by Rob Sanders
‘You want to see blood?’ he told them finally. ‘Well, you’ve come to the right place. You will see plenty of your own and each other’s, if you continue as you are. The World Eaters will see to that. Make no mistake, they will ensure it.’
Kersh glared at his Excoriators. ‘Dismissed’.
CHAPTER TWELVE
WOUND WITHIN A WOUND
With Brother Micah under one arm and the Apothecary under the other, Kersh was helped to a tablet bunk in the hermitage. Ezrachi had set up one of the sanctuary chambers as a temporary apothecarion.
‘I’m all right,’ the corpus-captain had insisted moodily.
‘You’re bleeding like a stuck pig,’ Ezrachi had carped back. Sat on the stone tablet, with Ezrachi and one of his Helix-serfs exploring the wound and gathering instruments, the Scourge looked over to the only other occupied bunk in the apothecarion. The Epistolary, Melmoch, lay unconscious on the tablet, his chest rising and falling rhythmically. Bethesda entered the chamber, light on her toes, with concern and urgency in her eyes. ‘Steel yourself, it’s going to hurt.’
In one practised motion, the Apothecary withdrew the gladius skewering the Scourge’s side. Kersh winced but remained silent. ‘Probably not as much as when it went in though, eh?’ Ezrachi chuckled, handing the bloody sword to Micah.
‘My lord?’ Bethesda said, but the Scourge was lost in thought.
‘He’ll live. As usual,’ the Apothecary reassured her. ‘Now make yourself useful, child, and get your master out of his sacred plate.’
This the absterge fell to immediately. Brother Micah turned the gore-smeared blade over in his hand.
‘Don’t you have anywhere else to be?’ Ezrachi said with irritation. ‘You could return that to Ishmael. I’m sure he’ll be needing it again soon enough.’ When Micah didn’t answer, the Apothecary added, ‘You think on the Trial? You think you would have done any better?’
‘The corpus-captain won the duel. How could I do any better than that?’ Micah said unhappily.
‘Good answer,’ Ezrachi replied, busy at work on the gushing wound.
‘He’s angry I didn’t let him champion my cause,’ Kersh said absently, still looking at Melmoch.
‘I am your champion,’ Micah said.
Kersh winced again. ‘You can take the next blade destined for my belly. How’s that? For now, I need you to find Brother Novah. Send him to me. I have orders to distribute. I need you out there. Ensure my orders are being followed. Oversee the beginning of the demolition. Work with the lord lieutenant and the Charnel Guard. I want recruits processed and armed. Establish emplacements, fire arcs and kill zones around the city perimeter. I want this city ready to defend itself. That is the cause – the company’s cause – that I wish you to champion.’
‘What of our number?’
‘The Fifth Company’s tactics will be more fluid and responsive to the nature, number and orientation of the threat presented. We need to expect anything. Go do your duty.’
‘Yes, corpus-captain,’ Micah replied. The champion stabbed the bloody gladius into a hermitage bench. ‘Brother Ishmael can collect this himself,’ he said with distaste, adopted his helmet and left.
As Bethesda stripped the Scourge of his plate, Ezrachi worked and his serfs stitched and stapled Kersh’s insides back into some sense of order. The puncture in the black carapace, which fused his ribs together like a chestplate beneath his flesh, was harder to remedy. As the Apothecary completed the brief surgery and closed up the wound with a corkscrew needle, he gave the Scourge his report.
‘I’ve administered growth hormone and applied a bonding agent – a surgical resin – to prevent further tearing along the carapace. The pain will fade over time. The resin will take an hour or so to set, so do your best to remain still.’
Bethesda held up the abdominal plate of ceramite through which the gladius had punched. ‘Take that to Brother Dancred,’ Ezrachi instructed.
‘He has better things to do,’ Kersh said suddenly. ‘As do you, Apothecary.’ Bethesda hesitated.
‘Ask him for a temporary patch,’ Ezrachi said. ‘As I have performed on its wearer. The detail and artistry can wait – as indeed it does on the corpus-captain himself.’
‘Where’s Skase?’ the Scourge demanded.
Ezrachi raised an eyebrow. ‘Is he to be punished?’
‘No,’ Kersh said.
‘He stabbed his commanding officer during a duel, an act it would not be unreasonable to characterise as treasonous or even an assassination attempt. He has dishonoured himself…’
‘Then that will be punishment enough,’ the Scourge shot back. ‘That and a duty on this doomed world. Dishonoured or not, I can’t spare a chief whip.’
‘But I am to be spared such a duty?’
‘Answer me. Where is Uriah Skase?’
‘Being just as stubborn as you,’ the Apothecary said. ‘He probably has one of his squad stitching him up right now. You know how Excoriators are about their duelling scars. They’re probably making a right grox’s ear of it. You did, of course, almost cut his entire face off, so perhaps I’d better go check on him.’
‘Fine,’ the Scourge said. ‘Begin with Skase and Squad Cicatrix. I want this company’s gene-seed harvested and you off-world in the next five hours.’
Staring hard at the Scourge as his serf collected his instruments, Ezrachi nodded silently and then made for the exit. At the door he turned.
‘You know, Kersh. Just because you got me into this mess, doesn’t mean you’re obliged to provide me a way out. Getting the seed to safety is a noble pursuit, but so is sharing the risk here and keeping it alive and well in you and your brothers.’
The Scourge turned to him. ‘Aetna Phall. Then, Eschara. You leave with this company’s legacy in five hours, Apothecary. I suggest you begin.’
Ezrachi’s crabby lips curled in a weak smile and the Apothecary left.
Kersh sat there for a while in the peace and quiet of the hermitage sanctuary. His side ached. His mind whirled. Was this what the Emperor wanted for him and his Excoriators? Was this his duty? Or was he needlessly damning the brothers under his command to certain slaughter? He thought of the worlds on the Keeler Comet’s path, and the Space Marines who must have been caught up in the trap sprung by its malign influence. The decision to run or fight. Was he fighting simply to avoid further accusations of cowardice or weakness? Was the Cholercaust his self-inflicted punishment – as Uriah Skase indulged the guilt of failure on Veiglehaven and the loss of his brothers, was he too castigating himself? As Skase had made himself live the excesses of the lash, was Kersh dooming himself and his brothers to a battle they certainly could not win? Or was he so desperate to win back his Master’s love and trust after the affliction of the Darkness that he saw the Blood God’s disciples as a test to be passed? Not the falsehood of games and trials, represented through the Feast of Blades or an honour duel. Would Kersh only be worthy to stand by his Chapter Master’s side when he had faced the War-Given-Form and enough enemy blood had been spilt?
Holding his torso and slipping down from the tablet, Kersh took several steps and stretched his side a little. Perhaps real Adeptus Astartes captains knew nothing of the questions he’d asked himself. Perhaps in them, doubt was a distant memory of the past. He had presented a mask of confidence to his men; seemed sure in his orders – even in the face of their questioning; tried to earn his corpus-captaincy in word and deed. Yet, Zachariah Kersh felt the crushing uncertainty of fate spinning on a coin about him. Events were unfolding, irrespective of his unseemly doubts and out of his control. The mortals called them demigods, but in the harsh silence of that lonely moment, Kersh felt the emptiness of insignificance – deep like the darkness of space, a vast oblivion in which his fighting spirit guttered like a candle flame and unimportance was complete. Kersh felt cold and alone.
Standing as he was, he noticed for the first time an object on Melmoch’s chest. Like that the Scourge had woken to find upon himself,
the object was a card – a crystalline tarot wafer used by witchbreeds to present portents, divine futures and shed light on facets of the Emperor’s will. Standing over the comatose Epistolary, Kersh picked up the card and turned it over in his fingers. On it was the representation of a colossal, rune-inscribed bell tower, imposing and ancient, with the dilapidated majesty of Terran hives stretching out beyond. The words Campana Spiritus-Perditus underscribed the illustration, but Kersh knew the image well. Every Adeptus Astartes did. It was the Bell of Lost Souls on Ancient Terra, housed in the Tower of Heroes, known to toll its doom-laden lament only at the death of true heroes of the Imperium.
Kersh felt cold. The unnatural absence of heat in the air. Looking up he saw the revenant, standing on the other side of the tablet, looking down at the psyker. With a sickening pause, the being looked up at the corpus-captain. Its teeth chattered in its macabre maw, and through the rent in its helm, the Scourge felt the attention of an eye within the bald socket of the thing’s skull, glowing an otherworldly red.
‘So this is you,’ Kersh said, presenting the tarot wafer. The horror merely stared back, never speaking, never acknowledging its hauntee with word or deed. ‘What does this mean?’ the Scourge demanded. The revenant merely stared at the Excoriator. ‘I want to know what this means, you sorry-looking, good-for-nothing fiend.’ Again, the phantom did not respond. It simply watched the fury building within the corpus-captain with grotesque fascination and icy patience. Kersh turned away. He looked at the card and then back at the revenant. He half expected it to be gone as was its frustrating habit, melting into the ether of reality. It remained, however, standing over the unconscious Librarian.
‘False prophet,’ Kersh told it with growing bitterness. ‘At first I thought you a bad dream – a resonance of the Darkness. Something I’d brought back. Then some manifestation of surgical error, a hallucination or insanity earned through drill and scalpel. For a moment I allowed myself the comfort of thinking you had answers. That you were ghosting me for a reason I would come to understand. Some sign of a greater scheme. Surely, proof that I truly have lost my mind. Now I just think I’m damned. Come to the notice of some pollutive entity or spirit that delights in tormenting me with its dark attentions. Do my struggles entertain you, wraith?’
The being looked down on Melmoch with ghoulish serenity before staring back at the seething Scourge. It reached out with a single, bony digit – protruding from a broken ceramite fingertip – and pointed to the tarot card in the Excoriator’s hand. Colour began to bleed from the wafer, until atom by atom the card disintegrated before Kersh’s eye, streaming away on some perverse, immaterial breeze.
‘More dark riddles? Could you be any more cryptic, you bastard thing?’
The hand that had been holding the card became a fist and the raw tension in the Scourge’s arm, a blow. Several stitches snapped in Kersh’s side as the Excoriator launched his attack, throwing a punch at the being. As the fist flew, Kersh winded himself against Melmoch’s stone tablet. His knuckles met no resistance, however. Instead of ceramite and bone, the Scourge’s fist hit agitated nothingness, the spit and crackle of soul-static and shadow. What horrified the corpus-captain more was the fact that the armoured phantom actually seemed to be there and it was his own fist and arm that had assumed a ghostly translucence. Instinctively withdrawing his hand and clutching it to his chest, the Excoriator was relieved to find that it had re-assumed its corporeality. It was flesh and blood once more.
The candles about the chamber suddenly died to glowing wick-tips. The sanctuary became thick with a darkness that even the Space Marine’s enhanced vision struggled to pierce. Even the revenant in his midnight plate could not be seen. Then, like a targeter, the wraith’s lurid red eye cut through the murk, fixed on the Excoriator. Before the Scourge, appeared an unnatural light. The phantasmic outline of the legionnaire flickered and danced with the auric flame of ethereal damnation. Kersh watched, entranced by this being of the beyond. Not noticing that the very darkness itself had been set alight, but the mere offending presence of the thing. The gilded flames took and spread, swamping the corpus-captain in an immaterial inferno. The soulfire blazed to brightness, enveloping the revenant in light and immersing the Scourge in cool, blinding brilliance.
When Kersh opened his eye the chamber had returned to blackness. The candle wicks reassumed their glow before igniting once more. The temporary apothecarion, including the still form of Melmoch, seemed untouched by the ethereal firestorm, but the ghoulish revenant was gone. The Scourge stumbled across to his bunk and leant against the stone tablet, probing his stitches with fat fingers.
The sanctuary door opened and Ishmael entered. The squad whip met Kersh’s blank gaze before walking over to the hermitage bench, his face dark like a burgeoning storm. Standing next to Melmoch, Ishmael grasped the hilt of his blood-smeared sword and plucked it from the ferruswood surface of the bench. He seemed to stare at the gladius for a moment.
‘Thinking about finishing what your blade started, Squad Whip Ishmael?’ the Scourge called over his shoulder, his words barbed and accusatory. After a short hesitation, Ishmael looked around at the Scourge. A decision was made.
‘Melmoch’s awake,’ the squad whip replied.
‘What?’ Kersh said, still with an edge to his voice. The whip’s response had caught him off guard.
‘Brother Melmoch,’ Ishmael told him, his eyes still slits of insolence, ‘is conscious.’ Kersh approached the stone tablet. Indeed, the Librarian’s eyes were fluttering open and staring glaze-eyed at the ceiling. ‘Corpus-captain,’ Ishmael acknowledged in a low voice before slipping out of the sanctuary.
‘Melmoch,’ Kersh greeted the Epistolary as he stood over him.
The Librarian sat up, leaning back on his arms. He licked his lips.
‘I’m thirsty,’ he said. It was a statement, but Kersh, still clutching his side, poured a small bowl of water from a ceramic pitcher and offered it to the psyker. Taking the bowl, Melmoch drank deeply, allowing rivulets of water to stream down from the corners of his mouth. ‘The apothecarion?’ he asked. Kersh nodded.
‘You’ve been out a while, brother.’
‘I heard voices,’ Melmoch said. Kersh felt himself tense.
‘Brother Ishmael was here…’
‘Whooh,’ Melmoch said, dropping the empty bowl and reaching for his head.
Crunching through the shattered ceramic, Kersh put a hand on the psyker’s shoulder. ‘What is it? Is it your gift?’
‘Yes,’ Melmoch moaned.
‘Is it compromised?’
‘Quite the opposite,’ the psyker told him, his face criss-crossed with lines of pain and tension.
‘You have the skill?’
Melmoch’s eyes opened wide and bright, and he spoke. His gaze was piercing to the point of discomfort and his words echoed around the inside of Kersh’s mind.
‘There is pain here like you would not believe. Not in this body but in the very fabric of existence. The dull agony of our savagery is a galactic affliction. The hot blood of ill will and the mindless brutality of our species sustaining its insatiable desire. Our kind were bred to trade in such currency. With each bolt and blow we feed the beast. Here and now…’ The Librarian trailed off. His eyes momentarily glazed before searing back to focus. ‘Here and now – this time and this place is a wound within a wound. An injury internal, like a bottomless pit discovered in the deepest trench.’
‘You speak of the Cholercaust.’
‘The screams,’ Melmoch marvelled. ‘The never-ending shrieks of slaughterlust, fear and rage, layered, echoing, bleeding into one another like a spiritual static. The starvation of reason – food for a god.’
‘Melmoch, I don’t–’
‘It speaks through me, but to us all. You can hear it in the drawing of a blade and the clunk of a firing mechanism. You can feel it in your face and fingers – in the snarl and the fists you make when you want to end an existence. It’s there – in the back of y
our mind, finding expression in the necessity of violence. It calls to you, shredding your nerve and urging the wanton abandon that every being craves – building, bubbling, brimming. Threatening to spill over into glorious reality where both power and blood flow.’
‘The gall-fever,’ Kersh agreed.
‘The futility of fighting fire with fire. A spiral of degeneration. The War-Given-Form. It will stop at nothing until we have all become the instruments of its boundless wrath. So much hate.’
‘Is that why you took this from the Ecclesiarch’s shrine?’ Kersh asked, dipping his hand into a belt pouch and extracting the small urn the psyker had used to put himself out. The Librarian immediately flinched in its presence. ‘All of the witchbreeds are dead. Navigators, astropaths – everyone.’
‘The Skull Taker knows we’re here,’ the Epistolary said, not taking his eyes off the orb container with its agonising contents: the God-Emperor’s psi-negative essence, dust of the divine. ‘It knows our gorestink, the copper tang of our blood. We are candles in the darkness to such an entity, flaring every time we lay our lands on a weapon or indulge our spite. It hates the witch most of all. A loathing beyond your all-too-human unease and disgust. The witch’s soul burns bright. The witch is a coward who shuns the unthinking urgency of the hand and whose agency is the warp. That is why the witch dies first at the Blood God’s hand. I needed to douse that flame, to retreat into the darkness and gather my strength – or, Adeptus Astartes or not, I would have shared the same fate as the unfortunates of whom you spoke.’
‘Melmoch,’ Kersh said, trying to get the psyker to focus. ‘I need to know if you can reach beyond the screaming – beyond the influence of the Cholercaust and this cursed comet.’
‘You wish me to send an astrotelepathic message?’
‘Yes. Several. Can you do that?’
Melmoch got down from the stone tablet and steadied himself. ‘I can try.’