Each of the seneschal’s additions bore the same name: Ignis Prime. The planet on which Chapter Master Quesiah Ichabod had come to inspect the mountaintop Excoriators garrison of Kruger Ridge, only to find a slaughterhouse rather than a Chapter house, and a waiting ambush in the form of heretic Alpha Legionnaires. It was there, barricaded in the oratorium, that Zachariah Kersh had fallen to the Darkness, failing both his Master and his Chapter, and allowing the Alpha Legion’s victory to become complete.
The Scourge blinked, shaking another abstraction from the mists of his mind. ‘Where is the Chaplain?’ he asked. He had come to the chapel-reclusiam to see Dardarius, against his better judgement. Since finding a new home for the sacred Dornsblade in his tiny temple, the Chaplain was now rarely found anywhere else. Old Enoch mumbled something unintelligible.
‘The corpus-captain sent for him, my lord,’ Bethesda answered, closing the tract.
Kersh’s eyes narrowed. ‘The engines have stopped.’
Old Enoch nodded. The faint rumble was absent from the deck. After the long haul from Samarquand, short jumps and frequent receptions had become the order of the day. As the Scarifica moved between the cruisers, keeps and warzones of the Excoriators Chapter, Kersh had learned that precious little progress had been made in locating an antidote for the toxin slowly eating its way through his Chapter Master. The hazardous environs of feral hellholes and death worlds had not given up their secrets. Meanwhile, all companies were on high alert. News of Kersh’s victory at the Feast of Blades had indeed lifted the hearts of his battle-brethren, but it made their duty of garrisoning the sectors bordering the Eye of Terror no easier. Servants of the Dark Gods were ever ready to test the mettle of Excoriators bastions, gauntlets and cordons, and with recent misfortunes the numbers of battle-brothers holding such precarious boundaries were dwindling.
‘Enough,’ Kersh commanded, scooping his helmet from the floor and rising to his full height. A sporran arrangement hung across the ceremonial loincloth, holstering an Adeptus Astartes Mark II bolt pistol. The ancient weapon was squat, fat and ugly like a guard dog, and sat within easy reach across the Excoriator’s groin to allow not one but two scabbard-sheathed gladii to hug the Scourge’s hip. The first bore a bulbous pommel, sculpted in the fashion of a clutched talon of the Imperial aquila. Both gladius and pistol, with the relic plate, accompanied the honour of being the Chapter Scourge.
The second sword was plain and had been with Kersh since his inception as an Adeptus Astartes Space Marine. The Excoriator used it as a functional back-up weapon. With standard held high and a Chapter Master to defend, Kersh did not want to fall to an enemy for want of weaponry, and many enemy champions were skilled in the arts of disarming and blade deprivation. In the end the Darkness had turned out to be the true master of such strategies. Gideon’s ceremonies did not necessitate carrying such an arsenal aboard the ship, but traversing the dreadspace about the Eye of Terror did, with all battle-brethren on board instructed to be armed and ready for the ambushes, boarding actions and unpredictable mayhem the warp rift routinely threw at them.
The serfs lowered their eyes and retreated. The Scourge turned to his seneschal. ‘Discover why our engines have stopped.’ Old Enoch bowed his head and left. To Oren and Bethesda he simply said, ‘Pray, leave me.’
As the lictor and absterge repeated their father’s subservience and exited the chapel-reclusiam, the Scourge approached the altar. The bejewelled case was closed. Looking furtively about him, Kersh found the chapel empty but for the blind chorus of the choir. Depressing two gleaming studs the Scourge disabled the case stasis field and opened the casket.
Within was the Dornsblade. Sheathless. Simple. Resplendent. The weapon’s spartan honesty had shocked the Scourge at first. With most warriors – even amongst the Adeptus Astartes – the greater the glory of the wielder, the more extravagant the decoration of the weapon wielded. Even laid out on the ermine interior of the stasis casket, the Dornsblade rang with history. It entranced the observer with the dull gleam of honours eternally earned. It was rumoured to be unbreakable, a symbolic reminder of the unbreakable spirit of the Imperial Fists in the face of adversity, given form in the trials of the Iron Cage. It also represented Legion unity during the necessities of the Second Founding.
It was crafted from a single piece of high-grade adamantium and remained completely unadorned. Cross guard, hilt and pommel were all bare metal, with the heavy blade counter-balanced by a solid pentagonal prism, with angular edges and featureless faces. The hilt had been cross-hatched and scored to provide a grip, and the cross guard had been stamped with three simple numerals across its breadth: VII. The blade was razored and featureless, bar its bronzed discolouration, which was believed to be the stain of the traitor blood that had baptised the blade in Rogal Dorn’s hand, during the Battle of the Iron Cage.
The blade misted. Kersh suddenly became aware that the temperature in the chapel-reclusiam had dropped. The lamps dimmed and the choir trailed off. The Scourge saw the white clouds of his breath before him.
‘Only you,’ Kersh announced to the temple without turning. ‘Phantom.’ There was no reply but for the chill on the air. The Excoriator turned but the revenant was nowhere to be seen. Kersh suddenly became aware of footsteps in the corridor approaching. The lamps returned to full brightness and the coolness dissipated. Snapping shut the casket and re-engaging the stasis field, Kersh turned just in time to see Gideon enter with Chaplain Dardarius. The Chaplain’s eyes narrowed and his gaunt expression soured. He made it clear he was unhappy with the Scourge’s proximity to the relic blade. Apothecary Ezrachi followed and behind him two strangers entered the chapel-reclusiam.
They were Adeptus Astartes. Excoriators. The first was like Dardarius, a Chaplain, also dressed in midnight black but sporting a hood and cloak mantle in the Chapter’s colours. The second wore the faded blue plate of the Librarius and a surcoat of tattered white identifying his rank as that of an Epistolary. Instead of a helm, a crafted metal hood protected the Librarian from both physical and psychic attack, and the willowy shaft of a war scythe rested in one gauntlet, the wicked blade-tip of the force weapon barely scraping the deck.
‘Corpus-captain,’ the Scourge acknowledged. Gideon looked uncomfortable.
‘May I introduce Chaplain Shadrath and Epistolary Melmoch,’ Gideon said, ‘attached to the Fifth Battle Company.’
Kersh looked to Ezrachi, whose eyes failed to meet his own, and then to Chaplain Dardarius, who glowered back. Both Shadrath and Melmoch walked out before the altar and the case containing the Dornsblade. Shadrath pulled back his hood to reveal a Chaplain’s helmet. From temple to jaw, the faceplate was decorated with a half-skull. He knuckled his forehead, the half-grille of his helm and then his breastplate – crossing from one heart to the other – before kneeling in front of the relic. Melmoch, whose piercing eyes and unguarded smile seemed out of place on the psyker’s weather-beaten face, merely kissed his fist before joining the Chaplain on the chapel flagstones.
‘No champions for the Feast were selected from the ranks of the Fifth,’ Kersh stated. ‘No offence intended, Chaplain.’
Shadrath said nothing, but came up off his ceramite knee and stared at the Scourge through the darkness of his helmet optics. The Epistolary looked to Kersh also, a knowing smile fixed on his odd features. ‘Then this is about the Stigmartyr,’ Kersh concluded. ‘You have found our sacred standard?’
‘We have not,’ Shadrath admitted, the grille of his helm reverberating with his grave words. ‘Though, we have lost over half our number in the endeavour.’
Kersh felt his face tighten. ‘I…’ he began.
‘…don’t have the words to express the loss of these brothers,’ Shadrath interrupted with plain but savage honesty, ‘both to their company and their Chapter.’
Kersh bridled. ‘Do you have intelligence of the Stigmartyr’s whereabouts or the movements of the traitors who took the standard?’
‘Our reconnaissance is sketc
hy,’ Shadrath said. ‘The enemy had the benefit of a clean escape and unchallenged withdrawal.’
The Scourge stared hard at the Chaplain’s half-skull helm. Without diverting his eyes, he said to Gideon, ‘Corpus-captain, we have returned the Feast’s contestants to their battle-brothers. Although Chaplain Shadrath is welcome to bathe in the hard-won honour of our contest victory, the Scarifica’s schedule is tight and we are needed above Eschara.’
‘You will not be travelling on to Eschara,’ Gideon told him.
‘What?’ the Scourge seethed, at last turning to face the corpus-captain.
‘Chaplain Dardarius and myself will see to it that the sacred Dornsblade is delivered safely to our home world. Have no fear of that.’
‘I am the victor, the champion of champions. It is my right to bear the blade back to our brothers and present it to Chapter Master Ichabod.’
Gideon offered him a data-slate he held in one gauntlet.
‘The Chapter Master has greater honours and greater need for you elsewhere, Scourge. You will not return to his side or even to the decimated First Company. You have been promoted, Kersh. You are corpus-captain of your own company, with all the power and responsibility that entails.’
Zachariah Kersh couldn’t believe what he was hearing. Silence intruded on the gathering.
‘The Fifth…’ he said finally.
‘What is left of it,’ Chaplain Shadrath hissed.
When Kersh didn’t take the data-slate, Gideon stepped forwards and placed it in his ceramite fingertips. ‘Corpus-Captain Thaddeus is dead. Long live Corpus-Captain Kersh. Your orders, corpus-captain,’ Gideon said. ‘From Eschara. From the Chapter Master himself.’
Kersh stared down at the slate. ‘There must be some kind of mistake,’ he insisted. ‘An astrotelepathic error. A garbled communication. Some confusion with the message terminus or destination.’
‘I was the terminus,’ Epistolary Melmoch told him, the broad smile still clear on his warrior’s features. ‘There was no mistake. I transcribed Master Ichabod’s orders personally. He was very specific, as you can read on the slate I’ve prepared for you.’
The Scourge’s gaze was on the floor. His mind light years away.
Gideon spoke. ‘I have taken the liberty of setting your personal serfs to work on packing up your… belongings and transporting them across to the Angelica Mortis, the strike cruiser in whose shadow the Scarifica currently resides. Your strike cruiser, corpus-captain. You will not be alone, either. I’m sending Ezrachi with you. Shadrath tells me the Fifth are bereft of their Apothecary as well as their commanding officer and, Emperor willing, we shall make Eschara without need of his talents.’
Kersh looked to the old Apothecary. Ezrachi raised a crabby brow. The Scourge said nothing for a while. ‘Kersh,’ Gideon said. ‘This is a great honour.’
Kersh’s face was creased with lines of fresh vexation and responsibility. ‘I am corpus-captain of the Fifth…’ he said.
‘You are,’ Chaplain Shadrath confirmed.
‘Then may I have the chamber once more, to fully take on board the magnitude of such an honour and consult the Chapter Master’s orders?’
Melmoch, still smiling, bowed his head and withdrew from the chamber.
‘As you wish,’ Shadrath hissed through his helmet half-grille and followed.
Gideon offered his gauntlet. ‘I know we’ve had our differences,’ he said, ‘but what I saw you accomplish in that arena will stay with me the rest of my days. Let me be the first to congratulate you, corpus-captain.’
Kersh didn’t take the offered hand. He turned to face the altar. Eventually, Gideon let it drop and nodded. It was the Scourge’s way. As he left, with a sneering Dardarius at his heels, Kersh called, ‘I fear you may be the last to do that.’
Gideon stopped and nodded once again.
‘Kersh, to command is not to be liked, feared or even respected. It is to be followed. Every corpus-captain finds his way. Some ways are harder than others, but they are all lonely paths,’ Gideon told him. ‘That’s why I left you Ezrachi.’ With that, Gideon left the chapel-reclusiam.
Once again, silence reigned.
‘This is a mistake,’ Kersh said, looking up at the towering stained-glass tessellations of Katafalque and the Primarch Dorn.
‘As corpus-captain you must master the art of the politician,’ Ezrachi answered. ‘It’s never a mistake when the Chapter Master makes it.’
‘I’m the Scourge,’ Kersh said, not seeming to hear the Apothecary. ‘I was born a warrior. I was engineered to kill.’
‘You’re a killer, yes. But killers need to be led, sometimes by other killers. You think yourself not worthy?’
Kersh let the question hang.
‘You are the first Excoriator to win the Feast of Blades. The first of our kind to earn the primarch’s sword. This promotion is just reward for your efforts at the Feast. Also, you are justly qualified for such a position. Before you were the Master’s Scourge you were a squad whip.’
‘First with the Eighth, second squad. Then, like Tiberias, with the Vanguard – First Company.’
‘Then I fail to see the mistake.’
‘The Feast is a distraction. I am afflicted. The Chapter has lost its standard and shares that affliction. I must assume responsibility for the Stigmartyr’s loss and the damage done as a result. I was a fool to think the Master would welcome my return – with or without the Dornsblade. He cannot trust me by his side. This promotion is a convenience. A way to keep me at arm’s length. Like sending me to the Feast in the first place.’
‘From what I know of the Chapter Master, that seems unlikely.’
‘Have you fought by his side for most of your life, Ezrachi?’ Kersh challenged. ‘Been his blade where his could not be, bled in his stead and been the moment between his life and death?’
‘No,’ the Apothecary admitted.
‘Then tell me not of your observations from afar. I know Quesiah Ichabod. He is a fair and honourable master, the best of us by a light year. He is more than a man, but he is still human and feels as humans do. He is dying. Slowly and in agony because he took an assassin’s blade that should have been mine to turn aside or receive. I am the Scourge!’
‘You are human also,’ the Apothecary reminded him. ‘You may think this promotion a return for some perceived failure or betrayal, but I watch as your all-too-human guilt eats away at you, corpus-captain. You punish yourself enough for both you and the Chapter Master. You view the Darkness as an affliction, but perhaps this is the primarch’s wish. Like Ichabod you were spared the butchery of that dark day on Ignis Prime. You both live your pain but are meant for greater things. The Feast of Blades. Company command.’
‘Command?’ Kersh snorted. ‘You honestly think of me as a commander? I am my brother’s right hand and the blade in his blind spot, not a voice on the vox directing that blade. I am not strategist or tactician. I am an attrition fighter in the best traditions of our Chapter, but when I cross blades I little know what I am going to do next, let alone a hundred others. And of the hundred, why the Fifth? Why did it have to be the Fifth?’
‘There is a poetry to the thinking,’ Ezrachi admitted. ‘You think that you earned the displeasure of your Excoriator brothers at the Feast? Wait until you meet the remainder of the Fifth Company. Then you will come to understand the true hatred of brother for brother.’
‘Like the loathing Master Ichabod must hold for me?’
‘Perhaps that is the point. Or perhaps the Master still has much to teach you and this is in turn a much needed lesson. You said it yourself, we are attrition fighters. We endure as you will endure this new responsibility and all that goes with it.’
‘Does your tiresome advice go with it, Apothecary?’
Ezrachi chuckled. ‘I will give you honest counsel when I can. To be corpus-captain is not to have all the answers. You will lead the way and your brethren will follow, it is as simple as that.’
‘I am a poor c
hoice.’
‘But you are the choice. These are the chains of command, Kersh, and they are binding.’ The Scourge nodded.
‘Now, corpus-captain, if you’ll excuse me I have staff and equipment to transfer to the Angelica Mortis.’
Kersh nodded once more and the Apothecary withdrew, leaving him alone again in the chapel-reclusiam. He approached the altar, looking up at Katafalque and Dorn. He placed his helm and the data-slate of Ichabod’s orders next to the Dornsblade and knelt before the glass representations. He thought on the trials of the Second Founding. Dorn’s own guilt and the agony of the Codex Astartes’ decree, the division of the Legion into autonomous Chapters. He considered the noble features of Demetrius Katafalque at his primarch’s side. The captain who bled with his men before the walls of the Imperial Palace, under the horrific onslaught of the Warmaster’s siege. Holding out for as long as he could. Putting his body between the enemy and his Emperor. Making them pay in blood for every treasonous step. Demetrius Katafalque, whom Rogal Dorn had designated the first Excoriator. The first Master of their Chapter. The Scourge rested his gauntlet on the pommel of his gladius. The weapon he’d received upon becoming a fully-fledged battle-brother, so many years before.
‘Were you ready?’ Kersh put to the stained-glass Katafalque.
The four men of the God-Emperor knelt before the cardinal’s throne.
‘You think it wise to treat the Adeptus Astartes thus?’
‘How many of their calling have you encountered?’ Pontifex Nazimir asked his brother ecclesiarchs across the ancient’s lap. They too wore their years of faith on their faces, but where the cardinal drooled into his vestments, his sycophants still revelled in the wiles of old men.
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