by Rob Sanders
It seems never not with me. On the dark and lonely passages of the lower decks I hear the distant footfalls of the revenant. On Samarquand its distant form stands atop the ruins and on the smouldering horizon, observing my progress as I run, train and fight. It is there above the Cage, always. I no longer look for its macabre presence, for I know I will find it amongst the colosseum crowds. Watching. In silent appreciation it stands, never talking, but a seeming supporter of my gladiatorial efforts.
‘Wake him,’ I hear a voice command. I know the voice. It is Corpus-Captain Gideon.
‘I am awake.’
The corpus-captain entered the gloom of the cargo compartment. His eyes flashed around the chamber. It was clear that the Excoriator had never been down in the hold before. Beside him Chaplain Dardarius glowered in his dark plate.
‘Chaplain Dardarius,’ Kersh greeted the Excoriator. ‘The good corpus-captain has allowed me restricted visitation to the chapel-reclusiam, yet when I am there you are not. Have you come down here to hear my affirmation? To cleanse my soul of doubt with your counsel as the lash cleanses my flesh of weakness?’
The gaunt Dardarius looked from Kersh to the sarcophagus that still decorated the chamber floor and then to Ezrachi, who busied himself with the surgery. ‘Chaplain?’ the Scourge pressed.
‘Later,’ Gideon instructed. ‘The Master of the Feast has made his ruling.’
‘Fortinbras came himself?’ Ezrachi asked, getting up off his adamantium knee and allowing an aide to close up the surgery.
‘And?’ Kersh said.
‘Fortinbras rules in favour of a continuance.’
Kersh looked to the Apothecary and his arm. ‘Let’s finish this.’
‘There’s a condition,’ the corpus-captain said.
‘Yes,’ Kersh agreed with building annoyance. ‘It’s a little matter called victory.’
‘The Fists have ruled in our favour,’ Dardarius added with low contempt. ‘But the corpus-captain’s equivalents amongst the remaining Chapters do not recognise your legitimacy, Scourge.’
‘They’ll recognise my blade as it comes for them.’
‘They will not honour you with sole engagement.’
‘What does that mean?’ Ezrachi put to the Chaplain.
‘It means their cowardice prevents them from stepping into the arena with me,’ Kersh barked.
‘Their honour prevents it,’ Dardarius corrected.
‘Again,’ Ezrachi asked. ‘What does that mean?’
‘The same honour also prevents them from claiming victory in the Feast without your besting,’ Gideon said. ‘Therefore, Master Fortinbras, with the primarch’s wisdom, has decreed that the Feast of Blades be decided by a three-way duel.’
‘A three-way duel…’ Ezrachi nodded.
‘The champions of the Fists and the Black Templars need not besmirch their reputations by facing you in single engagement,’ Dardarius informed them, ‘yet their victory will be rightful in your defeat.’
‘You seem confident of their success, Lord Chaplain,’ Kersh accused.
Dardarius took a moment. ‘You face Alighieri of the Black Templars. A devout Brethren of the Sword, a Castellan and veteran of the Volchis, Deltamagne and Hive Nimbus Crusades. He is half your age but has twice your conquests to his name. As for Montalbán, he is Pugh’s champion and the best of the Fists – the best of all of us, perhaps.’
‘I find your lack of faith inspirational, Chaplain,’ Kersh told him. Dardarius simply bowed his head.
‘Well, that is the situation, brothers,’ Gideon said finally. He looked to Ezrachi. ‘Get him planetside. Get him in his plate.’
‘And what from you, corpus-captain?’ Kersh asked. ‘Any advice?’
Gideon pursed his lips. ‘Do what you do best.’ The Excoriators captain went to leave. ‘Don’t lose.’
Montalbán. Alighieri. Kersh.
The Excoriator was surprised to find the rush of combat – the mad murderous scramble of gladiatorial confrontation – absent from the Cage. There were no stealth approaches or ambush attacks. No battle calls and no furious charges. The Imperial Fist and Black Templar simply walked out into the arena and composed themselves by their barbica-entrances. It was refreshing. All the while the Cage itself seemed to dominate with the mechanical thunk of blocks and floors moving about them, with pits opening and simple towers rising from the symbolic architecture. The Cage seemed in overdrive.
Above, Kersh saw that the gallery was crowded with superhuman silhouettes. The sons of Dorn had gathered to witness the final of the Feast; to discover which Chapter would demonstrate themselves worthy of their brothers’ esteem and be granted centennial custodianship of the primarch’s blade. History was about to be made. The eight hundred and sixteenth Feast of Blades was to end and a champion be immortalised in memory.
Alighieri was a devout killer. Zealot. Fanatic. A devotee of victory. He knew no fear. Doubt had never known a home in his pious hearts and his belief was absolute – in his primarch, his Emperor and his Imperium. The Black Templar was already on his knees in the arena grit, indulging in a warrior’s blessing. The dim light of the Cage shone off his bald crown and the bleak line of a mouth ran beneath the lustrous length of his crusader’s moustache. Alighieri was all about the moment. He lived his penitence and existed in a perpetual state of judgement – both on his enemies and himself.
Montalbán, by contrast, radiated presence. He was huge, second only in size to the savage Crimson Fist Kersh had fought in the earlier round. Unlike Alighieri, Montalbán’s belief grew from a place deep within his colossal chest. His faith was that of an Angel, long accustomed to the supreme capabilities of his superhuman body. He already thought of himself as a champion of champions. A symbol in flesh, sculpted in Dorn’s own image, whose eyes were not the pinpoints of grim determination that belonged to his Black Templar opponent, but gleaming, grey discs of adamantium assurance. A warrior who had played through the engagement in his mind a hundred times and had won every time. The Imperial Fist went through rudimentary flexes and stretches. His throbbing arms and shoulders were like rolling foothills to the tabletop mountain of his blond hair and graven brow, and beneath these hung a stoic visage of immortal calm.
Both Adeptus Astartes looked virtually untouched by the trials of the Feast so far, a testament to their skill and the ease with which they had despatched their opponents. Kersh looked like hell in comparison and decidedly ugly in his display of stitches and scarring both old and new. With his remaining eye the Excoriator caught a glint of light off the mirrored blade of a gladius. Montalbán strode over to the weapon and picked it up in one meaty gauntlet. Looking over at Alighieri he found that the Black Templar had ascended the wall of a mock-battlement. Stepping lightly across the merlon-tops, the Castellan found the second gladius and picked it up nimbly.
Kersh felt suddenly vulnerable.
‘Scourge!’
Kersh heard Montalbán call him and turned back. The mighty Imperial Fist was stood over the third sword. Kersh died a little inside. The blades had been randomly placed. It was not the kind of fortune he’d been hoping for. Hooking the tip of his gladius under one of the sword’s cross guards, Montalbán scooped the weapon up into the air. It spun the distance between them before being snatched out of its flight by the Scourge. With the gladius firmly in his grip, Kersh nodded his appreciation.
‘For all the good it will do you,’ Montalbán announced across the animated arena. He flashed his eyes at the Excoriator in mock surprise. ‘Here comes Alighieri. It begins…’
Alighieri was there. Like some feudal knight in an ogre’s cave, the Black Templar launched himself at Montalbán from the battlement, gladius clutched in both hands. Kersh admired the Castellan’s courage. It had been a brave opening gambit. The Imperial Fist turned on his heel and smacked the blade aside with his own, although the weapon looked comparatively short in the giant Montalbán’s fist. Alighieri hit the dark stone floor of the cage, tumbled and rolled, landing bac
k on his feet like a cat. He came straight back at the Imperial Fist with immaculate bladework, each swipe and slash a manoeuvre of cold conviction.
It became immediately apparent to Kersh that although undeniably skilled, Montalbán’s fearsome reputation as Chapter Master Pugh’s champion was not built upon swordplay. He was fast for one so tall, however, and the power of each strike was irresistible. For every stabbing riposte the Templar offered in the wake of the champion’s broad sweeps, Alighieri suffered the reply of a hammerfall of cleaving cuts and smashes.
As blades sparked and the Black Templar was pounded back, Kersh found his grip tighten around his own gladius and his hesitant steps pick up speed. It was not fear that had slowed his advance, although the Excoriator feared it might be interpreted as such if he dallied much longer. It was opportunity. He had been unfortunate with the positioning of the gladius, but the opportunity to witness even a few seconds of his opponents at each other’s throats was a welcome gift. Kersh took in the Imperial Fist’s reach and his preference for scything sweeps and rapid downcutting. The Space Marine treated his blade like an extension of his arm, driving the razored edge at his opponent with brute proficiency.
Alighieri, the Scourge observed, guided his gladius. His technique betrayed a crusader’s bluntness, but the Castellan had a clear respect for the weapon’s balance. His wrists did much of the work, working within the counter-arcs of both pommel and fulcrum. He favoured the tip of the leaf-shaped blade, relying on its length for the demands of a hasty defence, and worked the weapon with an even speed and rhythm. Strike for strike, the Templar was the better swordsman, but round after round Montalbán had smashed the skill senseless from his opponents’ hands and it appeared that Alighieri would be little different.
Within moments Kersh was among them. The Scourge was a killer rather than a fighter. He lacked both the Black Templar’s deftness with the blade and the centrifugal power of Montalbán’s swordarm. The Excoriator’s gladius came at them both with murderous intent, however. His first few swings spoke of a squat ferocity, the first almost taking out the giant Montalbán’s throat and the second flashing narrowly before Alighieri’s face. The pair instantly sensed the threat and responded with a double-dealing of punishing bladework. Kersh could barely get his gladius between the Black Templar’s stabbing weapon and Montalbán’s bludgeoning, overhead barrage. He wouldn’t have achieved that if it hadn’t been for the pair’s own exchanged blows.
With the impact of the Imperial Fist’s weapon still ringing through his own and up through his arm and shoulder, Kersh rolled beneath a low, opportunistic swipe from Alighieri. Out from between his brothers, Kersh assumed a defensive posture at the apex of the revolving triangle the three Space Marines had created. If the sons of Dorn formed the points, the clash of blades gave the shape its scalenic sides.
As the battle roamed the Cage, the architecture of the arena transformed about the three warriors, adding the simple danger of disappearing footholds and floorspace to the evolving deathtrap of blades slicing up the air between them. The movement of the blocks in symbolic representation of the Iron Cage fortress was more than disorientating. Preoccupations with footing, falling and hazards sapped the only seconds the Space Marines had to spare between the furious onslaught of their opponents’ blades. Serrated discs spun like circular saws along the gaps between floor blocks, forcing the Adeptus Astartes to sidestep and jump in their carapace.
Pummelled into the ground by Montalbán’s unremitting overhead assault, Kersh was forced to roll across a quad of blocks set with vents that were flush to the stone. As the Excoriator tumbled, the vents emitted a volatile gas that was sparked and ignited about him. Burying his head in his arms, Kersh rolled shoulder over shoulder until he emerged, hair singed and armour smoking from the shallow field of flame. A pit had unexpectedly opened up beneath Montalbán and the giant had dropped down into a darkness into which Alighieri and the Scourge were forced to follow.
The Black Templar was easily the most sure-footed of the combatants, but even he could do little to avoid the clouds of thick, greasy smoke that erupted from grilles in the floor beneath the Space Marines’ boots. The tacky fog smeared the skin and ceremonial carapace, as well as gunging up the eyes and enveloping the warriors in brief banks of billowing gloom. Through the smog, sword strikes lost their discipline and technique lost out to the hack and slash of open opportunity. All three of the participants’ blades made contact through the smoke, but it was impossible to tell which strike belonged to which warrior.
Alighieri received a slash across his forehead, an arm and a leg, considerably hampering the Black Templar’s former grace and agility. Kersh took a swordpoint in the groin – at the top of his left thigh – as well as a slice across the back of the neck running parallel with the line of his carapace. The Excoriator felt the now familiar spider-bite numbness creep through his flesh as the paralytic took effect. His head began to droop to one side and the Scourge was forced to bunch his shoulders and tense the sinew in his neck to rawness in order to keep it upright. Montalbán emerged the worst hit, being the largest target in the greasy blindness. A razor edge had found a backstrap on his carapace, cutting it free and allowing the ceremonial armour to fall away from his broad, muscular chest. The hulking Imperial Fist was adorned with crippling nicks and slashes across his shoulders and down one leg, but seemed unconcerned. His movements were as assured as they were before, the giant simply pushing through the paralysis like a runaway train that had blown its brakes. Grabbing the chestplate, Montalbán tore it free of his perfect form and tossed it aside.
The nightmare of battle went on. Dorn and his Fists had endured weeks of torment and relentless assault at the design of Perturabo and his traitor Iron Warriors. There the battle-brothers had come to know each other’s true worth as both warriors and spiritual siblings, this as part of their own primarch’s design. As the crowds built and gathered in the gallery above the Cage and the spectacle of superhuman endeavour and skill continued, it became apparent that some of that same hard-won respect and the kindred bond of Dorn’s spirit had been ignited between the three warriors. Too many blades had been turned aside and too many brief fantasies of triumph had been quashed for the Emperor’s Angels not to feel the sting of Legion pride in their brothers’ indefatigable efforts.
Neither Montalbán, Alighieri or the Scourge had any idea how long they had been fighting. It was not the weeks of their brothers’ historic trials, but it was longer than all of the other rounds and contestations of the eight hundred and sixteenth Feast added together. Movement became a sluggish blur and detail of the surrounding arena ran like painting left out in the rain. The snarling faces of Montalbán and Alighieri flashed before Kersh. So furious and exhausted was the exchange that at one point the Scourge fancied he even saw his own face amongst the glint of blades.
In the background, beyond the whirlwind of the fray, Kersh sensed his ethereal stalker. In the shattered fragments of reeling moments, the Excoriator caught an impression of his private revenant – not watching from the gallery in ghastly expectation, but down in the evolving arena. It was everywhere. Different places; different moments. An armoured shade, bedecked in death, whose presence seemed to suck the life out of the very space it occupied. It watched and waited with the patience of the grave.
The living in the Cage could only measure the passage of time in the fat beads of sweat shaken from their skin, the ache and burn of their battered bodies and, if they had had the luxury of a spare moment to observe, the closing gap between the faces of their riveted audience and the bars of the domed ceiling-cage of the arena.
The spectators found the contestants closer than ever as the three Space Marines scaled a line of block-columns rising up out of the Cage floor. Bounding from the top of tower to stone tower, the Adeptus Astartes exchanged blows. In yet another fearless move, Alighieri had launched himself across the open space between the towers and landed on the one being defended by Kersh. Somehow the Black
Templar had avoided being cleaved in two by the Scourge and danced in and out of the Excoriator’s tiring swordplay. The two were so close that Kersh could hear the incessant stream of battle-catechisms and recitation spilling from the Black Templar’s lips. The manoeuvre was even more daring than the Scourge had anticipated, as he discovered when Alighieri made it through the blaze of his blade and clipped the gladius from the fingers of Montalbán, who was swinging for all he was worth atop the tower beyond. The gladius left the Fist’s gauntlet and spun through the air above a large pool. Blocks had sunk into the floor of the arena, lined by the towers between which the Space Marines had been leaping. Dirty water had rapidly seeped up through grilles in the block-bottom of the large pit and filled it to a reasonable depth.
Montalbán watched the weapon fly across the water’s expanse and clatter to the ground on the other side. Instead of waiting for Alighieri to join him on his tower, the Imperial Fist dropped down the side of the column, sending a quake through the dark stone as he landed. The Black Templar wouldn’t have been able to make good on his bold opening since Kersh had come back at him with a lunge that had every right to gut the Castellan. Somehow the nimble Alighieri managed to arc his palsied form about the sword’s stabbing path.
The tower suddenly bucked. Kersh initially assumed that the blocks were once more on the move, but a second impact convinced him otherwise. The giant Montalbán was throwing his bulk at the tower base like a beast of the plains felling titanwoods. The third slam of superhuman shoulder against stone took out the base block and toppled the tower. As the column shook and tipped, Kersh lost his footing and went down in an ugly fashion. Striking his chest against the block edge he felt the shell of his fused ribs crack. He clawed at the smooth surface of the dark stone, allowing his gladius to tumble from his grip and into the filthy water below. The unsuccessful Scourge followed the weapon and was in turn followed and buried by the falling blocks of the collapsed tower.