As the portcullis gate began to climb, a second bell sounded. Ezrachi brought his clenched right gauntlet to his lips and kissed it reverentially.
‘
It was like no amphitheatre or training dome he had experienced. The arena was large, perhaps 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.
Prone and vulnerable, Kersh turned. His attacker had cannonballed him off one floor of the busy, vertiginous arena and down onto another. His objective became immediately clear. The Space Marine clambered swiftly up an angular column. Kersh heard the scrape of metal on stone. Turning to face him, his opponent held in his gauntlet one of the two gladius blades left about the chamber.
Ezrachi had been right. Kersh had been drawn against a Chaplain. A heavy amulet dangled down by his opponent’s waist on a necklace of precious prayer-beads. The amulet itself was a stylised, adamantium aquila, which Kersh recognised as the Chaplain’s rosarius, deactivated for the competition, as honour dictated. His shoulder plate identified him as a member of the Fire Lords Chapter, but Kersh would have known this from the Space Marine’s tattoos. The Chaplain was a walking illustration – every part of his body inked to represent the swirling inferno he wished to bring to his foes. His canvas-flesh curled with flame and fury, while the blackened dome of his skull was spiky and soot-smeared, like the burned stubble of agri-world fields.
With another roar, the Fire Lords Chaplain launched himself from the top of the steps. He hungered for a swift end to the contest and closed with the distracted Excoriator. The gladius cut through the air. Kersh rolled to one side, allowing the blade to fall where he had lain, chipping the stone. Rolling back, the tip of Kersh’s boot made contact with the Fire Lord’s jaw, sending the Chaplain off balance. By the time Kersh was back on his feet, the Fire Lords Space Marine was coming at him with the envenomed blade, flicking it this way and that, exploring the Excoriator’s defences. Kersh danced away on the toes of his boots. He arched and angled his body, retracting his limbs and skipping back out of the blade’s path.
The Chaplain’s style demonstrated flair and expert choreography. The movement of the gladius flowed, stabbing and slashing with a razored poetry. It reminded Kersh of flames dancing in the darkness and was no less entrancing. The Scourge brought up his plated gauntlets, allowing the tip of the blade to glance rhythmically off the back of his fists. Kersh envied the warrior’s grace. The Excoriators were attrition fighters. Fluidity, timing and technique were all subservient in Kersh’s Chapter to the simple, primordial desire to be the last man standing. Survival was everything. Magnificence with a blade was worth little to the dead.
Kersh allowed the gladius to snake its way through his defences. As the Fire Lord sensed an opening, he extended his reach, allowing the Scourge to lay one of his gauntlets on his opponent’s wrist and the other around his throat. The Fire Lord’s blade danced no more as the two Space Marines fought for the right to direct it. For a moment the Adeptus Astartes stood in a stone embrace – immovable – faces taut in a contest of strength and will. The Chaplain grasped Kersh’s own wrist, attempting to break the lock the Excoriator had on his throat. He swiftly exchanged this for a desperate grip on the Scourge’s chestplate and the two Space Marines spun around. The Chaplain ran Kersh back into the brute architecture of a block obelisk. The surface of the Samarquandian stone shattered and fell in pulverised fragments. Kersh pushed back, slamming the Chaplain into the thick iron wall of the Cage. The Fire Lord’s shoulder plate screeched against the metal as Kersh pinned his shuffling opponent against the wall. The metal surface boomed with the repeated impact of the Chaplain’s gauntlet as Kersh smashed the Fire Lord’s fist and weapon into the wall. The Chaplain released his hold on the Excoriator’s carapace and began slugging him in the side.
The Fire Lord’s hand opened and the gladius fell to the floor of the Cage. This surprised Kersh, who hadn’t expected his efforts to be rewarded so swiftly. His immediate desire to lay his own hand on the tumbled blade slackened his grip, and before he knew quite what was happening, the Chaplain had hammered the Excoriator with a skull-bouncing blow. Kersh went down with the sword. Skidding around on the grit of the Cage floor, he slapped a hand out, feeling for the gladius’s hilt. The heel of the Fire Lord’s boot found his grasping gauntlet first. With his hand pinned, Kersh braced himself for impact. The sole of the Chaplain’s other boot hovered above him and then came crashing down again and again on the fallen Excoriator’s face.
Opening one bruised and bloodied eye, Kersh realised that the abuse was over. The Fire Lord was no longer above him and he heard the scrape of the gladius being reclaimed. There were other disturbing movements. The architecture of the Cage, mirroring the nightmare of the Iron Warriors’ Eternal Fortress on Sebastus IV, was moving. The section of stone upon which he lay was either rising or the floor around him falling away. Rolling off the moving block, Kersh landed messily on the Fire Lord below. The Adeptus Astartes both went down, and once again the gladius became a prize wrestled between them. Grasped with gauntlets at both hilt and blade tip, the Fire Lord and Excoriator battled for supremacy of the weapon. The Chaplain found his grimacing way on top, the inked globes of each bicep thumping with might as he attempted to force the blade down across Kersh’s throat.
The Scourge gagged as the Chaplain leant in closer. The Fire Lord’s breath was a chemicular wheeze. It was as though the Space Marine had been swilling promethium. The blade fell a little further and Kersh’s eyes widened. Raw effort had drawn the Fire Lord’s lips back in an ugly snarl. Instead of the perfect teeth of an Angel, the Scourge found himself staring at a maw of flint. The teeth had been replaced with shards of razor-sharp stone, each with the appearance of a primitive arrowhead or spear tip. Biting down, the Fire Lord’s clenched jaws sparked. The Chaplain hissed through his teeth, sending a gout of flame at the Excoriator’s face.
Kersh threw his head to one side, allowing the gladius to fall even further towards his throat. He felt the flesh on the side of his bulging neck roast and blister. Jerking his head in the opposite direction, Kersh felt the flames of a second searing breath burn his ear and the side of his face.
Writhing and stretching, Kersh caught a glimpse of the silent crowds above. He could feel Ezrachi’s disappointment. He saw Bethesda’s stricken beauty. He then caught a glimpse of the sickening apparition that haunted him still. It stood there amongst the still figures of the audience. Waiting. Watching. It seemed not to be looking at him, Kersh suddenly realised. Following the angle of the phantasm’s dread helm, the Scourge cast his eyes across the brute landscape of the Cage, the mock courtyards and battlements of the Eternal Fortress in miniature. Where the stone blocks of a mezzanine platform had rumbled aside, Kersh could now see the dull glint of the second gladius on the other side of the arena.
The sword became everything to Kersh. He hungered for the solid satisfaction of its grip, the cutting sheen of its leaf-shaped blade and the blunt punch of its broad, tapering point. With one concentrated effort, the Excoriator pushed the poisoned blade away and heaved the fire-breathing Chaplain off him. The two Space Marines rolled until Kersh released his foe and threw himself across the arena floor. The Scourge stumbled to his feet as fast
