‘Endurance’ – Chris Wraight (Black Library)



Work has been giving me a right kicking this week; not in a bad way but very much in a ‘not giving me time to do anything else but sleep once I’ve turned my laptop off’ kind of way. That’s the way it goes sometimes and, if the rumours about recession are true, I’m just glad to have a job to be honest. It’s a good job then that I have a few Black Library short stories, lurking on my Kindle, and it’s even better than one of these is by my favourite Black Library author, Chris Wraight.
Wraight had covered many areas of the Warhammer 40K universe and I’ve been there for most of them. Today will see me cover an area previously unread; the Death Guard Traitor Legion and their mission to spread the many diseases of Nurgle across the galaxy, and fight stuff at the same time…

Lystra is a hive world, with a population of billions… or at least it was. Now Lystra is a corpse, overrun by the walking dead, with just a small force of Astra Militarum and a handful of Space Marines defending against the numberless horde. Exhausted and an inch away from destruction, they hold against the tide… but things are about to get worse, for the Death Guard have noticed Lystra.
‘Endurance’ is a half hour read that looks at just how much a Space Marine can endure before even these mightiest of warriors can fight no more. To be fair, when you’re pitting an entire planet full of zombies against one Marine, the outcome is never really in doubt but it’s the journey that the reader takes with Sarrien that is the thing and you really feel every failing sword stroke and the weight of despair that fights to crush the urge to endure and carry on. Sarrien’s tale ends with a question unanswered (or does it?), one that I’m still pondering as I’m writing this. You only see a little of Sarrien in ‘Endurance’ but he is a character that definitely leaves a mark.
Dragan’s tale is all the more poignant when Wraight makes it clear just how long he has been fighting the Long War and how much has been forgotten in that time. All that’s left is the fight and that’s no bad thing when that’s what you were bred for. To almost remember something and then have it snatched away is always sad though and that is very much the case here.

I’ve had my eye on Chris Wraight’s ‘Lords of Silence’ (more Death Guard but novel length) for a long time and it was ‘Endurance’ that encouraged me to take the plunge and click on ‘buy’. ‘Endurance’ did its job then and is also a short story that really gets you to empathise with its characters, no matter which side they are on. Well played ‘Endurance’, well played.


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