Sarven

"Captain," the wounded warrior voxed. "I can’t move."

Gharte had no legs below his mid-thighs – Khârn couldn’t begin to guess where they were in this sea of mangled corpses – and his chest was a ruin of violated breastbone and ceramite.

"Bide," he said, lowering the warrior’s helm. "Kargos will come."

The warrior gripped Khârn’s collar with weak fingers. "The Nails are aflame, even now." He coughed something wet into his helm. "How can that be? I’m dying, and they still sing? What do they want from me?"

"Bide," Khârn said again, though he knew it was useless.

"Just give me the Peace." The warrior sank back to the ground. "Seventy years of serving the Butcher and his Nails is long enough."

Khârn wished he’d not heard those words. Discomfort danced its tingling way down his backbone.

"You served well, Gharte." Khârn disengaged the seals at the warrior’s throat, lifting the helm clear. There wasn’t much left of the sergeant’s face. Something must have reflected in Khârn’s expression, for Gharte made his devastated face into something like a grin.

"That bad, eh?" he asked. His gurgling laughter became another cough.

Khârn’s reply was solemn obedience. He held the gladius above Gharte’s left eye, its point a finger’s breadth above the dilated pupil.

''Any last words?’'

"Aye. Piss on Angron’s grave when he finally lies dead."

Khârn wished he’d not heard those words, either.

He rammed the blade down, with the sound of dry twigs breaking beneath a boot, and the faintest clink of the point striking the stone under Gharte’s head.