“That is all. I leave you now, and in short order you will be taken before the Chaplain who will instruct you, in advance of the next round of examinations.”
With that the Space Marine stepped back through the open door, which he then closed behind them, leaving the aspirants alone in the dormitory.
Zatori Zan narrowed his gaze angrily at the Caritaigne who had murdered Father Nei, who he now learned was to be addressed in this place as “Aspirant du Queste”. Zatori glared at him, imagining all the myriad ways in which he might end this “Jean-Robur’s” life—crush his windpipe between his hands, break his neck against the hard edge of one of the metal benches, punch him hard in the nose with an uppercut to drive the bone up into his brain—but knew it would have to be done in an honourable way, as defined by the culture of Sipang, so as to put Father Nei’s spirit to rest, and in a situation in which there was no chance that the Caritaigne might survive or that Zatori would be stopped or apprehended before the deed was done. And while he stood considering all of the factors leading up to his hotly desired revenge, Zatori was startled when the Caritaigne turned and looked him right in the eye with an expression of indignant outrage on his face.
“To damnation with his talk of pain-gloves and discipline and all that!” the one named du Queste snarled. “Especially since he didn’t even answer my question!”
It was clear to Zatori that Jean-Robur did not recognise him as the Sipangish who had cried out vengeance on him. It was equally as clear that Jean-Robur did not expect any response in particular from Zatori, but was simply venting his anger and looking to the young Sipangish as a convenient target.
Even so, this Jean-Robur continued to glare at him, eyes narrowed and brow furrowed, as if he demanded some satisfaction.
“I…” Zatori began, unsure what to say to his hated enemy.
He was saved from having to compose any meaningful response by the arrival of another aspirant with yellow hair that looked as fine as cornsilk, who put his hand on Zatori’s shoulder in a companionable gesture and came to stand beside him, smiling into Jean-Robur’s outraged face.
“Meal period is in a short while, friend,” the newcomer said with a smile. “A little patience and your appetite will be sated.” He paused, and his smile widened somewhat. “Admittedly, it will not be the best fare you’ve ever tasted, but with any amount of luck it will not be the worst, either.”
Jean-Robur turned his gaze from Zatori to this interloper and sneered. “And who are you, to so freely address a stranger as ‘friend’?”
The yellow-haired aspirant extended his hand, thumb up and palm perpendicular to the floor, as though he expected Jean-Robur to grasp it. “My name is Aden Kelso, but everyone here just calls me ‘Aspirant Kelso’. I’m from the planet—”
“I have little interest in learning which world you call home, ‘Kelso’,” Jean-Robur answered icily, “which is no doubt some strange and alien place which I will never have need nor occasion to visit. I’m only now getting used to the idea of other human worlds out there, so please don’t bore me with your biographical details.”
“Well…” the one named Kelso replied, looking a little confused. He began to draw back his hand, on his face an expression suggesting disappointment.
Perhaps it was the fact that his hated enemy was being needlessly cruel to this yellow-haired aspirant that drove Zatori into action. Or perhaps it was the memory of seeing a young girl, like Zatori a fellow low-born Sipangish, being treated poorly once by a rich and overfed merchant who’d had one too many cups of rice wine. That girl had worn just such an expression as this Kelso now wore, one that commingled hurt feelings and confused bewilderment. Zatori felt the overwhelming urge to come to the aid of anyone who wore such an expression, and to ally himself to anyone poorly treated by this accursed Jean-Robur.
“Well met, Kelso,” Zatori said, reaching over and taking hold of Kelso’s hand. “I am Zatori Zan, former squire to the master warrior-elite Father Nei, and I am from the island of Sipang on the world called Triandr.”
Kelso smiled, and tightened his grip around Zatori’s hand. “Well met, indeed, friend Zatori. One day we may find ourselves on the field of battle together, and it would serve us well to have a friend at our sides, yes?”
Zatori nodded, returning Kelso’s smile with a faint grin of his own. But he could not help glancing over at Jean-Robur. Already the Caritaigne had lost interest in the discussion and thrown up his hands in disgust as he went off in search of someone else to whom he could complain about his hunger.
Taloc s’Tonan watched the Sipangish faithless talking to a pair of aspirants, one of them with strikingly bright yellow hair of a hue Taloc had never seen before. When the Sipangish who’d bested Tonan turned and clasped hands with the yellow-haired aspirant, the third aspirant in the huddle broke away and came towards the place where Taloc stood.
Taloc could feel the weight of his father’s blood-debt pulling on his shoulders, and he stared at the back of the Sipangish faithless’ head, imagining breaking it open like an egg against the hard floor beneath their feet.
“Hold, stranger,” Taloc said, motioning towards the Triandrian who stalked in his direction. It seemed strange to address a faithless in a shared tongue, much less one who had invaded the sacred places of Eokaroe, but the knowledge of Imperial Gothic which bubbled up through Taloc’s thoughts made possible communication that would at any earlier time in his life have been impossible. “That Sipangish you addressed a moment ago. What did he say?”
Close to, Taloc could see that this was a Caritaigne, the same one he’d stood beside while the Imperial Fists captain had addressed the new recruits. When he heard Taloc’s question, the Caritaigne aspirant quirked the slightest of sly smiles.
“Well, I find I prefer ‘stranger’ to ‘friend’ under the circumstances.” Then, seeing Taloc’s confused expression, he added, “The Sipangish bastard just spoke his name and provenance, as if any cared to hear it, and then went back to yammering with that yellow-haired ray of sunshine.” He paused, put a hand on his stomach and added, “Gods above, but I’m hungry.”
“His name,” Taloc asked, “what is it?”
The Caritaigne thought for a moment. “Zato, I think? No. It was Zatori. That sounds right.” He shook his head, grimacing slightly. “I suppose it’s too much to hope that you might answer a question for me, now.”
Taloc kept his expression stony and unreadable, but gave a slight motion with the fingers of one hand, as if waving something towards himself. Ask me. It was then that he saw the door open at the far side of the dormitory hall, and the first of the hunched shapes trundle in.
“When are we going to get to eat?” the Caritaigne demanded, petulantly. “I’m starving!”
Taloc merely pointed past the Caritaigne’s shoulder, and said, “Now.”
The Caritaigne turned, and saw the line of servitors carrying trays over to the row of tables, twists of steam curling up from the contents. To Taloc’s nostrils was wafted a smell that, while it seemed bland and unrecognisable, was still enough to make his mouth begin watering. He could not identify precisely what the trays contained, but knew immediately what it was—food.
The Caritaigne turned back and gave Taloc a grin. “Now that’s what I call a prompt answer!”
As the Caritaigne headed off to take his place at the table, along which the aspirants with stubble and locks were already congregating, Taloc turned and glanced in the direction of the Sipangish faithless who had killed his father.
“Zatori,” Taloc said under his breath in a voice scarcely above a whisper. “I name you nemesis. Perhaps not now, and perhaps not soon, but one day you will pay my father’s blood-debt. This I swear.”
Then Taloc’s stomach growled audibly. The blood-debt would wait, he knew. For the moment, there were more pressing concerns. It would do his father no good if he starved to death.
The meal was, as Jean-Robur had been warned, fairly uninspired. It was, in fact, blan
d and all but tasteless. Still, it was warm and filling, and when it was done his hunger was gone. The fact that he could not identify any of the constituents of the meal itself was a matter he chose not to dwell upon.
After the aspirants had finished eating, the servitors cleared the empty trays away, and clanked and wheeled their way back out of the dormitory and out of sight.
The twelve Triandrians had eaten in silence, so intent were they on sating their gnawing hunger—how long had it been since they had properly eaten, and not been sustained by the fluids poured and pumped into them by the Apothecary’s needles and tubes? It was not until Jean-Robur’s tray was picked clean that he noted that the other aspirants, those whose heads were shadowed with stubble or with ragged locks, were almost as silent, hardly speaking or even making a sound. Was it something in their various cultures which drove them to dine in silence? Or perhaps a trait they developed in their time onboard the Capulus?
It was not until they were taken before the Chaplain that Jean-Robur got his answer.
After the servitors’ exit, Jean-Robur considered stretching out on one of the cots and getting some sleep, when the great door at the head of the dormitory swung open once more. When the doorway was completely open and unobstructed, a Chapter serf strode into the room. The aspirants were ordered to gather together, and then were escorted through the ship to a hall where a towering figure waited on a massive rostrum.
Encased in coal-black power armour, from which countless ribbons and scrolls fluttered in the slight breeze, and with his face hidden behind a mask fashioned in the shape of a silver skull, the figure stepped forwards to the edge of the rostrum with footsteps that echoed like thunder, punctuated by the tap-tap-tap of his skull-topped staff.
“I am Chaplain Dominicus,” the towering figure announced, his words booming like the voice of a thunderstorm. “The Emperor’s blessings on you, aspirants, and the Venerable Dorn keep you in his graces.”
All around him the aspirants who had already been onboard when the Triandrians arrived bowed their heads in respect, averting their eyes from the Chaplain’s silver death-mask.
“You are here to begin your instruction in the proper worship of the Emperor, to be familiarised with the rudiments of the Cult of Dorn, and introduced to the noble heritage it may one day be your privilege to carry forward.”
The Chaplain’s gaze passed over the faces of the assembled aspirants.
“First, an instructive lesson, and then we will adjourn to the chapel where you will each be introduced in turn to the pain-glove, which will aid in clarifying your thoughts. Now, those of you who come from worlds who have not lost their connections with Holy Terra may have heard of the Column of Glory, the tower of rainbow metal near the Emperor’s own throne room which is embedded with the armour of the valiant Imperial Fists who gave their lives selflessly in the defence of the Emperor during the dark days of the Horus Heresy. What you may not have heard are the details surrounding the battle, or the ways our fallen brethren exemplified our Chapter’s absolute and uncontested mastery of siege warfare…”
The Chaplain continued on, but Jean-Robur’s attentions were elsewhere. What was the pain-glove?
Jean-Robur’s imagination filled with thoughts of gauntlets fitted with spikes and blades, or vices, or needles and barbs. The Chaplain continued to talk about the glorious history of the Chapter and its primarch, Rogal Dorn, but Jean-Robur heard none of it. His thoughts were only on the pain-glove.
CHAPTER SIX
When the Chaplain called on Jean-Robur du Queste to step forwards, Jean-Robur could not help but feel that it was an ironic bit of justice. So often he had transgressed the rules in Caritaigne and never been caught, and here he was the first to be put in the pain-glove? And not as punishment for any transgression, but simply to help him “focus his thoughts”?
Jean-Robur du Queste was to be the first of the Triandrian aspirants to spend his time in the pain-glove, which the Imperial Fists used not only as a disciplinary measure, but also as a routine part of their training and initiation. All of the aspirants would take their turn in the nerve-searing pain-glove, as Jean-Robur learned when the Chaplain explained the ways in which the Chapter viewed the device as an aid to focus and meditation. But knowing that he would not be the last to be subjected to the treatment did not make him any more eager to be the first.
* * *
The full ranks of the aspirants onboard the Capulus gathered in the chapel, arrayed in ordered rows on hard and unforgiving metal pews that ran from one end of the nave to the other. Chaplain Dominicus stood at an altar positioned at the apse, between two great pillars upon which were positioned holy images, on the left an icon of the God-Emperor fashioned in gold, on the right a representation of Primarch Rogal Dorn carved from alabaster. A heavy fug of incense hung over the massive chamber from the censers positioned throughout the chapel, and the golden light which streamed through the faceted panes of the ornate windows high overhead glinted off particles of dust which floated lazily through the air, causing them to flash and sparkle momentarily like miniature stars in the far distance.
“Since our earliest origins,” Chaplain Dominicus declaimed, “we Imperial Fists have found strength in meditation, and focus in pain.”
The death-masked Chaplain paused, and touched a runic stud embedded in the altar before him. Immediately before the altar was what appeared to be a circular pattern of tiles, with spiralling arms radiating out from the centre. With the sound of machinery grinding away somewhere far below their feet, the spiralling arms began to twist, and a hole appeared at the centre of the pattern, growing gradually larger and larger.
“Scripture teaches that Rogal Dorn once resisted the pain-glove for seven days until at last he was gifted with a vision of the Emperor. Presented with the sure and certain knowledge that the sublimed master of us all still watched over humanity from the Golden Throne, our noble primarch ordered that the VII Legion should symbolically enter the pain-glove, and thereby transformed and clarified by its purifying fire the Imperial Fists emerged from the other side as a Chapter of the Codex Astartes.”
The hatch which had been hidden in the patterned tiles continued to iris open, until with a sound like a weary and laboured sigh it finally came to a halt, revealing the mouth of a shaft as wide as a Space Marine in power armour, that descended from the golden light of the chapel into pitch darkness below.
“So too do each of us enter the pain-glove as mortal humans when first brought within the compass of the Imperial Fists, and through the clarifying fire and pain of initiation emerge eventually transformed into superhuman Astartes.”
With another sigh, though one of lamentation and not of laboured weariness, a steel framework began to rise from the mouth of the shaft. It was a gibbet, a roughly cubical scaffolding of metal rods, from which was suspended what appeared at first glance to be a representation of the flayed skin of a grown man. With legs and arms and torso fabricated of a transparent material threaded with a network of needle-thin silvery wires, it lacked only a head and the tops of the shoulders to make it fully man-shaped.
The Chaplain pressed another rune stud embedded in the altar, and the framework of the steel gibbet expanded, stretching the fabric of the pain-glove and widening the opening where the head and shoulders would be. Then the gibbet slowly lowered back into the shaft, until the mouth of the pain-glove was level with the surrounding floor-plates.
“Aspirant du Queste, step forwards.”
Rising from the metal pew where he sat with the others, Jean-Robur walked forwards, coming to a stop at the edge of the circular hole in the floor.
“Disrobe, aspirant,” Chaplain Dominicus ordered, pointing to Jean-Robur with the tip of his staff.
With evident hesitation, the aspirant removed his belted tunic, loincloth and boots. When he had done, he stood naked, hairless and exposed, at the edge of the shaft.
“Drop into the pain-glove, aspirant.”
Jean-Robur swallowed hard,
his hands tightened into fists at his sides, and then stepped off the edge of the floor. He dropped straight down like a stone falling to earth, and then the transparent Glove caught him. With a sound like a sigh of regret, the framework raised back up above the floor, closing as it did, so that the stretched fabric of the pain-glove retracted, tightening and settling around the curves of Jean-Robur’s body.
“Aspirants!” Chaplain Dominicus called out to those assembled in the chapel. “Hear now the words of the Liturgy of Pain.”
The Chaplain lifted his arms at his sides, his staff held high overhead.
“Pain is a lesson that the universe teaches us.
Pain is the preserver from injury.
Pain perpetuates our lives.
Pain is the healing, purifying scalpel of our souls.
Pain is the wine of communion with heroes.
Pain is the alembic which transmutes mere mortal into immortal.”
The Chaplain turned to his left, and pointed his staff at the alabaster statue of Primarch Rogal Dorn atop the right-most pillar.
“Turn your face to the image of Rogal Dorn, aspirant. You must learn to focus past the pain, and to strengthen your link with our primarch.”
And then Chaplain Dominicus pressed a final button embedded in the altar, and the pain-glove was at last activated.
The pain-glove felt to Jean-Robur like an unending eternity of agony. From the first moment that his nerves were set afire by contact with the electrofibres, it was as if he were consumed by actual raging flames. So intense was the sensation of burning that Jean-Robur could almost smell the bitter tang of scorched flesh, and could easily imagine his skin darkening and bones cracking as the fire transformed living tissue into char and ash. But even through the excruciating agony he remained completely awake and fully aware, the mechanism of the pain-glove preventing his brain from shutting down in the face of such overwhelming sensation.
[Warhammer 40K] - Sons of Dorn Page 10