin realised it would not be there, that hours of searching would not reveal it.

‘We were rescued,’ he conceded. ‘I was dying, and the smoke gathered so thick I couldn’t see. There was no way out and suddenly I saw it.’

‘Saw what?’

‘A firebrand. A flame to guide us out of the darkness and back into the desert.’

Ba’ken shook his head, denial and incredulity etched upon his features as if they had been chiselled there by Va’lin’s words.

‘I thought it was you, captain, come back to get us out, but it couldn’t have been.’

Ba’ken was staring, his mouth a hard line across his face as he clenched his teeth until the bone ground together.

‘Don’t say anything more,’ he told the Scout. ‘We’ll return to Hesiod, where you’ll be properly debriefed then the brander-priests will score you and prepare you for your apotheosis. That is all.’ He turned away and marched back to the speeder, a cloud thicker than the smoke of the fire canyon upon his face.

Va’lin met Exor as he was stepping out of the troop hold.

They embraced briefly, one glad to see the other alive and well.

‘I’ve made them comfortable,’ said Exor. ‘I assume you’ll want to ride back with them.’

Va’lin nodded, regarding the two slumbering aspirants he had risked so much to rescue.

‘Their life signs are good,’ Exor went on. ‘You saved them, brother.’

‘No I didn’t,’ Va’lin replied, ‘not really.’

Exor frowned. ‘Are you all right?’

‘I don’t know, brother. Define “all right”.’ He looked at him, and knew it was the hollowness in his eyes that Exor reacted to.

‘It is not unusual to be shaken after so close a brush with death.’ But Exor knew that wasn’t it. His face gave the assumption away immediately. ‘Did something happen in the fire canyon?’ he asked.

Va’lin nodded slowly, remembering but not understanding. The silhouetted figure holding the firebrand, its body clad in power armour. The shrine and the mark emblazoned in the earth.

‘It was the place where he died, Exor.’

‘What?’

‘Where he sacrificed everything for us.’

‘I don’t understand, Va’lin. What exactly did you see?’