eyes. Using the sides of the pit for balance, he stood as best he could and threw the gladius down at the still body of his mauled opponent.
‘It seems I was favoured by Dorn today, brother,’ he announced before spitting some of his own blood at the stone wall. Kersh looked up at the domed cage ceiling and the stunned audience above. He saw Bethesda – her face unreadable – and Ezrachi, whose bleak revulsion was all too easy to read. The apparition, it seemed, had gone. With no little revulsion of his own, Kersh finally called up to the gallery.
‘Who’s next?’
I am not sleeping, yet even as I think this, I know this to be a kind of sleep. Within his daily regimen of training, cult devotion and litany, an Excoriator allows himself four hours of rest. The demands of a single day in the Adeptus Astartes would kill an ordinary man. Our engineered forms are biological instruments of the Emperor’s will, but the mind needs rest. There is much to learn; errors to interrogate; the capabilities of an Angel’s body to master. Ever since the Darkness, I have been unable to lose myself in what might be described as a natural sleep.
My body is beaten and bruised. Some of my bones are broken. My blood swims with magna- opioids and growth hormones that help repair my injuries. A punishing training schedule and the ever more punishing contestations of the Feast are followed by ‘the purge’ and penitorium, the ritual purification of the flesh. My body, superhuman though it might be, is exhausted, but my mind will not submit. Abatement comes only in the form of catalepsean abstractions, like the one I assume I am experiencing now. Different parts of my genetically altered brain are allowed to shut down in sequence, while I remain in a state of semi-wakefulness. I have rested this way even in the lethal environs of death world phase- forests and quakeclonic superstorms. Your survival instincts remain intact while parts of the mind are allowed to rest. It cannot replace sleep, however, and the distinction between what is an abstraction and what is real is increasingly difficult to make.
Sitting here, I did not realise that I had entered such a state. I am down in the hold of the Scarifica. Despite my successes in the Feast of Blades, my presence on the dormitory decks and in the refectory is still not tolerated by my Excoriator brothers. Corpus-Captain Gideon has allowed me restricted use of the penitorium, chapel-reclusiam and the apothecarion – although I avoid the practise cages. Most of my preparation takes place down on the planet surface. Apart from the ceremonial presence of the Imperial Fists about the purpose-built Cage colosseum, only a garrison of the Thracian Fourth remains on Samarquand. All other resources are stationed on the cordon, keeping the Great Tusk and its greenskin invaders away. When I asked why the Fists would select such a place for the site of the Feast, Ezrachi told me that it was customary for the hosts to select the site of a recent Chapter victory for the contest location. Such choices were in line with the martial heritage of the Fists and their affiliated Chapters. With battles against greenskin blockade runners proceeding above our heads, and Imperial Guard cleanse and burn sorties decontaminating the earth for kilometres around, such a choice smacked of theme and pride. Regardless, it left me with the solitude of the ash fields and the apocalyptic ruins of a reclaimed world as my training ground.
I am sitting on a cargo crate. I sense the Apothecary and his Helix-serfs about me. My own people also. Ezrachi’s servants work solemnly on my face. Their needlework is neat and confident, and my flesh is a tessellation of stitching and stapled gashes. Between the nipping bladework of Sergeant Tenaka of the Death Strike and brutal headbutting I received from the hulking, nameless Crimson Fist I had the unfortunate honour of crossing swords with in the latter stages, my face is a mess. I know that each of these scars – these excoriations – are Katafalque’s blessing and the mark of Dorn, but my skull aches and my features feel as though they have been reassembled like a child’s puzzle. Ezrachi’s aides do their best with what’s left.
The good Apothecary works on my swordarm himself. The crate is covered with surgical foil, and Ezrachi’s instruments are laid out along the strapped-down length of my forearm. My flesh is open and the inner workings of the limb exposed. In the previous round, Knud H?gstad of Brycantia thought it prudent to shatter my arm – unhappy at what it was doing with a gladius on the end of it. I had the Iron Knight pay for the injury by cleaving off his hand – gauntlet, gladius and all – with the finest overhead downcut I believe I have ever performed. Dorn demands perfection. Demetrius Katafalque writes in detail on the sound a blade should make during the successful execution of such a manoeuvre, and the sword sang like a Terran songbird. Perfection is an ideal to which I aspire, but an imperfect victory still has a great deal to recommend it.
Ezrachi informed me that such an action, although legal in tournament terms, had offended several of the participant Chapters, the Iron Knights and Imperial Fists among them. It was not my intention to invoke an insult, an echo of the primarch’s own severed hand. That was how it was received by the Brycantians, however – a polemic and litigious breed, more interested in the detail of ritual law and tournament etiquette than victory itself. They petitioned my disqualification, and not for the first time. Earlier in the Feast, I left a former champion of the same Chapter called Hervald Strom gutted and all but dead on the Cage floor. A full day’s delay to the Games was called. A day for Ezrachi to attend to my wounds and Shiloh Gideon to berate me – although behind the corpus-captain’s words I sensed an unmistakable pride and relief. The dishonour of conduct in battle was preferential to the dishonour of early defeat. Strom lived, tough Brycantian bastard that he is, and my advancement was allowed.
The Excoriators would not indulge in such Chapter politics. There were no appeals on the ramparts of the Imperial Palace. No petitions to be had with the Sons of Horus, degenerate World Eaters or the warsmiths of Perturabo. When Berenger of the White Templars took my eye, I did not call for the tournament official or Feast charta. I did not yap like a dog, protest or pontificate. I fought on, like I was born to do. I took the only thing that mattered from my opponent: victory. I tire of rules and regulations. I yearn for the cold simplicity of the battlefield, where enemies were at least good enough to signal defeat with their deaths.
The Apothecary attended to my eye and offered a bionic equivalent. I refused. Ezrachi and Hadrach insisted that I would see better than with the original, but I cared not. When pressed they admitted that the change in depth perception would take some getting used to. I couldn’t afford the distraction this late in the contest. I opted for a simple ball-bearing to be inserted instead as a temporary measure. The matt, scratched surface of the metal revolves as I move my head. I catch others watching its motion. Ezrachi insists he’ll replace it after the Feast, but I have to admit that it is growing on me. The Apothecary already has his hands full with my shattered arm. He is surgically inserting an adamantium pin and piston arrangement that runs the interior length of the limb.
My serfs make themselves busy about my sitting form. With my arm strapped, there is little in the way of blood. What there is Oren moodily massages into the deck with his mop. Old Enoch is on his knees, babbling prayers and incomprehension. Bethesda is beside me, working around Ezrachi’s aides. She’s applying a moistened cloth to my brow, for all the comfort it gives me. I allow this irrelevance to continue. She is young and my form more than mortal. Her reverence is only human and if such meaninglessness gives her comfort then who am I to deny such minor mercies?
Of course, my visitor is here. It indulges in what might be described as an otherworldly pacing, the inky blackness of the hold giving up its armoured form before the phantasm disappears, again one with the darkness. I catch it in the periphery of my vision. It seems always there, even when it’s not. Once, in the chapel- reclusiam, I turned to find it beside me. The cleaved faceplate of its helmet radiated a chillness that turned my breath to fog. I heard its teeth chatter and, as I turned away, I caught once again the helmet interior and the fleshless face within.
It seems never not with me. On the dark and lonely passages of the lower decks I hear the distant footfalls of the revenant. On Samarquand its distant form stands atop the ruins and on the smouldering horizon, observing my progress as I run, train and fight. It is there above the Cage, always. I no longer look for its macabre presence, for I know I will find it amongst the colosseum crowds. Watching. In silent appreciation it stands, never talking, but a seeming supporter of my gladiatorial efforts.
‘Wake him,’ I hear a voice command. I know the voice. It is Corpus-Captain Gideon.
‘I am awake.’
The corpus-captain entered the gloom of the cargo compartment. His eyes flashed around the chamber. It was clear that the Excoriator had never been down in the hold before. Beside him Chaplain Dardarius glowered in his dark plate.
‘Chaplain Dardarius,’ Kersh greeted the Excoriator. ‘The good corpus-captain has allowed me restricted
