“We are Space Marines,” replied Corbulo. “We are meant to be above such things.”
“Meant to,” Dante repeated, with a cool smile. “But we both know the reality is not the same as the ideal. Even the primarchs, in their magnificence, could not range above the emotions of men. The Heresy is ample proof of that. We can only strive to do so… But it would be foolish to pretend we are free of such things.”
Corbulo frowned again, and Dante saw understanding in his eyes. “You… You let this happen.”
“Indeed.”
“And more than that, perhaps you even encouraged it.” The Apothecary shook his head. “Lord, why?”
Dante held up his hand for silence as an Astartes from his honour guard entered the balcony and bowed low.
“My lord? Word from the master of the arena. The duel may commence at your command.”
He nodded. “Thank you, Brother Garyth. Tell him they may proceed.”
“This will be a single combat, a duel of prowess,” said the servitor, the grating mechanical vox speaking in a flat, emotionless voice. “Fight to assent, show courage and honour. Edged weapons and firearms are prohibited. In the Emperor’s name.”
“In the Emperor’s name,” chorused Rafen and Noxx. Both men had stripped down to fighting tunics, suits of sand ox leather and cloth of the like that initiates often wore in the days of training. The servitor offered them both a wooden exercise blade; balanced to mimic the weight and heft of a light battle sword, the training weapons had no cutting edge to them.
Noxx eyed him, tracing a finger over the rapidly-healing scar across his cheek. “A pity. I’d prefer a proper blade to these toys.” His voice was low.
“A warrior fights with whatever he has to hand,” Rafen retorted.
“How true,” Noxx grated, and threw him a mocking salute with the weapon.
“Commence,” said the servitor, and it trundled backwards into an alcove on brass wheels.
Rafen stepped up to the lip of the bowl-shaped fighting pit and sighted across at Noxx, taking a position directly opposite him. He wasted no time with showy motion or play at the Flesh Tearer’s expense; Rafen stepped off the edge and slid down the steep incline of the arena wall, riding on the heels of his sandals.
Noxx bellowed a war cry and threw himself headfirst at the Blood Angel, leading with the training blade. The shout, loud enough that it would unman an ordinary soldier, did nothing but draw a sneer from Rafen. He pivoted and met the Flesh Tearer’s weapon, batting it away.
Noxx landed hard and rolled, dodging a follow-up strike. Rafen skipped sideways across the curved stone blocks, over the black lines. He felt the vibrations of machinery through the soles of his feet, great cogs and rods at work beneath the floor of the arena.
The Flesh Tearer spun about and came at him again, fast and agile. Noxx rained blow after blow down upon Rafen, and the Blood Angel parried them all; but the attacks were so swift that he had barely a moment to consider a counter-strike of his own.
Then a lucky blow; Noxx scored a hit, the nub of the training blade’s thick edge hitting hard across the dense muscle of Rafen’s bicep. A lance of pain shot through him, startling the Blood Angel. He fell back, feeling an echo of the hurt tingle in his fingers. Strange; but the blow did not draw blood, in fact it barely even bruised me…
Noxx attacked again, and this time Rafen was slow. A second hit, and then a third, one to a spot above his clavicle and the other on his forearm. Each one made his skin twitch and tremble with a quick flash of palsy. Fighting through it, Rafen made a hard return and caught Noxx across the face with the flat of the blade, opening up the cut on his cheek again.
He moved to follow through, but the vibration in the floor became more violent. Abruptly, the stone blocks began to shift and the ground on which Rafen stood jerked and rose up. Other parts of the fighting pit pivoted or changed in height, the static surface becoming an unpredictable, disordered landscape to make the combat more challenging.
The Blood Angel caught a glimpse of the men watching the duel as the block on which he stood rose up above the lip of the arena; he spotted a grim-faced Kayne and the rest of his squad alongside a cadre of Blood Drinkers, who called out and applauded; then in the next second the block dropped away from under him and he fell into a controlled tumble. Fangs bared, Noxx dived to meet him and he pushed away—too slow to avoid another blow across his shoulder.
This time the impact bared his teeth and sent his muscles tensing all down his flank. Nerve points. He’s attacking the clusters of nerves beneath the surface of my flesh. To an observer caught up in the pitch and moment of the duel, Noxx’s blows would have seemed random, without order; but they were far from that. The correct application of force in the right places, even through the protective sub-dermal sheath of a Space Marine’s black carapace, could be enough to deaden nerves, to slow a fighting response. And if one were trained well enough, the right blow, no matter if it were struck with an edge-less training blade, would cause a seizure.
“Noxx fights well, for a barbarian,” noted Corbulo.
“That is the way of Seth’s men,” agreed Dante, glancing at the group of Flesh Tearers across the arena, in another of the viewing balconies. “They have always excelled in making anger their weapon.” He looked back at the Apothecary. “And that, my friend, is why I allowed this to come to pass.”
“My lord, I do not doubt your reasoning but I confess I do not see it.” Corbulo folded his arms across his chest.
Dante opened his hands and took in the whole of the arena. “I knew from the moment I ordered the conclave that tension and uncertainty would fill the monastery as easily as smoke. For all the well met and noble greetings between our successors, we are all still warriors, Corbulo. It is in our nature to be guarded, to fall into patterns of rivalry and challenge toward one another. That tension had to be dissolved.” He nodded toward Rafen and Noxx, as the Blood Angel landed a particularly savage blow upon his adversary. “This manner seemed the most direct.”
“Mephiston ordered Rafen not to allow himself to be goaded. Yet you set him up for just that.”
Dante nodded. “I consider it a test of the lad’s character. Mephiston speaks highly of Rafen, and I wanted to see the colour of his spirit for myself. How a warrior reacts to the unexpected, the extreme… It can be most revealing.” He stood back from the edge of the stone balcony. “As for the Flesh Tearers, I already know them well enough.” He smiled thinly. “If the blood of our primarch could be light through a prism, then we Blood Angels range toward one end and the Flesh Tearers are at the opposite. They are everything we are not, kinsman. And they are truly fearless, for they have nothing left to lose.”
Corbulo mused on this for a moment. “That is why you placed Rafen with them.”
“Just so. To draw out the true intentions of Seth and his party.” He studied the other men in the various wargear and robes of the other successor Chapters. “There are those among our cousins who will follow my lead because I am Lord of the Blood Angels, because we are the first chosen of Sanguinius. But there are others who cut their own path, who will resist what I will ask of them. None more so than the Sons of Cretacia.”
“They consider us to be decadent and irresolute. They’ve never made a secret of that.”
“It is important to disabuse them of such thoughts,” Dante replied, his tone hardening. “And so Rafen becomes the object lesson. A reminder of what a Blood Angel is.”
He’s trying to kill me. The realisation was hard in his thoughts, like diamond.
The duel was sanctioned as a fight to submission; the rules were adamant. While blood could be drawn, the battle between the two men could not go on beyond the point of a crippling injury, and certainly not to the death. But Rafen saw other intent in Noxx’s dead eyes, watching the Flesh Tearer measure every blow against his flesh with all the care of a sniper picking off targets from a rooftop hide. It would be easy to argue the point after the fact; such “accidents” in
training were not uncommon among the Adeptus Astartes. And if Rafen was lost in this fight, what would be said then? That the Blood Angels, so wounded by their own mistakes, could not even stand up to a brief brawl with dulled blades in a fighting pit?
The stone floor clattered and shifted again, rearranging itself and both men moved with it. Noxx extended and hit him once more, and sparks of pain glittered across Rafen’s vision. He felt his hand going slack around the grip of the training sword as the nerves in his fingers refused to answer to him. Another strike like that, perhaps two at the most, and Rafen would be slowed enough for the other sergeant to take him down at his leisure. He had to end this, and end it quickly.
The blade grip felt rubbery and limp in his hands, and with a snort he threw it aside, flexing his fingers into claws. Noxx’s eyes flashed; the Flesh Tearer had not expected that.
If he had been fighting another Blood Angel, Rafen would have expected his foe to drop his weapon as well, as a gesture of respect so that they could battle on an even footing. It did not surprise him that the Flesh Tearer did no such thing. Noxx attacked, feinting a stab with the training weapon that swung about into a descending hammer-blow strike.
The dense wooden blade came at Rafen horizontally, at throat height. The veteran sergeant was putting every iota of his strength behind the stroke. Moving as quickly as he could, ignoring the spikes of pain from the deep-tissue welts left by the Tearer’s earlier hits, Rafen dove into the attack, not away from it, cutting the distance between them. His arms shot out and he caught the edge of the heavy weapon in the open palms of his hands, the wood smacking bare skin with a hard impact. The reverberation of the blow went all the way to Rafen’s shoulder blades.
The Blood Angel’s fingers dug in, and twisted. The Flesh Tearer snarled and grimaced, jerking the weapon in a vain attempt to free it from the other warrior’s grip. Rafen had purchase, however, and would not be shifted. Turning into Noxx’s motion, he pulled the length of the blade against itself, and the dark lacquer shell protecting the weapon cracked and crazed.
Noxx suddenly understood what Rafen was doing, but he had overextended himself, and allowed his attack to be turned against him. The Blood Angel’s face took on a feral cast; Rafen felt a familiar surge of anger-fuelled heat ignite inside him. The very edge of the fury; the shadow of the Black Rage.
With a yell, Rafen turned the blade the wrong way and the tough nalwood splintered and snapped. The weapon came apart with a snapping report of sound, the torsion of the sudden release knocking Noxx back a step.
The broken pieces of the blade still in his clawed hands, Rafen went after him and threw blows against the Flesh Tearer’s forearms as they came up to guard his face. Then, with a grunt, he tossed the fragments away and attacked with bare hands tracked with deep, fresh scratches.
Rafen’s fist struck Noxx’s face and he felt the satisfying pressure of the blow landing. His knuckles came back filmed with blood—some of it belonging to his opponent, some of it belonging to him—and his nostrils twitched with the sudden immediacy of the scent. The sharp, acrid tang was welcoming.
Noxx staggered back, trying to shake off the violence of the punch. Rafen came on, and did not allow him to do so.
Corbulo’s eyes narrowed as the watchers below applauded the display. “How far shall we let this go, lord? They may end one another.”
Dante watched the fight carefully. “It will not come to that.”
“Are you certain?”
The Chapter Master did not look up. “All I am certain of is that any intervention on my part will do more harm than good. This must play out as it does.”
“You’re putting your trust in someone whose sibling was a traitor,” the Apothecary retorted.
“I am putting my trust in a Blood Angel,” Dante replied firmly. “Brother Rafen is that before all else.”
“I have my doubts,” Corbulo said, in a low voice.
“Of course you do,” said his master. “That is why you are at my left hand - to keep me from becoming complacent.”
The Apothecary took a long, slow breath. “Then, in that capacity, let me be candid, my lord.”
“I expect nothing less.”
Corbulo was silent for a long moment. “This gathering… I fear it will not serve the purpose you wish it to. I look about the fortress-monastery and see all these unfamiliar faces, I see the absence of men dead and men sent afar to maintain the fiction we have spun. I am surrounded by strangers, lord, and I feel as if I am a ghost at my own wake.”
Dante nodded slowly. “It is quite a thing to consider one’s own mortality, is it not, my friend?”
Corbulo opened his mouth to answer, but his words were silenced by a sudden rumble of noise from the Astartes crowded beneath them.
The cogwheels beneath the fighting pit clattered and spun, the flagstones moving once more, drawing space between the two combatants. Rafen found himself dropped downward while Noxx was elevated over him. The Flesh Tearer saw the opportunity and launched himself at the younger warrior, falling the distance with his teeth bared. Rafen accepted him and struck out with a double-handed sweep, knocking Noxx aside so the veteran’s head bounced off one of the hissing piston rods supporting the raised blocks.
Rafen’s teeth were grinding against one another, and suddenly all he wanted was the taste of blood in his mouth, the hot gush of vitae torn from this arrogant, contemptuous fool.
How dare these barbarians consider themselves the equal of the Blood Angels? The fury rumbled in his ears, his blood thudding through his veins. How dare they sully this place with their presence?
Every spiteful look, every arch word and conceit that the Flesh Tearers had turned toward Rafen and his men on Eritaen came back to him in that moment, and all he could feel was dark and potent anger at the slights of Noxx’s brethren. Mephiston’s words of censure were lost in amongst the growling wrath that tightened in his muscles. Rafen wanted only to strike the veteran sergeant again and again, to beat the arrogance out of him, to make him understand his place against a true Son of the Great Angel.
Noxx hit back, but the building Rage made each blow seem a distant, unimportant thing. Rafen landed another crippling punch, this time sensing the snap of a rib beneath the tanned-dark hide of the other man’s torso. Noxx coughed and Rafen saw the glitter of emotion for the quickest of instants, a flash of surprise inside those dead eyes.
He moved without a conscious thought, sweeping his leg back beneath Noxx to knock the Flesh Tearer’s feet out from under him. Rafen’s hand shot forward and snared the front of the other warrior’s leather jerkin, pressing him down, slamming him hard against the stone floor of the fighting pit.
Noxx let out a bark of pain as he hit. Rafen ignored the other man’s sharp blows to his torso and forced the veteran’s head back until it hung over the edge of a broad flagstone, into a cavity made by the action of the shifting pistons. Overhead, a suspended block reached its apex and the risers spat out a belch of steam. Without pause, it began a descent back into its place, falling down on the collapsing piston rod toward the empty space currently occupied by Noxx’s skull.
The Flesh Tearer saw the dark shape dropping and thrashed against the Blood Angel’s iron grip; unless Rafen released him, it would sever Noxx’s head from his shoulders and mash it into a mess of bloody pulp.
Perhaps Rafen knew that on some level; but he was focused only on pressing the life out of his opponent, his fangs bared, the stink of spilled blood thick in his nostrils. Noxx tried to speak but his throat was choked with fluid that drooled from his lips. And still the stone fell, growing larger and larger in his vision.
“Rafen.” The name was a command, clear and unequivocal; but the Blood Angel did not seem to hear it, did not loosen his grip. Noxx’s life would be spent in seconds, the falling guillotine of rock coming to end him.
“Rafen, release him,” Mephiston’s words cut through the miasma of the great rage and with a jerk of motion the Blood Angel did as he was o
rdered to.
Noxx rolled away an instant before the stone slammed back into place and lay there, panting. Rafen glanced up at the rim of the pit and saw the Lord of Death watching him with a forbidding air.
“Fight to assent,” he told him, rebuke beneath his words, “not to kill.” Mephiston looked up and took in the balconies arranged around him. “This bout is concluded. The matter is settled and honour has been served. Let us hear no more about it.”
With a grinding hiss, the stone floor returned to its original configuration, settling the bowl back into shape. Above, the Space Marines in the observation galleries began to drift away in groups.
Rafen stood, saying nothing, the anger inside him ebbing but not vanishing. It drew back like a retreating tide, but remained on the edge of his thoughts, still churning.
The Flesh Tearer got to his feet with difficulty, and then spat out a fat gobbet of bloody spittle. He drew his hand over his torn cheek, wiping away a sheen of dark fluid. “Pity,” he ventured, after a while. “I’d have liked to take this as far as it could have gone. Don’t you agree?”
Rafen shot him a baleful look. “Then you would be corpse flesh now, cousin.”
With difficulty, Noxx chuckled. “My death will be a long way from this place.”
The arrogance was unbelievable; only a moment ago Noxx had been moments from fatality at Rafen’s hands, and now he behaved as if it were of no more concern than inclement weather. The fury briefly surged again, and for a moment Rafen wished he hadn’t answered Mephiston’s command to desist.
Noxx turned and walked up the incline of the pit’s walls. Rafen watched, his hands balling into fists once again. He called out Noxx’s name, unwilling to let that be an end to it. “I beat you. I believe that means you owe me a spoil.”
The veteran turned and glared at him. “I have little to give to one so rich as you,” he retorted.
“An answer to a question, then.” Rafen stepped after him. “Why? Why did you force this duel? There was no point to it, nothing to be gained!”
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