‘The worst in our history,’ the corpus-captain admitted. ‘Nine of our ten champions have been beaten and are out of the contest – and the Feast is but yet at an early stage. You are the last. That is why I had Ezrachi experiment with that damned box.’
‘If I fail?’
‘Then we have dishonoured Dorn and our entire Chapter. In your case, again. It would strengthen the belief in our brothers that we are ruined and I don’t know if Master Ichabod would survive such news.’
‘But we would leave the Feast early?’
‘Think not on crusades to reclaim the Stigmartyr. If winning back your honour is the prize, then that can only be achieved here. If you do not do your utmost – as every Excoriator before you – to succeed in the Feast, then I shall leave Samarquand with my ten defeated champions and take the Scarifica to Onassis and join the Marines Mordant on their penance crusade through Tempest Hippocrene. You will not see our home world, Eschara, for a hundred years, and when you do, it will be because the dishonour of our failure has been bled from your body. I will then select you for participation in the Feast once more. Consider this both my threat and my promise, brother.’
Kersh stood there. Angry at Gideon. Angry at himself. He watched the Imperial Fists cruiser peel away from the greenskin hulk. The Imperial Navy vessels disengaged likewise, their magnabore laser batteries silent but still glowing. The kroozer rippled with explosions. Sections broke away and the bulbous monstrosity split in two. Both sections tumbled towards Samarquand IV, wreathed in an upper-atmospheric blaze. These were followed by falling stars that had erupted from the belly of the Adeptus Astartes strike cruiser and were now thunderbolting down through the wake of the wreckage. Drop-pods laden with Imperial Fists, intent on finishing the job and cleansing the inevitable crash-site of greenskin scum.
Kersh turned to Gideon, but he had gone, leaving the Scourge in the penitorium on his own. The deck lamps were out and the cool chamber was only lit by the sickly light of the planet below. A shiver danced up the Space Marine’s spine and the flesh on his forearms suddenly pimpled, telling Kersh that the temperature in the penitorium had dropped considerably. Something brushed past the tiny hairs standing erect on his thick neck, causing the Excoriator to spin around. He found nothing but empty darkness. He hocked and spat into the black.
‘I spit on your childish tricks, Tiberias,’ Kersh announced to the echoing chamber, ‘for they proceed from a cowardly soul.’
Kersh turned back to the thick armaplas and the deeper darkness of space. He soaked up the emptiness for a moment – the totality of black loneliness offered by the void – before realising that he wasn’t actually alone. The unrequested appearance of his serfs would simply have irritated the Scourge. If he had sensed Tiberias then the Excoriator’s brawny arms would have flared with the sudden burn of anger and adrenaline. This was something else. The pit of his stomach curdled. He felt the coolness of his blood. Then, the chatter of teeth.
The Scourge turned his head slowly. He saw a ghostly reflection in the plas, the silhouette of an armoured figure, cutting its shape into the darkness beyond.
‘No…’ Kersh mouthed, his breath misting before him. His eyes widened. Before him was the revenant from his dark dreams. It didn’t look at him. It merely existed. There. A horrifying reality. Its grotesque armour was the skeletal nightmare he remembered, and through a rent in its helm, Kersh caught a glimpse of something unliving, a vision of fear crafted in bone and smouldering with radiance unnatural.
Something akin to fear fluttered through the Scourge’s being. He had not been built with the emotional spectrum to experience dread as mortals did, but something deep and primordial within him was reacting to the phantasm, and it was not pleasant. This alien feeling soon churned into something all the more recognisable to the Space Marine. Anger. The desire to meet a threat head on and end it. The revenant could be heralding the return of the Darkness or it could be an unknown menace that was a danger to the ship. Either way, Kersh felt that he had to act. He risked a fleeting glance about the benighted penitorium, his eyes darting for anything that might serve as a weapon. The brief search revealed nothing and within a moment, his distrusting gaze was back on the revenant. Except, it wasn’t there.
Through the vistaport plas, the busy hull of the Scarifica became silhouetted against the sallow curvature of Samarquand IV. Amongst the aerials, crenellations and grotesques, Kersh could make out a distant, armoured figure on the exterior of the ship. The revenant. It too was in silhouette and held his attention as it worked its ghostly way up through the crowded architecture.
‘Terran Throne…’ Kersh murmured, his eyes almost to the armaplas. Step by spectral step he followed it with his eyes, until, with a ghoulish uncertainty plucking at his hearts, he watched it disappear around a maintenance barbican.
He felt something wet and slippery to the touch on the plas interior. Backing away, Kersh found himself staring at High Gothic scrawl written with a fingertip on the vistaport surface. Some of his own words – words he’d used in the penitorium only minutes before – quoted back to him. In dedicato imperatum ultra articulo mortis. ‘For the Emperor beyond the point of death,’ Kersh mouthed. Stunned, the Excoriator strode across the darkness of the chamber. Hitting a stud by the penitorium bulkhead, he brought the deck lamps back to life. With the lamps on, Kersh could see that the words were spelled out in blood. Blood taken from the pool Brother Tiberias had left on the floor. There were bloodied footsteps also. Armoured, broad and heavy. They led from the spot Tiberias had fallen to the High Gothic on the vistaport. They seemed to come from nowhere and they led to nothingness.
Kersh hit the stud that opened the bulkhead and found Old Enoch, Oren and Bethesda waiting obediently outside. Gideon had dismissed them but no one had given them permission to re-enter the penitorium.
‘Did anyone enter after the corpus-captain left?’ he put to them. They looked to each other and began to shake their heads.
‘Are you all right, my lord?’ Bethesda ventured.
His eyes narrowed, then he turned back to the penitorium chamber. The pool of Tiberias’s blood still decorated the floor, but the footprints were gone. The Excoriator scanned the vistaport, but all trace of the words had vanished. He approached and looked back out along the Scarifica’s hull for any sign of the figure, but there was none.
‘My lord?’ the absterge asked, stepping into the chamber.
Kersh turned and placed his scarred back and shoulders against the cool plas. He looked up at the blood-speckled ceiling of the penitorium. ‘I need the Apothecary,’ Kersh told her.
‘He is not here, my liege.’
‘Where is he?’
‘On the planet surface.’
‘Then that is where we will go. Prepare a transport.’
Chapter Three
The Feast of Blades
‘Listen, Ezrachi…’
Kersh followed the Apothecary down the crowded stone corridor towards the arena. In turn the Scourge was trailed by his three serfs. Ezrachi limped through a throng of mortals and dead-eyed servitors. Each was pushing its way past, fetching, carrying and attending to urgent if minor duties. A sea of different Chapter colours, they parted as the Excoriators Apothecary marched to the rhythm of his leg’s hydraulic sighing.
‘I tell you, I am not well. I am not myself.’
‘Well, whoever you are,’ Ezrachi told him, ‘you’re entering the Cage in about three minutes, so I suggest you get yourself ready.’
‘I am suffering a spuriousness of the mind.’
‘Existential anxiety is an understandable side effect of such an unusually long time spent in the Darkness.’
‘Perhaps there was an error with the procedure…’
‘Gideon said that you would try something like this.’
‘I see the impossible.’
‘Seeing is believing, Kersh. Make the impossible happen here and we might just have a chance.’
‘I am still afflicted, A
pothecary!’
Serfs, who usually had their eyes directed to the floor in the presence of an Adeptus Astartes, looked up at the tormented Excoriator.
Ezrachi ground to a halt and turned. ‘I’ve reviewed the procedure and already made a thorough medical examination of your person. The procedure was a success.’
‘An occulobular defect?’
‘Impossible.’
‘Suprahormonal imbalance.’
‘Would have other symptoms.’
‘Cerebral damage.’
‘I was wrong, Kersh.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Back on the Scarifica, I ordered rest and recuperation. I was wrong. All of your wounds, those sustained at the hands of the Alpha Legion and the catalepseal procedure that followed, are all but healed. We are the Emperor’s Angels and we are made in his image, but we are not the same. I underestimated your powers of recovery. You are gifted, Scourge, and I need you to use that gift now. Your brothers expect this of you. It is a matter of honour and you must answer your Chapter’s call. This above all other considerations. Do you hear me, Kersh? The time is now. Two minutes – or the Excoriators forfeit the contest and their honour.’
The Scourge’s shoulders sagged. ‘Then I am simply losing my sanity.’
‘A mortal condition – I assure you. Follow me,’ Ezrachi instructed and ducked through an archway. Inside, Kersh found a small chamber. Each Chapter had been set aside a small area close to the arena known as the Cage to use for their preparations martial, medical and spiritual. ‘Assist Brother Hadrach,’ Ezrachi ordered Kersh’s serfs as the Scourge came to stand on a central stone bearing the Excoriators’ seal. The young Techmarine Hadrach had forgone his ceremonial plate and had settled instead for forge-robes. He worked feverishly over an adamantium anvil with an assortment of calibrated hammers, but paused long enough to give Kersh a stare of positive dislike.
‘As you were, brother,’ Ezrachi said, and the Techmarine returned to his work. Old Enoch and Oren started walking pieces of armour from Hadrach’s workspace to their Excoriator lord. Bethesda disrobed the Scourge. As her two compatriots began decorating their master’s muscular form she got to work on the belts, clips and seals that held the ceramite plates together.
‘What is this?’ Kersh asked looking down at the deep yellow of the battered breastplate the absterge was harnessing to his chest.
‘All combatants wear the old Legion’s colours in the Cage,’ Ezrachi told him. He peered out of the chamber and down the corridor before turning back to the Scourge. ‘A sign of symbolic unity.’
Hadrach handed Old Enoch and Oren a shoulder plate each. The first was the allegiant yellow of the Imperial Fists. The second bore the Chapter marking of the Excoriators. It had been this plate that the Techmarine had been working on. It was crumpled and badly damaged.
‘That will have to do. Usachar took a real beating.’
‘Ezrachi…’
‘The contest had already begun when you were awoken. You therefore did not attend the opening rites.’ The Apothecary peered into the corridor once more, anxious about the time. ‘What do you know about the Feast of Blades?’
‘I know that it’s a diplomatic waste of time to have brothers fight one another when we have a galaxy of enemies more worthy of our blades.’
‘The Feast of Blades commemorates our Lord Primarch’s decision to break up his Legion as the Codex Astartes instructed. Dorn chose the Iron Warriors fortress known as the Eternal Fortress on Sebastus IV as the instrument upon which to break us.’
‘And make us,’ Kersh acknowledged. ‘I know the saga of the Iron Cage.’
‘We entered the Eternal Fortress as a Legion,’ Ezrachi said. ‘We left as a multitude of Chapters. It pained the primarch to do this, but he knew it was necessary. Dorn himself presided over the first of the centenary Feasts. He wished successor Chapters to maintain good relations and a cult brotherhood. This commitment was re-honoured following the Daedalus Crusade. Our brothers from participating progenitor Chapters were invited to attend, and many of the Feast’s present rites and rituals were established. We know that Rogal Dorn broke the blade he’d used on Horus’s barge, after it had failed to protect his Emperor. His second sword, the weapon to which we refer as the “Sword of Sebastus” or the Dornsblade, emerged with the primarch from the Iron Cage. It is one of our most revered artefacts, a weapon carried and used by mighty Dorn himself. The Chapter that wins the Feast has the honour of retaining the blade and the solemn duty of presenting it at the next Feast – the contest they will host, at most, one hundred years later.’
‘Thanks for the history lesson. You sound like Santiarch Balshazar.’
‘You should know what you are fighting for.’
Kersh watched Bethesda fasten his shoulder plates in place. ‘I haven’t worn carapace since I served in the Tenth Company.’ Kersh wore a simple sparring arrangement. Upon a tunic and plated skirt sat an aquila-adorned chestplate, codpiece and ceramite shoulder-guards. Plated gauntlets and boots completed the armour. He wore no helmet and both his forearms and muscular thighs were exposed.
Ezrachi led Kersh from the chamber. ‘The rules are simple. Each round consists of a knock-out. Two champions enter. The one that walks from the Cage is declared the winner. Contestations last as long as they have to. The Cage is a ceremonial arena but is no dusty amphitheatre. It is an architectural interpretation of the Iron Cage as far as accounts allow, but the layout is changed between and within each round.’
‘Within?’
‘Within.’
Ezrachi took the Scourge through a sequence of gates and drome-barbica. The iron portcullis and stone of each entrance was decorated with sculpted scenes depicting Imperial Fists at their primarch’s side – a reminder to all who came to fight at the Feast that the Fists above all were Dorn’s chosen. The first among equals. Those deemed worthy to wear the primarch’s plate and colours. It sent a powerful message of martial and cultural superiority to other Chapter champions.
The Apothecary directed the serfs up to the tiered gallery. Old Enoch mumbled a blessing and Oren gave a moody nod of subservience.
‘Fight well, my lord,’ Bethesda said and lingered before disappearing after her father.
‘Talk to me about weapons,’ Kersh said. Ezrachi nodded. Kersh – ever the pragmatist and warrior.
‘You are only permitted two weapons within the Cage,’ the Apothecary told him. ‘This,’ he said, slapping the Scourge across the back. ‘Use it as you will. The second is a gladius secreted about the Cage. There are two: one for you and one for your opponent. The tips and edges of both blades have been smeared with a powerful paralytic toxin, engineered by the Adeptus Mechanicus especially for the Feast. The more you are cut, the more likely that you will go down. Your opponent will, of course, walk away victorious.’
The pair of Excoriators stood at the gate to the Cage. A single bell chimed, indicating the beginning of the contest.
‘Ezrachi?’
‘Yes?’
‘What if it’s not the procedure? What if it’s not my mind? What if it’s a further manifestation of the Darkness?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘What if these things I’m witnessing are… real?’
The Apothecary paused. ‘That would be a spiritual matter. Why don’t you discuss it with a Chaplain? As fortune would have it, you’re about to meet one.’
As the portcullis gate began to climb, a second bell sounded. Ezrachi brought his clenched right gauntlet to his lips and kissed it reverentially.
‘Dextera Dornami, Zachariah Kersh,’ the Apothecary said before climbing a set of steps up to the gallery. Kersh nodded and knelt before the opening gate. He formed a fist with his own gauntlet before touching his forehead with one knuckle, then his lips and then his breastplate – one heart then the other. Getting to his feet, the Excoriator entered the Cage.
It was like no amphitheatre or training dome he had experienced. The arena was large, p
erhaps the length of two gunships arranged nose to tail in diameter, Kersh estimated. The pit floor was uneven, an angular landscape of blocks, crafted from dark Samarquandian stone. There were square pits and perpendicular rises, steps and crenellated bulwarking. High above, through a caged dome, Kersh could make out the tiered gallery. This was no feral world gladiator pit. There were no howling onlookers or the frenzy of battle wagers that usually accompanied such contests. Rows of dark, armoured figures stood in silence, like impassive statues. The audience had the composure and still interest of those visiting a museum, with Chapter serfs, invited guests and gaunt servitors standing about the Emperor’s Angels, as the demigods looked on in expectation and judgement. Kersh swiftly picked out Oren and Old Enoch gathered about the dull white sheen of Ezrachi’s armour. Bethesda was at the bars, her knuckles blanched and her face a mask of fear and forced fortitude.
Kersh slowed to a standstill, looking up through the cage roof. There it was. Behind Bethesda was the horrid figure from his unending nightmare. His recent haunting. The phantasm in plate and bone. It stood amongst his brother Adeptus Astartes, watching him. As Kersh walked into the pit the sombre glow of its helm-optics followed him across the arena with dark interest.
The gate closed behind him. Kersh scanned the angularity of the Cage for any sign of a gladius. Breaking into a run, the Excoriator set off for higher ground and a better vantage point to spot a weapon. The soles of his boots scuffed the stone as he leapt lightly from block to block. His kept his shoulders low. His gaze was everywhere. His movements were athletic and economical. A predator’s approach.
Kersh heard a sudden roar of exertion as his waiting enemy revealed himself. The Space Marine slammed into him from the side with the force of a freight-monitor. Slabs of muscle and shoulder plates clashed as Kersh was knocked clean off his feet and down a steep flight of steps. The Excoriator’s kaleidoscopic tumble was punctuated by the harsh stone edges of the steps until finally Kersh met the grit and stone of the mezzanine level below.
Space Marine Battles - the Novels Volume 1 Page 176