hands and it appeared that Alighieri would be little different.
Within moments Kersh was among them. The Scourge was a killer rather than a fighter. He lacked both the Black Templar’s deftness with the blade and the centrifugal power of Montalban’s swordarm. The Excoriator’s gladius came at them both with murderous intent, however. His first few swings spoke of a squat ferocity, the first almost taking out the giant Montalban’s throat and the second flashing narrowly before Alighieri’s face. The pair instantly sensed the threat and responded with a double-dealing of punishing bladework. Kersh could barely get his gladius between the Black Templar’s stabbing weapon and Montalban’s bludgeoning, overhead barrage. He wouldn’t have achieved that if it hadn’t been for the pair’s own exchanged blows.
With the impact of the Imperial Fist’s weapon still ringing through his own and up through his arm and shoulder, Kersh rolled beneath a low, opportunistic swipe from Alighieri. Out from between his brothers, Kersh assumed a defensive posture at the apex of the revolving triangle the three Space Marines had created. If the sons of Dorn formed the points, the clash of blades gave the shape its scalenic sides.
As the battle roamed the Cage, the architecture of the arena transformed about the three warriors, adding the simple danger of disappearing footholds and floorspace to the evolving deathtrap of blades slicing up the air between them. The movement of the blocks in symbolic representation of the Iron Cage fortress was more than disorientating. Preoccupations with footing, falling and hazards sapped the only seconds the Space Marines had to spare between the furious onslaught of their opponents’ blades. Serrated discs spun like circular saws along the gaps between floor blocks, forcing the Adeptus Astartes to sidestep and jump in their carapace.
Pummelled into the ground by Montalban’s unremitting overhead assault, Kersh was forced to roll across a quad of blocks set with vents that were flush to the stone. As the Excoriator tumbled, the vents emitted a volatile gas that was sparked and ignited about him. Burying his head in his arms, Kersh rolled shoulder over shoulder until he emerged, hair singed and armour smoking from the shallow field of flame. A pit had unexpectedly opened up beneath Montalban and the giant had dropped down into a darkness into which Alighieri and the Scourge were forced to follow.
The Black Templar was easily the most sure-footed of the combatants, but even he could do little to avoid the clouds of thick, greasy smoke that erupted from grilles in the floor beneath the Space Marines’ boots. The tacky fog smeared the skin and ceremonial carapace, as well as gunging up the eyes and enveloping the warriors in brief banks of billowing gloom. Through the smog, sword strikes lost their discipline and technique lost out to the hack and slash of open opportunity. All three of the participants’ blades made contact through the smoke, but it was impossible to tell which strike belonged to which warrior.
Alighieri received a slash across his forehead, an arm and a leg, considerably hampering the Black Templar’s former grace and agility. Kersh took a swordpoint in the groin – at the top of his left thigh – as well as a slice across the back of the neck running parallel with the line of his carapace. The Excoriator felt the now familiar spider-bite numbness creep through his flesh as the paralytic took effect. His head began to droop to one side and the Scourge was forced to bunch his shoulders and tense the sinew in his neck to rawness in order to keep it upright. Montalban emerged the worst hit, being the largest target in the greasy blindness. A razor edge had found a backstrap on his carapace, cutting it free and allowing the ceremonial armour to fall away from his broad, muscular chest. The hulking Imperial Fist was adorned with crippling nicks and slashes across his shoulders and down one leg, but seemed unconcerned. His movements were as assured as they were before, the giant simply pushing through the paralysis like a runaway train that had blown its brakes. Grabbing the chestplate, Montalban tore it free of his perfect form and tossed it aside.
The nightmare of battle went on. Dorn and his Fists had endured weeks of torment and relentless assault at the design of Perturabo and his traitor Iron Warriors. There the battle-brothers had come to know each other’s true worth as both warriors and spiritual siblings, this as part of their own primarch’s design. As the crowds built and gathered in the gallery above the Cage and the spectacle of superhuman endeavour and skill continued, it became apparent that some of that same hard-won respect and the kindred bond of Dorn’s spirit had been ignited between the three warriors. Too many blades had been turned aside and too many brief fantasies of triumph had been quashed for the Emperor’s Angels not to feel the sting of Legion pride in their brothers’ indefatigable efforts.
Neither Montalban, Alighieri or the Scourge had any idea how long they had been fighting. It was not the weeks of their brothers’ historic trials, but it was longer than all of the other rounds and contestations of the eight hundred and sixteenth Feast added together. Movement became a sluggish blur and detail of the surrounding arena ran like painting left out in the rain. The snarling faces of Montalban and Alighieri flashed before Kersh. So furious and exhausted was the exchange that at one point the Scourge fancied he even saw his own face amongst the glint of blades.
In the background, beyond the whirlwind of the fray, Kersh sensed his ethereal stalker. In the shattered fragments of reeling moments, the Excoriator caught an impression of his private revenant – not watching from the gallery in ghastly expectation, but down in the evolving arena. It was everywhere. Different places; different moments. An armoured shade, bedecked in death, whose presence seemed to suck the life out of the very space it occupied. It watched and waited with the patience of the grave.
The living in the Cage could only measure the passage of time in the fat beads of sweat shaken from their skin, the ache and burn of their battered bodies and, if they had had the luxury of a spare moment to observe, the closing gap between the faces of their riveted audience and the bars of the domed ceiling-cage of the arena.
The spectators found the contestants closer than ever as the three Space Marines scaled a line of block- columns rising up out of the Cage floor. Bounding from the top of tower to stone tower, the Adeptus Astartes exchanged blows. In yet another fearless move, Alighieri had launched himself across the open space between the towers and landed on the one being defended by Kersh. Somehow the Black Templar had avoided being cleaved in two by the Scourge and danced in and out of the Excoriator’s tiring swordplay. The two were so close that Kersh could hear the incessant stream of battle-catechisms and recitation spilling from the Black Templar’s lips. The manoeuvre was even more daring than the Scourge had anticipated, as he discovered when Alighieri made it through the blaze of his blade and clipped the gladius from the fingers of Montalban, who was swinging for all he was worth atop the tower beyond. The gladius left the Fist’s gauntlet and spun through the air above a large pool. Blocks had sunk into the floor of the arena, lined by the towers between which the Space Marines had been leaping. Dirty water had rapidly seeped up through grilles in the block-bottom of the large pit and filled it to a reasonable depth.
Montalban watched the weapon fly across the water’s expanse and clatter to the ground on the other side. Instead of waiting for Alighieri to join him on his tower, the Imperial Fist dropped down the side of the column, sending a quake through the dark stone as he landed. The Black Templar wouldn’t have been able to make good on his bold opening since Kersh had come back at him with a lunge that had every right to gut the Castellan. Somehow the nimble Alighieri managed to arc his palsied form about the sword’s stabbing path.
The tower suddenly bucked. Kersh initially assumed that the blocks were once more on the move, but a second impact convinced him otherwise. The giant Montalban was throwing his bulk at the tower base like a beast of the plains felling titanwoods. The third slam of superhuman shoulder against stone took out the base block and toppled the tower. As the column shook and tipped, Kersh lost his footing and went down in an ugly fashion. Striking his chest against the block edge he felt the shell of his fused ribs crack. He clawed at the smooth surface of the dark stone, allowing his gladius to tumble from his grip and into the filthy water below. The unsuccessful Scourge followed the weapon and was in turn followed and buried by the falling blocks of the collapsed tower.
The fallen column had created a shattered causeway across the pool and a path Montalban fully intended on using to swiftly reclaim his weapon. Once again, the Black Templar’s light feet and balance had proved their worth and the Imperial Fist found a dry Alighieri holding an awkward fighting stance but blocking his way across the stepping stone. The Fist’s lips wrinkled in infuriation. Slapping the palms of his gauntlets on a colossal fragment of the broken base block, Montalban heaved the slab of stone above his head and launched it at the Black Templar. As the rock flew like a meteorite along the path of the causeway, a wide-eyed Alighieri was forced to jump from the bridge and dive into the water.
As his feet found the bottom and the Castellan surfaced, sword in hand, he found himself staring up at Montalban’s rippling chest. The giant had torn the remainder of the base-block out of the arena floor and was once again hefting the rock above the flat-top of his blond hair. Alighieri prepared himself to dive left or right out of the boulder’s trajectory. At that moment, like a daemon of the deep, Kersh broke the water’s surface. Coming up behind Alighieri he grabbed the Black Templar by both the wrist of his swordarm and his neck. The Castellan struggled in desperation but the Space Marine’s speed and agility were no match for the Scourge’s meaty arm-lock.
