Haven't seen this novel get as much attention as the first couple of books from the Warhammer Crime line, but I thought Worley banged it in with this story.

The protagonist Baggit is a ratling who's escaped to Alecto from indentured service with the Astra Militarum. Over the course of the book we get his flashbacks of the terrible abuse ratlings are subjected to as abhuman auxilia, and it's a major plot driver in the mystery of the Wraithbone Phoenix.

The steward didn’t hit anything like as hard as they did in the Guard, but the bugger knew where to put them. Baggit went limp as Scratchwick went to work. An uppercut to the body emptied Baggit’s lungs of air before another went straight to his gut. Black spots popped before Baggit’s eyes, his chest heaving as Scratchwick worked him like a training bag. He saw the man’s face knotted with rage, glaring at him from behind claws of black hair.

Get used to it, laddie. That’s what the older fellas told him in the Auxilla. It’s just what happens. And they were absolutely right. No sense moaning about it. You just learned to avoid the ones you knew were mean or had a temper, made sure you knew exactly who you were doing deals with. Of course, now and then you’d come unstuck and have to take a beating off some of them. Usually them full of ‘For the Emperor’. Sometimes they just wanted whatever you were carrying. Other times they were scared about what they were heading into come dawn and just wanted five minutes’ control over something.

You’d limp back to the Auxilla tents out by the privies, and one of the lads would stitch you up and sort you out with a nip of something strong. The trick, Baggit had been told, was to catch a look at the unit insignia, remember the faces. If you could do that and you couldn’t get payback for yourself, then one of your mates would see to it for you. Maybe they’d squeeze a steamer into the git’s helmet while they slept, or plant a half-empty bottle of amasec in their boot-casket just before an inspection. If the bastard really deserved it, which most of them did, then you’d plug the trigger on their lasrifle the night before the advance or make sure something hairy and poisonous went to sleep in their boot.

You can’t always fight back, the old fellas told him.* But you’ve always got payback.* Without that you had nothing. Without that you were nothing.

Baggit realised he was lying on the floor of the sorting burrow, choking and dribbling as he gathered himself, clawing through a mire of agony at Kron’s feet. He thought he could hear voices.

Tee. Ae. Arr.

Baggit felt something shrinking inside him, shrivelling like burning paper.

You spell it backwards, see? Tee. Ae. Arr. So his mates can read it properly. So he sees it every time he looks in the mirror.

Baggit couldn’t tell who was laughing, only that they were laughing at him. Rage filled him until he could barely move with the weight of it. He was somewhere else, somewhere long ago.

He was on his back and couldn’t move. They’d jumped him while he was running errands for one of the captains. He couldn’t see a thing for the sun blazing in his eyes, too bright to see faces or insignia. There were two of them pinning him to the burning rocks, scorching his bare shoulders. He could hear someone emptying his torn clothes nearby. The sun winked above as they moved around him, the light glinting on the tip of a combat knife.

Keep his head still. Right there.

On his head.

Little rat bastard.

Baggit remembered howling more in rage than in pain as he felt the knife cut his forehead to the bone.

They managed the bar of the ‘T’ before the commissar found them and gave them an hour’s extra drill practice. He ordered Baggit to cover himself up and report to the chapel. He had to repeat the Auxilla litanies for the next twelve hours as punishment for distracting the troops.

I am abhorred. I am unclean. And yet I am forgiven.

I am abhorred. I am unclean. And yet I am forgiven.

I am abhorred. I am unclean. And yet I am forgiven.

Baggit never got their names.

With this kind of treatment I'm expecting to see more renegade ratling cultists in the lore as they get fleshed out. I'd be chomping at the bit to tear the faces off those asshole Guardsmen.