At last she fell back onto the bed. A white flare shell went off over the battlefield. The slowly falling light patterned the wall as it slanted through the shutters. The flickering white light moved up the wall as the flare shell slowly fell back to the ground. Another went off, and another. There was a low subsonic boom.

Dido reached for the water. She took a swill and swallowed as many pills as she could manage. She gagged for a moment, finished the water, swallowing the last of them back.

Dido did not go for the fawning crap that the priests told them about the God-Emperor. Her prayer was a quick, no-nonsense ­affair. No pleading. No begging. Nothing abject.

A simple request from one warrior to another.

As Bendikt plunged forward in the middle, to his left Gerent Bianca strode in lockstep with General Plona-Richstar at the head of his warriors. The presence of the saint’s bier lifted them all to a state of almost ecstatic frenzy.

They had been barely able to wait for Bendikt to signal the charge, and as soon as he did, they rushed out like hunting dogs that had been held in kennels for too long. The Rakallion Chasseurs outpaced the Cadians, and were the first to scramble up against the trenches of their enemy.

Plona-Richstar and Gerent Bianca were ever at the fore, the general in his plumed helmet and Bianca in her suit of golden ­armour. ‘For Ignatzio!’ she shouted, leading the Rakallions through the trenches held by the Ongoth Jackals.

The enemy were no match for the Rakallion troops and the aura of Ignatzio Richstar.

Again and again, men and women claimed to have seen miracles performed by the will of the saint. Shots that were deflected. Blows that would have killed lesser men being shrugged off by General Plona-Richstar, and it was said that the Rakallion general could not miss.

Every shot hit a traitor, and every hit killed.

On the other side of the Cadians were von Horne’s Mordians. They marched, ten thousand guards in perfect step with one another, squares of red and white, defiant of danger.

The Mordians did not falter, even when their squares came under fire from heavy weapons in the rubble to their right and left.

The trenches opposite the Mordians were held by the bulk of Conoe’s Swabian Fusiliers. They were a smart force determined to sell their lives as dearly as possible. They put up a furious salvo of las-bolts. But as one Mordian fell, another took their place, and all this time the regiment kept in step, the thud of each footfall sounding out like the beat of a bass drum.

It was chilling to see the Mordians come on without pause, despite the Swabians’ best efforts. It was like watching a bull charge, knowing there was nothing that could be done to stop it.