Tyre! (15)

Valber, commander of Tyre's Fifth Guard Division

The irony was so blatant that he could practically taste it.

They were the ones. They were the ones who had made him what he was.

Not entirely in the literal sense, of course. He had to thank his new master for his "enhancement," but if not for the laziness of Imperium bureaucrats, he would not be standing here today.

That had been two years ago, or perhaps three?

Either way, he had just finished a campaign against the Greenskins in Aksum. He had commanded a regiment made up of Zuen People—bloody beasts as people, but the finest infantry he had ever seen.

When the orders arrived from Tyre, he had been preparing to sail from Iron Snail Bay to some fortress in Gramatia to take command of a newly formed regiment.

At the time, he had already prepared for the worst.

A force hastily cobbled together from miners, farmers, and child soldiers had performed far from satisfactorily when faced with enemy attacks, though their casualties had not been severe. The battlefield had mainly been concentrated along the border between two provinces.

The Orks had not launched any major offensive, but smaller incursions had never ceased.

As Ork invasions spread across the provincial border and both sides committed more and more troops, the entire war ground into a stalemate.

Every major fortress fell under siege, including one remote stronghold where his regiment was stationed.

With communications cut off, he did not realize they had been isolated until word reached them that Ork forces had surrounded them. In Imperium battle reports, they had already been listed among the dead.

They had chosen a mining fortress as their refuge because it sat atop a towering ridge, easy to defend and difficult to assault.

But it