Tobis flinches and tries to pull free of the woman's grip as her fingernails dig deeper into his arm.
"Let me go! You can't make me stay here!"
"No, you mustn't leave – they'll kill you!" the woman hisses, trying to pull him back; behind her huddles another child, a younger red-haired boy who won't stop crying no matter how much she tries to soothe him. Tobis raises the length of piping he'd scavenged and slams it down on the woman's wrist with all his strength. She cries out and lets go, and he scrabbles away from her before she can grab him again; the smaller boy begins to cry harder and she turns to comfort him, hugging him to her breast.
"You heading out, street-brat?" an older man in a ragged PDF uniform asks, looking up from the dead rat he's skinning with his combat knife.
"Yeah," Tobis says, trying to adopt an air of casual bravado, as if venturing out from the undercroft of a bombed-out chapel is the only action worth taking. "I want to see what's happening."
"You should listen to your mother and stay put," says the man; he licks the flat of his bloodied knife. "Only bad things happening out there. People getting raped, burned, beaten, flayed alive. They won't care that you're a kid – they'll crucify you to a wall and laugh while they gut you; that's what they did to my former platoon."
"She's not my mother," Tobis says, anger beginning to curl in the pit of his empty stomach, "And I'm sick of this place. I'm going to find somewhere better to hide."
"They'll catch you and gut you for sure," says the man as he lifts the rat's skinless body to his mouth. "Stay here. Plenty of things to eat if you know how to catch them."
His gorge rising, Tobis turns away and begins picking his way through the rubble and the huddled forms of the other refugees. Fear of discovery keeps them from lighting fires or talking above loud whispers. Rat bones litter the ground and the air reeks of blood, sweat and human waste. All around Tobis adults weep softly or murmur quiet prayers to the Emperor. No one else pays him any attention. The little red-haired boy is still crying like a baby.
I'm better off leaving, Tobis tells himself as he takes a deep breath and grips his pipe-club resolutely. It can't get any worse than this place.
They catch him less than a mile from the chapel; an overflowing bucket placed beneath a ruptured water pipe is all it takes for him to let his guard down. The fresh water has barely touched his lips before a gang of men in ragged black robes close in around him. Tobis has always been quick on his feet and manages to break the fingers of one cultist with his pipe before the others grab him and pin him to the ground; he curses and spits while they babble to one another in some nonsense language that causes his head to ache. Hideous symbols have been carved into their filthy skin and they smell worse than all the refugees in the undercroft combined.
"Boy," the lead cultist says, seizing him by his shirtfront and jerking him upright; his Gothic is so harsh and disjointed Tobis can hardly make sense of his words. "Boy-child, how old? How old are you, boy? Lie not; we will cut you – tell truth!"
"Twelve standard!" Tobis snarls as he twists and kicks out with his feet. "Go to hell, you Throne-damn bastards!"
"Good age, yes," the cultist smiles. "Defiant, fierce; Masters be much pleased; come, boy – you must fight and win favor! The gods smile on you this day – come!"
"No!" Tobis shouts just as another man claps a strange-smelling rag over his face; he manages to invoke a few more choice swear words before his vision fails and his mind slides into a morass of darkness.
The other boy is taller than Tobis and is covered in ganger tattoos. He comes at him with clenched fists, a terrified desperation in his eyes. The cultists surrounding the makeshift fighting ring holler and jeer and make wagers as the two boys begin to trade blows; blood slicks the rockcrete beneath Tobis' bare feet, and he struggles to keep his balance while evading the bigger boy's swings. Then a rusted dagger is tossed onto the floor between them. The ganger breaks away and dives for it; as he stoops Tobis drives a knee into the side of his head, knocking him off-balance. Swiftly grabbing the dagger he rams it up to the hilt in between his opponent's ribs; the older boy falls, blood spurting from the wound, his screams drowned out by the cheering of the onlookers. The cheering quickly dies down as three massive warriors clad in heavy plates of umber power-armor march into the camp. The cultists howl in rapture and fall on their faces in abject abasement. Heart hammering, Tobis wrenches the dagger from the side of the dying ganger and faces the towering man-shaped monstrosities, determined to die fighting. The giants regard him impassively through their helms' emerald eye-lenzes.
"This whelp is bloodied and bold," intones one in a deep vox-augmented voice.
"He is runty and reeks of fear," growls another contemptuously.
"Yet still he stands his ground, weapon in hand," says the third in approval.
Suddenly Tobis finds himself disarmed and surrounded. One of the giants reaches for him with a gauntleted hand. He does not resist. I hope they don't find the red-haired boy in the undercroft, he thinks as the Traitor Astartes lead him away, he would have never been chosen.
It is the last charitable thought Tobis will ever have.