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Fifteen Hours – Extract

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CHAPTER ONE

20:14 hours Jumal IV Central Planetary Time
(Western Summer Adjustment)

The Last of a Thousand Sunsets – A Letter Edged in Black – A Ghost in the Cellar – The Lottery and the Tale of his Fathers

The sun was setting, its slow descent reddening the vast reaches of the westward sky and bathing the endless wheat fields below it in shades of gold and amber as they stirred gently in the evening breeze. In his seventeen years of life to date, Arvin Larn had seen perhaps a thousand such sunsets, there was something about the beauty of this one that gave him pause. Enraptured, his chores for the moment forgotten, for the first time since his childhood he simply stood and watched the setting of the sun. Stood there, with the world still and peaceful all about him, gazing toward the gathering fall of night as he felt a nameless emotion rising deep within his heart.

There will be other sunsets, he thought to himself. Other suns, though none of them will mean as much to me as this one does, here and now. Nothing could mean as much as this moment does, standing here among these wheat fields, watching the last sunset I will ever see at home.

Home. The mere thought of the word was enough to make him turn his head and look over his shoulder across the swaying rows of ripening grain toward the small collection of farm buildings on the other side of the field behind him. He saw the old barn with its sloping, wood-shingled roof. He saw the round tower of the grain silo; the ginny-hen coops he had helped build with his father; the small stock pen where they kept the draft horses and a herd of half-a-dozen alpacas.

Most of all, he saw the farmhouse where he had been born and raised. Two-storeyed, with a low wooden porch out front and the shutters on the windows left open to let in the last of the light. Given the unchanging routines of his family’s existence, Larn did not need to see inside to know what was happening within. His mother would be in the kitchen cooking the evening meal, his sisters helping her set the table, his father in the cellar workshop with his tools. Then, just as they did every night, once their chores were done the family would sit down at the table together and eat. Tomorrow night they would do the same again, the pattern of their lives repeating endlessly day after day, varying only with the changing of the seasons.

It was a pattern that had endured here for as long as anyone could remember. A pattern that would continue so long as there was anyone left to farm these lands. Though, come tomorrow night at least, there would be one small difference.

Come tomorrow, he would no longer be here to see it.

Sighing, Larn returned to his work, turning once more to the task of trying to repair the ancient rust-pitted irrigation pump in front of him. Before the sunset had distracted him he had removed the outer access panel to reveal the inner workings of the pump’s motor. Now, in the fading light of twilight, he removed the motor’s burnt-out starter and replaced it with a new one, mindful to say a prayer to the machine spirit inside it as he tightened and re-checked the connections.

Taking a spouted canister from beside the foot of the pump he dribbled a few drops of unguent from it into the workings. Then, satisfied everything was in order, he reached out for the large lever at the side and worked it slowly up and down a dozen times to prime the pump before pressing the ignition stud to start the motor. Abruptly, the pump shuddered into noisy life, the motor whining as it strained to pull water up from aquifers lying deep below the ground. For a moment, Larn congratulated himself on a job well done. Until, just as the first few muddy drops of water emerged from the mouth of the pump to stain the dry earth of the irrigation trench before it, the motor coughed and died.

Disappointed, Larn pressed the ignition stud again. This time though, the motor stayed sullenly silent. Leaning forward, he carefully inspected the parts of the mechanism once more – checking the connections for corrosion, making sure the moving parts were well-lubricated and free from grit, searching for broken wires or worn components – all the things the mechanician-acolyte in Ferrusville had warned them about the last time the pump was serviced. Frustratingly, Larn could find nothing wrong. As far as he could see, the pump should be working.

Finally, reluctantly forced to concede defeat, Larn lifted the discarded access panel and began to screw it into place once more. He had so badly wanted to be able to fix the pump; with harvest time still three weeks away, it was important the farm’s irrigation system should be in good working order. Granted, it had been a good season so far and the wheat was growing well but the life of a farmer was always enslaved to the weather. Without the irrigation system to fall back upon, a couple of dry weeks now could mean the difference between feast and famine for an entire year.

But in the end he knew that was only part of it. Standing there, looking down at the pump after he had screwed the panel back in place, Larn realised his reasons for wanting to see it repaired went far beyond such practical considerations. Like it or not, tomorrow he would be leaving the farm forever and saying farewell to the only land and life he had ever known, never to return. He understood now that he had felt the need to perform some last act of service to those he would be leaving behind. He had wanted to complete some final labour on their behalf. An act of penance almost, to give closure to his grief.

This morning, when his father had asked him to look at the pump and see if he could fix it, it had seemed the perfect opportunity to achieve that aim. Now though, the recalcitrant machine spirits inside the pump and his own lack of knowledge had conspired against him. No matter how hard he tried, the pump was broken beyond his powers to repair it and his last act of penance would go unfulfilled.

Larn collected his tools together and made ready to turn for home, only to pause again as he noticed a change in the sunset. Ahead, the sun had already half disappeared below the horizon, while the sky around it had turned a deeper and more angry red. What gave him pause was not the sun or the sky, but the fields below them. Where once they had been bathed in spectacular shades of gold and amber, now the colour of the fields had become more uniform, changing to a dark and unsettling shade of brownish red, like the colour of blood. At the same time the evening breeze had risen almost imperceptibly, catching the rows of wheat in the fields and causing them to flow and shift before Larn’s eyes as though the fields themselves had become some vast and restless sea. It could almost be a sea of blood, he said to himself, the very thought of it causing him to shiver a little.

A sea of blood.

And, try as hard as he might, he could read no good omen in that sign.

By the time Larn had put his tools away, the sun had all but set. Leaving the barn behind, he walked towards the farmhouse, the yellow glow of lamplight barely visible ahead of him through the slats of the wooden shutters now closed over the farmhouse windows. Stepping onto the porch Larn lifted the latch to the front door and walked inside, carefully removing his boots at the threshold so as not to track mud from the fields into the hallway. Then, leaving the boots just inside the doorway, he walked down the hall towards the kitchen, unconsciously making the sign of the aquila with his fingers as he passed the open door of the sitting room with its devotional picture of the Emperor hung over the fireplace.

Reaching the kitchen he found it deserted, the smell of woodsmoke and the delicious aromas of all his favourite foods rising from the pans simmering on the stove. Roasted xorncob, boiled derna beans, alpaca stew and taysenberry pie; together, the dishes of the last meal he would ever eat at home. Abruptly it occurred to him, in whatever years of his life might yet come, those self-same aromas would forever now be linked with a feeling of desperate sadness.

Ahead, the kitchen table was already laid out with plates and cutlery ready for the meal. As he stepped past the table toward the sink, he remembered returning from the fields two nights earlier to find his parents sitting in the kitchen waiting for him, the black-edged parchment of the induction notice lying mutely on the table between them. From the first it had been obvious they had both been crying, their eyes red and raw from grief. He had not needed to ask them the reason for their tears. Their expressions, and the Imperial eagle embossed on the surface of the parchment, had said it all.

Now, as he moved past the table Larn spotted the same parchment lying folded in half on top of one of the kitchen cupboards. Diverted from his original intentions, he walked towards it. Then, picking up the parchment and unfolding it, he found himself once more reading the words written there below the official masthead.

Citizens of Jumael IV, the parchment read. Rejoice! In accordance with Imperial Law and the powers of his Office, your Governor has decreed two new regiments of the Imperial Guard are to be raised from among his people. Furthermore, he has ordered those conscripted to these new regiments are to be assembled with all due haste, so that they may begin their training without delay and take their place among the most Holy and Righteous armies of the Blessed Emperor of All Mankind.

From there the parchment went on to list the names of those who had been conscripted, outlining the details of the mustering process and emphasising the penalties awaiting anyone who failed to report. Larn did not need to read the rest of it – in the last two days he had read the parchment so many times he knew the words by heart. Yet despite all that, as though unable to stop picking at the scab of a half-healed wound, he continued to read the words written on the parchment before him.

‘Arvin?’ He heard his mother’s voice behind him, breaking his chain of thought. ‘You startled me, standing there like that. I didn’t hear you come in.’

Turning, Larn saw his mother standing beside him, a jar of kuedin seeds in her hand and her eyes red with recently dried tears.

‘I just got here, Ma,’ he said, feeling vaguely embarrassed as he put the parchment back where he had found it. ‘I finished my chores, and thought I should wash my hands before dinner.’

For a moment his mother stood there quietly staring at him. Facing her in uncomfortable silence, Larn realised how hard it was for her to speak at all now she knew she would be losing him tomorrow. It lent their every word a deeper meaning, making even the most simple of conversations difficult while with every instant there was the threat that a single ill-chosen word might release the painful tide of grief welling up inside her.

‘You took your boots off?’ she said at last, retreating to the commonplace in search of safety.

‘Yes, Ma. I left them just inside the hallway.’

‘Good,’ she said. ‘You’d better clean them tonight, so as to be ready for tomorrow…’ At that word his mother paused, her voice on the edge of breaking, her teeth biting her lower lip and her eyelids closed as though warding off a distant sensation of pain. Then, half turning away so he could no longer see her eyes, she spoke again.

‘But anyway, you can do that later,’ she said. ‘For now, you’d better go down to the cellar. Your Pa’s already down there and he said he wanted to see you when you got back from the fields.’

Turning further away from him now, she moved over to the stove and lifted the lid off one of the pans to drop a handful of kuedin seeds into it. Ever the dutiful son, Larn turned away. Towards the cellar and his father.

The cellar steps creaked noisily as Larn made his way down them. Despite the noise, at first his father did not seem to notice his approach. Lost in concentration, he sat bent over his workbench at the far end of the cellar, a whetstone in his hand as he sharpened his wool-shears. For a moment, watching his father unawares as he worked, Larn felt almost like a ghost – as though he had passed from his family’s world already and they could no longer see or hear him. Then, finding the thought of it gave him a shiver, he spoke at last and broke the silence.

‘You wanted to see me, Pa?’

Starting at the sound of his voice, his father laid the shears and the whetstone down before turning to look towards his son and smile.

‘You startled me, Arv,’ he said. ‘Zell’s oath, but you can walk quiet when you’ve a mind to. So, did you manage to fix the pump?’

‘Sorry, Pa,’ Larn said. ‘I tried replacing the starter and every other thing I could think of, but none of it worked.’

‘You tried your best, son,’ his father said. ‘That’s all that matters. Besides, the machine spirits in that pump are so old and ornery the damned thing never worked right half the time anyway. I’ll have to see if I can get a mechanician to come out from Ferrusville to give it a good look-over next week. In the meantime, the rain’s been pretty good so we shouldn’t have a problem. But anyway, there was something else I wanted to see you about. Why don’t you grab yourself a stool so the two of us men can talk?’

Pulling an extra stool from beneath the workbench, his father gestured for him to sit down. Then, waiting until he saw his son had made himself comfortable, he began once more.

‘I don’t suppose I ever told you too much about your great-grandfather before, did I?’ he said.

‘I know he was an off-worlder, Pa,’ Larn said, earnestly. ‘And I know his name was Augustus, same as my middle name is.’

‘True enough,’ his father replied. ‘It was a tradition on your great-grandfather’s world to pass on a family name to the first-born son in every generation. Course, he was long dead by the time you were born. Mind you, he died even before I was born. But he was a good man, and so we did it to honour him all the same. A good man should always be honoured, they say, no matter how long he’s been dead.’

For a moment, his face grave and thoughtful, his father fell silent. Then, as though he had made some decision, he raised his face up to look his son clearly in the eye and spoke again.

‘As I say, your great-grandfather was dead long before I could have known him, Arvie. But when I was seventeen and just about to come of age my father called me down into this cellar and told me the tale of him – just like I’m about to tell you now. You see, my father had decided that before I became a man it was important I knew where I came from. And I’m glad he did, ’cause what he told me then has stood me in good stead ever since. Just like I’m hoping that what I’m going to tell you now will stand you in good stead likewise. Course, with what’s happened in the last few days – and where you’re bound for – I’ve got extra reasons for telling it to you. Reasons that, Emperor love him, my own father never had to face. But that’s the way of things: each generation has its own sorrows, and has to make the best of them they can. That’s all as may be, though. Guess I should just stop dancing around it and come out and say what it is I have to say.’

Again, as though wrestling inwardly for the right words, his father paused. As he waited for him to begin, Larn found himself suddenly thinking how old his father looked. Gazing at him as though for the first time he became aware of the lines and creases across his father’s face, the slightly rounded slump of his shoulders, the spreading fingers of grey in his once black and lustrous hair. Signs of aging he would have sworn had not been there a week previously. It was almost as though his father had aged a decade in the last few days.

‘Your great-grandfather was in the Imperial Guard,’ his father said at last. ‘Just like you’re going to be.’ Then, seeing his son about to blurt out a string of questions, he held his hand up to gesture silence. ‘You can ask whatever you want later, Arvie. For now, it’s better if you just let me tell it to you like my father told me. Believe me, once you’ve heard it you’ll know why it is I said I thought you should hear it.’

Hanging on every word in the quiet stillness of the cellar, Larn heard his father tell his tale.

‘Your great-grandfather was a Guardsman,’ his father said again. ‘Course, he didn’t start out to be one. No one does. To begin with he was just another farmer’s son like you or me, born on a world called Arcadus V. A world not unlike this one, he would later say. A peaceful place, with lots of good land for farming and plenty of room for a man to raise a family. And if things had followed their natural course, that’s just what your great-grandfather would have done. He would have found a wife, raised babies, farmed the land, same as generations of his kin on Arcadus V had done before him. And in time he would have died and been buried there, his flesh returning to the fertile earth while his soul went to join his Emperor in paradise. That’s what your great-grandfather thought his future held for him when he came of age at seventeen. Then he heard the news he’d been conscripted into the Guard and everything changed.

‘Now, seventeen or not, your great-grandfather was no fool. He knew what being conscripted meant. He knew there was a heavy burden that goes with being a Guardsman – a burden worse than the threat of danger or the fear of dying alone and in pain under some cold and distant sun. A burden of loss. The kind of loss that comes when a man knows he is leaving his home forever. It’s a burden every Guardsman carries. The burden of knowing that no matter how long he lives he will never see his friends, his family, or even his homeworld again. A Guardsman never returns, Arvie. The best he can hope for, if he survives long enough and serves his Emperor well, is to be allowed to retire and settle a new world somewhere, out among the stars. And knowing this – knowing he was leaving his world and his people for good – your great-grandfather’s heart was heavy as he said farewell to his family and made ready to report for muster.

‘Though it may have felt like his heart was breaking then, your great-grandfather was a good and pious man. Wise beyond his years, he knew mankind is not alone in the darkness. He knew the Emperor is always with us. Same as he knew that nothing happens in all the wide galaxy without the Emperor willing it to be so. And if the Emperor had willed that he must leave his family and his homeworld and never see them again, then your great-grandfather knew it must serve some greater purpose. He understood what the preachers mean when they tell us it isn’t the place of Man to know the ways of the Emperor. He knew it was his duty to follow the course laid out for him, no matter that he didn’t understand why that course had been set. And so trusting his life to the Emperor’s kindness and grace, your great-grandfather left his homeworld to go find his destiny among the stars.

‘Now, the years that followed then were hard ones. Although he would never speak of it much afterwards, in his time as a Guardsman your great-grandfather saw more than his fair share of wonders and horrors. He saw worlds where billions of people lived right on top of each other like insects in giant towers, never able to breathe clean air or see the sun. He saw worlds that lay gripped all year long in perpetual winter, and dry desert worlds that never saw a flake of snow nor felt a drop of rain. He saw the blessed warriors of the holy Astartes – god-like giants in human form, he called them – and great walking machines so big this entire farmhouse would fit inside one of their footprints. He saw terrors by the score, in the shape of all manner of twisted xenos and things even ten times worse.

Though he faced a thousand and more dangers, though he was at times wounded and seemed close to death, still his faith in the Emperor never faltered. Five years become ten. Ten became fifteen. Fifteen became twenty. And still your great-grandfather followed his orders without thought of complaint, never once asking when he would be released from service. Until at last, nearly thirty years after he’d first been conscripted, he was posted to Jumael IV.

‘Course this world didn’t mean much to him then. Not at first. By then he’d seen dozens of different planets, and at first sight Jumael didn’t seem to have anything much to recommend it more than most. His regiment had just finished a long campaign, and they had been sent to Jumael to rest up and recuperate for a month before being shipped out to war once more. By then your great-grandfather didn’t have too many wars left in him. Oh, he tried to put a brave face on it, never complaining. But he was getting old, and the wounds he’d sustained in thirty years of battles were starting to take their toll. Worst of all was his lungs – they’d never healed right after he breathed a mouthful of poison gas on a world called Torpus III, yet still he didn’t waver in his duty. He had given his life over to the service of the Emperor, and he was content that it was at the Emperor’s will whether he lived or died.

‘Then one day, as the time grew closer when they would be leaving Jumael, news came among the regiment of something extraordinary. Emperor’s Day was coming, and with it the thirtieth anniversary of the founding of their regiment. As an act of celebration it was decreed that lots would be drawn from among all the men, and whichever man won would be released from service and allowed to remain behind when the regiment left Jumael. A lottery that, for one man among thousands, might well mean the difference between life and death. As the day of the lottery came upon them there was a sudden outbreak of piety among the men, as each man in the regiment prayed fervently to the Emperor to be the one to be chosen. All except your great-grandfather. For though he prayed to the Emperor every morning and night, it was never his way to ask for anything for himself.’

‘And so great-grandfather won the lottery?’ Larn asked, breathless with excitement and no longer able to keep his peace. ‘He won it, and that’s how he came to live on Jumael?’

‘No, Arvie,’ his father smiled benignly. ‘Another man won. A man from the same squad as your great-grandfather, who’d fought by his side through thirty years of campaigning. Though that man could’ve just taken his ticket and walked away, he didn’t. Instead, he looked at your great-grandfather with his worn-out face and half-healed lungs and handed him the ticket. You see, he’d decided your great-grandfather needed to be released from service more than he did. And that’s how your great-grandfather came to settle on Jumael IV, through the kindness and self-sacrifice of a comrade. Though in the years to come, your great-grandfather would always say there was more to it than that. He would say sometimes the hand of the Emperor can be seen in the smallest of things, and that it was the Emperor who had decided to work through this man to save his life. In the end it was a miracle of sorts. A quiet miracle, perhaps, but a miracle all the same.’

With that, his father fell silent again. Looking at him Larn could see the first beginnings of tears shining wetly in his eyes. Then, at length, his father spoke once more, his every word heavy with barely suppressed emotion.

‘You see now why I thought you should hear the tale, Arvie?’ he said. ‘Tomorrow, just like your great-grandfather before you, you’re going to have to leave your home and your kin behind, never to return. And, knowing full well you may have some hard years ahead of you, before you left I wanted you to hear the tale of your great-grandfather and how he survived. I wanted you to be able to take that tale with you. So that no matter how dark, even hopeless, things might seem to you at times, you’d know the Emperor was always with you. Trust to the Emperor, Arvie. Sometimes it’s all that we can do. Trust to the Emperor, and everything will be all right.’

No longer able to keep the tears from flowing, his father turned away so his son could not see his eyes. While his father cried into the shadows Larn sat there with him as long uncomfortable moments passed, struggling to find the right words to soothe his grief. Until finally, deciding it was better to say something than nothing at all, he spoke and broke the silence.

‘I’ll remember that, Pa’ he said, the words coming with faltering slowness from him as he tried to choose the best way of saying it. ‘I’ll remember every word of it. Like you said, I’ll take it with me and I’ll think of it whenever things get bad. And I promise you: I’ll do what you said. I’ll trust to the Emperor, just like you said. I promise it, Pa. And something else. I promise, you don’t have to worry about me doing my best when I go to war. No matter what happens, I’ll always do my duty.’

‘I know you will, Arvie,’ his father said at last as he wiped the tears from his eyes. ‘You’re the best son a man could have. And when you’re a Guardsman, I know you’ll make your Ma and me proud.’

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A BLACK LIBRARY PUBLICATION

First published in Great Britain in 2005.
This eBook edition published in 2025 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd, Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK.

Represented by: Games Workshop Limited – Irish branch, Unit 3, Lower Liffey Street, Dublin 1, D01 K199, Ireland.

Produced by Games Workshop in Nottingham.
Cover illustration by Klaus Scherwinski.

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