From the introduction:
On a moonless night, the five remaining members of Company Corvidae huddle around a dying campfire. Distant screams and sporadic flashes of sorcery fill the night.
For three long days, Corvidae fought alongside Imperial forces to defend the Citadel against Rebel armies. They bled and died, realizing too late the Queen's duplicity -- the reason the Rebellion had been allowed to amass so great a force, and why the Empire's greatest weapons had been withheld. Until now.
Tens of thousands laid siege to the Citadel. The battle was fierce, staining the ground red with the blood of Imperial and Rebel alike. On the third day, at dusk, the Fallen and the Queen herself ventured forth. Fueled by the fires of Hell, they laid waste the battered and weary rebel armies with an onslaught of sorcery. Blight, Wormwood, Jolly Jumper, Abomination, Grinner, and the Raven Queen herself unleashed merciless devastation, intending to shatter the rebellion once and for all.
Not far away, on a scorched and barren hillside, the emaciated form of Markus Qavn hung upon an X-shaped cross, steel spikes driven through wrists and heels, his strained and desperate cries a constant reminder of the price paid by traitors.
There, upon that cross, Corvidae watched Qavn die a slow and agonizing death as punishment for his betrayal. If only the Queen had permitted him to remain dead. In the first cycle he screamed until Grinner ripped out his throat. In the second, Abomination carved him into pieces and fed him to the dogs. In the current, Wormwood made his pores to weep blood and his flesh to melt, a slow and languishing death which had only just begun. In the sixth and final cycle, the Queen would destroy him, for so it was decreed -- Thrice betrayed, thrice and thrice to suffer and die.
Under cover of darkness, with the ever-watchful eye of the Queen and her Generals turned upon the Rebel forces arrayed in the valley below, Corvidae seized the opportunity to consult the traitor whom they had delivered into the Queen's hands.