7. Haldiser Luftkorps

The low number betrays an old regiment. Haldis Sancta rarely raises troops, and the "Seventh" has been levied anew so often that the number is long older than any man who bears it.

The 7th has been completely destroyed four times since 744.M39. The present, fifth raising knows its predecessors only as names on the standard. The soldiers speak of the dead as "the Elders", as though they were kin. For many this is true, for the service is inherited: whoever bears the number today often bears it for a grandfather who fell under it.

Velloc Prime Campaign

A Ynnari warhost under the Autarch Ishvael plundered the crypt chapels of Velloc. No one knew what the Aeldari were looking for. The 7th was to bring them to battle, together with the 19th Tarsenwaller Armoured Regiment and the 230th Mordriner Artillery. The Haldisers pushed into the crypt cities in Valkyries. Kessling had the names of the Ynnari leaders called out over open vox, and the callsign "the Heralds" was born. The Ynnari seemed to like it, for they answered every time. Three targets were struck off; Ishvael escaped through the Web of a Thousand Gates. In the end the Tarsenwallers withdrew their tanks while the Haldisers were pinned down in the Orrin monastery. Their colonel said he would not squander tanks on a matter of honour. 400 Haldisers died there.

Result: Partial success. The world was held; the primary target escaped.
Losses: 1,210 of 3,050.
Afterwards: The battlegroup was disbanded. The Haldisers bear a grudge against the 19th Tarsenwaller to this day. At every morning hour it is named in the curse verse of the song.

Pocket of Gharos

Ishvael resurfaced on Gharos. Varre hunted her together with the 6th Ostgrader Storm Trooper Regiment and the 22nd Korvaner Light Infantry Regiment, miners from Korvane. His nine weeks at the Kerrin Pass cost 600 men, and the Korvaners lost even more because they covered the open flank. The Ostgrader carried the counter-attack that finally broke the pocket open. Ishvael did not fall. A nameless Ynnari hunter was shot, and the regiment struck him off as "Ishvael's Shadow", which Kessling never quite got over.

Result: Stalemate, followed by the Ynnari withdrawing of their own accord.
Losses: 1,120 of 1,840.
Afterwards: The 720 surviving Haldisers and 690 Korvaners were merged into 1,410 men. The Ostgrader was transferred to another sector. The Haldisers owe it their lives, and none of them will ever be able to repay it. The Korvaners consider the Haldisers praying fools; the Haldisers consider the Korvaners grave-robbers, because they search the dead. Even so, they share tobacco and wax.

Glass Dunes of Serak

On Serak the 7th pursued a Ynnari Farseer. Together with the 81st Vasker Pioneers it was ordered to blow the Serak-Unter dam and flood the Aeldari's escape route. Below it lay the town of Kell with 4,300 inhabitants, and no evacuation was planned. Varre obeyed; the demolition masters drew their Aquilas in the dust. The Farseer escaped regardless, while Kell drowned. The Vaskers refused to lay the detonators, and their colonel was relieved of command. The Haldisers laid them for him.

Result: Order carried out, target missed.
Losses: 270 of 1,410.
Afterwards: The Vaskers were transferred within the same year. They despise the 7th, and the 7th knows they are right.

The sand was so hot that Mirek Dorn could feel it through his knees. For three hours he had lain beside the Bellringer, waiting for someone to fire.

"There," whispered Bellringer Benedikt Asch. "By the glass needle."

Mirek saw nothing. He was a Korvaner, only three months in the 7th, pushed from the ore pit straight into his world's emergency levy and from there, after Gharos, to here. He knew the smell of wet rock. This desert was like a lamp you stared into.

Then he did see something, a movement, slender and bone-coloured, an Aeldari in a cloak that looked almost like their own uniforms. He stood two hundred metres away on a dune, looking across at the dam.

"Is that him?" Mirek asked.

Asch drew the name-roll from his breast pocket, a tattered oilcloth book, and ran his finger along a line. "Yes. The second on the list." He snapped it shut. "Precentor, we have him."

The vox crackled. Mirek shouldered his lasgun, his heart beating in his throat. The Aeldari had turned his side towards them, a clean shot such as there had never been on Gharos.

The Precentor called him over open vox, in that high Haldiser voice that sounded as though it were singing in a cathedral. He pronounced the alien name slowly, syllable by syllable, the way one calls the roll of the dead.

The Aeldari turned and looked straight at them.

"What are you doing?" Mirek hissed. "What are you doing?"

"We are naming him." Asch did not even look up. "Now he knows he is the one meant."

"Now he knows where we are!"

The Aeldari raised his hand, not to his weapon, but in greeting. Mirek understood that he was bowing.

Beside him, Asch stood up. He simply stood up, upright on the crest of the dune, the crimson band on his helmet glaring in the light, and inclined his head.

Then the Aeldari fired. The first shot struck Asch beneath the chin; the second tore up the sand beside Mirek's ear. Mirek fired back, blindly, screamed and kept firing until the magazine was empty. When he looked again, the dune was empty.

Asch lay on his back. He was still alive and moving his lips. Mirek bent down to him to hear a prayer, a word for his mother, anything.

"Don't strike him off," Asch whispered. "He hasn't fallen. Don't strike him off."

Mirek held the book until the Bellringer was dead. Then he cut the name-strip from his collar with his combat knife, as he had seen the others do. His hands shook so badly that he had to try twice.

Down at the dam, the pioneers began drawing Aquilas in the dust.