Book excerpt: Commissar Gaunt and his men undertake a seemingly suicidal mission in the blood-soaked trenches of the 41st Millennium. On the battlefields of Aexe Cardinal, the struggling forces of the Imperial Guard are locked in a deadly stalemate with the dark armies of Chaos. Commissar Ibram Gaunt and his regiment, the Tanith First and Only, are thrown headlong into this living hell of trench warfare, where death from lethal artillery is always just a moment away. The only chance for Gaunt and his lightly armed scouts to survive is to volunteer for a mission so dangerous that no one else dares accept it.